Charging For Bridal Consultations....
Business By sweetlayers Updated 28 Mar 2010 , 4:25am by sweetlayers
In these tough economic times, it seems unfair to charge brides for consultations.
However, when I do the math, it doesn't seem fair that I should have to pay for them everytime either. (samples, gas, excessive amounts of time, etc)
So my question is, when a bride pays a small fee for the consultation, are they more likely to book? Or are they more likely to not schedule a consultation at all.
I'm mean, I'm not trying to be a "suchy much" decorator, but these consultations are getting expensive!
Please share you thoughts!
You can advertise that you bake all the samples fresh and consultations are for serious inquiries with orders over $____ amount, let's say.
So charge them a small fee like $20 for a private one-on-one consultation with various freshly-baked samples to taste/take home.....and apply that $20 fee to any order over $___ if and when they book you.
In these tough economic times, it's not realistic to give your time, labour, ingredients, etc away for free either! 
IndyDebi has brought this up in a couple of other threads, and I think it's such good advice I felt compelled to share it here.
You mentioned "in these tough economic times". We all might be tempted to offer a sale or discount to get the client to book. Just to get some business right? A better idea is to offer something else along with a booking, not a discount or free consultation. Debi's example was chocolate covered strawberries. Chocolate covered strawberries are relatively cheap for us to make, but the retail value is higher. So you can advertise that weddings booked from X date to Y date will receive a dozen chocolate dipped strawberries for the head table, a $28 value (i'm pulling numbers out of the air here). For sake of argument, that dozen strawberries could cost you 6 bucks. A discount of say 10-15% could cost you up to $100.
What would you rather offer?
In summary, don't discount, add value.
IndyDebi has brought this up in a couple of other threads, and I think it's such good advice I felt compelled to share it here.
You mentioned "in these tough economic times". We all might be tempted to offer a sale or discount to get the client to book. Just to get some business right? A better idea is to offer something else along with a booking, not a discount or free consultation. Debi's example was chocolate covered strawberries. Chocolate covered strawberries are relatively cheap for us to make, but the retail value is higher. So you can advertise that weddings booked from X date to Y date will receive a dozen chocolate dipped strawberries for the head table, a $28 value (i'm pulling numbers out of the air here). For sake of argument, that dozen strawberries could cost you 6 bucks. A discount of say 10-15% could cost you up to $100.
What would you rather offer?
In summary, don't discount, add value.
Yeah, I read this thread the other week. However, I did not draw an instant connection to this scenario. Thanks for redirecting me there.
Quote by @%username% on %date%
%body%