how do you guys keep up with your price quotes? like if a bride ask for a price quote, you give it to her and she emails you again for another one 4 months later and you quote her a price of $20 more...not remembering what you quoted her before...how do you keep track of who you quote what?
I always keep a record of who I send quotes to and check to make sure they haven't inquired before. I try to keep at least a copy of emails or even hard copies of any kind of correspondence with prospective clients. sometimes it is only a slip of paper in a file for that month. but at least I still have something.
I do everything by email and I create a folder for every single inquiry. It's labeled by date: "2009-06-13 Brim, Debi". So if Debi calls me 4 months later for a quote for a wedding on 6-13, when I check my files I see that I already have one for her.
I also send out all quotes with a notations of "quotes valid for 30 days". If they dont' book in 30 days, then it's subject to different pricing.
The reason I keep all of them is for my end-of-the-year stats. For example in 2008, I rec'd 294 inquiries, compared to 172 inquiries in 2007. I booked over 41% of these inquiries for 2008.
I tripled the number of events booked .... the biggest impact in this category were the "cake only" (no catering ... just a drop off wedding cake) which went from 5.9% of total sales in 2007 to 19.4% of total sales in 2008. The number of cakes-only went from 9 in 2007 to 62 in 2008.
So keeping a record of how many quotes you sent out; how many brides you talked to; how many blind inquiries you rec'd ..... will give you a bigger picture of how your biz is doing; how you are spending your time; and if you're really growing the dollar side ... or just spinning your wheels on the busy-work side.
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