- Do you know your inventory? Listen to this episode, find out what I'm talking about. Hi, it's Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the "Wedding Business Solutions Podcast." When I'm consulting with wedding and event pros like yourself, whether you are a solo entrepreneur or a few people, or a whole bunch of people or a lot of people in your company. I always want to find out if you know what your inventory is. And when I mention inventory people often think about physical inventory. So you think about if you're a DJ, how many DJ setups you have? Or if you're a band, how many pieces of equipment you have? Or if you're a florist, how many vases or how much oasis you have or whatever, but the most important inventory that a lot of us have is going to be your time and your calendar.

So time is an inventory issue when the wedding date or the event date is not dependent upon your ability to do it. So for instance, if you are an invitation provider or if you do you know, let's say dresses or tuxedos, right? The day itself is not as important as your time and your ability to be able to handle those customers. Travel professional, that's another one. So you know, you're not necessarily there. I know some of you are there for certain events, destination, weddings they might have you come or whatever, but for a lot of the time, you are helping someone, and then they're going to have their event, their wedding, their destination wedding, their event whatever it is on another day, and you're not there. So that day is not as important to you as your ability to have enough time to handle a certain amount of clients, so there's your inventory.

For a lot of people, it's your calendar. And I was working just recently with two people that were going full-time from having been part-time. And I said so you know, "How many events do you want to do in the next year?" And they said, "I don't know?" I said, "Well, then you don't know your inventory, and if you don't know your inventory, then you don't know supply and demand because supply and demand says that, it's Economics 101, "If the supply is low, and the demand is high, you have pricing power." So think about the most popular dates of the year. If it comes to weddings according to WeddingWire and The Knot there are approximately 22 Saturdays, that account for half of all the weddings in the United States, and if you're listening in another country in your country wherever you are, there are about that same number. Let's call it between 20 and 30 dates that are going to be the most popular ones.

Again seasonally, it's going to be different even here in the states. July and August, they're not very popular dates in let's say, Arizona and New Mexico for weddings, but they are popular in the Northeast, in the Northern parts because the weather is nice for that. But you're going to have other months that are more popular. So while it's May through October in the United States, those 22 Saturdays account for half of all the weddings in the United States, in your particular market, it might be different dates. So know your inventory, know your calendar. I had this conversation with a friend of mine Alan Marshall. Alan, if you're listening, "Hey how are you doing over there in the UK? And I said to him, "How many weddings do you want to do?" And he said "About 25." And he had multiple price points. And I said, "Well, why do you have multiple price points if you're only going to do 20 to 25 weddings? You should have one price point, and it's you want me or you don't. Now how much you want me to do on that day is going to be different but I'm going to charge the same because I can't do anything else that day." It's the same with my business. I can only be one place at a time. I don't have multiple people out speaking or training or consulting or doing sales training or anything. So it's me.

I just recently had a conference that I'm hired to speak at. And I said, "What else can I do?" And they said, "Like what?" And I suggested some things like, "Oh, we like that. How much more would that be?" And I said, "It won't be anymore. As I told you, my fee was for the day. So I'm there. What else can I do to add value to you, and your attendees?" And that's the same as I suggested to Alan, I've suggested to many other solo entrepreneurs. I did this with a photographer, same thing. I got rid of his lowest package, which is kind of an elopement thing. I said, "Keep it in your back pocket, and if somebody comes and says, "Hey we're eloping on a Tuesday down by the beach. We want some photos and you know, just want the digital images." Don't count that as your regular inventory, that's found money. That shouldn't be pay the rent, or pay the mortgage money. That should be found money, that's profit money. But those things that pay the rent, pays the mortgage pays the car payment. That stuff is your core. If you can fill those core dates, and you're still going to get inquiries for those same dates then you have pricing power. So once you're booked you can't book the next one that's a higher price.

So for some people I've said, "Well, why don't you just have one price? And they you're either booked or you're not. And you don't worry that the next one comes along is going to pay more because there is no more. They've paid your number." That's kind of, that's again, that's the way that I do my business. If you're hiring me for the day to come for sales training or for speaking, that's the price. And if I spoke twice instead of once, it's no difference from price to you. So think about your inventory. Do you know your inventory? Do you have... what I did with this one DJ? I said, let's look at A dates, B dates, and C dates. A dates are those approximately 22 Saturdays that if you do any kind of marketing, and advertising, if people know that you you're out there, and you're doing this at a high level, then you should be able to book those dates without much effort. Then there are the B dates, which if you do a little bit more marketing, advertising, networking referrals, et cetera. You're trying to feed those, you should be able to fill the B dates. And then there are the C dates, which to me again is the found money. 

It's that you don't go looking for you know weddings on a Wednesday in March because there just aren't that many of them so the inventory there is going to be low. But if somebody comes and says, "Hey, we're doing that." Why not? Why not take that? So what we did with him, A, B and C dates, so that we're going to try to fill those A dates. And I said, "let's try to price you so that if you fill just the A dates that you're profiting, and you're paying all the bills, and you're making a profit so that when you start doing the B dates, they're exponentially more profitable because your overhead is covered. So if you have expenses of your business, and plus how much money you want to personally make. If you're making that from your A dates, the B dates are much more profitable because there are no overhead costs. There are very small overhead costs for that. So think about that and say, "How many of those do I want to have? How many A dates do I want to have or do I need to have? And then is it realistic?" I had somebody who said to me, "Well, they wanted 50 A dates." I said, "Well, that's a little bit more difficult because there's 52 weeks in a year, but it's not all year that their particular service is in high-demand. It might be in-demand, but not high demand." And high demand is when you have pricing power.

That's what a lot of people have found in the last couple of years with all the backlog from COVID. And now all the extra inquiries, which are slowing down or have slowed down by the time you hear this, you found that, well I could raise my prices because I'm getting so many inquiries that I'm turning away business, right. Supply and demand once again. So do you know your inventory? Do you know your A, B and C dates? Some of you might have just A's and B's. Some of you just might have just A's. Some of you might have A B Cs and D's. But do you know what they are? Do you know what your personal capacity is if you're a travel professional, if you're an invitation person or dress shop, et cetera? What's your capacity to be able to deal with enough customers that you have the time to give them the kind of service that you're known for you want to be known for . What's your inventory? I hope this gives you something to think about, and give me some feedback on this. Thanks. 

I'm Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you'd like to suggest other topics for "The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast" please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.