Weddings Meeting The Prospective Client

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My showing up on time is what I do.... if I want the client then I will put up with their tardiness.... so Yes not answering the door even if you didn't have time for them and not atleast trying to re-schedule is being a hard ass and frankly a baby.... at some point in time unless of course your saying you don't need the work and could careless if someone books you or not than fine... otherwise..... dude seriously POOP Happens.... drop the attitude and just do the interview... last I checked you and I aren't superstars who can afford to snub a client no matter how rude being late is. I wont mince words here and this may seem harsh.... but, you were an ass, period.

Here's the thing.... they want to hire you and you want to be hired.... so you show up on time and are well prepared for them.... they show discourtesy by showing late.... whatever the excuse... you have two choices.... take the interview anyway or act like an egotiscical baby and slam the door shut on what might be your highest paying gig to date... your choice... I think you choose poorly and was a jerk about it.
 
Capital Disc Jockeys said:
Hard ass? No, I think not. My time is valuable, how about you? No? That's your problem. I block out 1 hour for appointments. If it last 20-30-40 minutes, great! It depends on if I have another one afterwards. If you have an appointment with me, be on time. Period. Not an hour late with a coffee in your hand...That's rude!
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Capital Disc Jockeys said:
Irrelevant. Come on now..??? So you mean to tell me if you make an appointment with a client and they show up ohhhh 30 minutes late, that's ok??? Poop happens??? Right....????
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May I direct you to post number #57.

P.S. It takes more than fancy speakers to claim professionalism.
 
patrickrlewis said:
I know I have said it before, but will go ahead and throw it out there again. We do not do face to face meetings. Here is email we send to clients who request one. Yes, we sometimes lose jobs with this policy, but it prevents these kinds of issues. Here is the email we send to prospects who ask for a face to face:

Hi XX,

In regards to a face to face consultation, this is something we stopped doing last year. Our site is designed for every client to be able to completely plan their entire event anywhere they are in the world. I am also available for a phone consultation at any time, plus various forms of online chat (AIM, Yahoo, Gchat, Facebook chat).

Our goal is to make every event as affordable as possible to every client while maintaining high service standards. We find that face to face consultations add an extra cost which can be avoided by incorporating every new technology possible to make each event we do run smoothly and without any issues.

We would love to your entertainment choice at your wedding, and hope to hear from you soon!

Patrick
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I would think you would lose alot of jobs with this policy - especially for weddings.
 
jokerswild said:
Ever have a doctor actually enter the exam room at the appointed time of your appointment?

Come on now... Poop happens.
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I have walked out of an Emergency Room before. One time when I was doing sales at a furniture store I got hit in the forehead with an Oak Door. My forehead swelled up like someone put a golf ball under the skin. The store demanded I go to the ER which I did.

They had me in this room for over an hour and a half while tending to other emergencies. I got up dressed and told them I was leaving. The Nurse told me that I couldn't. I said to her, "Watch me!" and walked out the door.

I told the Store that they had done nothing for me at the ER and therefore they should refuse to pay any bill. I went home and put some Iodex on the swelling and within a few hours it went away.
To the Hospital I was a captive customer so they felt they could have me wait indefinitely. If someone specifies that I come to their office on time and they are not ready for me within a few minutes after that time, I will get up and leave.
 
redhotdj said:
I HAVE WAITED 30 to 45 minutes to see the doctor like i said thats your business not mine
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What would the Doctor do if you were 30 - 45 minutes late for your appointment?
 
ahoustondj said:
I have walked out of an Emergency Room before. One time when I was doing sales at a furniture store I got hit in the forehead with an Oak Door. My forehead swelled up like someone put a golf ball under the skin. The store demanded I go to the ER which I did.

They had me in this room for over an hour and a half while tending to other emergencies. I got up dressed and told them I was leaving. The Nurse told me that I couldn't. I said to her, "Watch me!" and walked out the door.

I told the Store that they had done nothing for me at the ER and therefore they should refuse to pay any bill. I went home and put some Iodex on the swelling and within a few hours it went away.
To the Hospital I was a captive customer so they felt they could have me wait indefinitely. If someone specifies that I come to their office on time and they are not ready for me within a few minutes after that time, I will get up and leave.
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What I take from that is your health isn't as important to you as convienence.

It's sad this society is about instant gratification.... don't see the doctor in a timely basis.... leave despite the possiblity you may have a concussion and could fall asleep and never wake up due to a severe brain injury..... or miss out on a proper diagnosis of droopy eyelid syndrome because a doctor in an office got back logged by pregnant pixies.... or whatever.

Slow down people... take a look around the earth still spins at the same speed it did yesterday and taking the time to provide great customer service is your opportunity to make the sale of your lifetme.... instead of slamming doors on opportunity.... open them.
 
ahoustondj said:
What would the Doctor do if you were 30 - 45 minutes late for your appointment?
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Generally if the office isn't closing they will fit you in between other appointments... d'uh. :triwink:

The parrallel here is we can do the same thing..... but now they have to wait for us as we waited for them.
 
jokerswild said:
What I take from that is your health isn't as important to you as convienence.

It's sad this society is about instant gratification.... don't see the doctor in a timely basis.... leave despite the possiblity you may have a concussion and could fall asleep and never wake up due to a severe brain injury..... or miss out on a proper diagnosis of droopy eyelid syndrome because a doctor in an office got back logged by pregnant pixies.... or whatever.

Slow down people... take a look around the earth still spins at the same speed it did yesterday and taking the time to provide great customer service is your opportunity to make the sale of your lifetme.... instead of slamming doors on opportunity.... open them.
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Hey,
I can wait longer than the expected time to see someone if they will occasionally tell me something as to why I have to wait longer than expected. However to leave me sitting there, holding me captive is unacceptable. They need to treat their clients with respect if they want to keep my business.
 
SpinCin said:
It's really been an education reading everyone's posts! Quite a few things here that I never thought about & I have been djing for awhile. I'll say it again, thank you EVERYONE for your thoughts. I'm planning on using some of your suggestions immediately.
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If you don't mind, which are you implementing?
 
Capital Disc Jockeys said:
All of my potential clients are never more than 15 minutes late. I've had potentials call or text me and say they have gotten lost...I'm cool with that. It happens...But on purpose? Never.
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There can be little, if any, debate that tardiness is usually an act of selfishness and disrespect. But typically it is not so grievous as to be reciprocated with rudeness and more disrespect.

As primarily, a single op, I have the limited luxury of being purposefully selective with my service. However, when a client has agreed to meet, that act is, at the very least, worthy of some patience and understanding.

I would hate to dismiss a potentially wonderful opportunity over something as meaningless as punctuality during the sales and planning process.

A possible method of avoiding the circumstance is to inform the client, during the communications to schedule of the meeting, that you will call twice to confirm the meeting. Once the day before and another an hour before. Then do it. This method provides two opportunities to make adjustments or reconfirm, in the potential's mind, and re-establishes how important you are treating their celebration and the value you are assigning to their time and attention.

I am a stickler for promptness, but I do not I expect everyone to have the same value for time as I do. I simply make it less difficult to ignore or dismiss by making it easier or, at the very least, less likely for them to be so late as to effect the purpose.
 
patrickrlewis said:
And that is when I hit the delete button and never think about that person again. We have plenty of pictures up on both our site and Facebook page which show exactly what we look like, if that is what they are concerned with. We also have plenty of tesitmonials up on our site, and are more than willing to give out references to prove we don't "suck".

I can sit at my desk and knock out 3-4 client meetings, sometimes all at the same time, through GChat or AIM in an hour. These same meetings would require 2-3 nights being taken up to accomplish the same thing.

To me this is just another one of those scare tactics used to get people to pay more for the exact same service.
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Nice to know you have enough business that you can turn clients away tho. I'd never turn a possible client away over a face to face.
 
Capital Disc Jockeys said:
Hard ass? No, I think not. My time is valuable, how about you? No? That's your problem. I block out 1 hour for appointments. If it last 20-30-40 minutes, great! It depends on if I have another one afterwards. If you have an appointment with me, be on time. Period. Not an hour late with a coffee in your hand...That's rude!
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first, you book that many appointments per day well good for you ,and i have no problems, you run your business your way ill run mine
 
The very purpose of customer policy is to facilitate the achievement of your business goals. If you have not set these goals or conceive of policies for reasons outside of these goals - the policy is likely going to be counter-productive.

For example, my customer policies have to be; and are periodically reviewed to be consistent with the following goals or parameters:

1.) The policy should enhance the over-all customer experience to sustain returning customers, or attract new customers and prospects.

2.) The purpose of all policies is to advance sales and reduce returns or other laibilities.

3.) The policy must be both reasonably enforceable and clearly understandable such that the customer's actual experience with the policy remains cosistent with our over-all previously stated goals.

For my purposes - not answering the door and ignoring someone because they are late for an appointment would result in an experience counter-productive to the goals policy is intended to advance.

Certainly there is a more polite way that I could convey the scarcity of my time while continuing to advance the sale. That's really all it takes to preserve your own boundaries while serving the needs of customers.
 
ahoustondj said:
Hey,
I can wait longer than the expected time to see someone if they will occasionally tell me something as to why I have to wait longer than expected. However to leave me sitting there, holding me captive is unacceptable. They need to treat their clients with respect if they want to keep my business.
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Same hold true for your clients. Need to treat them with respect if you want their business and vice versa. I can understand someone saying they 'got lost' and you know they didn't. However, I don't have a show booked every day of my life, so I can use all the customers / clients I can get. Once I interview them, I'll decide if it's a show I want - after all, that's what the initial interview is for.
 
ittigger said:
Nice to know you have enough business that you can turn clients away tho. I'd never turn a possible client away over a face to face.
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Some people simply do not have the skills or capacity to handle face to face meetings. I can't imagine accepting a wedding client without one. To each his own.

Often, individuals that can't, won't or don't, attempt to deflect their personal shortcomings by using personal opinion to mis-characterize, typically in a negative manner, the things they can't, won't or don't do.

I do not sing or have the ability to play live instruments and cannot offer those talents/skills as part of my service. However, I wouldn't ignorantly characterize the ability and capacity in others as a scare tactic. If a client requires those components, I am merely not be the right professional for them.
 
ittigger said:
I would think you would lose alot of jobs with this policy - especially for weddings.
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You would be wrong.

Do we get the $1500 clients? No, but that is also not the market we are after.

For our price point, we are able to bring in plenty of business that we do not need to waste our time or the clients on pointless face to face meetings.

Just yesterday, I had 4 "meetings" in the matter of about 40 minutes. 2 on the phone, and two through facebook chat. All questions and concerns were taken care of in that time without having to take up unneeded client time.
 
patrickrlewis said:
You would be wrong.

Do we get the $1500 clients? No, but that is also not the market we are after.

For our price point, we are able to bring in plenty of business that we do not need to waste our time or the clients on pointless face to face meetings.

Just yesterday, I had 4 "meetings" in the matter of about 40 minutes. 2 on the phone, and two through facebook chat. All questions and concerns were taken care of in that time without having to take up unneeded client time.
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i am glade to see you can get $1500 clients, in my area that would NEVER happen so when they do show or call i like to make it as pleasant and professional as can be even if they are late
 
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