10/6/21 Today, Meagan met with Joe Taylor, the past owner of Southland Log Homes. Their daughter is getting married and want Meagan to possibly be their wedding planner. Meagan left it with them that she would look into giving him a flat fee for the wedding. He said multiple times that he doesn’t like the idea of a 15% fee for all expense. He said that he doesn’t want to have to think about how much Meagan is going to make each time he wants to buy something or rent something for the wedding. He would just rather pay a flat fee. Meagan said to the father and mother of the bride that she would go back and work on a way to make a flat fee work and get back to them no later than Friday.
Here are a few things mentioned:
- He said that the amount that she would make, $37,000, was more than what his secretary makes per year. That told me that he was planning to spend $250,000+ on the whole wedding.
- She told me that she would do it for $18,000 flat fee, but I think that is underearning and that she is cutting her value in half by doing that.
- The wedding will take over a year of planning and behind the scenes and would set the bar for the most expensive wedding she has ever worked.
- He is about to pull the trigger on a $27,000 band
- I was thinking it would be neat if there was a way to create a tiered flat fee structure. Something like:
- $45,000 for $350,000 and up
- $37,000 for a total spend of $250,000 and $350,000
- $30,000 for a total spend of $200,000 -$250,000
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Love Matt
On Thu, Oct 7, 2021 at 6:32 AM Jeff Warren <Jeff@warrenforensics.com> wrote:
Answer the following questions:
1) Why is he talking to Meagan and not his secretary? Isn’t it because the secretary can’t do the job.
2) Why do you normally get 15% of all the vendors? Isn’t it because it takes work to deal with these vendors?
3) Remember that word travels so what you do for this one will get out.If you want to do big weddings, be careful what you do. Who is a big wedding planner that you can call to see how they sell this.
4) Why would you want to work for half the fee on a big wedding that will be a lot of work and a lot of stress? There could be many reasons. Think about that. Wouldn’t be better to work on the big wedding and make big bucks.
5) What this is all about is creative invoicing and selling. There was a speaker who was asked to give a speech at a university. He sent the university a bill for $600. The administrator said the university never pays $600 to anyone to give a speech.
The speaker sent them two bills. One for $300 to prepare the speech and one for $300 to give the speech. They happily paid it.
Think about how you can make him happy. Sell the value he is receiving. A fixed fee would be fine with me but it needs to be a high fixed fee.
By the way, I don’t like paying 13% Airbnb fees but I keep doing it.
At some point you also can agree on a fixed fee that will make him happy.
Think about this. Don’t be too quick to negotiate.
Thank you. Perfect. I discussed with Meagan. Thanks again
My painter gave me a price to paint our boat. I went to him and tried to get the price reduced. He would not budge. He said there was a lot of work. Based on what I’ve seen he was right.
Now I am going to make sure it is done right. If you know what you are selling is high quality, stay firm with the price.
Years ago I when I had Warren Engineering a machine shop bid on some work and I thought it was high. Later on talking to the guy he commented that if his bid was a lot lower than everybody else’s he hoped i would give the job to someone else. In other words he had no intention of being the low bidder.
Meagan Warren Weddings has a great reputation based on what. I have heard. What you want to happen is for people to realize they have to pay to get her but on the end it will be an event you will remember forever.
Ponder these words and happy to continue to brainstorm.
You guys are doing great.
