Picture this. You just got an email notification for a new inquiry. You open it up and it is a freaking DREAM inquiry you know you are absolutely aligned with. You’re really excited, start going through your process, only to end up NOT booking them, feeling gutted, and then starting the cycle of the comparison and self doubt game on yourself.

NOT TODAY. Ain’t nobody got time for that! In today’s post, I’m going to tell you why you may not be converting those leads into booked clients.

Why You’re Not Converting Inquiries

This is a common topic I hear amongst entrepreneurs coming to me and asking: 

“How can I generate more inquiries?” 

“Why am I getting ghosted?”

“I had 5 inquiries this week, why am I not booking any of them?”

And so on. Once we take a look through your entire system + workflow, it’s pretty common to find some gaps with very important pieces missing.

There was a time in my business where I was getting a TON of inquiries, and I was actually booking most of them and booking them really quick.

Then on the flip side, i’ve been on the side where i’m still getting a ton of inquiries, but NOT booking many of them.

Now, you may resonate with this as well, but it helped me realize a few things:

1. I want to be on the side of NOT booking most of them because that tells me my booking rate is good and I am charging more premium prices
2. I am working with more aligned clients
3. There’s a lot of moving parts that go into attracting + converting inquiries

This is exactly why I decided to create my Elevate + Accelerate method.

Going through both sides of things here, it really helped me figure out what worked and didn’t work for me to convert inquiries into booked clients. Here are a few reasons why you might not be converting inquiries.

You don’t have a solid sales funnel

You might be asking: what the heck is a sales funnel?! It’s basically a series of steps that your client goes through from when they land on you to when they book you. So for example, they come across your social media and follow your CTA in your bio. They go to your contact form, and you respond back to them. This initiates your initial inquiry workflow, and they book you. 

Then they are led into your workflow. This is basically the journey they go on when they come across you online to becoming a paid client. You can have multiple sales funnels running and they can look different too. 

Start with your CTA’s in your social media posts and lead them through the steps you want them to take in order to book with you. This could be for weddings, mini sessions, grabbing a free resource you offer, planning an elopement with you, etc.

Take a look at your social media and website and see what your funnel looks like, and write down your steps and see where your gaps are that need to be filled.

Your business model has issues

If you’re trying to do much at the same time without enough resources and help, you will feel so stretched. You’re working too much with too little resources or help while working 24/7. What can you do to allow more freedom in your life?

You also may have too many offers that are confusing for your clients. A good example of this would be you are offering maternity sessions, family, seniors, weddings, and elopements. It’s too much and can be very confusing.

Don’t make things harder on yourself than they already are. Figure out what type of business model you want to be running that works really well for you.

For example, I know I go hard on my work 2-3 days per week so that I can spend the other days having more chill down time with my daughter and husband. I can do whatever else I feel like doing that day without the pressure of feeling like I need to work, because I know I got the bigger tasks done on the other days I was truly “working”.

Maybe you want to have 4 hour work days instead of 10 hour work days. Or maybe you are really productive in the afternoon so you don’t start your work days until noon.

Figure out what works best for you and stick to those boundaries in the way you run your business.

Your contact form isn’t optimized

I won’t go into too much detail on this one since I already have an entire podcast episode on this topic, because it is so important! If you want to know how to have a killer contact form, go back and listen to episode 6 or read the blog post here.

Your response isn’t bangin

Your response back to potential clients is the first communication interaction you have with them after they’ve raised their hands saying they are interested in your services.. so HECK YES it counts and is so important.

There’s also very much so an art to an initial response. You don’t want to give too little information that it leaves them more confused because they will simply move on. They don’t have the time to respond back asking you additional questions, and they also aren’t the expert in this scenario, so they may not know what questions to even ask.

But on the flip side, you definitely don’t want to be giving them too much information either. This will lead to overwhelm and cause them to not even take action at all because they don’t know where to start.

What I mean by this is sending them paragraph long responses with too many CTA’s, gallery examples, location examples, pricing options, etc.

There is such a thing as too much information, and that can absolutely hurt you as much as it can by not having enough information too.

I’ll also add this in here too, that you have to remember they’re reaching out to a ton of people about their wedding. They are getting a million responses, so how is yours standing out and serving them in a way that is customized and personalized to them?

That is all also a part of my signature Elevate + Accelerate method that I teach my students on what to do to be able to book their highest paying packages.

You’re not providing client resources

During the inquiry phase of your workflow process, this typically happens early on in your communication with them and even in the initial inquiry response. But remember, you don’t want to overload and give too much.

But you also do want to make sure you have resources ready to send potential clients so they can truly envision themselves in the experience with your services.

Something you really want to make sure you’re doing is positioning yourself as the expert at your service to your potential clients. and one way to do this is to have some killer pieces of content and resources you can send to them to showcase just that, and show off your expertise and talent.

It helps social proof and build brand trust to help you become more in-demand as an industry leader.

If you’re thinking “But I don’t have the experience to come up with resources for people” I need you to crush that limiting belief right now. Because, YES you do have enough knowledge to be able to come up with some type of piece of content for your potential clients whether that be a blog post, an insight on what’s helpful on their day, how to prep for their session with you, how to make the most of their experience with you, etc. 

YES there are tons of things you can do, so I won’t let that excuse slide for ya!

You don’t have a compelling follow up strategy

After they’ve inquired, and you’ve responded, your follow up strategy isn’t strong enough. First off, I want you to ask yourself: “Do I even have a follow up strategy?!”

I hear people say all the time that they get ghosted and then get upset and feel bad about their work. Before I let you get to that mindset, please ask yourself what YOU are doing to prevent that from happening? 

Remember, most every bad thing that happens in your business can most of the time circle back to something you could have done better to streamline it. Not saying that sometimes bad things happen to you that you can’t control, but I’m saying that we need to step up and take more responsibility for the things that we’re complaining about happening to us in our businesses.

We need to kill the industry belief that it’s the client’s fault for ghosting us, for not tagging us on social media, for asking us questions that they should know such as giving raws, our turnaround time, etc.

I want to make a change in this industry. It’s time to step up and take charge of your client communication and experience so that those things don’t happen for you, and you don’t get annoyed when in the small amounts of time they do.

If you’re reading this and realizing you don’t have a separate workflow strategy to follow up with leads you haven’t heard back from, this is your time and your sign to do so! I go over this in my Free Phone Call Outline.

Or even my Initial inquiry workflow email templates as well. Be sure to snag these freebies to help you with your follow-up strategy!

Final Thoughts

My action step for you today is to take a look at the back end of your business and ask yourself if you are doing all of these things and if you’re doing them in a compelling way.If not, this post is your sign to do so! And if you are reading this thinking “Wow I really need some help with all of this!” Fill out the form here to hear more about my coaching options so we can help you get a solid kick butt business so you can attract + convert more inquiries with ease.