Get clients to want you and your services by handling inquiries like a pro.By the time you get an email inquiry about a wedding or event, there have been many buying signals, including:• Visiting WeddingWire—clients are here because they want wedding information.• Exploring your market—they’re looking for pros in your area.• Choosing your category—they’re identifying that they’re at least a little interested in hiring someone for your service.• Clicking your thumbnail image—now you have their attention.• Clicking through to your website—they like your reviews, photos, and videos.• And sending you an inquiry—your website has gotten the conversion from prospect to inquiry.Once you get the inquiry, it’s become your sale to win or lose. The client has already filtered a large number of possible choices down to you and a few other professionals. Whether they’ve also inquired with two, five, or 10 others, we can agree that there are more professionals who will never get an inquiry, so they’re not in the game. As a matter of fact, they don’t even know there’s a game happening! Yet what is it that causes an inquiry to derail? Here are a few reasons:1. Forcing a phone call right away. Like it or not, when someone emails you, they expect an email reply. Consumers indicate their preferred communication method by the method they’ve used to contact you. If they call you, call them back. If they email you, email them back. If they text you, text them back. Unless their message says, “Call me,” use the same method they’ve used.2. Taking too long to respond. I hear this from engaged couples frequently. They’re frustrated that they make an inquiry and don’t hear back in a timely manner. What is a timely manner? That’s somewhat subjective as one person’s idea of “timely” is different than the next. Most couples expect a response within 24 hours, and a small percentage want a response within five minutes. While being the first to respond gives you an edge, an easy rule of thumb is that if it’s early in the day on a business day, reply that day. If it’s later, reply by the next business day. Many professionals are more responsive than this, but clearly real couples are telling us that there are many who aren’t getting this right.3. Using bad auto-responders. Auto-responder emails are not the same as a reply by a person. Few that I’ve seen add any value to the sender. There simply can’t be one correct reply to every inquiry. When you’re the consumer, are you satisfied by an auto-reply, or do you want a reply by a real person? Enough said.4. Answering questions they haven’t asked. When I teach and consult about sales, I say that you shouldn’t answer questions people haven’t asked. That’s why I don’t like sales “pitches” (or auto-responders). Sales meetings should be you personally asking clients questions to ascertain their needs and wants. Then, after really listening to their answers, you get to talk about what you can do for them to fulfill those needs.5. Not writing mobile-friendly email replies. Most of today’s couples are reading many, if not most of their emails on their smartphones. If you’re not paring down your emails to be mobile-screen friendly, people either put off reading them or don’t read them at all. When you get a long email, don’t you sometimes put off reading it until later? If it’s short, you read it right away. That’s what your prospects and customers are doing as well. If you write your emails to be the same as if it were a phone conversation, it will be a series of short, back-and-forth emails that should be more mobile-friendly.6. Not asking a question at the end of your reply. Many experienced professionals say they respond quickly and still don’t get a response. The answer is, possibly, that you’re not asking a question at the end of your reply. If your emails end with a period, the conversation is over. If they end with a question, it continues. Don’t ask three or four questions. Just ask one. If you were on the phone with them, you wouldn’t ask three questions at once. You would ask one and then wait for a reply. Then you would ask another question, based upon their response. The goal is to have a real conversation through email. Don’t ask everything you will ever need to know. Just ask what you need to know to continue the conversation.So, remember that when you get an inquiry, the client is already at least a little interested in hiring you. Your job is to get them to want you, specifically, to be their wedding professional. Handling the inquiry better is your first step to getting them to want you. WPM__Alan Berg, CSP ^®, www.AlanBerg.com, Kendall Park, N.J.