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Sneak Peak and Sales

cpq and sales if you've chosen to be a business person in your hours are billable your lord is the husband her husband's a lawyer you're laura's husband your husband's a lawyer billable right oh yeah no one is paying you to head it all night and day are they because that minimum wage that you're making you're like in the red now right when you stayed up all night to edit your images post a few images from your session and wow them with your amazing editing ability you don't need thio edit every session we're going to show you that today leave the rest be you sit down with your client educate them on the process and you show them what you can do if they choose to purchase their coming from you you which means your sales process you don't let the client dictate your process you know he kinds I'm had go here here's what I can d'oh you're welcome to to tell me remember I had a client there sitting across the table there like okay this is all great now what what can you d'oh woody I'm sorry...

what do you mean I could do this is a great price but what are you going to do for me I'm sorry well what's the discount are you on our baby plan no then then why is there a discount this isn't a car dealership what happened did you think there was a discount because this is my price I have a baby planned program you're welcome to join that no no no no no I just want a price and I says the client and why is this true story I'm persian I negotiate everything and I'm not putting down the persian community I'm telling you a story because I have a lot of persian clients and he looked right at me and said I'm persian I wanted discount and I said and I'm puerto rican and I will argue with you all day next and that's how the conversation went and he's like oh no one's ever said that to me before I use that persian thing all the time and I'm like it works for you doesn't he he's like yeah well it's not gonna work here okay and back to business I could have sunk down and been like oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh and he was hard I think I was shaking saying that I've had other men men are very intimidating and the wife's like I think I think of the men in the man's like I've got a thousand bucks what can you do okay let's get this on until the wife what do you want what do you want she's like I want campuses over the nursery ok well we've got a thousand let's work it let's figure it out what size can we get four thousand and I remember that client and he's like she only has a thousand and I said I totally respect your budget let let me let's sit can I sit down with your wife and can I let's figure out how we spent a thousand I was like a game show right here what do you really want what can we give up can you give up the announcements for the campuses over the bed where do you really want those announcing really want this announces if you want to buy the cards you wanna buy single digital files one hundred fifty dollars but if you do that was still a hundred fifty dollars you could probably get you two canvases so like you're talking with them and then he ended up spending fifteen you know I mean because he was like wait she's willing what's we can do this and other people they're like here's the deal anna okay I'm in a tight budget this year what can I do I'm probably gonna have to give up something okay no problem what we have seen what you have to give up do you want to make your own cars this year I'm okay I'm not offended one less holiday card have to do it I'm okay what do you really want I really want your books okay really where your books that's a good idea because holiday cards they're gonna fare away next year and the book is going to pass down a generation so I agree with you let's put your money let's put the money in the book and people come in and they say I want digitals and we say do you really because let's talk about why you want digitals not going there yet and you want to go there we'll go there we do ordering appointments within seven days of a session why I'm in the pregnancy newborn stage many times the women are coming at the end of the pregnancy stage and if I lose them to the new born they're not gonna want to look at pregnancy sessions when they're looking at their new born they're kind of done with that and it's too overwhelming now I've gotta look at pregnancy and I've gotta look at newborn something's gonna give so we really we just want to be done and we tell clients they say can I can you do the pregnancy in order newborn ordering appointments together way but why it is because we want your mind focused on how beautiful and pregnant u r and let's get that done let's finish one project before these stuff the next and about ten percent of them go into labor and there's nothing I can dio and and it's not bad sometimes we do a lot of we do actually do a lot of pregnancy newborn books anyway and I can explain how we do that it's not bad but this is our base business plan that we want within seven days we do a sneak peek or do it too a sneak peek just a day or two before the ordering session why it's purely logistical when I do a session the memory card gets filed in my memory card system and I don't even look at them the same day remember I told you have two hundred fifty memory cards so let's say I'm shooting for like eight straight hours I have a log like tiff any three cards for the day got the three cards we logged them I go shoot I put the mac if I'm really excited I may grab one to sneak peek but I I can't afford to look at them right now I have to look at the last batch that I did so they get filed away and then we still we start looking in the schedule okay what's coming up we'll start the week tiff you've got I mean it it will save me and you have belittled and I looked at the schedule the friday for the next week and we look and I go okay these people are all coming in for ordering appointments I want to sneak peek them and sometimes I just can't I mean we had a girl or doing in ordering appointment yesterday that I wanted to sneak peak er but I was here and I just couldn't and I feel bad I was like I'll post I'll pick what she ordered from and I can sneak peek those for her family by this isn't this isn't a ah hard rule I tried tio I tried to and it's just to get the excitement going I'm not going to reveal everything then we go online sales and just doing I cannae and satisfaction and just staring at myself in the computer all day sneak peek lo rez watermarked images on social media anywhere from one to three images with your amazing anything sound nothing else has touched crystal crystal photography wanted to know should I be charging for travel fees and if so what should I be charging I noticed in your in your price and you are about the home visit yes but then you also have where you go to the beach yes so tell me a little bit about that so it's the same fee for both it's one hundred dollars okay if it was really like out of the way like another city then there would be you know travel accommodations and airfare and things like that but generally I cover from the beach to los angeles and the outer skirts of l a and I don't think I mean the farthest I've driven was to unify resin that was celebrity when I'm like deep in the hollywood hills but for the for most of my general clients the most is like an hour away and it's one hundred dollars travel thing it's just a flat hundred dollar feet and when it's a home session in his same thing even if it's right next door because we do it people in our town where it's a home session and the reason it's a hundred dollars even if it's right next stories because I've got a lug like everything there and the gowns I've gotto bring the gowns gotta bring the reflectors have to bring lights as a backup to bring an assistant even if it's a solo session because I need someone hold the reflector on hand I have to fill my car with props so it is it is yeah that's why we have that thing one more quick question from m gem who's from australia do you ever have clients with a small budget come back and re order items they couldn't afford originally at a later date yes can I also say something about the travel fee before I had a studio I don't have a travel fee e I think that's important because I didn't feel like I had a right because I have nowhere to live so I'm travelling anyway do you know what I mean yeah but I still think if you don't have a studio you can do we travel so you have to come up with what your personal radius is because it adds time so you have to say my personal radius is within fifty miles of my stew of my home and I don't have a studio but that's where that's where my juju my like a salesman with your geographic area and if he wanted to extend outside of my area there's a fee you could do that but that's when I added it because the ones I was paying rent mike and paying rent utilities baba baba and a staff if I don't close my doors to run the place while I'm gone and so that was all my my thinking well so if you if you charge fifty dollars one hundred dollars to drive fifty miles one way you know that's that's not very much money only drive one hundred miles in a day yeah no it's not a lot of money is there a reason why that you don't incorporate that hundred dollars in the home visit session fee it is what it is I'm sorry I misunderstood that that's what I wanted to be clear on okay yes it is included in the session in that session anything and there have been times where it's been really far where I switched it to a mileage rate the there's a standard miley train if you google it thie irs has a standard for reimbursement so I have when people have said I want you to go to this unknown destination and I'm like let me run the mileage and do the irs smiley great and that's going to be the feet and people are very comfortable doing that because it's a business I mean it's a business expense okay so that the I'll buy more later yeah I love that when because it could be great or not great you know when it was film we used to say we keep your proofs forever and I've got a storage unit to prove it the negatives were always on file and then as I got along and I had hard drive after hard drive after hard drive crash and I've got major backups I mean range finder did an article on me on my honor the backups we do and we do the cloud and me a personal backups member have a tech husband so we're backed up but I haven't lost anything that I know of so far because things aaron about five million places but now we say through forty five days after you order you can re order knowing that we're not going to purge but in the case of a digital disaster that's my disclaimer so meaning from when your first order if after forty five days you've had a sesh and I haven't heard from you and we've tried to get you to ordering you still have an order I'm not liable if I have a digital disaster and I'm not going to promise anything because you're forty five days and we've reminded you like five thousand times people have had situations where they've talked to me and they can't get to me for two months because of a location or distance so our medical that's fine but if I haven't heard from you all and the session left and you've just vanished for forty five days and I've tried everything in my power to email you wee snail mail postcards call you and you haven't responded and you're not even a senior photos I can't guarantee it now the good news is I've never had that happen but we do get a lot of people say I want to do like a starter order and then get back to you and here's what we tell them a couple of things first of all we were preferred tio two for you to complete your order in the first round we dio say that we guarantee images for up to forty five days after you place your order in the case of the digital disaster we're going to do everything in our power but we're human beings and the whole world could blow up and I was nothing I could do about it after forty five days if you have chosen not to re order there is no guarantee and some people will say a restocking fee or a re posting the gallery fi I don't do online so I don't have that it's digital so I really have to do anything would pull it off the hard drive so I never felt comfortable saying it'll cost you fifty dollars more to see them or reorder them that wasn't mi people do that and if that's working for you that's okay and if you have a gallery and the only way to get people that order is to say this gallery's coming down or it's gonna cost fifty dollars more that's fine actually our school photos photographer did that and it got my attention she's like galleries coming down and I saw the email five thousand times and I'm gonna buy my child images matter how not amazing they maybe there's still school photos and I saw that e mail like five times they're going down the gallery's going down the gallery's going down if you order after this it's gonna be I don't know if it was a percentage higher or there was a fee but it was enough for me to go I'm buying them right now I think I bought them at like five to midnight so if you do do that especially when you're dealing in the public sector and you're dealing with school photos and events events I think you need to do that or things like that weddings yeah I think I think you should do whatever works because for the person that says I'm just going to buy this I'm gonna buy more later it's about two percent of those that buy more later so um to me it's more trial and error you're gonna have to see who your client basis and test it out and try out different things that works I don't have a perfect answer for every such a solution but try it out see what's going to work sell in person you already know now that I believe in selling in person the reason I believe in selling in person is because of the avon lady in upstate new york whoever you are thank you and because that's all I knew in the beginning when I started going to seminars and w p p I and all the big the big conferences I started seeing you have to project you have to project you're not going to sell unless you project and so mike I have to project so I go and I buy a projector you spend a thousand dollars on a projector and I buy a smoothie screen and we set it up in the studio and it failed miserably it was like a movie time and anna brandt studio and I remember I had an older woman and we have spent such a significant amount of time in her extended family shoot and the screens there and she's sitting here and she's like I can't see it I can't see it and we're going up there like he can't see you can't see ah four visits later I was like oh my gosh I need a full time staff to handle this projection thing because I don't have you literally have to have someone sit down here with them and serve them I fell into the wine and popcorn and ambience and music I've got a sofa not once but twice not once but twice so the first time after I did it during my busy season big mistake I would like I will go broke this is I can't I can't get anyone to make a decision everybody thinks they want to sit down and watch a movie with me the movie over their life that's wonderful I'm having a great time no one's buying anything no one can see anything I just must be an absolute failure because some of the greatest minds in the industry you're telling me this is how they sell and they make six figure businesses and I completely and failing I was already a six figure business at the time but I figured I must be failing miserably and nobody was ever gonna take me seriously okay when I realized I had to get through christmas season I sold the whole thing okay two years ago we moved to a new studio I make a room I paint the room I bring in a sofa I bring in a big tv this big I buy a new projector we hanging on the wall everything smelled good we can have popcorn and then what was it let's watch a movie at anna brand studio that selves weeds do you know what you want to buy you know but I love looking at this this is fun this is fine oh my god I can't make a projection sales and so if you're somebody who does sales projection I bowed down to you congratulations that's awesome I cannot do it I have tried twice I've sold it the second time and I decided that I just don't like it and so you have to tell yourself when you're going to the seminars and you're watching me you may be watching me saying I'm not doing in person sales I've tried it I fail and I hate it I'm going back online where I make my money that's great you have to do what works for you I'm gonna tell you projection does not work for me I may change my mind one day I mean change my mind one day I might create a new room painted by a sofa install projection and hire a saleswoman and I may come back can't tell you how amazing it iss but right now right here in my point of my life I don't do it so don't feel like you're gonna have to spend so much money is spent thousands of dollars trying to make something work for me that wasn't my vision or my idea and I think we do that right we go and we we watch creative live we watch the best industry leaders in the market we watch these people that are amazing and they must be doing everything right but I'm pretty much certain that that person had trial and error to and that person probably tried things that didn't work for them too so soak up all the information laid all out and say what's gonna work for me it's like buying a time share some people buy time shares and they think it's the greatest way to travel in the entire world I just can't do it and I've heard it's amazing and it's great and why wouldn't you buy a time share and I'm sure if you sat me down in the present presentation I probably by one and then I would never go and I was like that was the biggest waste of money but yet other people swear by the time shares more power to you okay so sell in person online image is one thing I know for sure it doesn't work for me I know in my world it provides instant gratification which is what we all want but it challenges the person seeing it giving them ideas of what to do because you're just seeing them on a screen so I have a product guide and my product guide head this is a full version so I'm gonna steal it real quick sorry so the products guide has the session investment it has the printing campus pricing it has print packages it has announcements and the different paper styles are explained and the pricing it has albums we carry two different types of albums chromosomes one of our best selling christmas gifts medals we love medals and framing and yes digital and so what we do when we're doing this house I'm going to show you unlike room and where are we on this slide when when we bring him through the process we say you're going to take a look at your images and you're gonna go through them we're going to go through faves rejects and things like that and by the way this is our products catalog we're gonna leave our product had along on the table this is one of them we have another one which is called an image collections guy that I did not bring that shows wall samples so we have those too we do sell coffee table books I'm going to talk to you like my client for a minute we do sell coffee table books we have two types of coffee table book we have the kind that have more of a board book page that's more of ah harder harder page okay it's more cardboard and then we have one that's more we call like a magazine style page where it's it's a softer paige it's not so hard so if you want me to pull out different books and styles from you I can I'm going to show you that in the pricing all you pick is the number of images we don't sell by page we sell by images so you pick the number of images we're going to design it for you based on questions we ask you and we're gonna lay out the book for you all you need to do is pick the number of images pay for the size of your book and let us design it and take care of and you'll see proof before we order it and so what I do is we have samples in our studio and I'll say we have campus is for the wall we have canvas blocks his canvas boxer from arctic couture another favorite christmas gift I love these because so many people say I don't have room on the wall and they need a gift for somebody and grand parents don't have room in the wall so what's a great stocking stuffer these are great stocking stuffers and so we'll say okay so these are all of our different products we do do custom cases for all of our digital clients everything is custom with images so all of these will be out and we'll tell them if he purchased the book you're going to get a set of many three by three he's come in sets of three for ninety dollars you're going to get us a set of these if you purchase a book complimentary or these air great stocking stuffers you combined in sets of three people by twelve fifteen twenty thes air a great stocking gift so we kind of give him a product overview I'm the avon lady I'm like look at what we have the star lie of catalog and here is our numbers on what I'm going to do is I'm going to allow you to look at your images would you like a glass of water would you like something to eat something to drink and we're gonna leave you alone I'm gonna show you how to use the program but we want to show you today and then we're gonna leave we'll give you some quiet time and let us know when you need some time and we go and me to go about our business we come in giving about twenty minutes how are you doing have you called the down have you yeah yeah I'm good are you ready tio any questions you want me to talk to you or me to help you out or do you need more time you want you want us to just focus on the faves and let's show the faves yeah let me just see my faves and take the rest off the screen no problem so now let's look at the face have you looked through the product catalog kind of okay well let me let me explain this well I think I just went digitals well I want to tell you something about our digital process you can buy your digitals you could buy a set number of digitals and it'll cost you cost you about nine hundred dollars and that's all you have or you can spend five hundred dollars in product and get the same amount of digital's for four hundred which is a better deal with the product and so they go wait I might spend nine hundred dollars and I'm going to get I can get five dollars in product and get the same amount of digital's for four hundred or I could spend my animals and I leave with nothing what this cute little case correct would you like to dio what do you think ninety nine percent of our clients do product so then you're going to say anna that means that everyone's only spending nine hundred or you're going to say anna what if they can't spend nine hundred and I'm gonna tell you no not everybody just spends nine hundred walk out on walks out the door I can show you the stack of orders back in my studio it ranges from four hundred dollars to five thousand dollars because I've taken the digitals out of the equation and made them more as we can get them but let's focus on the product whereas if I make it all about the digitals that's all it's going to be about I look at digitals is an add on as a bonus the price goes down the more product you buy my three thousand dollar clients are like oh yeah you out of the digitals right you out of that oh yeah I added that don't worry about that well you already at three thousand so now only two hundred for the digitals do you know I mean then I have clients who like whoa nine hundred dollars is not in my budget my husband will kill me we're not gonna eat for a month no problem but they know I love products so tell me what we're doing my soul thing is I need a christmas card image that's what he needs okay single invention is one hundred fifty dollars yeah there you go you could spend a hundred fifty dollars and walk out of my studio how many people think spending hundreds of dollars and just walk in my studio because I've taken the digitals out of the equation I want people to have their digitals I don't think it's a bad thing I want people to have him there's something wrong with it I do want my images printed in the best light and on the best products in the industry and I tell them I work with the best labs in the professional industry and I have some of the highest accounts with these labs in the professional industry remember I said I was selling that frames seven hundred dollars out of a catalogue that was look sell picture frames back in the day and I remember they came to a calm from workshop I had us a sponsor four years later they said that my studio had the highest number of frame sales in the country and I had no idea he was like a shock the rep said it and I was like really she was you had no idea your biggest account I was like no I thought the people with the projection people were your biggest account I don't know I've just had my head buried for the past four years selling frames out of a catalog because I was so passionate about frames that I wasn't I was on automatic billing I was even looking at the statements that were coming in I know my accountant loves the fact that I spent just as much money as I make and that's usually all I care about leaving very little left over so you know I like to spend I like to spend I like my clients to spend I spent a lot of money in product you know and so in the beginning there was no profit because I was pulling in some big numbers but I was spending big numbers and then I started cutting down my overhead and cutting down my full time employees and adjusting my numbers to make sure that it was a profitable studio so you do have to be careful but my clients know I am one hundred percent product we get the call every day hundred million dollars does that include the digitals and if he goes to the whole spiel and then they say well how much are the digitals like it's it's almost like it's a big secret in the industry and and tiffany will explain it wow if you purchased nothing else it's gonna be nine hundred dollars and they're like and difficult but you know what honestly no one does that no one does that we love product we've got over two hundred products in our studio and we also do complimentary in home ordering appointment so if you can't get out of the house we're going to come to you and bring a little yvonne bag we have a little bag that I bought that has the files in the nice bags from office depot that you carry the little sweet a little brown suede one and I tell tiffany you fill it up you put a product catalogue in there and you put a chroma in there you could put a little kim this block in there the jewelry catalog in there and we show up at their doorstep with this and we sit down and we put there a book in there and the minute they conversation start switching tio yeah okay you have no minimums no minimums I could come in and just buy one digital five one hundred fifty dollars five or more in size nine dollars each okay and it's done it's gone it's like the ellison in the room was just pushed out there's nothing wrong with digitals as long as you're making money I'm a profitable studio I'm here to tell you I'm a profitable studio and I'm here to tell you that my studio brings in over six figures a year a lot higher than that and I have tax returns to prove it so my point is that when I started out it wasn't to become a six figure photographer that was not my intention my intention from the core of my being was to create images and product that people would want in their homes and so when they said and use some more friends and like anyone we know I didn't say they were going I am going to be the top customer no one's giving me flowers or anything I didn't get any bonus prize for that but what happens I have clients that come to me eight nine ten years that say anna you've got to come look at my wall girl and in this product guide I went and visited a client who's been through two maybe plans to kids and look at her wall and what's fun about this wall is it was one frame each time because we have no minimums and so I said to my client every time you come by a frame and hang it she has campuses in the bedroom she has books she has all sorts of things but what have we done we've built her legacy that is her proudest wall in her home if when I met her I would've said to see me and to build the wall of your dreams it's gonna probably cost you about eight grand several photo sessions tears annoyance crams a few phone calls to the studio where is your frame in a couple of bribes to the kids would you do it no pass I require my clients to trust me if you don't trust me and trust my vision and help me help you create work for your home it's not gonna work I have had clients that have not trusted me and it doesn't work well how you feeling up there very quiet here it's kind of weird so you did talk about your presentation and how you do presentations and using software do you want to take some questions you wanted you want to go to that how are you feeling yeah I mean I feel like we should probably take questions and I should then sit down and show you okay fantastic so I'm gonna start with luna star do you ever do any phone consultations over the phone and set and sells or do you really want it to be in person okay everything is in person for first timers keep in mind that I have a very long time clientele and we do even my long timers we require them to come in person but there's a couple of clients that I have right now actually that one we met at the arboretum for photos and she lives all the way in beverly hills and she's like crazy busy and the other one lose in manhattan beach and I went out there for a beach session and they're both like I can't get to tustin it's just not gonna happen I'm like your yeah I know you can't but I've been dealing with both clients for over six years and so they're like you know the deal I'm gonna want like the one in manhattan beach had bought a forty by fifty campus before and she had been to my studio in person so everybody kind of has a requirement to come to my studio at some point and preferably every points but for my faraway clients if if if the manhattan beach girl the beverly hill girl build really hills girl could have never come to my studio I would have said then we have to come to you and have an ordering appointment in person we have to have that first ordering appointment if not the first one the first five in person we have tio and we warn new clients when they're coming from far we say just so you know we have to we just have tio we have to show you things we have to touch we have to feel we have to so that's not gonna work for you you might want to find another photographer so these particular to clients were they already knew and they bless their hearts have spent so much time coming to me that I'm like we can do this we can do this over the phone so they've been given private slide shows and we're working through it over the phone in fact while I'm here they've been emailing me and because I used a designer there like okay let's start with kristy I need this six images for the card let's get christie designing that now you know I'm going to need things for my wall let's talk about it and they'll say this is the wall space that I'm dealing with and many times I've been a client's home so I'll photograph their homes I tried previous software I haven't loved it that much so that's something that I would like to incorporate one day but I'm not having done it to the point that I like it yet and by previous office preview suffer you mean showing the photos kind of framed on your screen yes and I didn't want to bought the software was so proud of myself quite like projection actually went to a celebrity clients home with my ipad photographed all the walls and I'm like I got this I'm gonna pop it and you're gonna be amazed and then I couldn't get dropbox to load the photos and then it was like five calls to the studio and I'm like became kind of over this right now but I have gorgeous gorgeous pictures of their wall on my ipad their previous offer I couldn't get it to work I even had tested it three times before I went there and I was like okay this is a whole training process so if you're gonna do something like that I'm gonna warn you and I'm pretty tech savvy you've got a test it tested tested go do a fake session in your home tested again preloaded tested and then you'll it'll be great I haven't had that kind of time something I do want to do especially I'm dealing with hospital displays and I think would be very beneficial I keep going to the hospital and measure and then yeah align it and then show the board it would be great if I could go to my hospital displays with my ipad take a picture of the walls put the picture images in they could spring into a board meeting and get the board members to approve that's how I want to use it more than the client's home so that's something that for the new year I want to do but I need I need help I need a preview person to come with me or something so you know I mean training is still required I mean you can't just do everything on your own you're gonna have to watch videos or train yourself in sales sales isn't it that's a job on its own so if you're going to be the salesman the photographer in the market or you're going to need some training and even with this light room thing we were went from paper proofs to a tv to a big screen to light room we have to train ourselves how are we going to do this and we're still perfecting perfecting it so I definitely feel that it's it's ah it's a training process absolutely