Lessons

Lesson Info

Selling Workflow

Let's talk a little bit about the selling workflow so after the shoot and you're going to see our workflow semi live right? We're gonna have this high school senior on sunday come back in she's going to come in and we're going to show you the sales process how we present to them how we sell to them how we showcase products I think that's a very important aspect of what we're doing so you see this whole thing coming together but just so you understand it can wrap your head around this what we're doing after the shoot, right? So if they photograph on the first let's say right after that shoot they're going to get an email and it's a template it email right? We're not recreating a wheel every time congratulations, suzy I hope you guys had a great time on your on your shoot with sal attached our prices and packaging okay tied to our vendor specials I might give it to you one more time. You need this copy? All of you congratulations hope you guys had a great time on your shoot with south at...

tached our prices and packaging tied two specials are vendors are running please be prepared to spend about two hours picking and ordering pictures it's very important what I'm saying in this email this comes after four to five years of experience on hearing every objection imaginable from clients they come in your studio they go oh, we have to order tonight yes you do that's why? It's said be prepared to spend two hours picking in ordering your pictures oh, I didn't get the email with the pricing, innit? Oh no yes you did because that's how you knew when to be here I'm saying so I've learned over the years what objections were going to hear from client so it's very important this one email is very, very strategic we're telling them what date they're coming in we're telling them what's gonna happen and we're telling them it's specials tied to our vendors why is that important? Because I am not a hard sell I am not going to sit there and force them to buy pictures but there still has to be pressure in this case the pressure's artificial it's by my vendors even though in reality it's not right we're letting them know that hey here's some bundled specials tied to our vendors so you have to order tonight because that's when the specials expire this is very, very important once they come in we preview using light room so we use light room for the actual preview process right we do select sweet maybe we show them what it might look like cropped host of other things that light room affords and I know like rooms not made for that I mean, the truth is there's other programs out there that do the same job whatever your workflow is use it for us and you'll see more on sunday we'll show you how this how we work all this then we open up with an an emotive slideshow you guys use an animal? Yeah, I love an emoto okay it's a no brainer and so when they come in to see their pictures they're going to see a slideshow of sixty five to seventy five images just to get them warmed up just get them started right? So as soon as they sit down and start looking at their pictures we're going to show on an emotive slideshow get them warmed up then going to each individual picture yes no what do you like? What don't you like? We then take them through that like dislike process and you'll see this in real time on sunday but what does that look like? All the images come up on the screen and a typical senior we will shoot two hundred two we will show them I'm sorry two hundred, two hundred fifty pictures from a senior session we will photograph four hundred to seven hundred images on a five outfits you about one hundred one hundred twenty five inches somewhere in that range per outfit you might be thinking holy cow that is a lot of images yes, yes it is! I want to overwhelm them I want to overwhelm them with great images so my shooting style and we'll cover this tomorrow is tight middle wide tight, middle wide so I'll use a seventy, two hundred eighty to ninety percent of the time that's my favorite lines and then I'm gonna be at seventy millimeters one hundred millimeters two hundred meters millimetres vertical and horizontal so I could take one pose one expression six fran all different by the way they're all going to look different to the client and that's what I want I want to overwhelm them with great images then we're gonna walk them through the packages and will create packages today then what we want to do is help them select their big images images like this images that are gonna be art in their home we want to be able to help them select those they can't do that online if you post these images online they're not gonna be able to do that no one's going to be there to guide them and be the what trusted advisor are you using a software solution to manage your studio? Yes, we are using uh, screw this up studio cloud today to manage our like cr m and stuff like that exactly yeah, we're using studio club today s o that manages our invoicing contact information everything keeps track of that in fact it even offers up template emails built into the product so we like it scheduling everything have access to it on my iphone all sorts of things like that ladies you good let's go online ok have a question from where did you go from trade tufo tog would you ever do a nighttime senior portrait for example in downtown st louis they say I live in the loo and know that create a nice mood yeah so they're from st louis yeah they must be if they're referring to as the loop yeah or they know nellie I don't know all right so um know ifyou're in downtown st louis I would definitely offer a evening portrait any city for that matter because you can do cool things right khun street the lights from traffic driving by you know slower shutter speeds but what you have to do is if this were me I would build it into the tail end of a normal session so maybe I would start that particular session at like four five o'clock you know my normal stuff out of the way and then just maybe go have ah a cup of coffee with the senior or the parents and just hang out chill for a little while wait for it to get dark then go do it don't do a specific night eight session because in all your pictures they might not turn out right. Question from gene huang says I'm a little bit confused on where light room comes into play in your previous session if you could touch on that yeah, perfect so what's gonna happen here is after the photo shoot literally in twenty four hours they should have pricing and packaging in their in their hands now within two weeks their image is going to be ready to preview two weeks that's very, very important do not wait two months to show them their pictures they cause the excitement is worn off after that much time, so we're doing this in two weeks I don't care if you have to outsource do it yourself, you figure it out but we outsource, of course, but even when I wasn't outsourcing, they were coming in in two weeks to see their images that I cannot stress the importance of that that is, one thing is for tarver's we are horrible about is going through the post production process, so get them in in that two week window now when they come in to see their images in your studio in your incubator, wherever you're bringing them in to see the images that's where we're using light, we cue up light room to show them all their images in that catalogue hopefully that makes sense question from c valdez and you show your images on a monitor like this size or yeah, yeah, probably the exact same size we the monitors I like to use. I use a samsung sixty inch led tv. I really like the led tvs. They christmas clarity is amazing on those things and they're pretty cost effective. They're actually less. I think that a mac thirty inch monitor so you could get a good price on it. But that's, we use this to tv about this size sitting on a sitting on a table it's perfect. Now, when we started out, we didn't have this, we started out, we had a had a thirty inch mac monitor. We went into our office pulled our mac monitor down and that's how we did our preview, so taylor would be using a laptop on one side and a client would be huddled around this thirty inch mac monitor, so we found a way to make it work. We didn't always start and have all the gadge we started and made you so what we have, it can be done, right? And a question from gina marie is that I've always heard not to overwhelm your clients with their decisions. Why is it that you do the opposite? I don't really do the opposite you got to see the method to my madness it's I'm not overwhelming them with decisions, I'm overwhelming them with images there's a difference what I'm going to do with white room and me working with them if I just did it online, I would agree. Then I am overwhelming them, but I'm there with them selecting the images, guiding them and that word again. Trusted advisor so I'm telling them no, this doesn't look good. I don't like your smile here or I like this one better. And so I'm walking through that process building that report building that trust when I say to mom, look, mom, this particular image right here, this is your sixteen by twenty four she trusts me and it's, not a fake trust it's I've walked her through the whole process. Thank you. I'm not sure we'll be getting to this, but you can let us note, uh, tim, see, bring asked, how do you handle retouching options with the seniors and parents? I'ii do you suggest when it's necessary and you ever show them the before and after shots? That is a great question, by the way, the retouching let's talk about that and I wasn't going to cover this, so I like the question. We're going to have kids who come in from time to time and they're gonna have a really bad acne skin problems. I had one girl. She had a giant birthmark on the side of her face and she was as beautiful as could be, but it was impacting her confidence to have this giant birthmark there. Well, I wasn't gonna go through two hundred, two hundred fifty pictures removing that that's insane. I don't know what she's going to buy. She may only by ten or fifteen of those images. So what I did was on I do this for all our clients is I still like to one image. And I do full beauty at it. Eyes face if I need to thin their face off in it. If I if I touch their skin, I'll touch all their skin and I show them when they come in I go. Hey, mom. What I want to do is I did. I took the liberty of really editing this image for you on I want to show you what it's gonna look like so that when you're looking at all your images, you understand this is what's possible and any image you order here's what we'll do for you that's also important for all the shooting burners out there. Do you really want to invest all that time retouching and then handing them the cd that's insanity, right? You can't do that. You can't afford to do that with the time involved so that's, another incomplete service you're offering the client by not finishing what this should look like. So that's a good question do you do like a around a preliminary edits on all of them besides, just like, you know, maybe contract a bit of contrast or whatever you were set in the white balance. Um, do you do anything else than besides just that really minor basic edit for the ones you shone like the two hundred forty year twenty pictures you show them? Yes, absolutely. I find that my clients do not have vision that's what they're coming to me for. So images like this these air actually images that our clients would would actually see if they came in or studio so something like this her eyes have been enhanced, our skin's been enhanced. An image like this uh, her teeth have been enhanced, the there's been texture applied to the image. So what I do is let's say on those two fifty for example, on the two hundred fifty images I might take twenty five of those images and do what I call select style edits thes air going to be beyond the, you know contrast, color correction. It's going to be maybe black and white, sepia tone, hdr texture. So instead of editing a job, this why outsource, by the way? Because instead of editing the four to six hundred images I took or two hundred images, it doesn't matter. I'm gonna edit ten, fifteen, twenty images and those. Why am I spending my time there? Because those are the ones that I'm going to tell the parents they should be big in your home, so I'd rather see you. Invest your time on art pieces for the client than every single image that comes to your studio.