Lessons

Lesson Info

The In-Person Sale

So this is my sales room. We have a very large projection screen in my sales room. I love projection. Being able to project on a large screen is infinitely valuable to me, because I can actually show my clients actual sized images on that screen. Its about 10 foot wide and six foot high. So I can project any size they might want onto our screen and say, this is exactly how it'd look in your home. My clients, as I've mentioned, will also have sent in some snapshots of the walls of their home. I can actually project those onto our projection screen and then digitally slide their favorite portraits onto their own walls, so they can see exactly what they'll look like. So its very valuable for us, too. We do this all in ProSelect. Other things you'll notice in our studio here, we have lots of stuff on display. This again is all created in desire for our products. So there's lots of canvas on the one side, I have frames, I have metals, composites and collages and stuff there. It's all there ...

for the client to view. So this is a very popular item, its a montage where its a bunch of images combined together. I used to just have this one. Its a 15 by 30 on an easel. I just used to have that one in our studio. And all I ever sold was 15 by 30s. I put up a 20 by 40, it's just off the side here, I sell 20 by 40s all the time now, just because I added that to my wall. So, if a client can see it, they will start to desire it. Let's see, I'm gonna click on the next slide here. So, here's that canvas. We have a large canvas grouping of different images on our sales wall. These are all set up. It's a variety of different sizes. If a client doesn't send in snapshots of their home, I can just simply point to this wall and ask them which size they feel would fit well in their home. Again, clients naturally gravitate towards a mid-range. So our mid-range is a 20 by 30, or a 24 by 36, depending on how you calculate that. So they're gravitating towards one of those mid-range sizes. That's exactly why I set this up that way. 'Cause I want them to be able to see it, but actually kind of lead them towards a little bit larger size so that they can appreciate all that artwork in their home. So one thing I do want to mention is that you can still do in-person sales without a studio. On the in-person sales you don't necessarily have to be in a nice studio. We're very blessed to have what we have, but if its not in your current policy or its something that you don't have, you can still go to a client's house. It's still just as powerful to actually do an in-person sale at a client's house. Think about having a projector and being able to project actual sized images right above their couch and saying, this is your image, right there. They can even more clearly see what it's gonna look like. It's just as nice and so you can do all this stuff I'm going to present to you without a sales studio, but a sales studio is something that is nice. Also, I'm gonna remind the client, when the client comes in, we're gonna have some small talk, you know, tell 'em how excited I am for their portraits order session, and how amazing their portraits turned out. But I'm gonna remind them that nothing is retouched until they order it. So we're not going to yet invest the time until they tell us what their favorites are and what they want to do with them, because obviously spending a bunch of work on something they don't want is kind of wasteful. And so, I'll just wait 'til they pick out their favorites. Then we're gonna make sure they look absolutely amazing. We're gonna make sure their eyes are sparkling, the backgrounds are vibrant, occasionally they might see like our light stand in the side, or my assistant standing off to the side, or a background a little bit crooked. All that stuff's gonna be flawless for them, once we finish picking out their favorites. So now is the time, we're gonna have Dee come up and she gets to be our client. And we're gonna do everything in ProSelect, it's a great in-person sales software. I love it, and you're gonna see how flawless and smooth it makes the entire sale too by being able to show them actual images and what they want. So, let me bring up my ProSelect. And welcome, big applause for Dee for being brave enough to come up here. (applauding) So, in my studio we use ProSelect, as I mentioned. right now it's going to be mirroring my screen, but typically what I do is, I'd be sitting across, you saw my sales room, I had a laptop there, I have like certain stuff up on my screen, and then the client would actually just see the portraits, but today I'm gonna show you so you can experience the whole thing and what it's actually doing. So, Dreen, when they come in, we're gonna show them a slideshow first, after the small talk and creating the excitement again, we show 'em the slideshow. So you're gonna see our slideshow, our client slideshow, I will probably cut it a little short cause you don't need to see all the images and we got started a little bit late. So I'll just show you a couple of them. And then we're gonna go through and pick out their favorites. So here is an example of the slideshow, and again, this is un-retouched, so don't be judging, this is straight out of a camera and actually what the client saw. So I've done a couple of sepias and black and whites, but for the most part just all straight out of camera. And there is typically music, you can sing if you want to, it's not coming out. But ProSelect has all the music and stuff that you can just simply hit play on, and it'll play a great slideshow music for your client. As your watching this, and if anybody can think of a tune, you can go ahead and sing that, but you can kinda see how just the client gets to see an overview of their entire session, set to music. And then, once we see this, I'm gonna cut it short here, and escape out of this. We'd go into all their portraits and so... This is not showing up all of them here at the same screen, but you can see there's a big list of a whole bunch of portraits that we go through. And so, what I'd say at this point, is that, I'm gonna set this over here. So now our next step is just picking out your favorites. So what we're gonna do it bring up two or three at a time, compare them, figure out what some of your favorites are, and then figure out what you'd like to do with some of the favorites. Okay. Right now, they're all just in the okay category, so there's like a little like medium face here. I'm gonna bring up, for example, these two images and I'll make them bigger, we'll look at them, any of them you like will disappear out of this okay category and move over to the favorites category. The other ones will be left behind. So, for example, on these two portraits, and she would be looking up at the large projection screen, but she's sitting here at the computer now. But on these two images, do you like either one better than the other, neither, or both? I like both of them but I like the one on the left a little more. The one on the left a little more? Alright, so we'll throw it in. And she's just picking out the ones that she's liking. And sometimes if they need a little help, coaching, I will explain to them, like here's on the one on the left, he's a little bit somber, got some great fall leaves in there, he's sitting, kind of straddling the chair, and we got a nice close up of him smiling, too. Would you like either one better? I like the close up, actually. The close up? Alright, I think that's a great one. And again, I just go through and we just kind of bring up two or three at a time. With this process, for us, a client will narrow it down to exactly half their images. Almost every time. And my wife told me I can't say exactly half, but it is exactly half. It will go exactly half. So I know how many images they're gonna have in their favorites by the time I get done. Depending on how many I show them. So if I show them 40 or 50, they have 20 or 25 images in there. If I want them to have more, I'm going to show them more. Typically it's just the way we end up narrowing it down. So we go through all these images, and just two or three at a time, sometimes you can bring up four if you wanted to. For example, here's these four. You can bring up as many as you want at a time and the benefit of way I do it, is that whatever ones they pick, say their favorites were these two, throw them in their favorites. The other ones are left behind, and they get a little bit bigger and sometimes they say, oh we like those too, now that they're bigger. They gotta see them a little big longer, appreciate them a little bit more, so a lot of times they'll throw those in their favorites too. So I really love this system and it makes it easy for the client to pick out, 'cause they can compare them and typically it moves pretty quickly with this system. Once we have their favorites picked out, now it's kind of time to pick out the important things. The stuff for on your wall. The wall's portraits are usually your favorite, right? Yes. And I will nod yes and say it like, right? (laughs) And they nod yes, cause its important that that's the most important thing for them. So we're actually gonna skip ahead to this next one here. And I've got it ready for them narrowing it down. So this is what the client typically would have narrowed it down to. So there's a bunch of sport images in there, some of those classic images. Like I said, now its time to pick out the wall portraits. So I would have you pick out maybe your top favorites that you might like to see on your wall as a large wall portrait. What are some of your favorites? Its kind of hard to see with the glare. Okay. 103. Alright, I can turn this a little bit this way. So 103. 120. 120. Right here? Mm-hm. Alright. 131 looks good, too. Alright, there it is. And 123. 123, alright. So I'll bring those up. So there's some awesome choices. I really like the colors and think those are all the perfect wall portraits for you. So let's look at maybe putting them on your wall and seeing what they would actually look like in your home. Is there a place in your home you're thinking you'd like to display them maybe? I wanna start with the family room. Alright, alright. So like I said, they've already sent in some wall snapshots. So this is the actual client snapshots they sent in. So here's her living room. Like, this is a perfect living room, awesome. So what I would do is put some of those on your walls and kind of figure out what shape and size looks best. So I would grab one of them, typically it would probably be my favorite one, to show them first, 'cause that's what they get used to then. So I'm gonna put this on your wall. And now we're gonna size kinda what shape looks best, and then we'll figure out what size. So with this, this is a full portrait. There's nothing cropped off, this is the original image. There is also a more square image or there's long panoramic. Do you prefer any of those? I like the first one. The first one? Awesome, I totally agree. I think you'd lose something if we cropped off some of that stormy sky and the wind and stuff from that day we got. I think that's a very awesome portrait. So what we'll do next is we'll go through and figure out what size fits your needs the best. So what I'm gonna do is gradually make this smaller. You just tell me when to stop and when it no longer has the same impact as it does when it's larger. So as I go down here. I like that one. Perfect. And this is actually what the client said, too. This is actually, I'm reenacting a real-life situation here. The client wanted this, so I love that, too. I think it looks great, fits your wall well. And so, with the client, the client actually has two other brothers, too. So she said she wanted to make to slightly smaller. So we just went down one size, and the client loved it. So at this point, so we got a great wall portrait, I'd ask them how they'd like to see it finished. You like the canvas, do you like the metal or the frame? They're all the same price, so it's whatever finish you prefer. I really like the canvas. Awesome. So I'll just write that down for now. And so I would just write it down. I have just a sheet of paper on here that I just write down what the client likes. So it's not like I'm trying to type stuff behind their back 'cause their not looking at my computer screen. So I'm not trying to like hide stuff. I'm just writing down what they like. Alright, so you had a couple other favorites though. What if we took those favorites and we made them slightly smaller and kind of created a little art grouping, and that way you could kind of see some different expressions of 'em too. Sure. Would you like to see what that looks like? I would. So you had, let's see. We had 123, and was it 131 I believe? So I'm gonna put those in there. I'm gonna make them smaller and get them to fit, just underneath the canvas here. So I'm just gonna tab down through a bunch of sizes so they'd fit here. I'm gonna move this one up. Make it one size smaller. So here. Here's two smaller prints underneath that. What do you think of that? I think that looks really cool. So you can see how easy it is to create wall groupings. All I did was have to offer it them, and show it to them and the client desires it. So I think that's beautiful, too. They got three different portraits, three different expressions, different things happening. I think that's beautiful. How would you like to see those smaller wall portraits finished? I kind of lost track of where we were. Oh that's okay. Sorry. So we, yep. I like the canvas. I like the canvas and then arrange both portraits. Okay, yep. So we're here. Okay. Alright, so she picked out the canvas again. Actually, I think the real client decided on frames, but for time wise, I'm not gonna display frames and show through all these. But anyway, we're gonna pretend she picked out the canvas. And then again, I would just write down those options here. What I'm gonna do is just remind the client, I'm just writing down everything that you like. Okay. Once we get finished picking out everything you like, I'll print off an invoice, it'll have all thumbnails on it, and I'll have a list of everything you picked out, along with all the discounts in it. And then we can make any changes you want, if want to go from there. So was there any other portraits for in your home that you'd like to look at? I really like the great one with the smile and the leaves. Okay, let me find that again. That was, let's see. Here we go, 103. That's it. So that's a great smile, a very classic and beautiful. Is there a place in your home where you think that would look well? Let's give it a try in the hallway. Alright, let me find your hallway. So the hallway was right here. Alright, so its a little bit of an angle. Sometimes hallways can be challenging to get a straight on shot, to be able to actually slide your portrait on. But since I have all these in my studio, I would have all these different sizes behind me. Is there a size you think would fit well in your hallway that kind of appeals to you? Yeah, can we check out the 16 by 24? Alright, I think that would be a great size. We could, eventually once you have the other brothers in there, it'll fill that area nicely. And it'll ber a great display so I'll write that down, too. How would you like to see that one displayed? Also as a canvas. Perfect. So now that we've picked out the wall portraits, that was very simple and easy, right? I just made the, made the offer to them to see some different things, they liked it, and I just wrote it down. So we're just filling out their desires and their wishes. So next I would have, we'd talk about, we haven't yet talked about any of the sports stuff. Typically, my clients have all a bunch of different activities they've went out for and different things like that. So we have a bunch of sport things. These are actually all photographed on green screen, but I change it to gray so that the client doesn't have that annoying green shining in their eyes and just sometimes grandma will come in like, I don't like that green! (laughs) So its just hard, it's easier for them to understand or see on this gray. And also remind them that we're gonna, for these, we're gonna extract them from that background and create all kinds of different unique images, depending on what they tell us to do. And so we just go through and select their athletic stuff, too, or have picked out it. But at this point, I have kind of pre-sold different things to them. I've created that desire for it. So if you remember in the phone script I talked to them about creating those dynamic images, typically during their portrait session I've already also taken them into the sales room, pointed out different things that our athletes typically like. And so when their here at their order session, they already know exactly what they want. And I know exactly what they want, 'cause I said its normal to get this. But I'll pretend, I'll say, what are you thinking you'd like to do with some of these awesome sport images? I was thinking about creating a montage. A combination of them, the way you showed us in the session. Alright, perfect. So what we'll do for that is just pick out a main one that would go in the center. So is there a center one that you really love? How about the football one, where he's looking for, like the main one. Alright, that one. Yeah. Perfect, I think that would be a great one. And then we need to create a couple other ones to have some others around it, kind of create some motion and the activities going on. What are some of the others that you'd like to see in this? I'd like to see 165. 165, let me find that here. So I just highlight 'em. 171. 171. Maybe 53. Alright, 53. And I think 56 would be cool. 56, awesome. So I think those will also be amazing in the background, kind of create a little, kind of story of everything that's happening. I think there should be maybe one more with his wrestling, we had a couple with his warm up that would be kind of nice to incorporate in the scene too just to kind of give a different look for his wrestling that we don't yet have in there. What do you think about adding that one, too? Yeah, I like that idea. Alright, so we just pick out a montage, and then I'd say, what size are you thinking you'd like to see this in? And I'd say, we have the smaller one on our easel, and we have this larger one on the wall behind me. Do you prefer-- I want to say a bigger one 'cause sports in his life are pretty big for him. Perfect, I'll just write that down. And do you like the canvas, metal or custom frame? It's all, again, whatever you prefer on that. I wanna try a custom frame for this one. Oh, cool. So again, I just write that down. We pick out a frame, and we go from there. And then the next step, if you remember, on the steps that we go through, we saw wall portraits, montages, collages, and then we talk about albums. So an album is another thing. So we have a lot of other portraits we haven't done anything with. An album might be a good option. Would you like to look into that option, and be able to incorporate all these, and not lose any of them to have to look at years down the road? Sure. Alright, so what I'd do is then go grab, I have a, like rows of albums behind me on shelves and I'd grab some of the albums and display them. I'd say, we have a 10 by 10, the eight by eight and the 12 by 12. First off we're just gonna pick out what size you prefer. Do you like any of these sizes better? I like this one. The 10 by 10. Alright, perfect. And the next step is we go through and look at the design. So this one, we have a very simple design, it doesn't take us a whole lot of time. We also have one that's kind of a more custom design, where you can make the images bigger, really cool backgrounds and things like that. And we have an exclusive design. Which design do you prefer? I like them all. (laughs) Okay, so typically she like, well, I kind of skipped around on her again, so I'm really, she's doing a great job, just ad-libing here. And typically a client would kind of gravitate towards that mid-range, that custom design. So we'd pick that out, and then we'd pick out the number of images that she wants to go in the album. And I'd ask her, is there any of these images in your favorites, that you no longer want to have? Do you want to get rid of any of these favorites? And typically no at this point. They've established that these are their favorites. So again, I'd just write it down. And I'd say, last thing we need to do for the album then is pick out the one that goes on the front cover. Oh. At this point, I have been probably, because there's different steps, I've actually been showing our pricing guide, and you can kind of see how they're trying to calculate this up in their head. And they kind of have a little bit, like a worried look as far as the price going. But 'cause they're using the left side of their brain. When I get back to the question about which one do they want on the front cover, they're using the right side of their brain, with the desire and it just kind of alleviates all stress. They're like, oh my god, the front cover. And you can see their eyes just light up when we start to talk about that. So kind of just a good way to kind of stop that stress going on in their heads. So she'd pick out the front cover. And I believe she said that smile one. So then I just, again, write that number down in my order sheet of all that stuff. And then the next step is picking out stuff that you want for your friends and family. The eight by 10s, five by sevens, and four by sixes. With that, do you have a list of friends and family that you need stuff for? Yeah, we need things for the grandparents, uncles, aunts. Alright, awesome. So for the grandparents, typically grandparents, and I just lead them through. I kind of help them make decisions, grandparents are gonna want close up, smiling, and color shots. So I might make a suggestion of one of these two might be a great option for grandparents. Yeah, I like the second one. And just kind of help them narrow down some stuff. A lot of times they trust me at this point, as an artist, and they're gonna trust my decisions as far as, not really decisions but suggestions. They're gonna help take my suggestions. There's a lot of them to look through, so I just bring up a couple of them. Maybe these three might be a good option. They'll pick out one of those. So again, we just kind of go through and pick out some of their favorites. From this point, after we've narrowed down their eight by 10s, five by sevens, four by sixes, again, I'd ask them about the wallets. Wallets are, some people need them, some people don't. It's just not a necessary step, but in our system, but if they want it its a great, also a nice little add-on sale.