Lessons

Lesson Info

Sales

Okay selling children's portraiture what really motivates someone to buy? Um, it really is the experience photography is not to me it's not negotiable, it is something you have tohave it's not I don't think of it as a luxury adam at all absolutely do not you could not get those tie those days back with those children and so you have to create an experience we talked about, it starts at the consultation our consultations are thirty minutes and during those consultations were telling stories, but the story's air about the work and the experience that we give it is not about us, the awards, the accolades, the things that we do. You know, my clients do not know that I tour around the country unless they're following around facebook or really reading my block. They have no idea that, you know, I mean, I've had some incredible experiences this last year we shot commercials for asia, we did you know, kanan kanan, asia, we I have seen and done some incredible things, but I don't ever tell them...

that because when I'm home, I'm a mom with the camera and I'm a darn proud one because that's, what I built my company on and the moms that come hang out with me, we're just bombs with kids with cameras and that's how it goes so we when I talk to people I talk about the experiences and I try to relate the experience to what they're looking for us if they have a six month old girl then and let's say that wall portrait was a six month old girl then I would turn on I would turn to them and tell the story of that six month and I'll say oh my god she was so much fun and your daughter looks so much like her you know, they all at this age do this and so that that client can start to relate that my experience with her child I'm prepared for that I'm going to give her a great experience now this is where the this is the nitty gritty things that people ask me what do clients see when a client sits down and this is the soapbox speeches coming because this one is very important when a client comes into the studio I mentioned they're going to sit down um I will show you a sales room there set up a specific way for a specific reason we tell them they're going to see a multimedia presentation we did the lights we turn down the music arms that we turned up the music we dim the lights and we started that beautiful show now that show is as a tremendous impact when you're seeing your child seventy inches floating in and out it is absolutely breathtaking so they're going to see those images from there we're then going to start that process of the side by side comparisons they're only going to see thirty to forty images per session period now this is my soapbox speech um when you show your clients too many images basically your job is a photographer is to edit your work and prepare your work to show your work your job the client's job is to purchase your work and that is literally their job to come and buy your work if you show them sixty seventy, ninety one hundred my heavens one hundred fifty images you've now given them your job you've now put your job the burden of your job on them so now they sit down with you typical sales session is an hour and a half that is the standard for what people can actually sit through a reasonable amount of time from start to finish. So in an hour and a half if you have one hundred fifty images ninety percent of the time is going to be yes, no maybe yes, no maybe if your sales aren't high it's because you're making your client at your work and they can't buy your work unless it's edited now typically honestly be honest how many images are in a typical package that the client actually gets to buy? Just give me a guess like five thank you that is the average the average package out there in the universe photographers put anywhere from four to eight poses so the average being about five poses five polish is or what the client's gonna walk away with, right? So if you know that a client is you you know, without a doubt the client is probably gonna walk out with five poses why would you show them one hundred fifty? I don't care how good your work is. Why would you do that? I consider myself a pretty okay photographer honestly, I don't even show all my work because it's not their job my job is an artist is to get it down to the best image does that mean you have to sacrifice yes stop doing that but there you know they look alike but look his little fingers I e of it it's not funny it's you've gotta let it go stop that I edit a thousand you should see me at it. It would freak you out. I am like so fast that literally have it down to thirty images of people like because it's kind of freaky but you know what? It's? Not that I don't care I'vejust trained myself to look for what I'm looking for and get rid of the rest and don't think about it if you're like oh, you know, one image with that is okay one hundred and fifty is not okay, so I'm not kidding. You edit your work. You want to make a lot of money at your work. The client walks in, has thirty images and they sit down twenty two minutes is going to be editing their work. The entire rest of that hour and a half is going to be buying products you can't sell albums and purses and jewelry and wall collections. If your editing you could only showcase and sell those things if you've actually got them down to it now. It's a very powerful thing. The emotional connection when a client sits down and does that presentation is tremendous. For those of you who do not project. I wish there was a huge audience here because I love this game. I turned to usually three hundred people, and I say, ok, how many in this audience actually use a projector to sell your work? I typically get in an audience of two hundred fifty people. About thirty people that raised their hand is the average thirty, people raise their hand on its okay, everybody stared these people so everybody looks at them. And I said, now put your hands down now, how many of you that project in this audience doubled or tripled your income when you went to projection? All thirty of those hands go back up I swear to you on my own life and you haven't heard me do that before if you go to projection and you follow some of the techniques were talking about you will at a minimum double your income period it's just the fact that bigger you show the bigger you'll sell period so understand now your questions are going to be but what if you work out at home what if you have to go on location what if you don't that I know all those questions and you know what the answer is if I knew what I knew now then when I was working out of my home I would've bought a projector I would've rocked went right over to somebody's house and honestly I would have projected right over the fireplace and when they looked at me and they said how is that like an eleven by fourteen on that's a forty inch portrait what are they going to say they need a forty inch portrait over there if I can't they can't argue that point it's there it looks amazing they're freaking out over they're going to buy the forty inch portrait so that's what I would have done I would have hired somebody go to people's houses with the projector and project in their home and I bet you I would've sold collections all over the place because when you could say hey look up thirty by forty here one here and one of their look upon the place so I mean, I think it's really there's some merit there now I know what that doesn't work for everybody so again I will always say projection is the way to go can't project the biggest tv screen you can get like this it is good if you can't have this than smaller, smaller smaller until you get to the biggest laptop I know that everybody economically can't go and hook up projection but when I asked you how much money you wanted to make one hundred thousand dollars, how much are we making minimum to come on? We're out of thousand so when I ask you about projection, you're not going to tell me I can't you're going to say when I project that's what I'm going to make and you know what you're going to get there I promise you so the client sees thirty to forty images all of the images typically well, let me explain this it's not up there we as you saw I shoot color correct in camera I cropped when I'm shooting so I typically shoot with a crop in mind they're pretty you saw them popping up there pretty darn close to sellable right there unless there's something I can't work around way color correct them weak exposure adjust and then we do crop them artist thickly before the client sees them we used a company called pro select which will come up later but pro select allows us to crop it the way I wanted to be seen and also click off that button and see full frame if we want teo um I want to sell art I don't want to play pretend five by sevens and wallet so I want my size to be the right size and that allows me to do that so they will be cropped color corrected and exposure just I mentioned earlier that sometimes you run into a quick action to soften them but mostly with kids we don't stay this is sixty eight with full our work that's not true honestly it's closer to three to six that have full artwork to items will be art products with their child's image in them so in other words, those little art collections we showed you yesterday they will actually the day before they will actually come up in this show a cz finished product because that's what? I want them to walk out the door well with well I see a spectrum we I think somebody asked me this before. Well, I do I ever print for the client before they get there we do have the cannon picks him a pro one we just got it it's the most beautiful princess in the world absolutely stunning but on occasion, we have clients who spend well and I will actually pre print an item frame it, put it under glass, put it on an easel, put a cover over it. Client sits down, they watch their multimedia priest station. They're emotional, they cry. And then today we pulled it off and it's done. My favorite image is done. And those clients very rarely do they not walk out the door with that done. And those, you know, could be forty eight hundred dollars. Sell right there. So, yeah, we do. Speck print, but very rarely. I want to make very, very, very clear. That's very rare. We do sell prince that way, but, um, spec printing, you really kind of have to know your client. I would not do that for everybody that walked in the door. I'd lose money. If I did projection rooms, you can see we have projection screens. We have low ceilings. I might have to deal with those darn eight foot ceilings, so I had them build up into the ceiling. The screens come down out of the wall behind. That is a family. Actually, behind this one is a collage collection that we saw a lot of you can see we're predicting directly above a couch, because we want people to see when they see and this is what we call a sofa sized couch it's not a humongous giant couch because we want to show people that that's not a huge couch and a thirty by forty looks awesome over that so if you've got a bigger catch you probably to go a little bit bigger because most people don't even realize that how small eleven by fourteen looks over a couch um the chairs are placed in a c specific place uh this is uh we have two chairs facing the screen we know that if grandpas and grandmas coming we have extra chairs we could bring in but if you go to buy something with your spouse this is so true if you go to buy something like a car and this is my favorite if you gonna buy something with your spouse and you're sitting at the table and you're dealing with sales person if your spouse grabs you under the table and does this what does that mean not for no right I have a rule in my universe that if my husband does that to me it means yes oh well teo stop pinching thing a long time ago if he bumps me I'm like well del I'm sorry was that next so because what I found when people are together they send signals and they physically send signals that sometimes don't mean what what the other person thinks if they're together and let's say somebody reaches over and touches somebody, it could be because they're looking at a beautiful image, their child it's touching them where the wife is going oh he's saying not to do that so separate them, they have to be independent thinkers in our studio we believe they didn't make their own decisions does that mean we show it? Shove things down their throat, make them buy things? Absolutely not. We will step out of the room when things get a little uncomfortable and they're like bantering back and forth will step out of the room and give them a little space so that they could have a private conversation. Here is another one of our sales in this field the gold room and you could see the projection screen is up now so you can see that's a thirty by forty over a very small couch it's very smart to do that because now clients looking at that going my couch is twice as big as that and that's a thirty by forty vertical we could easily do a sixty inch horizontal so you can just kind of see again the two chairs the associates behind with nice speakers, we have refreshments, we have it all set up this is actually the blue room and this is the gold room here you can see them look in the corner this is the waiting area for the clients so when they come in the front door they're if they're coming for a sales session there brought into this room we have a cooking machine that we bake cookies all that day long we have coffees and teas we have water bottles we have things so that the clients could make themselves at home also have art products everywhere we have purses and metal murals and wall court sitting in this room we're going to show you the frame wall coming up the frame this is the framing room so we could take them in there now we make this a very homey environment but what's really happening is the client is having time to adjust to the product line they're looking at purses and they're looking at these things going on it's kind of cool I didn't know you could do that they're getting planted in their head before we walk them into that where you know sales rooms we all know they close in on you we want to create an open area environment for that initial part of the sale on dh then we go from there so that's just to give you an idea of that now if you work out of your home I always have to go back to my beginning because I I want people to go you know not say oh I don't have all that room when I worked out of my house, I had a small dining room table and I put product lines on it, and at that time I didn't know about putting large wall ports on the wall, so I had tiny like eleven by fourteen zina sick steam by twenty and you know what? I sold eight by tens and eleven by fourteen when I opened my studio and I put thirty by forty is on the wall, I sold thirty by forties and twenty by twenty four, so you show what you sell by far rather have you. If you're working out of a small space in your home, I'd rather have two amazing showstopping images on the wall, then six eleven by fourteen that showcase all the things you could do because you're telling your client and eleven by fourteen is ok to go on the wall and it's, not it's, really not, um, so that's important sales appointment appointments are actually booked at the time of the session. We do give them a reminder card to take home, and then we send the reminder email out that we talk to you about and then the email does remind them that the decision makers need to be present mom and dad, everybody needs to be there, uh, when dad's won't come and this is always the question people always say, like well, who who has to be there? We want dads to be there. Honestly, dads were great. I know everybody is intimidated by them, but honestly, they have control of that wallet too. When they come when they won't come, we find that decisions can't be made oftentimes plans to say I didn't know. I gotta talk to my husband. I wish he was here. Um they ask if the images could go online. That's the number one oh, my husband needs to see him before I could make it decision or they cannot make the decision for one of the first two reasons. And they say, can I make another appointment? You realize that when they make a second appointment, you just cut their cell in half? If it takes you two hours or total of three hours to sales sessions, if you're gonna make eight hundred dollars in the first hour and a half, you're now making four hundred dollars, is an average correct because they've eaten up two of yourselves appointments. So we have to close the sale. And I know that's a big, important one, and we're gonna talk about closers as well. Um, so we don't want to be waiting for mom to get approval, we want dad to be there whenever possible. When dad is present, discussions are had, decisions are made and payments are collected, most guys just want to get out of there. They just want to go home, and they get it when I started the process of projection, because again, these are things that you don't know how to do. And so until you see a sales room, you don't know what one looks like, you know, you don't know the dimensions. I didn't either. Um, when I first transitioned to selling by projection, I was completely intimate. I actually truly thought I was gonna go out of business. I thought people were going to hate me. Do you know why I went to projection? It was not to make more money. Period. Remember I talked to you about the time when I was shooting so much that million dollars that I wanted so badly. I thought I wanted nearly killed me. I literally was working six days a week, thirteen jobs a day trying to make my husband retired. I was trying to make it, and I I knew I was doing it for the right reasons. When my husband quit his job to stand with the kids, it was the right choice. But it also put a level of fear in me that made me go. I gotta work, I gotta work. I gotta work. I don't know working, so technically, I wasn't doing anything wrong. I wasn't becoming a workaholic cause I wanted teo. I just had a lot of risk, spence ability, but I went to a mentor because I was I had it, I was losing my mind. I hadn't seen my kids. I missed the first steps, their appointments, all the things that mattered, and I went to a mentor and I went to her and I said, I can't I'm literally I'm making so much money, and I'm so unhappy, and she said, you have to go to projection, and she had told me this pride for eight years before that, and I was like, I can't I can't find it was in a commercial space, and so I maybe good had to expand from two thousand of five thousand speak to do it, but I could maybe do this. She promised me that if I would go to projection, but I would double my income and that I could go home and literally in a fit of exhaustion I gave up, I said, all right, I'll do it, I quit. And so I did I expand and I spent the money I borrowed the money to put in the sales room and I was a risk I mean I thought okay we're losing everything now because not only my pain to do this but my clients are gonna hate this there's no way I put up a projection room and of course the first sale um you know, we went through this uh my first sale was kind of funny because it happened to be a client too they had a baby I photograph their first baby and it was all proofs a little four by five proofs and they brought in their second baby now their three year old uh use three then he was diagnosed with autism and he was a very difficult baby child photograph well, when we photographed hiss session it was breathtaking madonna portrait's and now here we are trying to do the whole family and we have a three year old who has no attention span and I'm struggling so hard I know what I'd given them before and I knew I was not going to get that again and so you know, we were using little pieces of candy little smarties trick to try to get it I was like sticking smarties in mom's button belly button and I'm like throwing him and is trying to get this child delay in on the time and it was just a crazy session it was absolutely insane and I didn't think I mean I know we got something but I knew we didn't have show stopping image I just I knew it I was convinced if I pushed one more smarty mom's gonna was gonna have a baby so we finished the session and they were overwhelmed that I was overwhelmed it just so happened that, uh that day uh they booked their appointment we had I couldn't remember the exact date was thirteenth of february we were goingto projection I told myself as of the thirteenth, every image that we do will be projection first up very first session was this family and I literally looked it was the thirteenth and I went to work nervous going, oh my gosh, she was going to be on the list and their family was first up and I was like, just what? I wanted to show a giant picture of failure. That's awesome. I walked in that room and I'll never forget this because I walked in the room and I hadn't least enough courage to do that and I sat down and we talked I had heard how to state, you know, the multimedia presentation and blah blah blah and I sat down with mom and dad and their clothes their chairs were closed but not connected but they were close enough and what I saw is what I've seen for ever since then they sat down explain the presentation I turned on the music ari sorry turned up the music turned down the lights and I started that session soon is that music start started now parents have never seen this coming as soon as they started I heard mongo and all of a sudden I heard her so short of catching qatar throat and I could hear she's kind of muffling its throat and so I'm kind of paying attention to her and I could see tears welling up in their eyes at her husband he reached over and he grabbed her hand and so when he moved his hand of course it cost me to look at him and I saw these big tears rolling down his eyes and of course it literally took my breath away where the image is amazing no, I mean they weren't they were honestly there were good images we'd crop them and fix them and done what we could but they were breathtaking images by no means but to that family in that moment, especially with their little boy that they had many struggles with they were so beautiful and they were so big and they were in the music and the sounds and the smell of cookies and all of that and I started to cry too and I cried although it wasn't my kid e um and it was amazing and I'm so blessed that that was my first sales appointment because it literally sparked that I'll never go back for I went from walking in there thinking I was going out of business to getting the big picture now the first year was awesome because every time I went in I had to explain every clinton mostly that came in they were old plants so I would have to say by the way we're gonna do this today something different rhythm a multimedia presentation the images they're all put to music and just sit back like I did this speech a thousand times that first year there's a point where you know you have a client come back that you don't realize that has been here so this honestly swear to you is the true story I walked into this mom and dad sitting in their chairs I walk in front of them and I said okay by the way I wanted to let you know this is a multimedia presentation we're goingto we're gonna go ahead and in the lights we're gonna have a slide show the dad literally stops me and he goes I know I know I know you turn down the lights you turn up the music and chuck ching was like you got it let's go get stuff in so that's what I want you to remember I want you to remember that you turned down the life you turn up the music and cheating issue and along with that you're gonna have an incredible experience you're going to see tears flow that you could never have imagined so it's well worth going to projection and again if you can't go there yet it's not can't it's when I do and that's how we want to look at things, okay, we have about five minutes, so we're gonna talk about some product lines and things that what people buy when they come into the studio, I didn't know that sail well wall portrait gallery wraps, standouts, wall collections, frame clods, digital files on archival cities were going to save digital files an archival cds because it happens to be a soapbox. Okay, I lied there like more than three, but it's an important one, but obviously there are all kinds of things that sell my goal is to sell a wall portrait and a big things to be a photo. They are my lab and kudos to them. When I got here, I didn't realize I would have walls that I could put displays on, and so of course we call them and they literally flew prints in overnight so I could at least have something behind me, so thank you, bay photo you guys rock you, they have done so much for me and they're such a good like you're looking for a lab they're real people that really is a way and here we got some good dope a photo in here oh my gosh happy audiences babe o'dea based babe audio good jobs so you know what I'm talking about? You know, they're they're like somewhere in the middle there not a tiny lab they're not a humongous out of control out they're just good people that actually answer the phone and take care of you. So thank you for that fuck there but really and truly thank you for the pictures because you know what photographer sits by blank walls that's just madness I can assure you I didn't mean for that to happen, but these are some of the items that sales that cell also now labs have all these incredible things like metal prince gallery wraps, wave books, three view folios wall displays there's just so many more ways to prison photos, go to your lab or go tobe a photo and if you just check out the selection that they have of stuff, it will blow your mind. I promise you, but then I'm going to tell you not to buy it all because it's not all going to sell and so I don't want you to go invested everything pick and choose the items and relate the items to the press list that you have so a couple baby items and a couple of family items in a couple of high school senior items and when those sell well do something else and if something doesn't sell get rid of it and try something else you don't have to go broke investing in all of these different things another shout outs to on the wall display guys this has been one really fun arianna you confined her on face book and she has a program called wall display guides and it works with pro select but they're also layered photoshopped files and elements and all that stuff but she created all these incredible rooms that you can create you could literally create the room with image is in it everything from a baby's room to a formal dining room two living rooms and they're multiple choices you can change the color of the wallpaper in the textures so we don't sit with clients and sell you know single images we literally show them like collections and then we say hey let's, try this with purple paint we become designers we can literally say hey let's paint your wall purple because it would look awesome with these images when you could do that your clients are really impressed they feel like you are giving a service far and above a picture taker and that's kind of what we're going for and for the investment in some of these things I know I've mentioned a lot of companies um this is really and truly what I use nobody paid me not one person paid me to come to this show period. I do have some sponsors that sponsor our tours they've been mentioned as have been people that don't pay me a dime. This is just what we use in their studios. Uh, barn on as far as I'm concerned, the neo is the best album coming and I see some of you use for now they are premium, gorgeous albums, they have great designs and they're great people as well. So it's a great company, we use templates to create albums. They have every kind of leather. I mean, this is the same thing is pay changing the wall paint with video you could design an album look around the style of the prince when I grew up in photography albums were black, white and maroon or whatever that color was cranberry garbage. Every wedding album was that color. Those are your choices and you have those little slip in mats and that's as good as it got that's most of us have probably wedding albums that looked like that. Now we can give these custom pieces that are breathtaking, so we do have programs. We have a baby album program, we have a family album program. We create pricing structures so that people can get into the albums and we don't get to talk a lot about maternity albums. So it was a happy accident. I forgot to put those in here. So this was actually from yesterday's show. We were talking about maternity. I had mentioned yesterday that we were gonna talk about how to sell maternity prince. Nobody wants for the most part of forty inch portrait of their belly. They don't. And they think they do when they have them. When they come in and see the pregnancy shots that I called so beautiful and then they have the baby because they never ordered they never order their maternity shots before the baby. They always say, well, let me wait. And then guess what? They have the baby and the baby trumps to tell me every time. And so all of a sudden the maternity section becomes a five by seven sale and the baby takes the money, which is fine. You're still making the money, but you put you put time into the first session. We explain the marketing value of that in the connection to that. But I still want to make money two seconds, literally. So I mean, I can stop if you just wanna sit, but then people think they forgot they missed something there's like five slides ah. Everyone we're back live we just had a little hiccup but you didn't miss anything, so back over to you, sandy we stopped and waited for a promise real quickly because we do need to finish we were just going to talk about maternity albums album's air important um but with maternity albums the question was how do you sell maternity prints? And the long and short of it is whenever we sell maternity our goal is to sell an album and the album is going to be a collection of both the pregnancy or pre pregnancy getting pregnant with froth no, the pregnancy images and the newborn images and we do a collection so we want to tell the whole story albums for us started around two thousand dollars so at a cell's average of a thousand per session it's still worth it clients invest more than the album, so of course we hope to get around three thousand dollars for that session, but it at least establishes that we're going to create a story and we're going to create a price point that we're comfortable with. I don't want to do a pregnancy session and sell if I buy seven that's kind of frustrating but I do want mom toe have those images as well so quickly just from different these air album pages you can see we work exclusively with templates because it's easy and it's the way to go we love our temp, puts a lot of the temples we create, like, for instance, the one you're looking at here. Now we leave room in the template. And then, as we're preparing them, we ask mom before the baby's born or dad, we say, do you want to write a story to the baby? Would you like to write a letter to your baby before it gets here? Would you like to write a poem? And you have a favorite poland. Give anything and we put in our albums, man, the ones where the moms, right, the letters are just there will just melt you when they talk about the baby that's not there. And then they read a second letter for the end of the book where they talk to the baby because the baby is there and just the excitement. Enthusiasm. And then, of course, the reality of having a baby. These become treasures. They're so, so beautiful. So, of course, when once the baby's born, we can showcase that all the way from the newborn session all the way on up tio their first year, the way we typically cell it is. But uh pregnancy and newborn is one book and in the first year is one book and that's outside of the baby program that's an add on sale so the people who really love what we do we want to take them from the baby program and put them in an album program as well. Let's see other marketing products that sell really well all kinds of things that these air we consider these marketing products because of a piece of jewelry with images mom's running around people are seeing it we have these templates on you can do that her place that's we don't sell a ton of them I'm not gonna lie to you, but the people that buy them they come with little markers the kids can actually ride on them and play with them and they're very interactive so we know that every day they're looking at our work um other things we use for nao as I said but we have the albums this is a fun one in the first year siri's we can do we do an a, b c and a one two three siri's where during the three three six this one with three, six, nine and twelve months we shoot so many of the letters each time is the baby grows like a is for apple with the baby b is for bat with the baby by the time they hit one years old, they have an entire album like a birthday album there first birthday and it's a reader it's something that can educate them. These go to church, they goto playgroup, they go all of the community and my logo is humongous on the back of them. Because I want people to know that we've created this for them. Other show pieces that people love, gina alexander makes incredible purses. You can even see some of them here. We love her stuff, she's. Great. Uh, really high end product and that's the thing with first cos I got to tell you, there are lots of first companies out there, but you kind of get what you pay for. Honestly, gina is high. I would say a higher price, but she's a higher quality by far purse. She does have a discount right now. And it's like fifty percent off your sample order. Just just contact them and it's sandy puts dot com so you can get some things like this because you don't need a million. But, man, you got a mom walking around with this and trust me, everybody is going to stop her. Gina doesn't allow you to put your logo on there now as well. So now the clients can actually see who you are and you know, your potential clients can see who you are. Birth announcements are also a marketing campaign these air things we've given some of those away these are things that we feel like really showcase our work and make it good for us um and played it cards, there's another fun one these are all things that we do they're loves these air literally baby business cards so imagine you're in a play group with your daughter and everybody's going hey, we should get the kids together well, when your client takes one of their little baby cards out and little matthew has his own little card and you want to have a playdate and here's his phone number that's pretty awesome you're like the coolest mom in played a group, so and people of course, are like, oh my gosh, this is so cute! Where did you get it? And guess what? Your logo is right there, it's awesome. Now do we sell a million of these notes? We give them way at bonus levels, which we'll talk about later this tremendous bonus little sending someone home with fifty of these is fifty times they're going to be out there talking about you and giving your work away, so let them mark it for you