Lessons

Lesson Info

Pricing

So what you're seeing up on the screen right now this is our engagement collections and I just want to walk everyone threw it in the highlights I don't want to spend three hours on this but I just want to get you some changes so if you've watched our wedding business bootcamp you've seen the original pricing sheets but we have in fact made some changes and incorporated new products here so just focus on the right hand side for me right now please so follow along on the right hand side it is just the ala carte price key concept number one everything you offer in your studio must have an associate id ala carte item you have to have a price point for it to establish value we all understand that the prices on the ala carte uh side of the equation here are artificially high it is two in fact punish bad behavior we don't want clients on the right hand side of this equation if they want to come in and we have no minimum orders so if you want to start introducing minimum orders to protect your...

time that's fine I don't like that I think it's a heavy handed tactic what I'd rather do is have higher prices and then let the clients come in and see if they want to buy one eight by ten they absolutely can sew for us notice we set everything up as a gift size eight by tens four by six is five by sevens on wallets are all qualified as gift print one flat price for that. Okay, I don't I don't want to get into what you're actually charging. I will guide you and tell you that if you're charging less than twenty five dollars, you're losing money, so even if you're just starting out, that was one of the biggest mistakes I made in the beginning. I was charging ten dollars for, you know, ah, four by six and so now a client comes in and buys ten four by six is and they spend one hundred dollars in your studio and you were just out on shoots, right for an hour and a half, two hours editing? Uh, you're not making any money. Okay, so you're losing money at that point in time, so it's got it's got to be painful for him if they start playing over there. Ah, wall portrait, nothing much has changed here. You guys are looking at the screen. Just start looking at the price points there. Notice what we're carrying everything just because the lab officer size doesn't mean we have to carry that. That makes no sense whatsoever, so we're picking sizes notice it's an eleven, sixteen, sixteen twenty four, twenty, thirty those air full frame sizes right we're shooting with thirty five millimeters I don't want to show a sixteen twenty that's a medium format size I don't want to sell an eight by ten that's a medium format size stores are starting to carry eight by twelve frames and so while I do carry that eight by ten it's on ly at the client's request I'd rather put in eight by twelve in their hands because then that allows for the aspect ratio right or the composition I should say that I captured when I was shooting but as especially as we start getting in the wall portrait we're going to try and maintain er that formatting now if a client comes to me and says hey, I don't want the eleven sixteen I have eleven by fourteen of my other daughter or another shoot can I get this in eleven fourteen absolutely we're gonna charge the same price though okay so it's the same exact price will just deliver it in an eleven fourteen same for sixteen twenty if they don't want the sixteen twenty four we'll give it to him now keep in mind as you're selling canvasses acrylics clients don't care the only time they typically want that eleven fourteen or sixteen twenty the more traditional sizes is because they have a frame or something ah space they're looking at on their wall where they want to go buy a frame right off the you know right off the shelf so speak they don't want custom framing but like I said companies like michael's they're starting to carry the sixteen twenty four frames the eleven sixteen in the eight by twelve mostly because everybody's a photographer now and even if they're not a professional photographer or want to be they've got a digital slr because you get those for under a thousand dollars now so that format they're getting used to see notice there it says mounted for durability so all our wall prints come mounted on styrene that's very important it's ah higher quality product I don't like gator bored I don't like any of those phone boards because they dent all right so when it comes to you know the cadillac of backing styrene is where it's at okay it's a little bit more expensive but it's not going to identify squeeze it or put pressure on it where phone board if I squeeze it and put pressure on it I will actually make a dent in the mounting material so it's not his high quality it feels that way it looks that way over time uh if they want to add metallic it's just a multiplier so at twenty five percent more and they get metallic for those prints it's totally up to them now in the studio we have both uh right regular prints and metallic prints we give the client's choice for the upgrade as we look at campus prices there again, nothing really has changed here recently. Uh, where will changes when we look at the acrylics and the framed acrylics and those products? Those were all new forest metal prince I should say so one and a half inch campus. So they're all both together notice, though, uh, add metallic or two and a half inch thickness, right? We just had a twenty five percent multiplier, so I want to keep pricing as simple as possible. And these are always moving, man, our pricing is a living document were constantly tweaking it constantly, trying new things and all I'm doing here is pointing out for you some of the highlights. So you understand the concept of our pricing. Stay on the right side with me. Notice we've got signature collection products here. So with internally we qualify certain products being within our signature collection so that they understand this a little bit more artistic, right, you can totally position it that way in your own pricing model. So call it signature collection. Call it whatever you want. Just make sure that you have higher and products in there. So for us in there, we've got, um, the five by seven acrylic blocks and eat by twelve acrylic blocks, so these air really thick they're acrylic blocks we get them from virtuoso uh they're super affordable and clients loved them, so they're free standing so the acrylic block grab that mike for me all right, so the acrylic block is it's going to be actually about this thick so the thickness is there on this looks almost like a five by seven or a little bit bigger acrylic block so imagine this now this piece of glass you're selling it to them for their office for their nightstand at home and it's free standing so because it's so thick it just stands like that with your picture in it so it's an absolutely beautiful product just check it out but definitely worth adding to your arsenal of ah of products all right, so let's keep going acrylic or metal. So what we've done is we have priced acrylic or metal, so if you've watched previous pricing, you never knew how we were pricing the critics are metal because they're brand new we're just introducing them to our client base and so I want you to see the price points were carrying these out so a sixteen by twenty four acrylic is eight, ninety five or metal where is a sixteen by twenty four campus is six, ninety five, so the acrylics are two hundred dollars mohr or metal two hundred dollars more than a canvas as it should be this is a signature level product for us okay within our own internal with in our own internal client base they absolutely love these pieces but they cannot be the same price as a canvas because it is a higher and product than a canvas and so uh these are the kind of products you're gonna want to start showing also noticed add frame to acrylic for two hundred fifty dollars so we will actually deliver virtuosos when the only cos carrying that a framed acrylic a za fully polished item brand new we haven't really announced it yet but we'll be carrying framed metal prints as well so those air going to add much more polished so we made it easy for our clients hey you're going to go get this thing framed someplace ok, maybe you are maybe you're not but if you're going to go get it framed just give it to us we'll deliver it on it'll be two hundred fifty bucks more so we don't have any magical formula that we're trying to make them calculate ride by how many square feet is it in all this other jazz two hundred fifty bucks straight fee uh some frames I'm going to make more money on some I'll make less on but what it does is it looks really good for our clients and I'm building the rest of the price into right the acrylic or mental itself so you've got to start adding these products that's how we're pricing it notice on the bottom there collections cannot be altered very important understand we all have those clients. Second, I want to start just manipulating packages on us, not allowed, and we're going to talk about cover packages in a second here, so look at the other things here. The digital negatives are there eight by eight album, a twenty page album that is, in fact, a press printed book from bay photo, the twelve by twelve metallic album that is also a press printed product from bay photo so we want to sell engagement albums now every once in a while, I'll have a client that wants to, in fact buy a wedding style album, okay for their engagement citian engagement session. Those are few and far between mostly they're just happy with the eight by eight or twelve by twelve press printed book and foreign engagement session. I'm okay with that, too. It doesn't have to be the same caliber is there? Is there wedding album, but the guest book two ninety nine web posting one ninety nine what is the web posting that means? You're not going to come to me and I'm just gonna automatically poster images onto a website that's not gonna happen you're going to come into my studio and look at your imagery if you don't come to the studio and see the imagery that's totally fine it's going to cost you one ninety nine toe actually post it now do I charge people that one ninety nine? Absolutely I'm not going to just allow them to come in and poster images online because if you do you're losing that impact with them, you've gotta have the impact to get them going, and that happens in your studio. How do they know what a metal print is? How do they know what they're acrylic is without seeing it touching it, feeling it our critics are so heavy there's the quality is incredible you're not going to see that looking at a picture online, okay? Or buying a cheaper, inferior acrylic from another company, so I want them to see it in their hands. This becomes important now let's jump immediately to the digital negatives that's always the place of great conversations are born eso digital negatives b l only that means black label, so on the left we're going to cover this next they cannot come in under any scenario and just by the digital negatives from their engagement session, not an option it's just not even an option it's not something we offer okay, so I want you guys to think about this everybody's going all my clients they just want their agent gibbs you know I got to give him joe I got to give in to him. Okay? So let's say hypothetically you go to kentucky fried chicken and you want to stake not what you really want to take you to get that stake it doesn't exist they don't make stake you can't get it in our studio we do not offer digital negatives from an engagement session unless you are in the black label package you've got to deliver that message with confidence I don't care what every other photographer does I don't care about what every other studio does well, you know jim smith photography he does it we're not jim smith photography okay, I can't go into kentucky fried chicken and be like, well uh the capital grille serves steak why don't you? Because we're not a steakhouse that's why we don't we are not a shooting burn location we are not delivering digital negative suck it up get over it stopped doing it there's just you don't have to do it stop thinking you have to succumb to this here's what we do deliver when we give them the digital negatives it is in fact in our black label package on lee jpeg images are approximately twelve, one hundred to eighteen hundred pixels. That is what we are delivering now. You need to understand this is in our our language, it's an export script out of light room, so just create an export script on a light room and it'll render it that size, so it takes me ten seconds or less okay to grab all the images from a client session exported and create those digital negatives so that I'm not sitting there obsessing. Now you remember the case I showed you the other day in that case, with that thumb drive that's now how we're delivering them and maybe you're not there yet? You're doing it on a cd drive. If you're going to our cd, you're going to want a cd dvd, make sure it's branded, so get those branded cases for the cd dvd and get branded dvds. Okay, so don't try and reinvent the wheel for every client trying to pick, uh, print their images on it. Yeah, that may look great, but when you've got high volume coming through your studio, that becomes a very complex process that's not worth the time, so I used a company called w t s media w t s media dot com and we have printed branded dvds we bind by the spindle, they're very innit sensitive on now everytime after print digital negatives it's a black cd with my white logo so it's completely branded to my studio and it's much more economical when you're buying three hundred of those first trying to get one per client and paying twenty or thirty bucks per that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, so go check that out all right let's jump two packages now if you notice we present our packages top down, so are most expensive packages up top and I know for some of you this is a refresher but you should have your price sheets out right now trying to make notes on it as we're going through this were coming top down our most expensive package up top the most uh least expensive on the bottom now why does that matter back to consumer behavior? Consumer's minds I can always come down in price but I can't go up in price it's very difficult for our minds to let us come up in price we just start seeing dollar signs, dollar signs, dollar signs but it's much easier to come down and guess what when I'm coming down gets where I never want to be in the basement no one ever wants to be in the cheapest package just consumer behavior it's how we all work think about yourselves I'm not talking about that one client who wants to be in the basement I'm talking about eighty percent of your clients don't want to be there so give them a reason not to be there so let's start with the base package what is in there now? This is what's in my engagement package and eleven by sixteen eight five by sevens while you can read the screen here's what? I want to point out to you I want you to understand the framework in the concepts here one notice we have value next to the price of the package. Okay, so it's not so the price of packages six ninety nine it's a nine ninety five value where we get the value from the other card right? We got the value from the ala carte that's why it's so important that you're ala carte everything you offer is on that ala carte menu because that's where the value is being associated with also that's why it's important that they are artificially high prices? Even if you want to sell in eight by ten for ten dollars which I highly encourage you not to do, you cannot have it on the ala carte side for ten dollars because there's no wiggle room once you put that as your price you can't where do you discount? You have no room for discount so it's easier for me to say I charge one hundred dollars for an eight by ten and discounted to fifty or discounted to twenty five than it is for me to put it out there for twenty five or ten dollars and try and discounted or go up in price I can't do it. Okay, so here's some other things notice there's a web posting there so the minute you get into a package your images will be posted online. That's very important that's a big pull through item for clients pull through are those items okay? Just a refresher here that gets you from one package to the next. What does every client want when they come in? They're definitely gonna want their images posted online so all their friends and family can see it. Well, if you come in and you just want to buy a web gallery if you saw on the previous slide the web gallery here is one hundred ninety nine dollars. If you want to post them on facebook on lee, you're ordered prints you're seeing that in parentheses ninety nine dollars so we've raised that price. It used to be seventy five dollars. We raised it to ninety nine dollars there's no facebook in there there's nothing it's, just smaller prints in that package, but guess what? Six ninety nine is a good starting point for me now. When I was starting off rewind years back, that pack at same package was for ninety nine there's no reason why today all of you out there can't make that package for ninety nine it's a great entry level package for your engagement session now over time as you become busier and you get more experience and your work improves that price goes up against what doesn't change the framework I'm showing you right here so notice what's not in it no digital negatives no albums okay no large prints no canvas not in my base package money is like water. It will follow the path of least resistance if you make it easy for them to come into your studio and spend no money they will in fact spend no money if you make it difficult for them to spend no money then they will spend the money it's on you so when your client comes in if they end up on your allah card and buy two eight by tens and ah sixteen by twenty four off your allah card you need to go into the mirror and just smack yourself right for just being a dum dum right now. Okay, so you've got to make these changes in your business money is like water. It will follow the path of least resistance I'm making it difficult for them the dance over on the ala carte menu and they all gravitate towards the, uh package price why look what's right next to the price the value so once you start doing that and you show the value consumer behavior changes yet again, they start thinking about not what they're spending. They start thinking about what they're saving the minute you start getting climbs to think about what they're saving it's a game changer. So a lot of studios out there in some of you I've talked to offline, you're like, no, I just let my clients pick and choose whatever they want they build their own packages. That's awesome! Let me tell you what's never gonna happen. You're more than likely never gonna have a two, three, four five thousand dollars bail because you're making it too difficult because as they're building their own packages, their brain is like a human calculator. Okay, let's, get this campus. Well, how much is that? Well, that's six, ninety five okay, let's, get this acrylic. How much is that that's this? How much is that? How much is that? How much is that? Every time they keep asking, how much is that? The groom? The father. Somebody there is thinking about their wallet and the pain they're putting on their wallet right now, right? But the second I start showing hey, in our platinum package, you save sixteen hundred and forty dollars well, like that, I'm saving money now you understand the difference? It is the psychology of the sail. It is the difference between what I'm spending and what I'm saving. We need to get our clients thinking about what they're saving. This is proven tried and true customer psychology, consumer behavior, there's nothing to argue about with me. This is how it works. We do the same thing when we go into stores and we're doing it. So if it's, how we behave is consumers, why don't we believe it's? The way our clients behave in our studio? There's no reason for it. If this is what corporate america does with their pricing structures, why wouldn't we? Let's look at the platinum package. What are the pull through items what's there to get me up into that package while we've got a sixteen by twenty four, we've got a fifteen by thirty panel. These are prince, okay, the acrylics and the new products we carry, they're going to be in our black label. They're going to be in our top package. So in that middle package, I'm going from just small prints into big prince. Okay, now I've got some big prints in there. I've got the facebook posting I've got the fourteen day web gallery also noticed I'm saying ten gift prints. You could do whatever you want. You want ten, eight by tens get ten, eight by ten. You could do whatever you want with it wearing the base package. It was much more restrictive. Now, let's, look at the black label. This is where we want to be. Look at this savings. Thirty six hundred dollars savings. Right. Based off the ala carte menu. Here's where we introduce the twenty by thirty acrylic. So now we've introduced where's before. If you've seen this package sheet before, we never carried acrylics. Acrylics are not available in those base packages. So now we got a twenty by thirty acrylic of fifteen by thirty panel twelve by twelve engagement album. This is everything they could possibly need. Ah, guestbook. So for the wedding, right, we give them a little eight by eight. Guest book, ten gift prince, high resolution digital negatives. That's what's in that package. There's. No other package to get the digital negatives from. Um and then, of course, a facebook posting and then let's not forget in every package it has additional discounts. I don't want them to stop spending the minute they hit that package. I want them to continue to spend in the studio, so I want to make it easy for them to spend if you just put that in the package now they end up in their package and they think they're done well here I'm saying, look, if you're gonna get ah large print from mom, I'll give you twenty five percent off all additional wall portrait. Okay, so these are the kind of things we want to start doing. We just had a ah, a wedding sail come in. Last week they spent forty five hundred dollars, post wedding. Right? They came in. Mom got an album his mom got in a right. His mom got an album, her mom got an album in addition to the album they were already getting, and that becomes easier because we were discounting it with discounts like this, making it easy for them to continue to spend money. It doesn't cost me that much more money to hit the number to or the number three to get three albums now, right? So anything I can make aiken significantly discount just hit the number two and it's profitable for me, okay, so I don't need to make two hundred, three hundred percent markup on it, not when they're additional album, so we have ways of discounting that for clients, yes, they're always the same albums excuse me like you don't redesign an album for mom if mom's like but I want a picture of grandma and I want a picture the family the short answer is it depends okay if it's been a high maintenance client sorry this is the real world we live in it's a high maintenance client that is not spent money with us no we will not redesign the album for them because we all know how it works on the back end I'm going to get a discount hopefully if I'm ordering two or three of the same album right however if I've got if I submit three different album orders I'm not getting any additional discounts and so that's hurting me and plus I got to send it back into redesign this particular client that came in game through very good client great people our clients they hired us for photography they hired us for video they spent about twenty five hundred dollars on their engagement pictures you want three different albums designed we got you covered okay that's a level of good service you've got to be a good customer too right this's a two way street you can't just be a bad customer and I'm going to be giving you open up you know the door so to speak so bad customers I can't do all this stuff for them I just have a testimonial about this for everybody here starting out everybody on the internet that we used to just throw our images up on in a gallery online and you know in the beginning were hoping oh, we're just going to drum up and all the orders will come in magically and we never sold anything I know how that we sold one by by seven so since we started implementing this and doing the viewing meaning our our average now for a portrait or engagement is a hundred bucks that's awesome huge increase obviously so from here yeah into set two thousand seven but you know, I remember when I first met you and your husband and I remember sitting there talking to you guys in denver because I was like, two years ago or something got two and a half years ago somewhere in that range and I remember you guys balking at this process think jeff jeff didn't believe it worked I didn't throw you under the bus, jeff she did just so we're clear, but I remember I remember him walking out and not thinking it would work and a lot of people out there feel the same way they're like I don't want to get there I don't want to bring him in I'm nervous I don't know how to sell it's not a sales process, the pricing is what's really selling it think ofyour yourjob is kind of the navigator you're just guiding them through the process, and we do. We don't force our clients to go anywhere we could. You tell us what you want and by showing them okay, this is rewinding toe like two or three sides ago showing them this product. They're the ones making the decisions because when she's holding that acrylic in her hands well, that framed acrylic in her hands. She's seen she's seeing it in her home immediately. She's like I want this, but if you just show her a picture or tell her about what it might look like could look like you're not going to get it there, you've got to show them. Um, do you ever show your pricing before the actual shoot? No, never there's no reason to great question and never so let's talk work flow. Here they are. What they do know are the ala carte prices, so let me let me step back. I don't want you to think like it's kind of like, you know, jack in the box, they come in and they're like, just completely surprised they see the ala carte prices, yes, that's part of their contract, so there's no bait and switch whatsoever what they're not seeing are the bundling I don't think I have to show them that they know how much an eight by ten is when they hire us. It's fifty bucks they know how much a wall portrait is. The discounts are incentive based specials to get them too. Act now, write what happens when we post online I don't know about you what your experience is, but when I was starting off and I would post online weeks, months would go by, their site would expire, I'd have to call them up. Just grab me. Did you check your pictures out? You're laughing because it's probably something that stuff you do. He's, did you check him out? Right? I don't want to do that anymore, you're coming in. We're checking them out together. So this email when we send it out it's right after their engagement session. So as soon as the engagement session's over as soon as the senior session is over, family sessions over this goes out in an email scheduling them to come in. Hey, guys, hope you had a blast on your session with sound attached or prices and packages tied to vender specials. Okay, you've heard this spiel before tied avenger specials. Please be prepared to spend about two hours picking in ordering pictures here's a date I've got february the seventh at eight pm I've got february the ninth at two p m let us know what works for you okay, so now they've seen this about two weeks before they come in so they've had two weeks to digest the specials are they upset about it? Of course not you don't have to buy a single thing there's no minimum order and you already know what our ala carte prices are because when you contract it us you knew what they were so there's nothing shocking there about it semi consent it's a good question over here. What jumps out to me that ligature pricing right there, of course, and that's the dalek are items what? You have the black label platinum you have silver, you don't have entry level mid range tom tear can you talk a bit about how you why you use things like black label and silver and manning? Yeah, like what name you picked for your business, right? I don't have like happy feet package one that's not going to get anybody excited about it. I wanted to create an internal I'm gonna get, like hate mail from anybody who owns happy feet, anything, uh, just be getting heat from people. But, you know, it's in good fun, but anyway, I'm not going to get those kinds of names aren't evoking the kind of emotion I want, but when you say black label it just sounds rich, right? So when you're naming your packages and your structure, the last thing I want you guys to do is just be like, you know, flowery one okay, I don't what does that mean, right? Start thinking about branding so within and hopefully these guys can get a close up of this within the packaging itself. All right, notice the labeling of off the black label we've created a brand identity four black label and that's what we're looking to do a showcase for our clients just there's a difference because there is a difference between black label clients and our standard client so even the packaging has this this difference and people love knowing that they're in our top level package, right? So create that black label brand an awareness within your own business, right? You know there's there's a tiger's local to me who follow what we do and they're not calling it black label they're calling it red label right? Call whatever you want just give it some meaning something of substance. So great question. We got questions online because usually when we do pricing uh it's uh jackpot rolling in right now if you guys got questions to hit me up so I want to pause here for a second naturally and take some questions thank you black diamond uh d c says how do you handle customers who buy individual products, then returned later for the rest of the items in a package? So if I understand the question, they buy one or two items, and then they realized they want a package. Yeah, it's going be build that way. So if they come into our studio and they pass on the package, who actually let me step back here in our email that goes out to the client, we stay clearly, uh, these packages and pricing or tied to vender specials, right? So I'm not the bad guy. My vendors are the bad guy, and they're gonna expire the night of your previewing and maybe there's a little gamesmanship there, but they understand what's going on there's a sense of urgency if they try and come back a month later, those specials have expired, and we will not yield on that. They are paying allah card prize after that, so if they leave and only about one or two items, if they cause back a week a month later and try and buy more items, they're buying them at the ala carte price. And you have to hold strong on that, because once the word gets out, guys, all the soccer moms talk right at school. All the brides talked to their brides, maids and once the rumor gets out that the packages aren't really something you're going to stand by everything it's a house of cards everything starts falling apart so they know in our in our area that when we're telling you this is the deal if you don't take advantage of it I don't care I'll lose more business uh, more sales I should say from you because I'm not going to give you that package again a week later they come back the day a day later well tell him before they leave so usually you can tell if clients are on the fan god, we really want it we just don't have the money right now one offer them payment options why not offer them payment options? Hey, guys, how about if I split the payments in the two so that you guys can do that without work? Maybe they say no, but if we know they're on the fence we might throw it to him and say guys tell you what, just let us know by tomorrow if you're on the fence and then we'll still honor this for you at that point, if they don't, I think it's a one off scenario where a client will come back ninety nine point nine percent of our sales are happening that night in that room what I like what you did right there is you said, hey, we'll give you a payment option or maybe come back tomorrow what you didn't say I think what a lot of people are tempted to doing business is hey well let me give you this ten or twenty percent discount now let's get a couple of questions online right here this from jenny jimmy rudy it's a good question and a few people have chimed in with this speaking specifically to the stuff on the right cell valek our items how often do you find yourself selling individual pieces? Those on the right side on the right side? I would say we're probably ten percent of the sales I come through, we'll end up and just go allah card not many okay because I'm making it too painful for him if I found any more than ten percent or fifteen percent ending up on that right hand side that just means it's not painful enough so raise your prices until it is painful. So for me in my local market, fifty dollars for an eight by ten is kind of hot, but when we're up in new york and chicago uh fifty fifty dollars would be kind of low comparatively so I would actually raise my prices when I'm in those markets, so when I'm shooting weddings or seniors for people in those markets, my gift prints are one hundred dollars for that entry point and that makes it painful so you've got to constantly adjust your pricing. This is a living document it's not right once and you're done for the next two years were constantly tweaking this document, so we've been noticing that your packages that you offer you always give three three packages I'm a big believer in three right it's like low, medium high uh and so I don't like four I don't like five it starts getting too complicated there's not enough differentiation between the packages and I've seen a lot of you out there. You will come to me for pricing and portfolio reviews, and I started looking at this like jumbled list of options and what you start doing is you could confuse your clients the wrong way give them three options tell them what they need. You're the expert if you don't know what they need. If you're giving them five options that says to me, you don't even know what they need and so by giving them three options, I'm telling you here's what you need based package all small prints, middle package, some larger prints and give prints top package I'm giving you an album and large wall art for your home those were your three options there's no reason they should have five options on a piece of paper you're just gonna confuse him greats do one more questions that were more of course kaylie is asking this question and you may have touched on earlier but beyond this pricing right here what do you charge what what is the session or and or sitting fear when you books out to come to your wedding or were you major event yes so a session fee for us for a high school senior that is going to be two hundred or three hundred dollars session fee depends on time so like my hour and a half session might be two hundred dollars the three hour session is going to be about three hundred dollars and then of course on engagement session is to ninety nine ah family session is to ninety nine but again these air all ala carte prices I don't expect anyone to pay that full price to come into our studio that just gives me wiggle room to run a special or something like that writes where I could be like fifty percent off last thing I wanna do is make it fifty percent off and then it's ten dollars for a session feet that doesn't make any sense so it gives me wiggle room to run a run a deal glo photography is wondering if you have a minimum order price we do not that's the beauty of this in my opinion we have no minimum orders you can literally come in and buy one eight by ten print hopefully if that's it I should say if you're good enough and you're shooting the way I'm telling you and you're presenting them with those signature level edits or those fully polished damages there should be no way a client's gonna walk in and buy one image if they are you're doing something wrong this is where we were talking about day one and day two you've got to look inward after every sale what happened? What went wrong? We have those sales by the way we have clients come in and they will buy one print right? And after that session taylor and I are having a conversation we're going okay what just happened here? Is this a one off or do we have to start worrying? Okay? Because I'm very in tune with what's going on in our business I never take anything for granted and so we're always looking at what we can do better but it's hard sometimes to look inwards and think maybe my photography needs to get a little bit better uh maybe I need to work a little bit opposing what didn't they like all too often for tarver's they're guilty of this they'll blame the client they just don't understand it they don't like pictures of themselves all she was a bear to work with, you know, I had a high school senior last week I was working with you know I don't know sometimes people just suck it life, right? I mean, you know, I hate to say it they're just miserable, you know what I mean? You can't make him happy uh, you know, is that wrong? Should I not said that? It just it happened it's the truth, but going back to sales process on people are probably asking us a home a cz well, when you put out this document to show that that climb after you work with already is just a matter of here you go here, your options, what do you want or how much is that salesmanship coming out when you're doing that? Well, let me come back to that because I don't want anybody think back. Whoa, sal just said somebody sucks at life. My point is, um, when you're looking inward at yourself and what you're doing and what you're delivering, how many of us have been on photo shoots where we either working with a groom, that's difficult to work with, we're working with a senior that's difficult to work with, they don't have their pictures taken, okay? That's what I'm referring to there just not happy at it, they're not happy with themselves, they're not happy with the way they look our job when you come back from a session like that is to look inward at yourself and ask yourself did you give everything you could to that photo session? We can't blame the client that is the key and that's what I see photographers do all too often oh, they were really difficult to work with oh, she didn't want to smile all the groom hates having his picture taken so just a week ago two weeks ago at a high school senior come through and that was her man she don't want to smile she wasn't into it she didn't care I had a personal challenge with myself I'm like I'm gonna get her smile today I don't care if it's the last fifteen minutes of this session I'm gonna pull out every stupid joke I know I'm going to say every ridiculous thing I can, but I'm going to get the rial response out of her so that I can have a sale tied to this I was not going to blame her I was going to be accountable to it so that was my point out that we can't blame them after every sale we've gotta look inward and ask yourself, why did they buy one print? Why did they buy no print now to your point? Ah antonio, now they come in, we don't just drop the sheet in their hands, okay and then hope it all works taylor is walking them through step by step this pricing sheet so after they see their pictures when they walk in right, the first thing that we're gonna do is we're gonna have that speck prenup on screen we're gonna try and blow him away then we're going to play in an emotive slideshow of, you know, seventy five to one hundred images of the day get them really excited for the seniors, especially or even an engagement session then taylor is going to pull this out and put it in their hands even though she already e mailed it to him so taylor's gonna have his beautiful folio leather folio handed to them with this printed on it and she's going to say them guys want to do now is that not walking through this piece? I sent you an email did you have a chance to look at it? Okay, so what taylor's looking to do there is confirm they've actually seen this now they can very well say they didn't know I haven't looked at it, but they had an email telling them what time to be here and what to expect so becomes very difficult for them to say they didn't look at it right they knew what time to be here so they had to get everything in that email so now taylor starts going let me walk you through the back black label collection the black label collection includes a twenty by thirty acrylic puts it in their hands and as you can see on the wall behind me this is what it would look like in your home over a couch over uh you know, a chair in the living room whatever the case may be okay uh it also includes a fifteen by thirty print boom. She puts that in their hands here is an image I think that would look great in a fifteen by thirty and she pulls up one of their images and shows it so she's connecting dots for them she's painting the picture for him not hoping they figure out what image would look right in a fifteen by thirty let's be honest nine out of ten clients have no clue that's what they're coming to us for. So do your job show them what would look good in it that being said taylor is going to go through every single package showing them the products as she goes through notice one thing that I did not do mention price I didn't say in the black label collection which is nineteen hundred ninety nine dollars ah you get this right they can read they know how much it is I'm going to say in the black label boom and let them figure it out from there taylor then takes him through the entire package ok so then she gets to the bottom goes to the silver did you guys have any questions no no you explained everything you know really well no awkward silence you cannot allow there to be awkward silence you know what I'm talking about like we can't do that no awkward sounds so did you have any questions? No not at all great just let me know what package you want to go with and also help you start picking pictures. Ben there's taylor's clothes that's how she does it so you've got to get its very rhythmic it's perfect she just does it it's not sales he here's what the assumption is I'm assuming you came to me for pictures guess what I sell pictures so now that we're both sitting here I want to know which what you want and that's the assumption we operate under the funny thing online chat room there a lot of people saying can I have taylor taylor may give you me depends on what's going on but you may be like get out go to new orleans I don't know so maybe I'll be your sales person that's also alright so question from adrian and ohio first of all like you know, every uh city has a different market price point you know and you have to be competitive ah lot of people will pretend that they're a potential bride and groom and send fake e mails out to kind of get those prices other people actually hire a photographer to actually get the price list you know, and build off of that, in your opinion, what is the best way to go about finding pricing and be competitive in your own area? And that is from adrian in ohio again? Yes. Oh, adrian here's here's the thing, but you do not want you do not want to worry too much about what your competitors aire doing right? You want to be aware of it, okay? I'm not saying, you know, stick your head in the sand, you have to be aware of what they're doing, but ultimately you've gotta find a way to separate yourself from them. So if you've been watching for the last three days, you know that the one thing I don't care about is pricing according to what my competitors aire doing, I do want to be aware of where their price so that I understand where I can be priced and what I need to do to differentiate myself but your main mission in life once you know that your competitors aire shooting and burning once you know that they're handing away eight by tens for fifteen dollars is explain to yourself look in the mirror, tell yourself I don't want to be there that's not what I want to do that's not going to run a successful or profitable business, so what am I going to do? To stand out from the crowd what products am I gonna offer? What services and mike and offer how can I differentiate my business so don't get too caught up in what your competitors aire doing again I don't have your head in the sand but you've got to make your own mark and blaze your own trail because guys you go to my local market I am one of the most expensive photographers in our area when it comes to senior photography there's competitors up the road ninety nine dollars one hour session three outfits and you get a dvd of all your images were nowhere in that price range average senior spends close to two thousand dollars in our studio so we're nowhere near that price range how are we still going on business it's on all those ancillary items that we're talking about the service, the products that's how we're differentiating our brand I was talking to somebody and I don't know if everybody out there knows about shutter magazine my gosh, I don't know where you've been if you don't but if you don't go check it out it's a free resource it's behind the shutter dot com it's me we've got a host of other riders in there uh robin vanessa if your fan fans of them I mean there's too many riders from you'd even remember but we do columns on lighting, we do columns on business marketing it's free so it's a free digital resource there's no reason for you not to go sign up for it, so check it out behind the shutter dot com and I think you'll absolutely I love it. So as promised, I want to show you this video this is so yesterday we showed you that fusion piece, okay? And that was a mixture of their imagery and some of the video that we captured well, here is a full video or three minutes three, two, four minute video that we produced from that same wedding. So I'll be curious what you guys all think here some of you may have already seen it wait on the corner suite you hit me like a vision I wasn't expecting but who am I to tell fate? You? Where it's supposed to go with it? Don't you think you're my missing way got around to just love it leaving you're finding it and keeping it because it ain't every day you get a chance to say a waiter, then this I've never seen it. I found this love, I'm gonna feed it better believe treated better than anything I've ever had because you're so damn people for read it sunday way go together like peanut, some pittis, money and rigging and everybody needs to get just say, waiter, then some way to shine down way never felt this way before sweat. You hit me like a vision wasn't expecting who am I to tell fate where it's supposed to go way wait, wait brighter than the sun. Thank you, thank you, thank you. So hopefully you guys love that. I loved it. I'm sorry. It looked like it was jumping. So these poor guys are trying to play a full hd video inside of power points. That's probably not a good idea. If you want to watch it again, I'll post it to behind the shutter for you, so you can kind of see it full motion. But that's, what we're starting to do, guys. I mean, we're starting offer full video, uh, and we're getting into it, and we love it and it's a great aspect. Who storytelling and our client's absolutely love when they see this stuff because a great way to tell the story of the day that's beyond just the still image.