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Jim Garner: Unleash Real Profit

sales so important. Obviously, we must sell what we dio. We need Teoh realize profit from the work. They're great. Now I've talked to you a little about my background in psychology. And I haven't talked to you about my background before being a photographer. So it was a hobby, Of course. For many of us, it waas It started for me in middle school. Actually, the pinhole camera assignment in middle school were actually made a camera out of a coffee. Folgers coffee jar will put a pin hole through it. I mean, some of these exposures were like 45 minutes. So cool. I fell in love with that. I lived in the dark room. Then I went and ended up being the yearbook photographer because I loved it so much. I think Trevor here's got the same character is This is what I see in you, my friend. You picked up a camera. You never gonna put it down a bit. It is. Isn't it great doing what you love? But it started there, but I never thought you could make a living as a wedding photographer. So I did what my ...

family does and they're in the sales business. Okay, My mom's manufacturer's rep for years. And she has has a designer showing she sells furniture to designers. My dad as well. He sold insurance, and it was natural for me to go into something with sales. So that's what I did. When I first met Katarina, I knew I need to go do something The sales field and it was software sales. In fact, that's where we met at a software company where we sold educational software. I learned from that experience what sales are about, and I'm going to share with you now. This the seven components of sales. But I'm gonna do it with it from understanding of how the psychology of sales worked. And this was really relevant to what we're talking about today because this is an emotional sale. You got to get your clients to that place in order for them to value what you are selling. So let's talk about this. Step five is exactly what we need to hear at this stage of the process. Emotion and brain and sales unleashing the real profit first season, quarter three and four. Very important that you guys understand this process So, up to this point, we've established that we want to move into this area of his Harvey. We want to, um, work towards the goals. We do all the steps up to this point. Now we need to learn how to sell what we've refined and turned into a beautiful, creative product for ourselves. So little quote first to get us inspired. I have learned this is my and Angelou. Sorry. I have learned that people will forget what you said. People forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel. And I find this to be such a relevant quote for the sales portion. Because sales isn't about taking as much as you possibly can from somebody. It's about helping them understand what they need and want, and then for feeling that in a very fair and beautiful way, very important. We talk about this now, so at this point would step five. You guys are still watching the show on. Do you haven't been able to leave out of the chairs in front of me here because you're stuck here with me for three days? Okay, so you have to understand this is key, all right. But a motion to terms pricing, emotions, returns, pricing and the first questions we're gonna get from people out there. How do you do your pricing? This is the section. Okay, so just a little bit. I'm gonna back up a second, remind you about the emotional brain or what we call for the purpose of explaining the technical side of how the brain works. Characteristics are, if you're there's two states of mind, basically the right brain state of mind. The emotional state of miners will refer to it as uses feelings, big picture oriented. It's imagination, symbols and images. Get it feeling spatial perception. It's fantasy based philosophy and religion, believing versus knowing it's risk taking versus safe. That risk taking component is where we need our couples to be in order to find the will to take their credit card out of the pocket and give it to you because they fall in love with what you do. So I've learned not Teoh cell on the literal brain side of things. I have learned not to do this. Okay. In 1999 2003 where hourly and by the role okay, What undermines the concept of commissioning an artist viewed as a vendor? OK, you're viewed as a vendor. If you do this, it undermines the concept Commission are peace. So in 2000 and 3 to 2007 we had a three tier program that I'm going to show you in a second. So there's we'll just call it for sick of understanding. Easy. Good. Better. Best. Okay. Three tiers. Clients have control. In this case, they could pick one or another, your lowest price to your medium price or your upper level price that you received the most. And they're in control. Um, off a couple will choose the cheapest of the three they get in the door. Price. Well, been there, Right? Leaving additional revenue at the whim of the hard sale process. Heart sale, soft sail. Smart sale. We're gonna talk about that now. Okay. Now, 2007 to today. We have create custom proposals, Tustin proposals. That's basically based upon information gathered during the meeting about the wedding plans. So we have a conversation. Tell me what you want. What do you have planned? What would you Where do you envision your photos to be displayed. You're interested in this album? Fantastic. You love that wall art that you see in our studio. Fantastic. We want to create that for you as well. Tell me everything that you could possibly desire. And also tell me about your wedding day. You? How many people you brought a party? How many locations You know, you have a ceremony and reception to different locations. Have you considered going to 1/3 or even fourth location? Just add experience today. Like the experiential style. Great. Perfect. Okay, What I'm gonna do is after you leave, I'm gonna put together custom proposal for you that involves all of this. That includes all this because we want you to have everything could possibly want. All right. And then you're going to let us know if this fits your brother. It works for you That does such a big change from what we used to dio where they just pick a price and you deliver what you're getting. What is involved in that package price. The three tier program. So custom proposals are not yes or no, they're negotiable. It's not a threat at all. Even if you come back in your prices way out of their price, right? You know? Well, your proposal is a little bit out of our price range. Well, you know, let's work with that. Let's work with that. So, yeah, we put you down for four locations, 16 locations. Now, we put you down for a few locations, and we also considering the size your bottle party, we assume that you'd want a very large book, 35 double page spreads. But let's work with that. We still want you to have the 35 spreads, but here's what we can do. Okay, To lower the price for you. Okay, This is how smart sales work. Okay? Way Have a little dream photography. Who says Oh, golly, custom proposals would be great. But there is no way you do that for every bride would be nothing but doing nothing but proposals all year. Is this actually how you do it? Do you propose do a customer puzzle for every breath? Well, it sounds like that person is shooting quite a few weddings. And my question would be Are you shooting the type of weddings you want to be shooting? Yeah, you're right. That's a custom proposal, actually, for us is in our sexual inner our toolkit sample of custom proposals. All you do is change the content within and off It goes, Okay, it's a template. So for us, it's very, very easy. And it also creates a negotiation. Its communications not Hey, it's a B or C. You take it or leave it? No. You want to work them into something special. And so it evolves. Custom proposals evolved. Now, what is my favorite thing to do in the experiential style? Give away free time and even free spreads, double page spreads, even three images complimentary. I don't say free complement our gift to you to make your day even more special. Want more time in your hands? Okay, that's how we work into making these custom proposal adapt. Made their living documents. They adapt. Okay, it's really fun. I'm gonna explain all this, and I love how you hit me with that question right now, because I'm gonna answer it in the slides ahead. So the old ways versus the new So 1999 to 2003 were hourly by the rule. And you saw this number 12. 50. That doesn't include all of our costs, of course. But now let's look at the three to system of 2000 and 3 to 2007. $2500 was our get in the door price. Okay, $3500 was level B, eight hours, 20 spreads. That includes an engagement shoot. Level C is 10 hours, 25 spread engagement book and an engagement shoot. Okay, they just pick one. But most of them seem to pick the $2500.1. Then we have all a cart menu. That's a lot of left brain stuff. All the Cartman you could get. You get additional spreads for X, you get you get additional shoot time for why you could get the big book. You get the medium sized book, you could get a small book. Oh, you get a framed art or unframed art. That's what we're doing back then. And all the cart menu was so left brand that we it was his price shopping. It wasn't working. So now check this out. Coaster proposals is all about the art. Now it's about orienting the minds of your clients to the art. Correct? They've come to us the scene. Our website, they've what we want to do is seldom on the emotional level. In order to do that, we must bring them to our studio. They must see what we want. So we have four tier system that I'm gonna get into in one second. This is tried and true. There's been studies around it. P p a has been involved in the four tier system. It's been taught for quite some time, and it works. But I'm gonna ask you, toe, I want I want I want lead into that just yet. This is really fun stuff. I really love this stuff. Okay. 80 moment squirrel. Okay, so here's my all the cart price. This is just an example, but all left brain, literal brain, all the cart sheet. Okay, you could you wedding books there? $400 8 by tens or wedding book is 516 by 12. Wedding book 600. You get metal. 50 ad acrylic Add 60 leather. Add leather engravings on lee. $50 more parent books. This is a really small document because I don't want you really see it. Just know if you're doing this It's not an emotional sale. We want you to consider this. There's a lot of copy on this particular, but these are four tiers images on the left. There. Beautiful signature images distract from the content on the right. I'm trying to get them in an emotional place before they go to the right side. But this is These are the forms that we use to write our custom proposals out. Okay, This is not a custom proposal yet. I'm gonna show you an actual for custom proposal. Oh, bride That just booked this last week. Two weeks ago in one minute. So you see, it's a totally different experience. All the car versus these customer posted. We can control the emotion when we custom proposed. So let's talk about and I will give you more examples, but let's talk about what we can charge for our Everyone wants to know what my prices should be. It's got, make sure they know what they want, and that is the property or at the client's understand to what we deliver. They will value to things, time and size of art. Okay, the amount of time we spend on their wedding day so many questions about this. I can't wait to answer all your questions in the chat. Is it going crazy right now? Yeah. Good. We get through all of it, eventually answer many of them. But I'm absolutely willing. Toe stop midway and do some questions along the way. Okay, But we have They want it. Ivorian improperly, to what we sell. Time and size of art that size of are, of course, is the thinking pick any album size, they want the coffee table sized one or the standard size one. And obviously wall are two. Okay, that's that's considered size of art as well. Um, but time is what they really want from us ties into the experiential style. How do you raise your prices? How do we set up our prices or gonna tie in together? It's gonna be confusing at first, but in time together, talk about incremental annual and trends form. Excuse me. Transformational style of price changing. Okay, incremental is when you change your price a little bit with each booking that you have. Many people starting out used this technique. Every new wedding you get, you slightly increased 2 to 3%. Okay, or something like that. Annual is raising your prices by percentage each season. So we did that Starting out each year were 1 25 $ toe, $25 per roll and there were 1 25 $35 per roll. We incrementally raised it every year. I'm asking you to transformational style, and that is going big, doing something completely different. It's another reinvention. It's another reinvention for you. Go big. Do what I'm about to share with you. OK, so here is our current four tier system, and I know everyone's in particular notes. We have a lot of questions, but this formula, by the way, I'm sharing prices with you. I've asked forgiveness about talking about money. It's all about being transparent, but I've created a formula that I know work anywhere in the world. Okay, this formula is, uh, something that you can take. Teoh, you know, a place where weddings are a lot more expensive or a lot less expensive plugging in and will work for You can see. Here we go. We're called good, Better best. And then wow A, B, C and D. Okay. And I'm just plugging in my What is in each category? Good. Better and best are good, is up to six hours and up to 15 double page spreads and I'm using up to because that's an emotional way of saying it. If you see firmly, you get six hours and you get 15 spreads. That makes it a little left brain. But you say up to you have the opportunity. Say you're gonna get every last spread and mawr. Okay, watch your wording in this, OK? And this is just again a formula. But after I teach you this, I'm asking to throw it away. It's gonna be really funny. Okay, so, uh, better up to eight hours and up to spreads best up to 10 hours and up to 35 double page spreads and then all the way over there, this is we're gonna have a giant leap. Is the wow tear. It's like you get everything firstborn Children like you get our first born Children. No, just kidding. You get unlimited coverage and a multiple volume book. Multiple albums. It's big now. Noticed this jump here. That's out there. They're psychology behind all of this. Good is your get in the door price. This allows you to tell them when the first question is we all know what it is. How much are you to be able to say? Well, I'm a story shooting guitar for I do things differently. But I started the same prices. Everybody else. We called out the lost leader Price Lost leader. When going to that in a second, it's there to get them to come see you. So yeah, we start everybody where everybody else is, and but we do things differently. Really need you to come into the studio. We really want to see a work. They come in, they see your presence. They see your studio. Whatever. You open these beautiful books. This is how we're different. We're storytellers were also really concerned with your experience. Last created custom proposal for you. That's how you do it every single time. Okay, so that's why I'm gonna say in a minute you gotta throw your throughout this formula. This is nothing but psychology and getting him in the door. Okay, so let's talk about be better, and that is okay. We're not going to go with this. Um, from where you are, I need you to start with whatever costs is competitive for your field. That could be your lost leader price. It could be right at or slightly even below your your your competition, first level price, your goals and had never actually book it. Okay, And you're going to, with the psychology of how this is laid out, be able to shift people into the other tears. Okay, so let's say it's $1000. Let's say it's safe. $10 just for the sake of knowing that everywhere across the world is going to be different. Okay, you can legitimate. Say, that's gonna be $10 for good. This would be $15 for better. And this is 1.5 x plus B plus a. Okay, you're gonna have to study this at home. I know was taking quick notes. So that's B B minus A. Rather. So that's 15 minus 10 is five plus 15. That's 20. You're $20 in this tier. Okay, this is now three X. That was 10. This is $30. Okay, so for me, I will say it. Let's say it's 15. 25. 35. 5000. It's a big jump to get over here. I don't do the math right there, but you get the idea. 2500. 2000. 3000. Okay, It's got have a big jump. And why do we do that? Because we want this psychology. How this works is that this price makes this price very attractive. We need to have this be a very safe and wonderful place to shoot with that. We're happy here. We're not happy here, but this will always get us to hear in here. And guess what the rule is. I'm gonna jump ahead on my side. If you book this twice. Three times in one year, you do another transformational pricing change. It's really quite scientific. It's fun to. So let's move forward. X equals a starting price of direct competition specific to your region. Plug in and it works. So let's get move forward. What's my next slide here? Oh, why And zero add ons. This is great. So you also gonna have winds E, which are your additional things that you could purchase since there's, like, an engagement shoot etcetera. All right, I know this is math stuff. I know. We're all right. brainers out there and, uh, add ons. Let's talk about add ons. Additional time is why an additional spreads rz. Okay, that's what they want from us adults. So my vish additional time is expensive for $50 additional time, it isn't. Our $14 additional spreads $250 per spread. It's expensive. Why? Because I'm gonna give it away. Signed the valley like we talked about earlier. My time is very expensive and high value. And these spreads that go in the book are very expensive, very high value. And you know what? My clients like those gifts. That's where we can negotiate. That's where we can talk about how we can make that package price come down for them. So look at the custom proposal now. So incremental, you're gonna change your pricing as our top weekends book up right? Annual 10% raise on a product only. With this system, you don't raise your prices. You raise the price of your things that you sell Y and Z finds yes, your spreads in your time. So that's why each year I become my hourly becomes more expensive and my album spreads become more expensive. That's making that gift more valuable and able to be negotiated and ultimately leads to more profit. Okay, so and then the transformational moment in this tiered system is when you book three wows. In one year, the entire tier system goes up a percentage 10%. That's the size. That's what's worked for us year after year, and it has changed our business completely. 65 weddings Now we have, like from five under 10 weddings is more profit than 65 weddings. As a result of this, each year it's baby steps. I know there's so many questions. Let's get into it. So, first of all, though, April Renee says this formula is brilliant. Why hasn't anyone else offered a kick ass formula before now? Because we haven't had Jim Gunner. That's no, but a couple questions. First of all, just a very simple one. You find a you find a spread for people when you're talking about additional products to find us. Friend. Yeah, what is it? Spread A Spread is as two pages in an album that contain a single story. The story has a theme. It has continuity, teach image. Each image has a reason for being there, usually under 3 to 5 images per spreading our rules. It's absolute continuity meeting That's Photoshopped at the same time. A spread is a page in the book, a double page spread in the book Um, Omar Zeeshan asked from England. How does Jim tackle sales with clients that are overseas or outside of Seattle? Bearing in mind that clients may not be able to visit the studio to view products? How do you kind of tell that story? It's great, cause it's 50%. There are at least 1/3 of what we do we got the experience is so important. Or clients, of course, the meetings. In fact, I'm about to show you a custom proposal of somebody who doesn't even live in Seattle. We haven't personally seen this person in years. I photographed her sister's wedding three years ago, but it's all done through, uh, Skype conversations, etcetera. We control the experience of them viewing their images for the first time with okay, first of all, to book them, we explain the process, explain what did you just over Skype for the phone, visually showing them by sending albums, the quick time movies so they could see it to music controlling experience while they're looking at perform. Similar. How would be in the studio to communicate with them regarding their of the experience? When we're gonna talk about that experience and how you must amplify every time they see images, you gotta amplify that, you know, 10 fold. So when they first see their initial slideshow from the images, by the time they get home from their honeymoon by time we give him a proof book. This is all gonna be in workflow. We send it to him and we asked them. Sorry, we asked them to open a bottle champagne or do what they do something. Quiet the room, close the drapes and be together. And I'm email you a link to that slide show gallery. At that moment, you're ready with the champagne poured. That's how we control it. Same goes for the slideshow of seeing their album. For the first time. We pick music, talked about foreign language music, allowing them to think it's being some about themselves. Or often it's their first dance song. We surprise him with that and we say, and often for clients, consider this ship from a bottle of champagne. OK, open that box and tell us when you're ready and we will email you at that moment or text the link to that viewing. So I believe that load. You know, having distance from your couple is not a problem in this era. You could still provide a wonderful experience if you get creative about it. That's really cool. I love the idea of sending them a bottle of champagne and then saying, Okay, when you're ready to open it, let me know and we'll Then we'll send you the late let's see. So Schaefer photo. We talked about how to raise your prices, but for people first starting out, if someone's never done portrait, sir weddings before would you recommend going through the three tiers to build a portfolio or just jumping right out and starting your business with custom proposals? Uh, this 14 system. Okay, so the custom proposal process is part of the four tier system. I would definitely recommend the four tier system. The three tier actually enables the clients to just pick one, and you got to go with it because it's firm on the price. The four tier system has X And why which are additional time is for 50. For me, additional spreads is 2 And all of that is negotiable. Member, I want them. I want to then say, Hey, here's kind of I wanna be able to say here is kind of what we work around these air general prices. But let me hear about your day. Let me put together custom proposal for you. And you know what? We do This thing called experiential style. I'm gonna shave. I'm gonna like, Let me take care of you guys. I'm really interested shooting your wedding. We have a couple of hours, couple digital spreads. I will subtract that from the bottom of the custom proposal. Subtracting time subtracting Sorry, price from the bottom line. It's one about to show you, and that shows that I'm willing to work with him. And I really want them to choose me and our team to take care of them. That next level. So again, it's all psychologically considered. One more question them from Tina. What do you tell clients when they do call And they say, How much do you charge for a wedding and price? This is the only thing on their mind. And Tina says as a side note, just got two of those context via Facebook while I've been watching this class very timely, Tina. Awesome. Okay, yes. So it sounds like the question really is about, like, price, price price. Right? So that is exactly the problem we have. The picture focused philosophy is that you're that particular client is coming to you looking for a price deal because they happen to be picture focused. They know that their friends and everyone else are delivered it perhaps a disc of image and maybe an opportunity to get an album. Maybe, you know, one opportunity to get some enlargements five by 74 but most likely there after you for your disk, right? Or your individual images on a disk in the process. So therefore, you are in the 90% competing over price. And so, of course they're calling you toe. Ask what your price will be. So that is the key to this two season transformation is to move you out of that marketplace that that place with the type of clients are looking for individual pictures on this and move you into the type of clients that value this type of art, And I guarantee you there's a lot of people out there. There's a lot of people out there, and, um or as I said, that more of us to do it. The more people are looking for that art, so make that transformation and the phone will stop ringing with How much are you? How much do you harm issue? And it will start ring with. Are you available? And then how much are you? Okay. And that's what we want when we're coming on that. But I'm having a squirrel moment. So could we. Just very briefly, because I know that this is an issue that a lot of people deal with. So just a role play like, Okay, I'm calling up on the phone here. That's what I was gonna geo that squirrel moment. Love your work. Checked out your website. Can I ask how much it costs to book? You will tell me about your wedding day? What do you tell you everything about your way today? Because it really depends. We custom we cater our pricing teach you never come couple. How could we just give you a price. We don't know what you want. Your wedding might be different everybody else. But we start at $2500 in our tier system. You could work your way anywhere that's here. But why don't you come in? Why don't you sit with us, see what we do? We do things differently. We're storytellers and every single client that comes to us. We will leave with a beautiful art book and enlargements. We guarantee it. Come see this art, and we'll share with you how we're different than everybody else. So how unthreatening is that? We start the same price everybody out of, but we do something different once they're in front of you. That's when you sell yourself as a person. You sell yourself as a studio, a service based company, and you get them excited. You follow up with a phone call hand. I know you're getting wedding at your getting married and your weddings at Newcastle Golf course. Hey, here's a quick time video. Take a look at this. I shot this at a Newcastle Golf course last month and I just finished the album. Check it out to see how sales work is not, and this is the booking portion of sales. But it's not about competing on price. It's about showing that you're different from everybody else. So they choose you orienting their minds to what you do and finally on. And then I think it's good tea. Keep going. You got more prepared. A lot of people getting enquiries as it was on Facebook or via email or something like that. Is your response any different when you're typing it? Or is it that same general strategy of Here's my baseline where I start, but let's get in a room together. Let's meeting Internet inquiry. Okay, Yeah, I feel strongly about this. I need, like, the social thing and the Internet, the world that we live in right now. This is a personal It has to be Phone. Hey, love to talk to you. I know, I know. We're not always giving the opportunity, okay? They just want show share of meteor price structure. And that's basically what this is about. This is about showing you could still hire me. You could send that document, have them to over and say, you know, we could still do level one or we could probably afford level two, but you're able to say in your documentation and by the way, we have all those documents in our toolbox for you. How you ride a cover letter to the pricing so important how you lay it out. Hey, this is just a basic overview. Kind of where prices, Right. But we want to hear from you or see you in person, and we're gonna make it custom proposal just for you and for the question that happened earlier. Had a squirrel moment. I guess the answer really did. That question is of what we do. Every wants me on price. Maybe that's not the right bride for you. And that's being able Teoh. Except hey, it's not gonna work out was one of the biggest blessings and gifts that we ever had in our business because it opened up a spot for people to do value the art. And believe me, we're 10 11 15 enquiries for the same Saturdays in Seattle. You know, we could have used to grab every single person. The first person that got that that book doesn't is using the first person we met with for that weekend um, we were closing the door on the opportunity. People that really oriented art so don't, like, feel bad as you move through this transformation, you know, having people say You know what, your I can't afford that. Trust me. You'll be rewarded when you find the right clients for you in this philosophy. That a question? Yeah, So we talked about 90% you know, in the photographer side, 90% after takers and 10% is art makers. Storytellers is your view that even on the consumer side is at 10 or 90 or what was the trend right now? Um, it's Well, the neat thing is, it doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to be a huge market, but the trend is on the rise as the more we talk about. That's why I'm really promoting it as much as I can in this opportunity to really get people on board again. The mawr people that do this and I want to reiterate some people in my logged in after we defined the 90% and 10% the 90% a good portion of the 90% that are picture taking philosophy also produced albums and art as a supplement to their picture taking philosophy. They're making more, more picture style books. Okay, to be like the 10% that I'm my observation by the It's not scientific observation from from taking polls for last minute, multiple years regarding this program. Um, the 10% has to give you to find us 10%. In my personal study, they have to deliver art with for each and every client. And that goes even into the family work. They do this, the high school senior work, they do, etcetera. So, um, keep that in mind when we talk about those statistics. But again, the market is fantastic, and I can have profits that equal. And it almost like 1/2 of your shooting weddings during the picture taking philosophy from one destination wedding or one local wedding that signed onto the double volume book idea. Then, um I believe there so many more out there that available. We just need to raise the bar together. Don't way we can do it too. Do you think guys