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The 6 Ps of Selling Part 2

Sales is my forte I love it it's so much fun the strategy involved the ability to get your customer happy while it, while at the same time spending lots of money is always just a huge satisfaction. And so I want you guys to get your studios to the point we're selling is a system and it's an easy system it's not something to be scared of it's not something to be worried about and always I want you to go always in with the sails into a sales appointment with lots of confidence knowing that it's going to turn out good for you and good for your client and I think that's the important part is that it's good for you and your client so yes, they may spend more money than they anticipated but they will be happy about it and not having buyer's remorse or any kind of regret so yesterday we discussed purpose and you're pre consultation ok right. Remember what we talked about there? We talked about finding a reason for why you do what you do and communicating and selling and marketing from that pu...

rpose we also discussed pre consultations how important pre consultations are you remember how important that is, right? Remember how I beat in your head like you must do a pre consultation we must we must start doing them even if it's on the phone that's fine that's how I do it is on the phone with newborn baby clients it's just too hard for them to get in to the studio so obviously in person consultations are the best but on the phone is just fine as well, especially if you system isat and make it into something that's easy to conduct for both you and your staff. So today it's all about products were going toe touch on pricing, but then next week I'm going to really heavily go into pricing, so this week we're going to kind of overview in this session we're going overview pricing just a little bit, but next week we're spending, I believe yeah, almost three days on pricing your products and developing packages and cost of sales and all that good stuff, so today we're going to do an overview, but the in depth stuff is kind of really come next week when we dive heavily in the pricing, but since pricing is such a pertinent part of sales and is what helps you get to the average sale that you need to get teo, we need to touch on it today as well since it's so much a huge component of the six piece of selling so you guys saw this graphic yesterday I want to show it again because I think it's that important your purpose is where you sell from that helps elevate your brand your purpose is what you speak to and it's the emotional reason why your clients by your work okay, so as artists, our purpose is often what we feel inside, right? You guys thought about that at all he's thought last night let's go into that a little bit I want to hear what you've been thinking about when it comes to your purpose and I could've phone who's willing to chat about it and tell me what they think I was thinking about this last night and we've gone through a cultural shift in I mean several of them in the last couple of decades on dh one of those being the digital age where all the photos are digital they all live on the computer, your usb, your phone and they rarely get printed when I was younger, you know you took the film tio you know, rite aid or twenty four hour thirty one thought up then and you got your prints and you know, people look through them and they sat on the coffee table, you know, you put them in the albums and you could look through them from time to time when you were little when you were little holder and you could see the birthday parties, the christmases you know, all of life's events and to me now looking back that is so all special and that just doesn't happen anymore even if it's just your iphone photos your instagram photos they don't get printed and like you said, when you print them from your computer or your printer they look horrible you don't want to print them and you don't want to do anything with that and you feel bad that you wasted all that color ink and I just want to give clients and maybe make another cultural shift back tio printing photos for your children they're not that expensive even if they're just the little prince you know my son is almost three and we don't have hardly any prince around for him to thumb through even if they're so I just want clients to have won the world all of us to have what we had when we were younger prince photographs added at our touch so you want to tap into the client who feels like they're losing their life to a digital hard drive so that you wantto rather have artwork how abstract paintings ah ha front from home deads something that's mass produced rather than actually having a photograph in the same size of their family on their walls because they don't know how to go about doing that where to get it printed go teo and that that that that idea is coming from your essentially from your psychology of being hurt and in pain because you don't have for your son what you had as a child pretty much okay anyone else want to share some some thoughts yeah please um yesterday when we talked about that previously I um went through all my carry on my notebook everywhere I tear to church I carry on nakata clients and I went through and I found exactly what you were talking about and I had written it in about february or march of this year I was thinking about what does my life mean to me not just photography but my purpose in life and my purpose of why I do what I do and can I read but I wrote this this last year I didn't write it previously and it says I wrote it is so much deeper than just the baby in the picture there are so many experiences stories that are part of this little week old soul the fabric of generations the joy the pain the indescribable raw love in life of the human experience that's beautiful that's gorgeous so and I think that what I want to train you to do is use that in every fiber of your brand and of your marketing and of your selling and it's so raw and emotional but I think you can see how something like that ties into the experience of what your client will feel when they work with you and so you know it might not be using the exact words you know, I don't expect you to use exactly was very personal stuff there, but I want you to make decisions in your business. I want you to brand your business. I want to mark your business from that perspective from that point of view so that every time you come up with a marketing promotion you are thinking deep in your heart about that purpose does that make sense purposes so powerful because then you'll word things and you'll create promotions that have impact to the client and they will then believe they will then know that you believe what they d'oh and they will by your why not your what? Not what you do, why you do it and then it's just a matter of producing that customer experience the product line everything to support all that that proves what you believe my fence purpose is the core of your business it's your mission statement it's your m o it's why you exist and why the dream of your business originally started and you may not have known when you first started what that deep purpose was you just had this calling to do it, and I am now asking you to figure out why that calling to place why you were convinced by fate god, whatever you want to call it, to photograph what you photograph and to create art the way you create art you knew it was a calling right the dream I want to do this for a living I love this so much but you still maybe even that may not even know deeply why that is what in your life in your psyche has triggered that. Okay but once you figure that out like she has, you're going to start speaking and communicating to your clients and emanating from your brand that purpose which will make you so unique nobody can touch you okay? When I found my purpose and really started marketing and branding and communicating from it I knew at that point that nobody would touch me so I don't care a photographer's caught me in town I don't care if they're cheaper prices I don't care if they want to come mentor with me or by my products or whatever great go for it you'll never be me you will never get there because I'm just different I want you to succeed and that's why can't we all be there's? Plenty of business to go around guys there's plenty no reason for us not to like be nice to one another and hang out together but you must be confident in your business and its purpose, its mission and its product and its service and when you're confident that you will no longer worry about the hundred dollars shooting bernard the street you won't it will be a non issue if you're having problems and you are worried about that right now, you should take a deep look at your business and where the flaws are in your business, not in theirs. I know that's hard to accept because everybody just wants to blame the other guy. Why are they shooting for a hundred bucks? That's crazy? They're undercutting the market. They're ruining the industry yada yada yada yada yada. I know what it means is you're not running your business well enough to make the consumer pick you over them. That's your problem. So you need to look at yourself, figure it out, and sometimes it takes a lot of thinking and strategic planning to figure it out and it could drive you crazy. My sister had this problem three months ago. She called me like julia I'm gonna close yeah, I'm I'm in debt I want a client's nobody's calling I have forty two enquiries and only two bookings forty two enquiries in two to three bookings that's horrible what was going on? She couldn't figure it out just like I don't know if I'm too expensive she started researching all our competitors. She started looking and she realised her competitors were outshining her even though they were priced the same very similar to the same price point entry point in average point they were outshining her in branding and marketing. Their work was looking different than hers, outshining hers. Hers was starting to look like a commodity, even though, you know, she had just been in cruise control for years. She's lots of business things going great. She was in control, cruise control. She didn't bother to keep up with the industry and thank god in the last three months, she she with some help for me and my dad and all the people who love around her she's been willing to swallow her pride and take a big forty thousand look at our business and go, what am I doing wrong? What do I need to change? And how can I fix this? Because it's not their fault. They're just taken the market from her and she's fixed it. She has now book for christmas, okay? Booked solid through christmas with some strategic planning, a little bit of changes, some branding help and a little bit of tweaking on our pricing and packaging. She is now booked through the holidays solid, and she shoots in the holidays. She shoot thirty, forty clients a month. Okay, so she's booked. Which is awesome and it was huge and she's a little worried because she still doesn't have a ton of baby she kind of brought it in with family so she's trying to like plan that out and see how she could move into january which is typically a slow time for her but now at least she could breathe to do that if she just got in cruise control again I would go jenny for me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me don't let that happen and so she's really working hard to prevent that from happening you know? So I'm in the same boat my husband lost his job I got a double my income I mean that's dramatic but it is true somewhat um it's freaky story so now I gotta figure out take forty thousand foot look at my business and go wow where can I strategize and make it so that I can improve my profitability and open my margaret chair? You know that's the big question for me what other branches of the market can I go into that will get me profitable not only in client work but also in education, etcetera, etcetera so now I'm like oh okay strategy plan let's where can we do this and that's what I want you to dio but I always have to do it for my purpose that's super important okay so his artists were selling our identity our purpose, our art, our images we put our soul into them right? We put our hearts when you click that shutter everything that you've designed everything you've put into the image it's all you right so we are asking when we sell our work to put our identity with asking people to buy our worth it's it's, it's, it's hard I mean I'm basically saying are you good enough to buy when I'm a client? Not is your work good enough to buy but because your purpose and your soul and your heart everything is put into that image I'm basically saying I'm not sure if your image is worth it that means you're not worth it that's the psychological response that your brain triggers our identity permeates everything we do and it should our purpose our brand, our work and your brand needs to be solid before you begin selling your work harbors don't like me saying this, but I really don't think that if you don't have a solid style if you don't have a solid brand and a solid identities to who you are, you're gonna have a really hard time selling your work especially if it's not consistent I mean you'll get sales here and there but you will not be building a solid foundation for your business the brand is the brick and mortar that the house is built upon okay the brand is what connects the client to your business it's how they feel about it the impression they get it's the loyal evangelist tendencies they have towards it when they love the brand so everything in your studio should reflect your brand and that means your product line two and products today is what we're going to dig deeply in and I know we've just reviewed purpose and all this stuff and branding but it all permeates do you see that how it intertwines with everything so you need to ask yourself what are you selling and how did you decide how to sell it right and what we were selling let's hear from what do you sell right now? What products digital okay what else but I don't want to okay good you don't have to put the caviar that's okay so cute but I want to sell other things I'm working on a um there's nothing wrong with selling just digital nothing at all I don't think so. Um there's pros and cons to everything you know I think that's what I want to communicate to guys is that you can sell whatever the heck you want. I just want to be fully aware of what the pros and cons of each are and then you make the decision and structure your business model around what works for you that's what you need to get out of this course what else do you sell? Yeah, I mostly sell it, give prints and mounted larger print, get prints, amount of larger print and then like the lay flat books that I really don't. We're selling those things I want to sell I've been trying to do campuses and the finer albums, but nobody really buys them no one really buys him. Why do you think they don't buy him so cheaper? Because they're cheaper, more expensive work. Okay, so you want to be selling campuses and wall are pieces, but instead you're just selling smaller albums and things like that. It's usually what they end up buying even if they're like oh, yeah, we're one of canvases and stuff like that then they end up cutting the budget at the end. Yeah, that can happen to me too. Just to know you're in the same boat. What do you sell? I fell wooden prince and many albums. Okay, biggest selling, okay? Wooden prince and many albums. Okay, anyone else want a volunteer front here? Sorry, I do framed wall art canvases and then give prince I don't don't do digital no digital. Well, I do like social media images. Okay, okay, so you do without every label riches and sometimes that's all people want is just the the web site's files people show off that's the key is the digitals allowed them to show off on a more public stage right? And they have my local own. Yeah, nice. Good. So there's tons of different strategies for offering products. But what I'm hearing and what I honestly expected to hear from you guys was exactly what you said campus while our frame prince many books, albums digitals you're just repeating what you found at trade shows. Oh, those trade shows those big fat trade shows where the temptations are huge and the eye candy is awesome, right? Okay, it is so hard in the beginning when you're first starting out to go to these trade shows because you look at all the new products and it just makes your heart sing. We're photographers, we love to display our work into products. So when we look at all this stuff, we just started teo to sell that to my clients, right? We get excited. That's exactly the reaction I do not want you to have and there is a dang good reason I want you to remember that these businesses, these labs and these album cos our businesses and they want you to buy more, look at how they merchandise their products to you. They are a tempting you to buy to offer the product to your clients and the more the better in their mind. They want to sell you products, right? So you need to learn to discern and be strategic about what you choose to offer in your studio. Okay? With the whole cell company like a lab, more is more to them. The more beautiful products they have, the more things they can offer, the less vendors you have to go to, thereby providing a service to you as a photographer. Okay, you are not someone who's. Well, you do get overwhelmed with the number of products, but they kind of use that strategically to get you to buy. But because their products are technically not that expensive, you will buy a lot in our industry. Since we are considered a luxury item to our clients, clients are spending a lot. So the more products you show them, the more overwhelmed they get. Okay, so it's a catch twenty two and you need to be the one who stops the cycle. If you produce everything that the lab does for your client, you are shooting yourself in the foot and supporting the lab till all high heaven. They're happy as clams because you're buying everything samples and, uh, etcetera, etcetera. So think about how the labs operate as a business. They're trying to get you to buy more products and stick with them on lee, right so when you go into a trade show and you're looking and doing rnd research and development on products you need to have a plan and be very strategic about what you pick and choose to put in your product offering to your clients and I'm gonna teach you how to do that right now first things first you need to ask yourself what does the product cost so I'm sitting here at a lab looking at all the beautiful things in the trade show and going ok, I love that wooden box what is the cost? The next question you need to ask is what is it perceived value to the client will the client look at it as a valuable product and want to pay for it? Is it in demand in your market some market sward boxes take it or leave it some markets oh that's so hip and cool gotta sell it okay so that begs the question with that kind of perceived value what can you charge for it and I'm going to when we get into heavily into pricing products next week I'm going to actually give you a formula for pricing your products okay? And it doesn't work so I'm we're not gonna go into that yet but I want teo I'm kind of warming you up for the whole pricing discussion because pricing is a biggie okay so what can you charge for it? Is it in demand are your client's going to want it? There's no sense offering a product of you not to sell it right? How easy is it to create? This includes the time you put into it albums clearly, depending on how you do them can be very time consuming, and different albums could be more time consuming than others. Ah, custom album, my studio with text and footprints and baby statistics and all that good stuff is way more expensive than an album that just has one image per page makes sense time effort. How easy is it to order? Some labs have these convoluted ordering systems that take like twenty minutes to order one product, what a pain in the booty, and then you have to weigh that question with if it's worth enough and you can charge enough and you can keep your cost of good down and it might be worth it to have a crappy ordering system in order to get the product especially if it's a quality product makes sense what's the turnaround time so you get it quickly or is it a six to eight week process ordering something internationally that's kind of affect your customer service it's going to affect your brand it's gonna affect the price you can charge forth, etcetera, etcetera, both up or down? Is it quality craftsmanship? Is it going to fall apart? I can't tell you the number of products I have ordered from different labs that have fallen apart two years and I gotta replace henry and take care of it for the clients so that well make you think twice I can't tell you the number of frame cos I have spent through four hundred dollars to hook up with initially because you gotta buy all their samples and dual us up and a year later they're freaking out of business and my four hundred bucks is down the drain because this new frame company didn't last so when you go to these trade shows and you're tempted by all these new vendors and their little boost and oh, how exciting the first thing you should ask him, how long have you been in business? Do you have a record so many businesses fail in the first year and frame companies and and vendors for photographers of the same way? You don't want to put a bunch of money starting up with somebody if they're just going to close down in a year that's happen to me three times now with three different frame cos I am so sketchy on frame cos now because of that, so I only use a top crawley larson jule is the company's been around for decades and they service the frame industry not only photographers so that's all I used now because I'm I've been burned okay, so we think about these things when you're in the trade shows and trying to determine new new vendors pop up all the time prop vendor same thing you're so money little tiny shops here in their yacht of mom and pops were making all these cute things in their great are they gonna be in business a year from now when you need another one? You know you have twins coming and you only have one of one hat and mommy wants them to be matched they're identical twins and oh I got this at this vendor I should probably text your second buy another one and she's out of business what? Well finally and most importantly does the product suit your brand I don't do metal prince for a reason they're great they're cool they're beautiful number one that costs way too much but the perceived value my market is not what it is and others my clients don't value it and it does not suit my organic textural soft matt brand so I do not offer mental prince is a matter of fact I have standouts with uh metallic standoffs with aluminum steel style decided border you know I'm talking about right stand out it's like a box print it's a metallic paper and then there's a stainless steel edge around it it's pretty contemporary I never sell it myself thanks not my brand nobody wants it my people who are attracted to my brand don't want that product because it's not me so we're yanking it okay? We're gonna pull it off the price menu this is strategic thinking you need to be doing to create a system of pricing and product development in your studio. So one of the questions I get all the time is how many products should you carry any other numbers you want to spit out? What do you have in your studio? You know, three ok, is that really how many you have? What do you have? I have albums wouldn't prints and digitals okay, how many albums do you have? Those two wooden prince albums wouldn't prince and digital? So one, two, three, four products that's low number and I always think that less is more, but you might want to evaluate that. Do you have clients who say that's all you carry kind of thing? Good. Awesome! I'm really happy to hear the numbers are low on a lot of photographers who think they need to carry everything under the sun, and I truly believe that left sizemore in any high end business. If you're high volume and more about, you know, low price, high volume, then you can consider I think having more out there, but you need to be really careful not to overwhelm a client okay too many products will do that and will lead to fewer sales because the client just can't make a decision there it's kind of like putting images online if there's so many to look at their like I get the side same thing happens with product development if you try to carry you know everything but the kitchen sink it's going to be exhausting for your client and cause more headaches so it also leads to scattered systems especially if you use too many vendors when I first started out I used like cash so many different vendors inventor for each product really and that was just a train wreck waiting to happen because I had to create so many systems for ordering the products from the different labs and that ended up being like a nightmare because I'm I'm different turnaround times different just it's confusing to me to my staff and the client okay oh this album takes two weeks again but this album only takes one why it wasn't streamline and I was going crazy trying to figure out track who did what which lab was where ordering systems were all different you know I mean so you want to try to pick us few vendors as possible and offer a limited number of products to give yourself direction I say the maximum should be ten at the most okay the question is is how do you make a plan for those products and systemized, what you will carry, what I'm giving you in the worksheets is in the homework is a product development table, and we're going to go through this because I want you to see how it works so that you could do this with your own products in your own studio. Okay, so this is basically a worksheet where you are going to list every single product you want to carry or already do carry first, like I said, you know, this is in your homework sheets. So those of you who by the course, get get this, um, you're going to put down what the hard cost of the product is. So, like, a sixteen by twenty at your lab is thirty bucks twenty nine, ninety five or whatever, okay, what, you can charge for it, okay, what it's worth to the client? What you're going to charge for it, and trust me next week, going to get into cost of goods and cost the sales, and how to figure this number out is what we're going to all due next week. Okay, then you're going to, of course, to track those two and figure out what the prophet is made and granted, that will does not take into account time and labor and packaging, but it does kind of give you an idea of what your profit will be then I want you to ask yourself if the perceived value of the product is high okay? Is it suited to your brand like will the client look at it as a valuable item? So it's kind of a yes or no answer isn't suited to your brand yes or no? What are the pros and cons of carrying it? So let's take a example an eight by ten album from brody fbi which is one of my labs cost me one hundred fifty six dollars hard cost okay, not including labor or time to package or design the album. I charge seven hundred seventy five dollars for it. Okay it's six hundred nineteen dollars profit which is a twenty percent cost of good not cost of sale cost of good it has a high perceived value to my clients. They look at it beautiful and elegant it's very well made it's handcrafted very well and it's suited to my brand. The pros are that it's in demand is very easy for me to produce because I use pro select to do so okay it's a thirty second design the album and then high res production I sent it out and it takes literally two minutes to make the album okay, I'll have to do is do a cover and that's it okay let's, look at something else. Twenty by twenty four metal print costs one hundred and sixty five dollars from white house custom color I could charge I would have to charge around eight hundred twenty five dollars in order to make a six hundred sixty twenty percent cost of good on it right perceived value in my market is average especially for my brand that's the key to the people who come to me like my organic textural mats no shiny brand so it's not really suited to that no demand not branded high cost for what I have to charge for it in order to make it sell in my market at the cost of good I needed to sell at right so not something I carry let's look at another example twenty by twenty gallery canvas cost me one hundred seventeen dollars at white house custom color I charge five hundred twenty five dollars for it putting me at twenty two percent cost of goods the perceived value is high it suited to my brand it's in demand and it's easy to produce so I carry it now what you need to understand is I do not sell these products outside of collection you cannot buy these like this at a twenty percent cost of good if I sold something like this it would always be sold in conjunction with the digital files which what does that do reduces this number down to ten percent so my cost of goods on my creative collection is between ten and fifteen percent sometimes lower so my profit on credit collection is incredible that's why I designed it that way. Okay, so when you see these products and see that twenty percent cost of goods just know that that's not what I'm making on the collection when I sell a collection makes sense okay digital files and let me kind of nail the head in the coffin with this one all digital files fifty box about with packaging the usb all the labor that goes into it yada yada yada okay because I pay belinda to do the service for me okay so and it takes her about two hours to edit a session plus the usb I charge for the large files eight hundred ninety five dollars in conjunction with an art piece. The cost of good on the files alone is five percent so you can see how when I combined say a gallery canvas with the digital files which is what would happen in credit collection that costs of good is going to plummet down to ten or fifteen percent makes sense so the digital files pad the sale that's why I sell them and my clients want them which makes everybody happy okay, so the perceived value on digital files as high mainly because I educate them so because I have a huge lost opportunity cost that comes with files the minute I let those files go out the door I could never make any money off them again and I educate my client to know that that they're getting unlimited printing rights to those files which adds value to them and I'm usually giving away forty files so divide that by nine hundred and you're looking at a really low cost per file actually quite low so when you put it and spin it in that perspective the clan goes oh okay that's not so bad all about how you market spin stuff it suited my brand because my clients demanded it huge demand it very easy to produce a very profitable so uh I'm going to offer them as a product in my lineup makes sense once you complete this work sheet with all of your products you will have a solid plan for products that will atleast work in your studio now as far as what to exactly charge for those products next week we're going to look at the formula I'm gonna land out for you and we're going to combine that formula with perceived value and lost opportunity cost to help you come up with a price that's appropriate it's not about just going oh I paid twenty bucks for this let's mark it up by four therefore I pay I'm charging eighty bucks for it! No that is not the case if you price like that, you are losing money. Okay? It's, not just about a blanket markup on everything perceived value and lost opportunity cost all play into this it's the art and science of pricing okay, pricing is a science hard numbers division multiplication figuring all this stuff out, but it is so in art because the price you charge for something takes into account what the customer feels about the product and what you lose when you sell it. And just when you think you've got all this figured out, something goes along and screws up your mind tells you're doing it wrong, and george attacks you and you're like max like scary, overwhelming, time consuming, insecurity, breeding nuisance. It really is, isn't it? So we're gonna cover all this in depth next week, but I don't want to overwhelm you overwhelm you and justin chunks rather than good products. I always go for things that are low cost of good with ah hi perceived value. I wanted to be cheap to me, but look really expensive to the client. Okay, your product should reflect your brand don't try to carry everything saying if it's not suited to your brand, don't do it. The price of each product should reflect a twenty percent cost of good or lower in my opinion now places like pepe and the benchmark survey professional fire was america will tell you different things based on that but for me in a studio with overhead I need to be below twenty percent to be profitable okay my creator collection is in the ten to fifteen percent range for may ever but it's so funny because photographers call me up for the email nick you're so cheap how come you're so inexpensive you're teaching people the wrong thing no I'm not if you looked at my numbers and you ran the spreadsheets you would know that my credit collection is a ten to fifteen percent cost of good I make a boat ton of money on my collections and with an average sale of about twelve hundred dollars per client I am justus happiest could be in that twelve hundred dollar order on ly cost me one hundred twenty bucks money but photographers don't understand that I have very strategically planned this out these numbers have been run and I am not stupid and I am not going to sacrifice profitability I'm all about more money baby I've also researched my market I figured out what compare I know my brand I know my quality and I've done research and surveyed my clients ok so if you've done that you need to charge what's good for your business okay and don't let anybody else tell you that you're not doing it right or you're too cheaper yada yada if you know you've done the work now if you haven't done the work and somebody tells you you're cheap, maybe you might want to take a second look okay? For example, if it cost you twenty dollars to create it, it should be priced at one hundred dollars for your customers, however that's kind of the formula thing like mark up thing this does not take into account the proceed value or the lost opportunity cost that comes with the product you're selling that all has to be factored into the price of the of the product creating it means product hard costs and your time cost to edit design order, package and deliver. So make sure you add all those things into the price of the product don't look at other photographers websites how on earth do you know they're doing it right? You have no idea if they're doing it right, you have no idea where they're ordering stuff from you have no idea what their costs are that is like the stupidest thing you could do is to look at somebody else's website you make float you for a little while but it's going to shoot you in the foot when when stuff really gets going okay and please don't undervalue yourself the worst thing photographers do is george frickin gets on their shoulder and says you're not good enough to charge that much how many of you have said that in your head all of us trust me I've done it too here why are you charging so much? You're not worth it you're not good enough you're not trained enough so and so is better than you you need to be lower than them because they're better than you okay? This is the battle we all fight and you will fight at the rest of your life is a photographer trust me I fight it all the time okay? Even as a business owner who knows her numbers and knows what she's doing and notice probable I still fight with it okay? You have got to look at your business as your baby it's your child take care of it protected don't let the voice in your head tell your horrible parent okay if you don't and if you really really really, really, really don't feel like you're good enough then you need to work on your skill more before you start charging simple is that you need to learn you need to get your technical skills in place and you need to grow yourself to the point where you're like okay, I am good enough to charge otherwise yourself it seems it's going to spiral down into a deep that black dark hole when you start charging you don't think you're good enough then other photographers there is going to tell you you're too cheap you don't just goes down the hill, ok? Don't compare yourself toe other businesses. I know this is so hard. The on ly thing you want to do is go oh my gosh so and so down the street is only charging such and such for all the digital files there's no way I can compete. Ah, give up, throw in the towel. Blame someone else. It's not their fault. You're not successful, okay? Your fault you're not successful. Fix your business. Step back. Look. See what the problems are and repair it, don't wing it. You have to create a system. Systems on the business. People were on the systems. Okay, so if you create a system for developing products, then you know your profitable on those products, right? You know you're profitable. So then from there, it's just a matter of marketing and selling and branding those products your client wants them and coming up with a selling system like we're learning today that gift them to buy them makes sense. So key points. Remember, your pricing has to be effective. The art to get high dollar sales that's the art of pricing so convincing the client to spend more pricing has to be strategized and presented to the client in ways that make them want to spend more money create packages that meet your happy place money goals the average sale that you need to be on and we're going to go through the whole break even process if you think I'm depressing you now I'm going to press you even further come next week when we do the break even worksheet and how much money you need to make for your family and how much money your business needs to survive everyone's going oh my god really you're not gonna do that to me yes I am going to do that to you and it's going to be fun right thing but yeah I know and honestly I know it's not very fun to talk about but it's also it's the most important part of a business you have to do this right okay evaluate your pricing according to your cost of good stuff the science evaluate your pricing from the client's perspective where is the best value for the dollar? They will spend that's the art when you look at it from your client's perspective then all of a sudden you khun strategize on your own end to make them by where you want them to buy of course this will all be discussed next week packages must pride that provide that incentive value for the client to want to move up each package should have more value to it as the client spends more your lowest package should have no value it kills me when I see people put digital files in their lowest package why are you doing that? That's what your client wants if that's the case then your lowest package better be your rock bottom teller average price you need to make procession and everything else above there is candy that's fine, but when your middle ground is your happy place your middle package, your happiness and then you do a low package as an entry point and you put digital files on there you're shooting yourself in the foot am I talking too fast? Are you following me? Okay the middle packages where most consumers will buy and should be priced at the average sale you really want that's my strategy now some people do do their their average sale that they need as the lowest package that's a good strategy because then any package you sell above that is going to be more than what you need to live right which is awesome I and some people need to do that for their own ability to sell I prefer to have a lower price point so I look approachable but then the brand that customer service the eggs experience sells them into mohr so they want to spend my middle road or higher does that make sense? Because what I strategized and found that you know newborn target market mommies they're not at the height of their careers when they're having babies usually their first or second job so they're not at the height of their income earning potential so therefore they can't afford a ton right their income is not like someone who has a high school senior setting them off to college and got a huge retirement savings a big home their husbands the ceo now etcetera, etcetera they're back when they first started building a family so I put my entry point as approachable which is why so many photographers call me cheap put in them it yeah and you can get out the door for that but it's really hard to do that because I make it almost impossible for you to do that with the images with the experience with the product line with credit collection it is so tempting to spend more than they do do I have allah card three ninety five sales twelve files eight by ten size you betcha happens about once a year and I screaming scratching when they close the door on my uh all a cart sale, huh? Okay, that's why I'm raising my la carte price because it makes me upset I don't want to sell it so I'm raising it okay the top tag it should be a whopper the one no one ever buys now created collection is different there's no ceiling you could buy as much as you want I've had people by ten thousand dollars were the product on credit collection doesn't happen every day once every other year I get a really nice tail it's usually stephanie who in pine because she's like my best client or angela, but so these people I know are going to you know you have them, they all you know they're going to spend a lot of money with you but create a question there's no ceiling so there's no sky and this guy's a limit to what they will spend, which I love, because then if you have packages that are set in the top packages as much as anyone will ever spent okay with credit collection in the world is your oyster there's a soft, hard bottom soft, hard bottom that's not there is a hard bottom meaning the minimum collection, the minimum credit collection is your rock bottom price, okay? And most people go in the middle, so we'll talk about packages, of course, ah lot next week, but and I just want I guess the point I'm trying to make is there are a few tried and true methods for creating packages and what you truly, truly depends on your business novel your brand and what you're comfortable with selling, okay, you have to pick what works for you and I'm gonna outline all these package types and so you can choose what works for you, but this is mine. Okay, for now we're going to kind of take a brief look at how mine work I use a hybrid model. Okay, so my clients all want digital files? I know that they're the generation millennial. They're having babies and I have got to sell the digital files were going down the street somebody else. Okay, so I have tried to create a system that maximizes selling digital files for my own benefit while at the same time getting the client to print the images, which is always the headache when it comes to digital files. So when you create a collection, you follow the two steps. She was an art piece. Choose your files. Simple is that you can choose one or fifty or a hundred. I don't care as many as you want. The minimum is one your digital files, you get them all. So it's, do you want, um, laura's or higher is original size negatives that came out of camera? Or do you want lo rest files? Basically, if you buy the high rise files, not only do you get a free set of adorable birth announcements for free, okay q's button people love these course, we put our local over much three marketing and advertising for us, okay, but you also get a proof box with your usb and all your proofs from your session inside the box they got to take this home the day of their order appointment with their large high rise files on the usb they love this yes I have a question over here do you print those now I pre ordered them through the lab so you don't need me I'm right yes yeah yeah sorry to interrupt this is the only spec thing ideo cost me twelve dollars for the proofs so I'm banking twelve bucks that they're going to spend an extra three hundred to get the large files because I'm giving them away well the announcements cost me about twenty so I'm investing thirty two dollars in the client hoping that they'll spend three hundred a ten percent cost of good bye uh the small files the rez not since we started doing this because that was my problem people would buy the small files to save money and I realized that they didn't really care about the large file some do some don't just depends and I tried to sell them on the benefits of the large files first the small ones but they'll choose an art piece and then they'll choose a small files the minute we started offering the birth announcements and the box I saw more large files when I do small do this small files have you little going um no and how we get people to print is we upload them to zen folio and I charge what I want to charge for the prince now do I charge retail no it's it's more than costs but it's enough to make me a nice little padded for five thousand dollars christmas money make account every year and we push people to print through the site because it's so easy and family and friends can print from their mama doesn't have to make prints and send them out to everybody she has a new baby in the house who wants to have to do that okay the products are attempting we do products that are to the brand okay thes watercolor prints with the tourney m edges float mounted these air all done in studio this thing cost me seventy bucks I charge seven hundred for it is their labor involved of course it takes some time to do this and that's what justifies the cost because there's a high perceived value do you see that it comes framed with museum glass ready to go ready to hang then there's things like albums he's asuka books which I absolutely love these things are arm or expensive customized albums where we put in the birth statistics I've even done footprints I've had parents write letters to their kids we make it very personal this album isn't eleven, twelve hundred dollar album but combine that with my large files at six ninety five and I've got it to almost a two thousand dollar sail off to products an album and the digital files most people only do one or two products in that first step so what happens is they will um you know, order on album or a book I didn't bring a ton of wall art but I do canvas watercolor prince, regular prints and standouts which is changing we're going to teo framed we're gonna do all we already stuff for now from now on once we get the racing I don't and then of course I offer of five or six different albums and the digital file's ok, so I have about ten products in my studio and so they'll buy one so say for example that this album is super popular this is the eight by ten pro dp I album that I charge seven hundred and seventy five dollars for that we looked over in the product and the product worksheet so they'll buy this the large files for six ninety five percent of that's fifteen hundred dollars they get the set of birth announcement they usually always add on another box of birth announcement at eighty five dollars which just paid for itself plus the box so they just spent sixteen hundred dollars and got two products the digital files which they take home the day of the ordering appointment the birth announcements and the book this book I produced super lightning fast and pro select it takes me about fifteen minutes total. The only thing I custom I have to make is the front, which we already have a template made for in our system. I add the text, send it off and in thirty minutes their entire order is that the lab being produced and I just made fifteen, sixteen hundred dollars and I spent one hundred seventy five dollars to do it. I'm profitable, very profitable and I want you to think like this too I'm trying, I'm telling you let's try to make you think like a strategist like a pricing and product development strategist they get to pick their image on the front they get to pick the fabric we matched the boxes to the fabric he was somewhat customs okay, but simple for me to produce there's nothing fancy about that it's the middle of the road album for us where is our custom albums? I don't have my other one up here with that has all the footprints and stuff in it. Those things are fifteen hundred dollars apiece, but then I sell them more by saying a duplicate album is forty percent off, so oftentimes they will add a second album for the grand parents on their forty percent off, okay so I'm adding an additional five hundred dollars sale I only have to pay another hundred fifty bucks for the album so yes, my cost of good on the additional album is less but I've just patted my profit in and I don't have to do design work I have to go order two instead of one real hard okay so think strategically to incentivize your client creating art of pricing that makes them want to spend more well at the same time the science structures it so that you make your cost of goods drop as much as possible and that's one of the reasons I sell digital files because they helped pad my cost of goods and make me money and that's the big question anybody else wants to know should I sell digitals or not? It really depends on your model, your brand and your target market some high end family photographers who are working with families where the you know those high school senior older kids don't care about digital files they don't want him weddings everybody wants the digital files in a wedding if you're not telling digital files on weddings, chances are you're losing you're losing clients to the competition okay I feel the same way about newborn babies that's why sell them and I get bashed all the time for selling digital files your violin the industry oh my god I can't believe you teach this stuff well today's digital file is yesterday's eight by ten I don't even sell eight by tens and five by sevens anymore that's the proof right there is the smallest thing I order and when I started doing that I said that when I go oh my gosh I haven't ordered us print this size in years because it's so small okay I let my clients do all that little stuff with the digital because that's what they want to dio really that's why they want the digitals to produce smaller files for their families I just make sure I'm charging and afford to make it profitable that makes sense you guys you see why I do this and why it why it works why it can work now there's started like allison rogers is in tennessee near memphis tennessee she does not sell digitals and she has a bang in business man average sale three or four thousand dollars apiece incredible photographer khun sell ice to an eskimo and she makes a lot of money not doing digitals she has focused on a high end art model she is in memphis, tennessee a multi million population amount the people she has a high end market there are people there who will spend that kind of money and want the prince bend oregon does not have that okay so all of these systems depend on your market research where you live what you're doing who you're targeting myself so the pros in my market and what I do is that digital files are easy and cheap to produce. They're in demand, they have a high perceived value and they're profitable, right? No company in their right mind would not sell a product that looked like that, right? The cons, their files or transitory, they're not archival. They're not going to last, they're easily corruptible. The client may not print the client may print low quality, they're easy to alter. You don't have any control on the lost opportunity. Cost is high. There are some negatives with selling digital files. A lot of negatives. Yeah, question over here is a microphone on the low quality thing. I have a disclaimer online because I've seen my stuff printed at walgreens, innit is awful. So when I do digital files, I have them sign a disclaimer that they can on ly print that approved printing sources. Great idea. Do you do that? We're gonna recommend still, though thankfully, I won't let them print at target. Walmart, costco, walgreens, rite aid, safeway, anywhere that has just poor quality printing, the lowest they could go. Shutterfly, that's a great idea. I mean, that's a great way around the problem, can you police it? Probably not, but it does educate people that those labs were are not going to produce the highest quality what I do is I put a positive spin on it and I say, you know the lab we're going to send you to his color calibrated to our monitors so exactly what you see on our screens is exactly what you're going to get through that and that color is very important folks who print, you know labs like walgreens and shutterfly or whatever those are generalized settings on their on their machines and the people there are not trained to look at color or quality and they just send the images through whatever settings the machine happens to be on that fits most images well, the issue with us is because our color schemes air so unique and neutral working we're working with studio lighting that has a specific color temperature associated with it. We need you to go to professional lab because they will print the image is exactly how we see them on our screens. The price is extremely comparable maybe a dollar to more but those images are fully archival and will last one hundred years or more plus tohave an archival print. Digital files are easily corruptible they will not last and of course if you have a print printed we can always make a new digital negative from a print we cannot print from a corrupted file, so we strongly encourage you to prevent print with a professional printer that we're going to send you to so we know you're getting a high quality image that's pretty much what I say so I'm kind of a little bit negative but I'm also I spent it to be a positive thing and you can make them sign something that says we won't print it such and such but think suspending the message you wanna send really if you want to be tough about it and say hey don't do this it degrades the quality or if you want to spend it the other way and turn into a positive to print somewhere that's truly healthy for the for the file does that make sense but I think it's a great idea I mean I might actually steal some of that language and put it into some of my work because then you do both you say hey this is why you don't print there I think if you say don't print there and don't give a reason your client may go well why not they need to be educated I guess this is the final word resonate any other questions yeah one more in a ce faras the printing off quality by ten for archival purposes do you offer something where they can say hey you khun I will have them printed put it in this box with acid free paper or however it is that people should package them to put them away yeah, I mean, you could definitely offer that could make guidelines or you definitely operate it starts I don't I don't do that but that would be an amazing service to provide to them that helps out and maybe if they make a certain purchase or a certain amount that you'll do that as a complementary service to them all these air korea I love the way you're thinking you're thinking with strategy involved you're thinking with the you know, getting your client to do what you need them to do in a way that makes them happy that's easy for them and that's the way you should be thinking that's awesome don um when you're selling the larger digital files and now you've incentivize that purchase or you finding that you're getting less purchases on larger pieces of art canvases and whatnot that people can buy elsewhere no, now that they have the large files not at all now granted well, I guess I thought you're saying yes and no, I think it depends uh that's the hard part about pricing and everything's always a yes and no answer there's never hard clear cut result um I will often sell it that way if I see in the sale session things hemming and hawing on price, I know they've hit their budget, I will say them well, what a lot of people do is they'll have us print the larger, more significant canvas, then they'll purchase the large files and print the other pieces in the wall siri's themselves. I'll say that like, I'm literally almost downgrading my sale, but what you don't see is the body language and the mental thing going on. They've hit their budget. I want to sell the large files because that's more profitable to me than adding on an extra canvas. Does that make sense? They're thinking of buying one canvas. They want three canvas or three things on the wall. I will tell them. Let me print the big, expensive canvas for you. You get the large files and you can print the two other ones yourselves, because otherwise what they were going to dio is they're gonna buy all three prints in print, not in canvas, and then get the small files which makes my profitability go down. It's more expensive for me to do that than it is for me to do one canvas and the large files because those large files pad my sale. Do you see that? So there are times when I am strategizing in my head in the middle of a sale session. I want them to do less art pieces and larger files because it means more money to me. That's a personal decision in a business decision you need to make for yourself I like that because it saves me time I'm only ordering one campus instead of three it's cake bam out the door it's done and they get the large files were happy and they're out the door to me I save time maur than I want to save more than I want the extra dollars on the sale does that make sense sometimes it's a strategic decision on my part so yes, sometimes I will talk a client into doing that sometimes they will strategize in their own mind and they will talk themselves into doing that I'm okay with it honestly it's it's a personal decision that you need to make now some clients are like like stephanie just do it all I want to deal with it you know you have those too again it's a bell curve and it's a yes or no answer depending on the situation I'm sorry I can't be totally direct with you but there are times when someone will go oh well if we just get the one our peace or what they'll do is they'll buy an album, get the large files and then print their wall geller on their own I'm perfectly ok with that doesn't bother me at all I just made in eighteen hundred dollar sale and they got to do the work okay? Okay I think when it comes to digital files it's just above all it's critical to charge appropriately for them. And I think this is where the industry is so controversial on this topic because there are so many people out there doing the whole shirt shooting burn thing for a hundred bucks. The digital file really is what the eight by ten used to be back in the old days when, before digital really got into play, the client would call you and go how much is made by ten? He was when ceres and j, c, penney and all those people were doing these gift prince and stuff will now it's always how much your digital files. Okay, so you have to decide if selling it will compromise your values and your brand, and what you believe in the purpose that you provide your business from the way we have figured out how to do it is to do both you at least solve most issues relating to the negatives of selling digital negatives. Ok, but really, when it comes down to it, when you're developing a product line for a system of selling, pricing is important to present to the client up front, okay? And the effect of having a good product line that's open to the client is enticement, excitement and enthusiastic clients. Okay that whole concept of merchandising what you what you carry in your studio whether it be on location and in a beautiful catalogue or in a studio space on the walls those samples or pictures of samples is what's going to help your client get excited about the process that they're about to go into with you it's going to give them a goal and it's going to take exactly what you were saying earlier about you know wanting to go back to the printed days it's going to take exactly that client and put them in that mode okay so your client gets pumped up about stuff your brand is refined and affirmed when you carry products that support it the eye candy effect you know how when you go shopping how many of you love to antique shop oh yeah I love the antique shop sorry alex alex what kind of shopping do you like to do, alex what kind of shopping do you like to dio camera here walks in a camera store same thing us too right you walk in there you like five more three I want it you know excited right? You won't hold it touch it you want to dream about it right? Much better of a photographer you'll become if you just had that better camera right it's the eye candy effect and merchandising is a strategic thing did you know that there are business degrees and merchandising did you know that in a grocery store the end cap units cost four, five times more to have your products display there than the bottom shelf that's? Why the cheap products are on the top and the bottom and the expensive stuff is that eye level and on the end caps merchandising is an art, so you need to merchandise and that's what temps your clients your customers to purchase and anybody who has a business degree merchandising knows that it's a strategic thing to merchandise, so start thinking your strategy not only your space but a catalog. If you're going, you're on location of the studio to make a catalogue strategize where the best products are in that catalogue front back cover that's why advertising space in the magazine is so much more expensive to be on the back cover of the inside because it's the hot real estate that's what everybody sees is it is it relating? You relate this to your own business? Yeah, question. I've heard that many clients will buy one size down from the wall, art or canvas that you have in your studio. Do you find that true know why post, like pros like selling software, makes that never happen, so why use it? It has a feature called working with rooms in it that allows me to take my client's wall put it in the software, and then I could put their session images on the wall on the right side. What if they never send you a photo? I beat him over the head until they do sometimes they don't, sometimes they'll send it to me, it's the very last second if they don't, then I'll show them a canned room and you'll see this when we talk about this stuff projection of things like that, but I will use a can dream that I have that's designed like a standard sofa and show them what the sizes against the standard sofa. And then I have a huff niggle in my studio that explain what it is in future segment it's an image, same image, different sizes so they can see and compare and actually hold in their hands. What a sixteen by twenty and thirty by forty looks like I have samples all over the walls that's a thirty by forty that's, a sixteen by twenty that's that they actually can compare and see. And then they see in the south where they see in their own room and there are wall and they always get the perfect size because of that, so no, I have nipped that in the bud with a system that system is pre select, okay, so there's other southwards out there that do it some cheaper somewhere expensive it's kind of a new technology thing but that if you if you employ something like that it's really going to help you um and that's kind of the next step in getting a system for your studio is getting those tools that help you do that efficiently. Okay, so when you have a good product line you become in demand but remember how I told you guys about or how we discussed in the very first part of the segment I asked you what products you carried to remember that you all said canvas albums but in such I want you to start strategizing and system izing how to make better products than what just the lab provides you word walls albums that ara siri's this is two different products from white house custom color it's their image box and there lay flat albums one for each session we do in baby plan. Each album has twenty pages and this is what the client gets at each session and then the images go in the box or the books go in the box at the end of the year I am strategizing by taking two products and combining them into one so when you go to these trade shows, be thinking outside the box and creatively about creating products that no one else is carrying and that means combining what the lab is trying to sell you or, for example, when it comes to albums making an album that perhaps is the first year book we just belinda just designed and created for us and for photographers first year baby book that talks about oh has spaces for parents to right in there, like when we found out we were pregnant. Oh my gosh, this is how daddy reacted. Write it down with pictures of the newborn you wait this classic little baby book designed gorgeous instead of just doing an album. Now, all of a sudden you're taking the album to the next level that other photographers in your market aren't necessarily doing same with word walls. I've shown you this picture, the picture, a lot of belinda's kids with the love you more love you most on either side. You know how I got that idea? Walking through hobby lobby here's what hobby lobby is for those of you? Her international hobby lobby is a big craft arts and crafts store it's like a woman's dream. You can literally go in there and spent, like three hours inside hobby lobby, and they have all these signs that you can put on your walls like inspirational quotes and signs, and I looked at my nurses are so cute why they can't combine that with art with image art. And make something really cute so the frames it's a mix of canvases and prince and frame prince so it's a canvas with a frame that butts up with a print inside the frame I've mixed finishes all the time we mix campuses with these watercolor prince to create that interest layered effect instead of just putting four canvases on the wall big blowup mix the finish is some frame some not do a shelf make things look designed and layered over time and that's going to set you above other photographers or newmarket because you're being creative with how products are displayed and created okay and when you do that you entice the client with this whole concept of the eye candy when they walk in your door they see it in your catalog and it becomes more about the display then the files okay, this is how you systemized product development in your studio and when you systemized this along with your pricing and good pricing of course what do you get profit? Okay. Money, eh? You meet your average sale every single time a client comes for the door and I think you can see from my create a collection why I hit my average every time because it's strategized okay your income then of course becomes predictable because you know you're going to take us out of certain amount of money in each session it helps you to find your brand. It helps you plan and budget for future projects. It helps you plan for growth. It allows you to pull a reliable income out of your salary, are out of your profits every month, really confidence, security, and all you have to do is worry about getting enough clients for the door. And once you get your customer circle intact and you're starting to get referrals, then all of a sudden you don't have to market it's hard. The snowball runs rules down the hill by itself, and you got a business that's operating like a well oiled machine.