Lessons

Lesson Info

Sales

one of my biggest problems when teaching is I could literally pack and I have another show loaded in cute I could go and do another ten hours of families were to attend we could do thirty are thirty three hours of business management pricing and isn't is an entire day seminar so I mean I could keep this up forever but there are components that I don't want to leave without touching so selling children's portrait's what motivates some they are someone to buy and I believe it is the great experience and again I apologize for flying through this but some of this is just stating the obvious the phone call is where we start talking to the client it's not necessarily where we address pricing we do have an intake sheet this is one of the things that we have in a really big books we ask questions it's not mechanical we don't sound like robust you know like what is your child's name what is your very fluid we make sure that they don't know that we're writing it down we do not type when they're ...

on the phone we don't click in a keyboard we want it to sound like we're just conversational so that's why we handwrite it and then we put it in later it really does these air techniques that I've studied sales and they do work it's very fluid if a client asks about pricing we're going to try to defer them back to a consultation there's a long theory there but if they really are pushing for pricing were absolutely proud of our pricing and we're happy to note them to steve united our pricing our least expensive everything kind of thinks about the eight by ten least expensive eight by ten on our priceless currently is one hundred fifty dollars from eight by ten so we don't just throw out eight by tens or hundreds fifty dollars we tend to work in budgets we tell people uh you know we ask them we say are actually we usually start out with typically for instance of baby program typically a baby plan clients spends between eight hundred fifteen hundred dollars what's your budget and what that does is it kind of opens the door where we're not pigeonholing them into a package the low package we're giving them a range and if they go okay that's great done if they say oh do you have something less then we could say we sure do we have lower packages but we would really like to bring you in for a consultation to explain the differences within the packages and of course the third thing is if they say oh you know what I'm gonna talk to my husband and I'll get right back to you what are they really saying bubba and they can't afford you and that's okay too not every client is your client so don't beg or try to fix it or try to make it happen because if you try to get them in the door when they can't afford you you're going to take time away from people that you love so uh that education process is really important to us it starts in the consultation and good pricing structure we do a thirty minutes of forty five minute consultation this is where we create relationships with our clients but it's important to note that we don't talk about us that we've won awards or that we have this or that we do this it's never about us it's about their relationship we what we do is we tell like story similar stories uh it might be that if they're going to photograph a three year old girl we're gonna show them portrait's down the halls of oh my gosh this little three year old just like your daughter amazing you know we did a little tea party what happens is class plants like relatable things so when they hear a story about another person's cute little three year old they can envision that happening so it's not about awards and accolades it's really about relationships and building from there we do have a sheet that we work with when they're in the actual consultation and this is where we're getting mohr notes uh this is things like what are their expectations what have they seen what it's the what is the portrait we actually in the consultation work on sizing on creating collections were setting the groundwork for high sales and it casting me done in that consultation we do have an online booking option we just started doing this not even a couple of months ago and we had all I can tell you so far as we have booked uh sessions online the last time I checked it was three or four sessions that were booked online within that was within the first three weeks of it going up and then I was in asia and wasn't able to keep up with it but what I found in research is that people work after hours to do things like looking session so it is something that I would recommend there are a lot of companies out there I'm not gonna name names only because I haven't officially made a decision who I'm going to use in support um so and I just and that's just my policy because I don't want to sell you on something that doesn't really work but so far what we're doing works really well and we like it and what happens is they book the session it does require a follow up phone call they still have to have a consultation but what we're doing is creating a convenience moms at midnight going oh my gosh I've got to get session she comes she books now we call her back and we could find her if mom's at midnight and can't book a session she might not think about it again it might be you know six weeks before she goes oh my gosh I forgot to do that so we don't want to lose that connection so online booking is something that you should consider we truly believe that a proper consultation will give you the chance to educate your clients about location about clothing about this size the final display and pricing we're not ashamed of our pricing we have we are generally I would wager about where the most the most expensive photography studio in our community anywhere we're ok with that we set the bar high we try to put our work at that level and I feel like we do a pretty good job at it but this is again that really it's more about the relationships and education than it is about selling at this point client invoices really important I'll spend a little more time on this because with our client in voice we want to capture all of this is through a software on and we want to capture their name their address phone number all of this is pretty much done on the intake form that we felt out it's been put in the computer but that client there's a model release that lowest box has the model release and this one is important I will not photograph any session ever period barn on that does not sign amada release period my work goes all over the world we use it all the time for different things I try to be respectful of my clients but heaven forbid I use something I would not want to have a negative reaction to that so everybody signs this there is no option around it in twenty four years of having is about twenty years that have had people signed this I've had four people refused to sign it and I have refused for sessions and I will note that all four of those people were lawyers and my feeling isn't there already arguing and questioning and refusing I don't want to work with them and I don't like turning people away but I could just tell if that's the attitude they're walking into the ill so you kind of attitude there's no reason to play there so I just won't go there so model releases critical on and that's something like that is uh that's and I think both a really big book and a really big book of price because I know some of you got that so that's something that it it covers not only our copyright it covers what we can and can't do with the images and that we own rights to them we have the right to use them in media and publication sell them do anything we want I don't I would never uh take advantage of clients but it is there for my protection uh sales appointment is really where we bring it all together this is where we sit down with the client we've created that entire experience and we're kind of peeking here now they want to see what we've actually created in order to do that we have to prepare the session now a suggestion sheet is a form that we use the photographer's when we shoot helen and I and our other photographers at the end of the session once were editing we use this forum called a suggestion sheet now we sit down and as we edit we hand right and we have in the let's see which because I think it's in the creative edge it kit it is in the creative edge kit and the pricing book when we do this we I preferred a handwriting but we did make it a digital form so that you could type it in but my opinion is the way I edit is I have one finger ta going between the images and the other one with a pen writing down my favorites the first thing I'm going to do there's a bar there that says artist favorites I'm gonna write down my favorites and from there I'm going to pick the images that we do artwork on and this is a question I get a million times a week it feels like sometimes how much art work do you do on files before you show them to a plant so I'm going to tell you exactly how much that is I fill out the artist's favorite once I have the artist favorites I then select the items that I'm about to show you um with our slide show we do a very clean at it we believe in not overwhelming the client so typically our goal is to show thirty forty images I stay closer to thirty helen stays closer to forty two forty five because helen does a lot more art products than I do I tend to sell big portrait's in my work she tends to sell multiple collages and collections um so there's no right answer they're the right answer is edit your work um I beat this one up last time but if you know that a client typically is going to buy four to six poses on any order they're gonna place why would you show them one hundred images your time is critical their time you have an hour and a half typically in a cell session too impressive client and to be able to get to that sales point if you spend an hour in fifteen minutes editing with them saying do you like this one do you like this one do you like this one or do you like this one you're using up all of your sales time doing your job which is editing my sales time our clients get through the editing with thirty to forty images they get through that process in fifteen to twenty minutes within fifteen to twenty minutes worth the sales process the reason we have sales at the level we do you know two three four five seven thousand dollars orders are because we streamline it with this process I'm going to show you we show them what we want them to buy and we've given them on lee enough to get them excited and yet hold them into the sales point you can't sell albums and collages and collections and all that fun stuff if you're editing the whole time you've got to allow time for it so this is exactly what we do due to our files after I picked my artist suggests artist favorites which we talked about that six to eight images that we love and that's typically in a set of forty it's about sixty eight we actually mark those we're running through a quick action that adds the word artist favorite on them this is a very important sales technique because what it does is it's it's actually a mental process it's a subliminal process literally that when a client sees those images come up even if you're selling to them yourself when they see artists favorite what it does is it says sandy loves that one sandy loves that one and when they're ordering when they're doing side by side comparisons we say do you like this one or do you like this one nine out of ten times they're going to pick the artist favorite and they don't even know why but they just believe that you love it the most and obviously be careful and choose the best images this is not a just slap it on there this is a pick the best images because your guiding nor cleanse so very simple sixty eight favorites those air color corrected and cropped no artwork done on those one image is going to get full artwork one single image is goingto have head to toe retouching cropping embellishments whatever we're going to do it's going to be done there this is where we invest their time because we need one image to showcase what we're capable of doing but on ly one this's really important in family photography if you've got you know mom is the most important person in the world if she doesn't look amazing in one of the shots you may go from a you know forty inch sail down to a five by seven because she doesn't like the way she looked so invest your time in one image so that the client can always refer back tio what's this going to look like it's going to look like this it's going to be amazing and you know our goal as we pick the one that we believe is the best wall portrait as well in addition to one wall portrait we're going to show the client to art products now our products are template based and I think we might have brought some with us I don't know if brandon khun grab those I don't know if they made it here or not um but to our products and these are things that are storyboards essence elegance all of these air names that we've given to these types of products uh that sell this is where the money is it's the add on sales that's why all the time when I was shooting I was saying we need this for an art product we need this for in our product something like this here this is the most popular a second most popular I offer that we have in the children's line it's called the making faces and I actually photographed one of our little caitlin yesterday and all we do is have them make silly expressions and funny faces and then we put it together in a nice composite on and it's a great way to sell that age group so always showing two to four are sorry to wall collages and our art products is important in addition to the art products every single client that leaves our studio will have an art card if it's a family it's gonna be a holiday card if it's a newborn baby it's going to be a birth announcement if it's a high school senior they're going to see a finished template off a card completed you can't sell it if you don't show it and you would be a amazed how many christmas cards we sell in february for the following year because we might do a family portrait in january on one of our specials and I'll turn a moment I'll say oh my gosh that card looks great do you want to just go ahead and place your order your kids or teenagers they're not gonna change that much you could just be done and they'll say oh my gosh yeah let's just get that done and you know selling fifty to one hundred cards in february is awesome but and you know with little children toddlers and babies were not going to push them asshole ard because we know those babies they're going to change but it gives them a reminder that hey come back because we've got this as an option as well the last thing them in dimension is embellishments because this is where your time gets sucked away this is the black hole of imaging because all of us do it you start working on a file and all of a sudden it's two o'clock in the morning and you don't know where your children are and you're not even sure if you fed them but you have this really awesome looking shot one single file that you spent six hours on it everybody has done that and so embellishments to me our time meters and we have a rule in our studio when we're slow which is january february march and april we embellish the heck out of everything we stick for stars and diamonds and you know there's some other ones here digital frames were really popular so we stick those all over our work but that's all done in the um in the slow season our busy season august september october we don't embellish anything there's just no time to do it embellishments are things that make people go wow that's really cool I want to come to that studio they're not things that people buy people will not pay extra how much is that frame worth on that image well if I show it to the client already done you can't say it's fifty dollars extra if I don't show it to them they don't have the vision and they won't see it so we consider embellishments free it's things that we do tow worked for our personal sake you're not going to make money on it don't let it suck all your time away make sure that you have in fact my studio samples might I cou I d pull those in january february or march we decorate them and they become the samples for the rest of the year because I know I'm not going to get to the current year's work until the following year um frame options we use pro select and this is one I can rave about pro select we absolutely live and die by it will be in your catalogue so you can look it up there but press like gives you options like framing you can actually I have all the labs we used to w molding but they have all kinds of frame companies uh frames you'd actually import them in and now you can sell images framed everybody out there that says I work out of the home I can't sell frames you're wrong if you can sell friend afraid with forty inch frame could be three to six hundred dollars additional cell on top of forty inch portrait so so don't say you can't just say how am I gonna figure it out and you can make it happen templates are amazing this is one of my most exciting thing is is that um with the pro select they now khun import templates in fact all of the yu can do templates were converting them over to the option of having him as pros like because we've always you know the art products the storyboards and the things we've talked about used to be you had to go into photo shop and build it on spends time it was worth it because they so well to per client now you could import the template just drag and drop images client comes in loves it then you take it into photoshopped client doesn't love it you didn't waste a second so this is revolutionary um and that is again why I think pro select is absolutely whatever you pay for pros like that I don't even know exactly it's been so long since I bought paid my subscription if you sold I'm sure if you sold one or two templates you would have paid for it for the year so it's worth it absolutely um with the slide show the client's gonna come in and we're gonna show them a wow factor slide show one of the things that we like to do they're paying for an experience how do I justify one hundred fifty dollars eight by ten it's everything an eight by ten is not a piece of paper it's an experience it is twenty four years of learning and training a equipment expense and my heart and soul goes into that piece of paper so every little detail aiken work on to make it even better I try so when a client comes in when they walk into our projection rooms which will show you in a minute they're gonna have when they walk in the room their child's name is going to be up on screen in it it's funny as cheesy as it sounds I can't tell you how many people turned the corner walk into the room ago oh my gosh honey look it's her name it's look it's a start and they can't see the picture it's kind of all show you it's kind of ghosted in the back so they get the feeling that something good is coming but we want to make it about them and it's like their own personal movies so we start with their names and we end with our logo so there's a professional field to the beginning and the end so we create everything in pro select we get all of the art products the cards the little art elements everything we've done is loaded into pro select it's ready to go we save the pro select catalog and when the client comes in we have the show completely ready to go this is actually my current studio this is the this is not the reception area this is actually an area we take the clients and it's a waiting area what you can't see to the left we have a cookie oven it's an otis punk meyer cookie oven we have drinks down below sodas coffee tea water bottles you can see our products are everywhere purses metal murals when you come in here you get the sense of relax just take off your shoes enjoy yourself wait here these two rooms in the back the two doors in the back the one open area is the frame room I'll show you the other two rooms are the sales rooms this is the blue sales room you could see we project the screens come out of the ceilings this's a smaller of the two rooms this is the gold room and this projectors up in the ceiling here but you get the idea of we try to keep it elegant warm inviting food music refreshments we want people to feel like they are at home and very very comfortable we want them to enjoy you know the entire experience so client comes in they sit down and we tell them the first thing we say is first of all I don't want you to think about uh the pictures were going to say we don't weave created this multimedia presentation for you what just sit back and enjoy don't try to remember poses don't try to look at anything this is really just for you we turn the lights down and the music comes on and this is what they see way son for you a lot I can do for you is wish you best of everything wait forever a flat for you and you love this will bring wait I just said step way audrey way joy from about until way whatever you think way no your gaze from my time here whatever I've got for you way just instead way happiness joy from until man way laughter happiness joy from number until way happiness joy from way wait it looks way better when you say it like that huh it's always amazing what actually comes out of a session and obviously with a client would show one family not five four uh but really and truly when you look at those images and you consider how very little we had with those children if every mom walked in here right now and they bought the minute the typical package which before this exposes everybody got four to six amazing poses even our little list one that really took a long time to warm up that last shot that last smile I mean that's the one that's the wall porter right there and that's what we're working for so so it is fun to sit here and be in a room and this always gets me emotional on I can't help it because darn it you know every day for years and years years I have been able to watch joy every single day people walk in they sit down and we take their breath away and we make them cry and it's just such an honor to do that and so few people in this world really get the opportunity to do what they love every day day in day out and no matter how hard it gets and this is the kind of a winner for tough although I loved every minute of it because to me it's it's about you know believing that you can sew it's a gift and uh if you're not even sure you should be doing this you absolutely should stick with it yes ma'am I just had to give you some feedback from the chat rooms because people are clapping of and nick chantelle says wow I'm so blown away by the slide show it brings the whole three days into perspective just blown away and it's true I'm sitting there watching well this is everything that you did this weekend while teaching thousands of photographers around the world how to do this wrapped up in a lovely sideshow so any thank you sad we couldn't get today's kids in but I felt like aaron did a good job picking that one out in a now ours that was just awesome and also um brandon let us know that everyone always want you know whose music that wass and it is I wish you love by nancy falken thank you because that is everybody we get fifty facebook post what was that song exactly don't go so yeah so I mean and really truly the beauty of each of those children um is just unbelievable I mean they just look like little dolls and that's something that you know I got to do that every day I could just sit here and cry and weep and hug you all that you gave me the opportunity to do this here because I'm gonna do it every day but when I can show people what it is and I could take I could take that level of fear and give you know five hundred thousand more people the opportunity to live their dream it's so worth it the heat the stress the chaos uh worth every second when I when I get that kind of feedback so thank you drink you always something that always makes me feel better all right guys we haven't given away enough today so somebody's going to get the creative edge kit which is the if you do this six six month membership you get this for free but uh this is the kid that has all of those embellishments and all those products and we gave one away online already so amy you get this next one so yeah um and you're writing that down right cool creative edge kit on the kid it's all the funds so enjoy that now what sales in there's so many things I could go on forever but really you have to figure out there are all kinds of our products like wall murals meta murals gallery wraps float mount these are all very popular products we use bait photo and love bay photo big shout out to them they're such good people and I know a lot of you guys use them too I see a lot of heads nodding so if you're looking for a lab I think there are a lot of great labs out there to be very honest with you but if you're looking for a lab that's a family I think a photo is definitely great option um so they have cool things like the wave books the folios the wall displays and there's just a lot of ways to impress you clients but in the sales room we always recommend three to five ideas for your clients no more just because you have one hundred fifty choice is to show them don't if you overwhelm them you actually drop yourself go in there with the attitude of these are the three things I want to sell because I know I'm going to sell to instead of we could do this we could do this we could do this we could do this you are the artist you need to generate in your mind what you're going to sell before it actually happens uh for sure also big shout out to fin a oh they were wonderful teo provide those albums that we're giving away I know we're gonna be giving away a few more today as well as tomorrow for now I lay me down to sleep for some of the wonderful people there so ponyo is just been a great supporter what we do but I told you they have really and truly I found them before they found me and they have just the best most beautiful albums but we talked a lot with the senior art book so I won't go into it heavy here but the idea is obviously you can tell a story you could be creative you khun you confined looks and styles that really go with the work that you do produce uh framing is the finishing touch when you're doing a sales presentation so you want to make sure that you're offering that as a customer service and that's why I said pro select makes it easy if you're working out of your home you don't have the option of corners and mats but also keep in mind when I worked out of my home long before digital anything I didn't have a frame wall like I have now and I just had a small box with twenty corners and a smaller box with a few mats and I told my clients I said you know honestly there are thousands of frame corners but I picked out I selected the top twenty that worked for my style of work and people bought into it so it was just kind of fake it till you make it if you don't have a frame will have a frame box and tell them this looks great with this image and this looks great most clients don't even want to pick out frames they want you to do it because they're overwhelmed so half the time because it's in pro select they just assume that we have pre picked that from which we do and they just say okay I'll take that and we say ok would you like the frame with that oh yeah like they almost looking at this like it doesn't it you know it doesn't come with it so we just put it on it doesn't come with it but we while they're watching put it on their order and that's not a problem because it's part of the experience so it's definitely part of the customer service uh this is that that room that was towards the back in that frame in the frame areas you can see we have a bigger frame well ironically enough the wall that's a really cool metal wall a riveted while we had put in there and the funny thing is that was the original placement we have now knocked it down to about thirty corners like we cleared as much as I invested in that wall I I had this vision of this great frame room and you know what I found after all these years the twenty frame corners were better because it just got things done and it didn't make a difference to have one hundred fifty except people's eyes were like oh we have to do this too so we've just eliminated and change that process as well um and obviously a finished portrait is a classic if it's not framed it's not going on the wall it breaks my heart early on when I started photography I didn't have framing is I didn't know I could frame I don't even know how to frame and so I have clients now coming in for senior portrait's and they'll come in and obviously financially they're in a better situation when they're babies twenty years ago when they had babies were all poor when we started out now they're much more established and they're bringing in eleven by fourteen sixteen by twenties that I photographed twenty years ago saying I need to get a frame for this too it's been sitting in a closet since you know and I mean that's the honest truth they just take him home stick him somewhere they never go on the walls and they've missed now their baby is going to college and now they want it on the wall but that's sixteen years that they didn't have that uh that opportunity and and there are many studies that say and this is the honest truth and yes I used it in the sale that uh children are actually affected emotionally by images hanging on the wall I actually have a report that says and I keep it in my studio because it says that children are much more confident when they have images of themselves it's a it's a love factor they feel very loved and when their portrait is hanging in the home so if you ever need ah you know uh ah boost there with your sales you khun definitely could even show parents that it is true that children feel more secure when they are in their own environment so those of you out there who are saying that you cannot you don't have a sales room like you know again this is twenty four years later originally I was selling on my kitchen table with peanut butter and jelly all over it so I've been there done that nobody can tell me they can't nobody can tell me that but if you're in a situation where you can't you don't have a studio space you're sharing an apartment with somebody and can't do it in that you have sixteen dogs I mean I know we've talked about different things and that's a possibility so if if if that's the situation you have to make a decision you're gonna change the situation or what are your options we teach that the bigger use show the bigger you'll sell period we convert our students over to projection eventually because when we prove to them ok you're making this much money with this show it on tv you make this much money is showing on a projector you make this much money it just makes sense and people eventually will convert in big audiences I always asked the audience how many people project and then I always ask how many people tripled their double their triple their income when they went to projection every single hand always stays up so if I told you right now I could triple your income or at least double your income wouldn't you do what I say I mean honestly if I could double what you make I can if you buy a projector and learn how to project so if you can't big if you can't project that a big screen tv I can't do that then the biggest laptop you can get within your mind saying a soon as I can project I'm going to that's my end goal and you will succeed if you if you put that as your target go for now if you cannot do that there are options there are places out there almost in every major city that you could rent professional space there are lots of studios for rent their office spaces that are really cheap that you could rent and you can share office spaces another one where I've had I mean I've had brutal arguments with photographers who just want to prove that they can't do it and sometimes I feel like looking at him saying you know what you're right you can't do it but I'm not mean and I try to try to keep it together but some things I want to shake him I'm like you're right here you're literally you are putting it out in the universe that you can't do it and I can't take it back I can't put it back in you so so the very worst case scenario is I've heard people say things like you know I all my clients come from out of state so skype is an option we've been teaching that a lot too on the forum that if you can't if you can't go to your clients the very minimum you can do is set up in appointment it needs to be a real appointment with skype you khun screen share they can then see your screen you keep them on a headset you go through the image is the biggest issue is creating a personal experience I will never be an advocate for throw it online and pray you get an order it doesn't work I'm not not an advocate of online sales because like for us in our events in our charity we do use it but most but in regular portrait sales we would not weddings also another animal we're not talking about those today uh bonus structures we've talked a lot about that so you kind of already have my opinion on that the idea is to get your clients to invest bonus structures and digital files are the two things that they want the most they want the free products they want the digital file therefore we have that disclaimer that if they're going to get the bonus item or they're gonna have digital files attached complimentary one's attached to their higher packages they must place their order the first time they see the images within thirty days if they're there and they're like oh we can't make a decision can we come back we turn to them and say you know what no problem we'd be happy this reschedule it sells appointment however you will lose your digital file option your archival images as well as the bonus item is that okay nine out of ten moms say no honey let's get the checkbook let's at least put a deposit down let's make a payment on this so they don't want to lose that those files are a gold mine when you understand how to utilize them