Lessons

Lesson Info

Live Consultation with Engaged Couple

you are going to have a massive amount of questions here's what I want you to do take a deep breath think about your objections that you encounter during the sales process during the consultation process what objection comes up nine out of ten times for you because you're probably struggling with how to answer that objection when I want you to do is pay attention listen if you're working right now if you're editing pictures stop doing it give me fifteen minutes of your time and pay attention to what's going on right here right now I am going to show you how we have a real conversation with a couple this to me is priceless to see exactly how we have this conversation is soon I'm going to take a natural pause halfway through the conversation and I'm going to come to you I'm going to come to the internet and I'm gonna want you to tell me what you're noticing about the conversation all right so with that being said let's bring our engagement couple in did they balance a quick they're no lo...

nger engage money guys how we doing how we doing I'm south what you need from devon devon nice to meet you carmen carmen nice to meet you come on take a seat right so we got carmen and devin here and uh congratulations on your big day guys excited thank you yeah so tell me tell me a little bit about your day where's the uh where's the ceremony where's the reception gonna be um it's gonna be a place called life her manner it's kind of like a big garden area very going outdoors but it's all covered of course raines here all the time can't really trust now is there a lot of greenery there yeah it has a lot of it kind of does a lot of the work for us like we're not gonna have to decorate very much because it's just really pretty that's good nights you save money on somebody or write what you know her away anyway so yeah probably makes you have um so tell me a little bit about what are the colors of your day uh we're going to do pink and gray actually are you wearing pink no no no we're going to do he's going to bring all the great tuxedo yeah yeah I like that no that's really popular right now you know all the guys have been wearing black on then the great tuxedo I think it was just a nice change of pace so you're understanding their block any accent colors oh between the between the two high or anything like that way hadn't gotten that far we were just gonna kind of be open to suggestions I and we had a basic framework down but we hadn't set all the details of stone that apartment you know based on the environment you know we're gonna be shooting how gonna be shooting what kind of stuff we do on the side so we just wanted to leave a couple things open for you no further discussion yeah well you know my advice to take it you know for what it's worth I like you know especially if you're gonna do that that accent just give you a little accent color and that could be a simple is a pocket square to bring that color in you know I don't I don't necessarily it's your wedding but I don't want to see you in like a pink tie or a like that that I don't like it I you know I wear pink so I can't lie but I think just a little pink in a pocket square can really tie the two together I think that'll be kind of cool so cool you know I don't want to be overly personal but I'm curious how did the two of you meet um we actually met through a longtime friend of mine he had a cousin um I didn't know she existed I was friends with him for seven years and you know she existed he was holding out on me he was holding out on telling you yeah he doesn't trust you so you know so we met at his birthday party started meeting shortly thereafter and just we're pretty much inseparable from day one how didn't so carmen how did he approach it was smooth there was a nervous well actually there was um one of my cousins other friends was sitting in between us and so we kind of like we're doing this thing where like if you're laughing or joking we try to like get around him to get a glimpse of the other person and then when we kind of parted ways it was sort of like a facebook random exchange but then not really much after that like it was more of him kind of blowing me off really way don't necessarily read the signs that are right in front of us and you know about a mile later I finally just texted him because I had his phone number still and I was like hey you know what's up or something like that he was like who is this and I was like you don't know what I might number anymore devon you're lucky she's even talking carmen did you have to propose no but she's like e I threatened tio well let's so let me ask you how did the um how did how did the proposal happen he's going to explain that I'm gonna have to tell you this one we've got a long version or the short version I just could be the abbreviated one um we uh we went out for a one year anniversary and I went through a serious of steps to make sure she had no idea and wouldn't be expecting it on our one year anniversary because it's kind of an obvious opportunity so I pulled out all the stops everything including sitting her down for talking saying you know I'm really sorry I know this is supposed to be a nice day but you know I just couldn't make some things happen she thought oh this is going to be one of those stop that counts kind of anniversary and I took her to black park su we spent about three hours going around there and I proposed on an island in the park right next to it the kicker the whole thing was I had a buddy of mine photographer friend of mine shadowing us the whole day paparazzi style taking shots from a three hundred millimeter lens away and he caught the three hours of us going around the zoo plus the entire proposal sequence it and she had no clue any of this was happening and her one regret at the end of the proposal was that we had no good pictures like oh yeah about that should say that dinner a few nights later and her had just kind of exploded when you approached us at one point during the day and this is like he knows him you don't know you know I don't know if you never met him and we're trying to take our picture you know like this and he comes up he's like oh do you want me to take that picture for you just like devin's like having a heart attack like get out of here e he had no clue that's awesome dude and you know taylor and I my wife we we kind of went through the same thing because swiffer tigers obviously we're always taking everyone's pictures and so I proposed to her during an actual photo shoot so she wanted professional pictures of austan so here we are we go to san francisco and we're taking pictures by the golden gate bridge and you know we're doing our thing and then my photographer at the time his name's mike or santino he I told I didn't tell him right because at the time I didn't I didn't even know michael oh he had been working with taylor directly so I didn't trust him right being a being a native new yorker we don't trust anybody for anything so I was worried about he would like slip and just say something and here he is you know I shone the ring like literally two minutes before he starts he's like oh my god dude no it's hard enough shooting other divers I'm like dude just breathe man don't miss the moment so he gives me the nod I pull out the ring and I get the ring to here I don't even say anything to tell because she had no idea at all that I was going to propose and her family was like guessing every holiday there like always gonna propose always gonna propose at this point they've given up on me and I get the rain here and she's like I do and I didn't even I didn't even ask her the question yet right and he captures the whole thing on these pictures are so important a tte this point so that is a really really cool story so I you know when was the moment you know carmen that you knew he was the one oh gosh um way went to california for his birthday in march and it was kind of like that was the way we were we just decided to go on right time did we spend together it was one hundred twenty hours over twenty six hundred miles driving where we were constantly in contact the entire time no breaks in you know no time often or not if you can survive through that you can survive when we came back and both of us had to go backto work and at the end of the day we're just kind of like we want to spend time together again like when we like something or something from like having spent all that time together and then having to like not be together it was like he's just both knew that moment yeah yeah that was really the indicator I was when we started having conversations and that's how it should be well that's really cool well I'm glad you came I mean I'm excited about your story and and what I want to do now is just kind of walking through all our albums and packages and stuff like that so all our packages come with an album this is your first family heirloom this is the one thing you're going to run in your house and grab it right when it when it burns down I mean this is how we keep track of all those great images we're going to get from your your wedding day so what I want to do is just kind of walking through this and show you some key features so this is twelve by eighteen very significant in size and what this is gonna allow me to do is take some of those dramatic images that will get on your wedding day and rather than putting a bunch of those small pictures in the album I can put some big images across two pages right so I can really tell the story in a dramatic fashion I hate putting tiny little pictures in an album the thing is our clients you know the last thing I want to see happen with a book like this is I don't want it to be underneath the coffee table right that defeats the purpose if you're going to invest in something like this I want you to have this out so people can see it enjoy it and when a lot of our client will do is they'll put it on the center coffee table or they'll have it sitting on a small table top easel just out so people can grab it and enjoy it that being said I want to show you some of the key features I want you to feel this this is crushed velvet wow you won't see anything like that out there so it makes it very unique to you and all our letters we have forty different leathers that we can completely customize so whatever you want so even from a coloring perspective although I don't have pink leather waken do something that really captures your essence of who you are and as you look at this notice how thick the pages are right extremely durable also noticed that there's no gutter here and so with this lay flat design this allows us to go across multiple pages and really showcase your images so flip through that and just notice how we're telling the story of your day I could get the page here uh scared to hurt it you won't hurt their thick baby yeah yeah that's nice my my sister's wedding book the pages are just the normal thing and and now she has two kids and so of course I mean it's it's gnarly looking you know and I love I love that you're saying that because the truth is you know I meet with a lot of clients and I really try to instill the value of the book because this is way can't put a thousand images on your wall this is the way and you notice we're telling the story of our bride getting ready of you getting ready of the ceremony of the reception and this becomes a great keepsake and those little flimsy books I think they're garbage right and so I want to give you something that's going to stand the test of time your grandchildren should have this book let's pause great job to um what did you guys notice and I'm going to an internet I want to know what you notice because we you have to understand what just happened here what did you notice that I'm directing directing the conversation what else the personal connection to yeah how much how much of my packages by the way anybody out there know right nobody has any idea how much our packages or did you already catch up I've been sitting here with them for about fifteen minutes and I talked about what then right guess what they don't want to hear about me okay uh you know I'm an international award winning for tyre for you'd be pretty lucky if I photographed keeps a corrupt man nobody cares it's their day it's all about them how to win friends and influence people it's an oldie but goodie as faras books go that is foundational to our customer experience what's the number one thing people want to talk about themselves right and that's what they did and I love hearing their story did you feel like it was genuine very genuine I'm not I'm not being funny here this is who I am I want to get to know my couples but I'm not gonna get to know them lisa we talked about this yesterday in a random email or some random phone call this is what I'm going to get to know them at this point I'm what else did you notice the details of how you explain your album like I saw the album what is the album by the way what is it is a word it's a family heirloom right even she she's like so did you notice her especially for the record I've never met these two before I met them this morning for the first time I said hi I shook their hands they went off and got ready so I've never met them before they've never seen my product before did you guys catch her reaction when she felt the crush she was like oh my god so that's the kind of product I wanna have for my clients with when they go like this they're like oh my god dude I'm corrupting them this's I hope they go meet with other photographers because they're going to go to other photographers and they're gonna open them think about it this is crap let's get more what is this I was just going right notice she hit on her sister just like my sister got married and she's got an album with thin pages and it's been destroyed oh she's screwed right now she is because she's selling this album for herself and guess what devon can't walk out of here and not get an album you know why you can't get out get out she's gonna be like what do you mean you don't want a family devin would be in a world of hurt if he tried to get out of here and not wanted out him we do not have clients who tell us they don't want albums guys this is key to running a successful photography wedding studio you have got toe offer albums this is their family heirloom this is how you're gonna start charging more you can only charge so much money for a cd of images you can't do it this is what allows us to differentiate ourselves what else do we know internet I mean people were just saying there's she sold it's what they're saying yeah totally sold on then I guess people were saying it's it's not rehearsed it's not rehearsing what people were saying it sounds rehearsed but it's like you've probably done a few of these rights you know this is my this is my stick I mean you get you into this world your mind right this is what I'm good at but it's not sales e at all I mean well ok was it sails no I felt like you actually were interested in you know how we got together and getting to know us and I am yeah and I'm glad you you're saying that because I do do genuinely care and did everybody noticed when we first started this conversation devon was a little nervous right that's pretty normal by the way I get into these meetings and the guys are extremely quiet they don't care now devon does care because he's into photography and but the average groom could care less about pictures so I go out of my way to make sure I engage both of them right I don't know if anybody caught that I was engaging with both of them jenna mike ofa tyree said notice that he ended on letting them seen touched the book not starting with it like it's a portfolio right yeah because I don't want to just jump into this the minute I jump into this I'm in sales mode they don't want to be sold to so what I do is I want to have a conversation with them get to know them as a couple okay have them tell me their story then we start talking about the product but did you notice what product I'm showing right out of the gate this's my mack daddy album I'm corrupting her in a sense off I'm creating and educated brought this is where I mean really what I'm doing is I'm screwing other studios because what's gonna happen is she's now knows what she should be looking for in a book and by doing that I've established myself as an expert that's very very important that you asked about the colors and then you kind of asked about if he was going to incorporate anything and you're already establishing yourself is that trusted adviser by your top of the pocket square right exactly what else I just have a question just because I have mom brain a lot of the times that I want to try to remember specific things about them so I might just be kind of jotting things down don't dio no writing down it's so hard that I want to try to remember you start writing it down this this conversation changes from being two people having a conversation to now you're interviewing me yeah no writing down okay fix your brain okay start remembering things ok ok so I can remember their colors right I remember their story now when they leave from this meeting now I could jot all that stuff down okay but what happens if they do start asking your prices do you kind of well we're not there yet we're gonna get there they're gonna get their prices for sure yeah I'm just pausing at this moment if they act like they didn't ask because you're very good about right so you mean if they sat down and they were immediately how much or just in a few minutes into the conversation absolutely guys I'm gonna walk you through all our package is what I want to do first is just kind of showcase our albums and everything we have to offer redirect because that will happen but that's a question here from m colton you just asked how do you redirect the conversation when the first thing they ask is how much are your packages but that question should have been answered in that email that one out right they already know sitting down here prices start at so the fact that they're sitting here at this table they already understand that prices air starting at forty five hundred or whatever that whatever the price point is they understand that so they shouldn't be walking in this door how much how much how much because I've already given them enough information so that should make sense what else so what else are people noticing well I just I want to say it's cool a lot of people have asked you know do you think it's way haven't actually asked you the question but is it better to be a female wedding photographer because you really to the bribe but I like how you brought down with him and made him relax because ultimately when they leave he's got input into this he does and so he's like I like this guy well that's funny you say that because what I'm going to do is show you the difference between how I present and how taylor presents I didn't hear anybody mention it's or catch on to this did you catch on the way I'm having the conversation with him I was talking to them about what pictures were going to get on their wedding day they may catch onto that here's what we're gonna do on your wedding day so we can do this so when we're photographing we got a lot of color I'm talking about this like it's my wedding I already have this wedding you understand I'm speaking with confidence I'm speaking as if I owned this I'm speaking creatively about their day ideas for their day here's what we can do now what I didn't get to it was time now normally I would start talking about time okay everybody with me okay so here's what I want to do I want a transition and bring taylor in here because now now we would never do this right I got I gotta preface this so um sometimes I don't want everybody to get confused I would never kind of start the conversation and then bring taylor into clothes clothes whoever starts the meeting closes the meeting but what I want you to do because it sounds like susan people caught on to that online does it help being a female not if you understand my process my methodology my work flow and you implement this you're going to be successful and taylor is going to do the same thing I'm doing except it's gonna be through her voice right I'm a little more type a personality she's obviously not she's a little more reserved a little more quiet but she's still gonna hit all the correct sales points in order to make this meeting and I want you to pay attention how she closes the meeting how she's closing the meeting is just as important so with that uh being sad taylor come on in here alright guys like what you're seeing so far yeah awesome we'll let me walk you through our packages that way I can make sense of everything for you and these will be yours to keep not starts off with our bios and all that boring stuff so what's with that layer but here's our packages so I'm just going to start at the top and walk you all the way down so if you have any questions please just stop me so our black label package comes with a sicilian serious album which is any of our bigger books and there's no price difference between them so you can pick whatever size you like then whatever cover you like which we have leathers we've got acrylic metal canvass they're all the same price so we like to give you a lot of diversity and options in that package you get an engagement session and something sound I do for a black label engagements is we travel so much we don't charge extra if you want to meet us in another city for pictures so let's say you're originally from chicago or you love to travel to san francisco we would just work our schedule so that we could meet there at the same time and then it's nothing extra and you've got just a diversity in your pictures especially for the artwork in your home tio you get an engagement guest book which is this so it's just a little coffee table book that fuses your engagement session with a place for people to sign so instead of just a book of lines is a lot more meaningful that way and then a lot of our clients use it it's a coffee table book afterwards and they usually ends up being a line at the reception kill the guests wanna look through all your pictures too and you will get to pick the pictures for this too it's about twelve pictures one for the cover one for the back and then sent on the inside you also get an event frame and I don't have this with me because it's so big but it's a twenty four by thirty six lit up poster so just like when you go to the movies and you see those coming soon posters that's kind of what this is so it's a huge poster size in this clear frame and it lights up from behind it's one of your engagement pictures on the inside so we usually set this up right outside the reception's those people are walking in that's kind of what's greeting them for your event and then you get to keep the prince inside afterwards so it's pretty cool that you get a bridal session which is just another session to get you more creative pictures that we couldn't get the wedding day so let's say you have your heart set on going to downtown seattle but of course it's raining and we can't go uh so we were just schedule another photo shoot you guys get dressed up again and we go and get all those creative pictures that we couldn't get that day you get two photographers and you always get sal or myself as a primary shooter so you're always working with an owner of the company now we're both open on your date so you can pick whoever you want to be primary but I'm better so I would pick me but you can pick any anyone you want you get your high resolution negative so all the unedited pictures on a disk so if you want to go print them off at walmart for a little sizes you can and then ten hours of coverage and a day of events slide show this is really cool so at the reception we pull out a sixty inch screen and a projector and we show about one hundred fifty pictures fully edited that we took that day yeah it's really awesome because you get to see him getting ready you getting ready all the cool pictures we went often did so it's like a little movie premiere event for your guests that puts you in our client for life program basically it's a free photo shoot every year for the rest of our lives so is you start to have kids or maybe dogs that are like kids and you want a photo shoot for whatever you want it's free every year and then you get a dvd slideshow which is just a copy of that slideshow from the reception we burn it in a format so that you can burn copies for family and give it out his gifts if you want to and you could put on your iphone on facebook too if you did want to add on video you get thirty percent off and I can walk you through video if you are interested and then all your wedding pictures would go online for sixty days that makes sense okay perfect once you go to the platinum package it comes with a roma siri's album which is this guy so it's a little bit smaller it's ten by ten and then for a cover option you've got acrylic which is this or black leather all the way around with your name steve austin and so I would just continue to walk them through every single item in our package and notice you never heard me say a price no one wants to hear that number it is not a pretty number if you if you uh ask then you can afford it uh no so we don't ever say numbers even when someone's buying something at her studio for um giving me their credit card for their total I never say a number unless they ask uh because they don't want to hear it as much as I don't want to say it and then notice how this wasn't even on the table so I want them to fall in love with their bigger books so this isn't even out there so by the time I pull this out and it's right next to the big guy it's like weren't wearing it's not even gonna come close to the other books they're falling in love with this so have your other books off to the side so that they don't even see them and let them fall in love with the bigger stuff and notice we're going top down we're starting with the bigger stuff uh so we want them to fall in love with all the good stuff it's easy to go down in price than to go up and did you see the transition how we went from the first package to the second package I asked if they had questions that's really important so even though they might not ask a question you have to read their facial expressions so if you see like they're a little bit confused make sure you address that because if they have a a mental objection that they're not saying it's still going to stall the sale so you want to make sure that you're on the same page so if I saw that you maybe looked a little confused I would say hey is something not making sense you just look a little confused right that's it just make sure you're on the same page questions so far all right let me take you to close because I know that it could be a really awkward point for us whenever we walk through everything and it's like you want me uh so let me listen to how I bring it too close uh let's say I walk through all the packages does all that makes sense still yeah okay well just so you know the process to move forward is the thousand dollar deposit and that secures your date if you still need another week or so to figure out exactly what package fits you guys most that's totally fine the big thing is to lock us in once you know you want to work with us that we don't lose your date to another wedding but you tell me where you read in the decision process about the middle one to start or at least that's what I was you know look at initially sure yeah well let me know if you guys wanna um if you want to lock us in because I love to work with you guys I think we have a lot of fun working together especially me not so uh but yet let me know and we'll go forward does that seem awkward at all I let them know the process to move forward because they're going to ask it every we all know that's the next step they're going to ask that question so why not appear to be confident even if you're not confident and tell them the next step to afford assuming that they do want to move forward I mean if they're here looking at a work aiken make the assumption that they like our style of photography and hopefully I didn't creep him out with my personality so why wouldn't they want to book me let's move forward based on that assumption and I told them it's a thousand dollars to secure your date like we discussed with the bridal show uh section they don't have to pick a package right then so by taking that off the table they can easily look at each other and typically decide if they want to work with me or not yeah well we know we wanna work with you we have to figure out budget but yeah let's lock it in that way we can secure a date that's how you get a lot of bookings right then and you would think that with letting them book a package later on that it might hurt the selection process they might look a lower package but our trend is actually eighty percent of our wedding's next year our black label even with them booking packages the week after because what's happening is they're falling in love with the books and so if we're able to differentiate our packages with these books they know they have to go black label and so this is what selling our clients on our top package whether they do it there and not when they go home now they're able to rework their budget based on us so they could afford the book that they want