To Sell or Not to Sell

• Step-by-step

• Selling Photography

If you are not making the kind of money you want the problem could lie in your sales process. In this newsletter I reveal the steps I take to lead a potential client from first time caller to happy client and at the same time maximizing the amount of income from every sale.

How not to Sell

I had been running my studio out of my home for about 3 years. I was doing primarily weddings and seniors with a family every once in a while. My sales process was to do the session, then put the old-fashioned paper proofs in a little spiral bound booklet, then have the people come and pick them up and say, take these home with you, look them over and I’ll call you in a couple of weeks so you can come in and place your order.

Well in two weeks I’d start calling them to come in and place their order. Of course, most of the time they hadn’t even looked at them, some of the time they were in another state so aunt Tilly could see them. Anyway, what was supposed to take two weeks would stretch on for 4,6, or even more. Then, you guessed it, they wanted their finished order tomorrow.

And to make matters worse the orders ended up being so small I almost cried.
I was totally at the clients mercy. Clients directed everything. I felt there just had to be a better way.

If you can relate to the above true story about my early beginning I’ll bet you are looking for a better way too.

Well there is a better way. A way that trains our clients to realize we are professionals, we know what we are doing, and this is how it’s done. I mean, after all, when you to a store to buy something don’t you have to make your purchase according to its rules of business.

A Better Way

Here is the outline of the steps I take in order to make sure each sale is maximized and goes smoothly.

Making the sale is not just telling the prospect about your products and services and how much they cost then hoping for a check.

1. Motivating the prospect to call you in the first place. This is the job of your marketing.

2. The initial phone call, and how you talk to them when they call for information. This determines whether you convert them to the next step. I just put up a series of posts on Photon Fortunes on how to handle the telephone in order to get the maximum conversion rate. You won’t want to miss it.

3. Convincing them to come in to the studio for a portrait design conversation where you can now educate them about how you do business, how you photograph, and your prices.  Or, if you don’t have a studio you may want to have that first visit at their home.

4. Collect a check for the session. Or as I do a retainer that applies toward their order.

5. Now you do the photography, during which time you are constantly reassuring them about how good they look and how great the portraits are going to be. However, Don’t overdo this to the point of phoniness. That is a real turn off.

6. I recommend you make as many different photographs as possible.

7. Next is getting together with them either in your studio or their home to show them the portraits you made and to have them place their order. This is done by projecting their images into a frame on your, or their wall, so they can see the actual size.

By the time you get to step 6 you should have really learned a lot about your client. This is where you really earn your pay. Right from the beginning, It is important that you have at least a minimum dollar amount in mind that you want to earn from this sale. To facilitate earning that amount you will already have a lot of different products lined up for your client to invest in.

For example. You may start with one wall portrait, followed by a gift box of the other portraits, or a fine art book, or maybe multiple copies of the fine art book. You get the idea.

During the educational part of the sale back at the portrait design meeting you should have educated them to the fact that you specialize in portraits for décor.

Finally, yea, you collect a check for their order. I recommend at least half.

Summary

If you will incorporate these six steps into your selling process you will instantly see a substantial increase in your bottom line.

I have refined and honed these six steps over many years, and even today, after every sale I review what was said by my clients and by me to see how I can make further improvements. If you want a studio that serves the more affluent who have more discretionary income and who give you a whole lot less grief, this is the path you will want to follow. And, it puts a quick stop to so many of the problems photographers face.

Some may think this is too much work. The answer of course is, yes, it is work but if you are creating superior images, that’s a lot of work also and when you consider the alternative, letting the client dictate the sale you will always be struggling.

We need a way that puts control back in our hands so we can earn a decent living for all the hard work we put in. These steps do that for us. When done properly they are actually appreciated by the client. Because they have further assurance that they went to a photographer that has their best interests at heart.

All the nitty-gritty of these steps and how to implement them in your business will be covered in tremendous detail in the Photon Fortunes forum and in our monthly telephone seminars and webinars.

Next time we’ll be covering “How Good Is Your Photography,” it’s the third building block of a successful studio.

Good luck and good selling.