I get it. As photographers, we hate sales, we hate selling, we hate everything it represents. Why? Because most of you believe that sales feels like used car salesmen. It’s that icky feeling you get. If you don’t buy now, we’ll delete all your files. I’m not advocating that, but that’s how it feels sometimes, and I’m promising you all the years that I’ve been doing in-person sales, the one thing we pride ourselves on is not acting like that. We don’t want our clients to feel like they’re being sold to. Instead, we try to position ourselves as the trusted advisor.
Think about something for a second. They came to you. They came to you for not only your service but really your expertise. That’s why they came to you. And so if you have that in the back of your mind, you realize that by just handing them a thumb drive of digital images, you’re really doing a disservice to them.
Instead, what you should be doing is showing them how to put product up in their home so that they can display all this incredible art that you created. That is what clients want. Whether you want to believe that or not, well, that’s a different conversation, but I promise you that is ultimately what they want.
Your clients WANT products, not just files
I’m going to share this story with you. It almost seems like it’s too good to be true, and I won’t tell you this like every client says it to me, but one client recently said to me… It was a wedding client. This is in the last six months. We sat down in my salesroom, and I’ll show you pictures of my salesroom here in a second. We sat down in our salesroom and I’m walking her through my price sheet and she says to me, “What’s with the digital files?” I’m like, “Well, what do you mean?” I’m like, “That’s for you to have for archive for your social media.” She’s like, “I know, but who’s printing all these pictures?” I’m like, “Well, we offer prints.”
It just caught me off guard. And I was a little taken aback by it, and then I started realizing, I’m like, you’re my dream client. She’s like, “I get it. I’ll post on social media.” But she’s looking around my salesroom and she sees all these big pictures on the wall, and she says, “But you’re going to print all this for us, right?” And I’m like, “Well, yeah, if you want us to.” I’m like, “I’d love for you to buy from me because we’re going to obsess over the image. We’re going to finalize the edit. We’re going to inspect it, make sure everything’s right. We’re going to get you the right product.” She’s like, “Okay, good because I have a job.”
I started laughing in that moment because, well, that’s what we want all our clients to say. We want them to come to us and trust us to handle all this because, well, I don’t want a scrap-booking mom who’s coming to me because they just want to thumb drive, CD, DVD, whatever it’s been over the years, files.
I want to be able to deliver a final product to my client. And so I think if you have that in the back of your head and realize that you are in fact the trusted advisor, and that they came to you for a reason. Anything less than you delivering a complete experience to them, I think is failing. Not only are you failing your business, you’re failing your client. You’re leaving money on the table and you’re not delivering a full end to end service.
Get started with sample products
Let’s talk about this a little bit. How do we get there? How do we successfully navigate IPS? And one of the things I am going to hammer you over the head with is you have to show it to sell it. And so I learned this early on in my career that if I did not show that product to them via sample products, if I did not show it to them, I was not going to be able to sell it.
Add samples. Show clients what products you offer, whether that’s metals, acrylics, canvas, and showcase your best work. Don’t try to sell a wedding client and show them a senior canvas. They’re not going to be able to make the connection. Unfortunately, sometimes that means you’ve got to have a lot of different samples in your studio.
But when I say samples, it’s not only the type of product canvas, acrylic, metals, albums, it’s also the size of product. When I first opened my studio, I didn’t have enough room to put large prints on the wall. And when I say my first studio, I was working out of my basement, like many of you probably. We all start somewhere.
But as I moved into a bigger space, one of the things I did, and I tell this story all the time, is I got a 30 by 40, and as soon as that 30 by 40 was on the wall, I was able to sell my clients on 30 by 40’s easily because they could see it and visualize it.
If you’re not quite sold on IPS yet, I want you to think about a few things. How do you sell large prints without offering IPS? It’s very difficult to do because you’re just throwing sizes at them. If you throw a price list together, meaning you do it online, “Hey, tell me what size you want.” In a customer’s mindset, an eight by 10 is huge to them, but we all know that an eight by 10 on any size wall is going to look utterly ridiculous.
But if you show them on the wall a 20 by 30, a 30 by 40, and you show it to them in space, meaning it’s on a wall and there’s things around it they can visualize like, “Oh. Well, that’s about the size of the wall in our house.” Now the number you’re throwing out is with context. Whereas when they’re just looking at a price sheet at eight by 10 or 30 by 40, there’s no context to it, so it just sounds huge when it’s really not.
The SCP sales room
I’m going to show you my studio here real quick. And so you are looking at… In this picture, you’re looking at a TV screen. That’s what they see when they walk in. Flanking the TV are two 30 by forties vertical. They’re not taking up that much wall space. Forget that I have tall ceilings, width wise, that’s a small side table in anyone’s home.
And by having those two 30 by 40’s there flanking the TV, it makes it easy for us to sell 30 by 40s. Super easy. We hardly ever get pushback from people saying, “No, it’s just too big.” How so? You don’t have a tiny table in your… You know what I mean? And so it becomes much easier, it’s non-combative. Now we’re navigating them and showing them all these different sizes. And then I’ll show you in this next slide you’re seeing if you look on the walls there, you see what the products are.
Offer specialty products
I’m a huge believer in offering unique products. If you want to offer a unique product to your client, you’ve got to offer something that they can’t get at Sam’s Club. Walmart, Walgreens, they can pretty much get canvas and prints almost anywhere. That’s why we like to offer specialty products and specialty sizes, like the Edge line from H&H Color Lab.
How do you get your clients to buy in? I think it just comes down to you realizing that you have to educate your clients on this stuff. You don’t have to be cheesy about it. You’re just educating them on it. And that’s ultimately what it’s all about. Educate them on the process. I remember when I was coming up and all the cheesy crap that photographers would do.
They’d be like, “Our paper is professional quality and this paper is not.” And they’d show paper from Walgreens and then their professional lab. Hey, I got news for you. I’m not sure if you guys all know this. Literally the same equipment that is in Walgreens and in Sam’s Club is the same equipment your labs are using. There is no difference. Now, the machines may not be calibrated correctly. That’s a true statement. The teenager running the machine, they may not know what they’re doing. That’s also a true statement. But the reality is it’s the same stuff, so I don’t want to compete that way. And so I’d rather educate my clients on why would you buy from us rather than going from Walgreens. Well, every image that you buy from us is fully retouched. Okay, well, that’s something that’s important to them. I’m not going to retouch if I shoot a wedding 1200 images. I’m not fully retouching that. That’s not going to happen.
But my bride now knows, okay, yes, I’m going to pay Sal a little bit more money, but he’s going to fully retouch every image that I order as a print. That’s a value added service for them.
Using Room-Vu for in-person sales
One of the other tools that we use in our business that has helped in person sales is N-Vu. It’s an incredible tool. We’ve been using that for years as well. I just want to focus on one feature, Room-Vu.
What this allows us to do is show a client what their print would look like on a wall. It could even be in their home. They can send you a text message with a picture of their wall, and then it can show you on that wall what it’s going to look like. And if they don’t have a picture, there’s, I don’t know, 20, 30, 40, 50 mocked up rooms built into the system already.
Your product offering
What you offer your clients is going to make in-person sales either difficult or hard. And I think once again, this is where maybe setting up a new account with H&H and taking advantage of that 25% off new customer deal will really go a long way. In my opinion, you should be offering your clients prints, canvas, metals, acrylics, and albums, and then maybe something fine art, like that torn edge print. Those products elevate your brand. And it’s not enough to just say, we offer them. Because think about it. If your clients see something that’s called “fine art edge print,” what does that mean? You’ve got to show it to them, so we’re back to show it, to sell it. And so every year, what we like to do in our studio, is refresh the samples with updated products and new images.
And then of course, albums. You should be offering your clients albums from weddings. Don’t just deliver a CD or a thumb drive of images. Deliver a final product. And I always tell my clients, “This is your first family heirloom together.” That’s a true statement. And by delivering it that way, they have more appreciation for what we’re offering them. But don’t just offer a crappy album, like get best of breed. Yes, it’s more expensive, but pass that cost on to your clients because now you’re offering the best of the best.
Now you can go to them and say, this is fine art paper, Italian leather, handmade. What I’m talking to my clients and explaining this to them, maybe it sounds like a sales shtick, but it’s the truth. I’m being truthful with them and explaining to them what they’re holding in their hand. I don’t just put an album in their hand and say, “We offer albums,” because now you’re downplaying what you offer. Instead, I’m explaining to them why this is so incredibly valuable.
Think about it this way, this will be the last thing I leave you with. If you just go into and buy a car, you could make the argument that, well, a Kia is the same as a Ferrari. It’s got four wheels. It’ll take you from point A to point B. That’s how the Kia dealership might position it. But I promise you, if you go into a Ferrari dealership, they are not positioning it that way. They’re positioning it as all the leather is Italian leather, hand cut, hand sewn by a seamstress, not a machine. Each seat takes 20 hours to make, whatever it is. They’re explaining what makes it so unique. Your sales process should include explaining to your customers the details of your unique products.
