I’ll be perfectly honest with you, lovely. My life is insane right now. Lots of scurrying and hurrying, wrapping, baking, scheduling, ordering, printing, packaging, prepping, and otherwise busy-fying. You don’t need brand advice right now. You need five minutes of rest and (let’s be honest!) a six-pack of your favorite beer.
So here’s me, sending you five minutes and virtual beer of beverage of choice. I’ll return when the new year has arrived, and I hope you’ll rock 2010 with me.
Happy happy happy holidays!
(P.S. I was forced in front of the camera for a local newspaper feature, and my business partner Haunani nabbed this bio shot in the loft. Yay Haunani!)
I love getting questions from Brand Camp blog readers! From a lovely photographer in Dallas…
Here’s the way it works for my business. I do an in-home client proofing session with projector and large screen. I post them online and give them 10 days to place their orders. I nag them if they don’t. This last part feels like babysitting and drives me crazy and is a waste of my time. I tell them there is a $25 fee if I have to re-post their web gallery.
I don’t like the “pressure them at the slideshow so they’ll buy right then” method because I don’t expect everyone to make $700 decisions on the spot. I used to offer a 10% discount if they order at the slideshow viewing but now that I’ve used Easy as Pie, I don’t want to lower my prices by offering yet another discount.
How do I get customers to get off their asses and place their orders?
Dear Dallas: A few simple tips can change your clients from feet-dragging to downright spiffy order-placer-people. (That’s the very technical term for them. The Latin? Spendmoneyicus-nowicus.)
Call your session an ORDERING session.
Not proofing, previewing, viewing, or revealing. Straight up, cash-taking, money-talking, order-placing ORDERING.
Take portrait orders on the spot.
I absolutely expect people to make $700 portrait-purchasing decisions on the spot. I don’t have the time to hold 2 or 3 ordering sessions to get one order, and I’ll bet you don’t either. I’m not into high pressure sales, but you’ll find that simply having the expectation of ordering yields…orders. If we’ve designated Friday from 6 to 8 p.m. as our ordering session, we’re going to order, dammit!
Offer portrait collections only at the time of your ordering appointment.
In other words, if you’re going to inconvenience me by ‘talking it over’ for three days while your order total drops by 40 to 60 percent, you’re going to be paying a la carte pricing. If you’d like to enjoy the discounts of collection pricing, you’re going to have to order at our convenient and ridiculously awesome in-home ordering appointment.
Narrow the online gallery window to 72 hours.
If your clients absolutely, positively cannot make a decision and are willing to defer to a la carte pricing, let them choose the 72 hours when they’d like to have their order online. If they choose that window, there’s no excuse for a baseball game or concert or cheerleading practice keeping them from placing their order.
Charge a higher gallery republishing fee.
A $25 fee is inconvenient, yes, but if it’s $75 or more, it’s downright profitable! The higher the price, the more likely that this fee will never have to be charged and your orders will be placed on time.
(If you need more tips like this for rocking the sales and projection with your portrait photography clients, I recommend buying the Projection and Sales Merit Badge. Shameless, I know.)
This has no reason, but it makes me happy. Stressed about clients? Christmas? Orders? Bills? AGH? Just watch.
If you’d like to submit a question for the blog, use the contact form to hit me with it!
I LOVE THIS BLOG. Your quick wit, honesty, and downright photo biz smarts is amazing! I have the big projector, proselect and all….and still haven't done a session. I like a good kick in the rump every now and then…so THANKS for this….and for all of the other advice and humor you share with the rest of us.
I’ve heard all the excuses in the book. My clients are awful. They don’t buy enough. They don’t buy when I want them to. They buy greeting cards and frame them instead of purchasing prints. They scan the prints they bother to purchase. They put my images all over Facebook without my permission.
I once had your problems.I spent two years working in a MotoPhoto, which is now closed. The franchise model is part high-volume, low-end portrait studio and part film-processing lab.
It was while trying to sell the VERY EXPENSIVE $65 Single Pose Package to total strangers that I learned to sell stuff. If I could just get them to buy three portrait sheets — a sheet being 1 8×10, 2 5×7′s, 3 4×6′s, 4 3.5×5′s, or 8 wallets — I would meet my sales goal.
I laugh at the $65 goal now, but it was very real! I had to convert people who were given a free sitting and a free 8×10 print into paying customers. During that conversion process, things often got ugly. Many customers attempted to bully, cajol, and/or demean me. They did whatever they thought would get me to lower the price or add some free stuff to their order.
I was new to photography, happy to have a job, and unsure of my skills. I let people tell me my work wasn’t worth spending $30 on. I let them alter portrait packages, make deals, and generally make me feel like poo in the name of getting a few more dollars in the register.
And then something happened. I began to respect my work.
When I began to respect my work, others did, too.
Yes, they still tried to heckle me into giving them free stuff, but I could say no. I could defend my lighting skills, my focal points, and my choice of composition as I grew. I didn’t apologize for cutting off the top of a child’s head because it let me get closer to their eyes in the shot. I didn’t apologize for my choices in shooting or in editing. I stopped apologizing, period, and took charge of the sales sessions that were taking place.
The average sale went from under $65 to over $300. (Remember, it’s a low-end chain! This was extraordinary!) I created portrait collections that made sense and that were based on what my clients wanted. I began to offer retouching as a matter of course and raised prices accordingly. I asked clients to trust me, and they did.
I expected clients to trust me as a professional, and to pay accordingly for my professionalism.
(Was this enough to save the business? No. Out-of-control overhead expenses and diminishing film-processing habits were beyond my reach. Anyway…)
If you’re still encountering people who refuse to respect your work, your time, or your policies, I’ll bet you’re not respecting yourself first. It kills me to see individuals on forums who are still griping the same gripes as two years ago without having changed their policies or their pricing to reflect a respect for their own artwork!
Fabulous portrait sales begin with respect for yourself, your time, and the artwork you create. I can teach you the sales process, but the respect is up to you.
Amen, sister! I so hear you about this. I know I had to get to the point where I was pretty annoyed (at how much TIME I was putting in and how little my clients appreciated it) before I started respecting my work. Now, I have no problems doing it. I hope everyone on the forums gets it soon, too, because I agree with you about the griping. Thanks for the post!
In the midst of Brand Camp consults (which should actually be called ‘Business Therapy’), I often find myself giving an artist permission. Permission to believe in herself, permission to raise prices, permission to fail, permission to be true to her artistic style, permission to get rid of a blog, permission to delete weddings from the website, permission to paint a wall blue, permission to use polka dots.
Consider this your permission.
If you adore something, use it. Show it. Embrace your love of plaid, your preppy side, your polka dotted background. (Keep your clients in mind, of course, but don’t let anyone tell you x, y, or z is awful if you find it remarkable.)
If you hate something, don’t do it. If you loathe blogging, find another way to reach your audience. If you are nauseated by traditional portraits, don’t show them on your website. If you abhor color photos, shoot only black and white. If you retch at the thought of digital photography, shoot film.
Consider this your permission.
You are good enough. You are brave enough. You can treat yourself and your artwork with dignity.
Consider this your permission.
Get out there and fail without beating yourself up about it. Get out there and make a friend, work with a business, hold a contest, try out a promotion. If it fails, minimize it. If it succeeds, pat yourself on the back.
Consider this your permission to succeed.
Be the fullest, bravest you on the planet. Learn and grow, certainly, but celebrate your progress as well.
Consider this your permission.
I was twenty years old and completing my degree in English before someone told me I didn’t have to read a book simply because I’d started it. It’s so simple, right? I just needed permission.
Kristen, thanks for this today! I think we need this reminder often… especially in the midst of holiday family portrait madness when everyone is yelling CHEESE at their kids
Thank you! I found this through Twitter, and I'm bookmarking it. There are so many days when all of us need to read this. Today, I needed it. Thank you!
I’m going to print this out and post it on my office wall! Thank you for giving me the permission I need to succeed even if I fail a lot along the way!
thank you so much kristen. this is huge. I (as I'm sure most creatives are) very hard on myself. I am my own worst / hardest critic. At times I think it's good that I expect nothing less than perfection (or what clients would interpret as "perfection") from myself, but it certainly gets taxing. Thank you for the reminder that we can try new a different things and feel completely confident no matter what the outcome.
I’ve been watching too much Ace of Cakes, obviously. Last night I decided that building a gingerbread house can’t be *that* difficult and went to work with royal icing and a slightly-deformed icing bag. Um. The coffee table is covered in a thin layer of icing. The front Christmas tree is leaning to the right.
For God’s sake, the snowman has a unibrow.
horrid photos courtesy of my iphone
This is also, I have to remind myself, a first attempt. I’ve never piped icing from a bag or assembled a house made of gingerbread. The fact that it’s still standing is a testament to my progress in the happenin’ world of gingerbread houses.
The same principle applies to business. If this is your first business, and particularly your first few years in business, you’re a work in progress. It’s easy to say you’ve effed up your application of royal icing or your snowman is leaning precariously to the side.
For a moment, though, let’s consider your progress. This year, have you:
Your gingerbread house of a business may not be perfect, but I’ll wager that it IS making progress. Take a moment to remind yourself of your own accomplishments. And even if you’re following a gumdrop master in the ways of business, take heart. NO ONE has it all together. No business owner’s past is free of mistakes and failures.
I needed this post this morning – thank you!! Oh – and when my mother and I built a gingerbread VILLAGE (4 houses with acoutrement) when I was little, the dog ate it! So great job on keeping the house safe he he he
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