In any business, there are two main ways to generate more revenue – you either increase your volume and take on more clients OR you increase your prices.
As a photographer, increasing your volume means booking in more sessions and shooting more.
Now that may be the simple solution for most photographers, but not always the best option … particularly if you’re already fully booked or you’re a parent balancing home and work life.
So the next option is to increase your prices or your average sale per client.
This is where the brilliance of “In Person Sales” comes in.
In an increasingly digital world, it has never been easier to send our clients an online proofing gallery.
By doing this, however, you’re limiting the buying potential of each customer … and ultimately your overall sales.
Clients have incredibly small attention spans.
Once they’re over the initial excitement of seeing their images for the first time, the novelty where’s off and the emotional attachment to the photos subsides.
This ULTIMATELY reduces their desire to purchase.
To make matters worse, “digital” and online also has a lower perceived value. Even if you’re providing them with a printed product, all they have in front of them is a digital image.
They don’t have your products in front of them to see, touch and smell them.
So what’s the answer?
In this week’s video, I’ll explain how In-Person Sales can dramatically increase your profits and not only deliver gorgeous photos, but an unforgettable experience as well.
And I promise you, they’ll be willing to pay higher for the value you offer.
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Full Transcript
Hey, guys. Mark Rossetto here. In this video I’m going to show you how in-person sales can dramatically increase your profits.
There’s so much to say about in person sales. It’s a bit of a buzzword at the same time.
But the difference is that in-person sales really is a hand-holding situation for your clients.
You look after them from the inquiry, all the way throughout the shoot, and all the way through to the design appointment where they see the images for the first time.
Then you help them choose and select the right artwork and images to suit their home and style, and design something specifically for them.
It’s also a greater experience for the client, because if you just got a web link and went onto a gallery and saw your photos, most likely that client is looking at it through a device – an iPhone, an Android, or a screen.
There’s no big emotional attachment to the photos.
There’s probably a watermark on it as well.
They’re also probably looking at it by themselves, and not with their partner.
They’re not sharing the experience.
They’re just scrolling through the pictures on their phone.
I just feel that you’re not giving your clients what you deserve to give them, which is a full client experience.
Give them a professional photography experience to help them in every step of the way to choose the right artwork to suit their home and style.
The other part is a perceived kind of value.
The perceived value of clicking on an image and downloading it is a lot lower than picking up a beautiful piece of artwork and hanging it directly on the wall, ready to go.
When I mean a full service, that’s what I mean by finished product.
You wouldn’t go to, say, a professional restaurant, where you sit down at the table, you look at the menu, you ask to be cooked a certain meal, and then the chef comes out with the ingredients and says, “there you go. Cook it yourself. You can do it.”
Artwork is not just in the pretty photos that we take in the files.
It’s in the products we choose and the quality of the products to suit your brand and style of photography.
Because you know that you’re going to take those digital files and go down to your local department store, and it’s going to be printed with all sorts of funky colors.
When you speak to the 16-year-old behind the counter and say, “hey, this doesn’t look so good.” He’s just going to go, “that’s what you gave me. That’s on the USB. Not my problem.”
Where when we can actually look after our clients every step of the way and do the finished artwork, that’s where the true value is at.
So, online value. Most of them looking on their phone. Most of the time, both parents won’t even see the pictures, and only one parent will order them.
There’s a lack of building rapport, and there’s a lack of “how do you create your images?”
Imagine going, “I want number 6, 12, 18, 24, 32, and 16, to look just like this.” The client is going to look at you and go, “um, I can’t imagine that, no,” because a confused mind will just kind of say no.
Whereas with in-person sales, you can sit them in the room and show them a beautiful slideshow on a computer or a projector (I recommend projector) where you can wow them with the slideshow to start with.
Help them pick and choose their favourite images that they’ll love to have.
You might have a gallery of 50, and it gets down to 20 to 30, okay?
But then with the power of ProSelect and also Fundy, you can do room views, collections and layouts, and they can take a photo of their house. We import it into the software and then we put the room view onto the screen.
We can say, “That’s the images that you’d love to have. That’s too big. That’s too small. That’s with a frame. That’s with no frame.”
And we can actually create beautiful artwork specifically designed for the clients in mind.
You’re there to help them in every step of the way to produce your finished artwork that you’d love to have, which will therefore dramatically increase your sales.
Because, all of a sudden, a downloadable gallery of 30 images for, $800, $1,000, or $1,500 cannot compare to a $4,000 masterpiece of a collection we used to sell all the time, or the beautiful 30-inch metal high gloss definition, beautiful print that’s created.
Our clients can’t create this stuff.
This is the stuff we need to make sure that we look after our clients every step of the way and create beautiful artwork and images that they’re going to love to have forever.
Trust me, it will dramatically increase your profits.
Because you’re going to be selling artwork, and that artwork needs to be priced accordingly to have greater profits at the same time.
You’re not going to sell a $600 circle, a metal print for $750.
That’s not the idea.
If you price your products accordingly with the artwork you want to sell, with albums, boxes, and gift prints and up-selling and value-added products, you will dramatically increase your sales.
So, my encouragement to you is to sell artwork and look after your clients in every step of the way.
We’re not just here to take pretty photos.
We’re here to give the clients a full, proper service that they will love to have.
Bedazzle your clients with the skills and knowledge you have, not just with your photography, but the finished artwork that we produce as well.
Have a fantastic day.
We’ll speak to you soon.
Bye.
