Bev's Blog

Going back to when I started working with Tim and his father in the studio, I remember being proud of NOT doing planning sessions. Other studios required them, but we didn’t. The clients that were attracted to our studio were the ones who were not serious about their upcoming session. Translated, that meant they didn’t care that much and were never the good spenders!

Fast forward to today and we would not dream of doing a session without a planning session! What is new, at least to us, is that we now do the majority of these in our clients’ homes. Until we started closing on Mondays, we just could not fit it onto our calendar. Now, we use many Mondays for these appointments. From the success we have experienced, I would say to you to fit them into your calendar, no matter what! They are that pivotal in these times, where so many have flooded the profession, in creating a higher and more professional level of experience for the client. We can create very customized Sales Suggestions when we are armed with the additional knowledge going into the home provides.

Reason #1:

Putting THEIR image on THEIR wall in THEIR home through the magic of ProSelect is AMAZING! 

As many of you know, we created the concept of the Sales Suggestion many years ago when we were shooting film. The concept was to start a sale at the “end” of a typical sale, pre-selecting the images in the sizes and products we wanted our clients to purchase and pitching it to them, letting them say yes or no or tweak it. We called them Sales Suggestions. Of course, that is an entire other blog or two to explain it in total. Now, when we do a planning session in our clients’ homes, we are simply taking the idea of the Suggestion a step further by putting our selected images on their walls, thereby creating a vivid visual. People are visual; sales are also visual!

We now take several pieces of copy paper instead of a ruler so that we can write the locations throughout the home on it. When we started, we only took a ruler that we would tape to the wall with painter’s tape. Then we would get back to the studio with several snapshots of walls, hallways, etc, but couldn’t remember where they were located throughout the home. DUH! We all know that paper is 11″ wide, so we use that measurement in ProSelect to correctly size the images as we populate our client’s walls with virtual images. We save these snaps in a folder for future suggestions of future imagery. It is a win-win. We know the layout of their home and where our portraits would hang best and they get properly-sized imagery!

Reason #2:

It changes the playing field of host and guest.

When we are were invited to do the planning session in a home, our client becomes the host and us the guest. It is exactly opposite of doing the planning session in the studio. When we are the guest in a home, the dynamics change as our clients strive to make us feel comfortable on their turf. It takes the pressure off a bit. An added bonus is they don’t have to pack up their babies and children to bring them to us! Any time we can make our clients’ lives easier serves us well in the market when women are busier than ever before and love this convenience.

Reason#3:

We see their decor and can match imagery and framing more closely to a style that will hang well in their home.

Although our concept of Sales Suggestions have served us very well over the years, we can pinpoint them more specifically when we know what our clients’ homes look like. If our client doesn’t yet know which Walden “style” they want, Color Studies (more formal) or Relationship Black and White Imagery (more interactive and contemporary) or a Beau Visage (painted piece), we can steer them in the right direction when we are standing in their home, looking around at their decorating style. We can more successfully choose framing as well and not suggest a formal frame for a casual home or vice versa. Seeing the colors used throughout their home helps determine how we style the photography session as well so that we don’t use colors in our set that would clash with their walls.

How do we get clients to book these sessions in their homes? What we have found that works best is if we simply present the idea as normal operating procedure. Instead of saying, “We do planning sessions either here at the studio or in your home. Which would you like?” Instead, we say, “Our planning sessions are done in your home (here you give whatever reason you want to present to them). Which day would be best? Monday or Thursday?” Let them turn you down; don’t assume anything!

As a boutique studio, we MUST create GAPS between us and others vying for the same business and dollars. With this added service, we feel we are adding yet another layer that creates a GAP for us in our market.

Have a great week, everyone! Please subscribe if you are not a regular…I would love to have you:-)

Bev

www.timandbevwalden.com

This can be a bit tricky, but I wanted to share what we have done in this area as we have had photographers inquire about this topic. We decided we needed to raise prices, but really hated to in a soft economy, so we came up with these solutions.

Instead of raising prices on some of the products, we decided to look at our PROFIT MARGINS instead to see where we could improve them. We took apart every product and process to see where we could lower the base cost, but we knew the product still had to stand the quality test our clients paid us for.

1. The first change we made was on one of our most popular products, the Image Showcases (6-8×8 images in 12×12 double mats.) We were paying quite a lot for vendors to cut a double mat for the front and then an additional solid mat to back each of the 6 matted images. Three mats per image times 6 images was 18 mats for one product! We don’t use cheap mats either, so that was adding to our cost and diminishing our profit margin. On top of that, we had to pay to have them assembled and also pay for the print that was inserted and they took awhile to finish and deliver to our clients because of all the many steps (and people) in the process.

Instead, we decided to create a designed 12×12 piece as a template where we could digitally add the image into it and voila! Done! Now all we do is upload these pieces to White House (WHCC) and they come back beautifully printed, mounted on styrene, laminated and ready to deliver. This cut our costs tremendously in materials and labor and dramatically shortened the time it took to deliver it. We designed one set for color and one for our black and white work. In the Associate division (formerly Studio B), we were already doing this.

With this new style, we are keeping the same price as we had and if someone wants the “old style” with physical mats, we charge $50.00 additional for the extra materials and labor they require. It makes sense to our clients when I explain it, we make much more profit and everyone is happy as they can order either and we are covered.

2. The second change we made was to delete the automatic mounting of our Table Top images (8×10 and smaller) and if a client wants it now, we charge an additional $15.00 per image. Again, we are taking the approach of raising our profit margins rather than our print prices. About 40% of our clients will pay for the mounting of their images and 60% opt out. This decision allows us to keep our Table Top prices the same (now for unmounted prints) and make additional bottom line profits when we mount them.

3. Finally, on this topic, we scoured our price lists to find those items that were costing us too much to produce and figured out ways to scale them back to make them more profitable. Since we were printing our own canvasses in the past, we created our products in odd sizes as it didn’t matter. Once we printed them and had our in-house framer stretch them, we realized we were paying way too much once we figured up the costs of materials and labor (and it took a long time to deliver these images). We decided to re-configure our products to fit WHCC’s sizes and once we did that, our costs went way down. So, our Senior Eclectic that was 13×21 is now 16×24, a normal WHCC size. We know now exactly how much it will cost and as a bonus, we have a much faster turn-around.

Take the time this week to go through your prices and products to see where any changes, big or small, can make a difference to your profit margins.

Have a great week everyone.

Bev

www.timandbevwalden.com

“If all store owners watched a video tape of what every customer experiences in their store, any of three statistics might rise dramatically: murder, suicide or unemployment.” Ron Martin

This quote made me chuckle, but also reminded me of how important a good-no, great-no, incredible salesperson is to success (or failure.) Though we don’t run a retail business, certain core principles still apply when discussing sales, so I thought I would  go over what I consider foundational lessons we all need to learn to succeed.

First of all, sales is not a dirty word nor is it a low-skill job. Actually, I think it is harder to find an incredible salesperson than an incredible photographer! It takes a certain personality, determination and mind-set to excel in this area. A great salesperson can take a mediocre product and make it a success. A poor salesperson can take a great product and fail. Yet, we seldom see emphasis put on sales training and when we do, few photographers take advantage of it.

Selling is foundational not only to surviving, but thriving!

If you had to define selling, what would the first word be related to? Would it be a giving or a taking word? Those whose only goal is to take money from their client will never excel in sales-it is superficial and your client will know it. Sales is a giving profession. In the salesroom, I give myself to the client in how I act, my emotions, my words, my time, the information I impart, my ideas and so forth. When the client makes their decision on what to buy, they feel good about it and become evangelists for us! It is a win-win situation.

When money is the only object of a sale, pressure becomes the driving force. Pressure births stress, negative feelings, high anxiety, pushy behavior and failure!

Second, people buy you before they buy what you are selling. This means you MUST respect your clients, have an outgoing personality, be informative and friendly. When the client trusts you, they trust what you are selling. Build trust and friendship with your clients.It only takes a few seconds (some say 7 seconds) for a client to size you up and determine if they do or don’t like you. First impressions are critical, but so are second, third and so forth. We must generate the two R’s at our studio; RETURN AND REFERRALS. We have had some clients for thirty years and we need them to continue coming back (RETURN). We want them to feel so impressed with our business that they REFER others to us! The two R’s are the lifeblood of any business!

The third lesson is one I learned early in my photography career and that is no matter how I felt, when my client came through the door, I was on stage! It didn’t matter if I wasn’t in the mood or feeling down! Professionals do their job even when they don’t feel like it. Think about a professional basketball player or an actor on Broadway; the show must go on, no matter what! The amazing thing is I always felt much better after the appointment, but I had to make a quality decision about my behavior long before my client walked through the door!

Selling is like being on stage in a play; the moment the client shows up, you must be “on” no matter what you may feel like!

Though there is so much more to say on this topic, the final lesson I want to talk about today is that you must learn to communicate before you can make the sale. Much like a long distance runner, the most energy required is right at the beginning when the runner must push off of the blocks with great speed and a burst of energy, but after that, can shift into a slower pace, knowing he must get to the finish line. Sales are like that! The first moments require the greatest amount of skill and energy to meet and greet the client and bring down any walls they may have put up. It is vital that the client feels comfortable with you, but they often have their “poker face” on, not knowing what is going to happen in the sales appointment. Often, they have had a bad experience in the past and they may expect another one from you!  You must work to get the walls down, relax the client and then you can shift into a slower pace, allowing relationships to form as you are selling. This is why we schedule 90 minutes for our sales. We never want a client to feel rushed or pushed out for the next appointment.

“Don’t get out of order by trying to conclude the sale before you form relationships-people don’t care about what you know until they know you care about them”

Read this blog and make a list of things you need to work on in the sales room this week. Post it above your desk and think about how it applies to your situation.

Have a great week everyone!            Bev

www.timandbevwalden.com

Facebook: Walden’s Education for Photographers

In a darkened room in 1994, Tim sat, head in hands, wondering what to do with Walden’s Photography, the business we took over from his dad a few years before. With money and business dwindling, we had to make some decisions, and make them fast (or find other jobs.) Birthed from that time of desperation, we made 5 pivotal decisions that changed our course and put us on the path to success. Today, they still guide us when we falter.

Pivotal Decision #1: No longer being all things to all people, but finding a unique photography style and niche. Narrow, narrow, narrow!

Who are you in the photography world? Are you easily recognized by the buying public? Does everything you do and say (ads, marketing, social media, studio decor, exhibits)  relate back to your photography niche and tell the same story? If not, you will have a hard time being recognized in the marketplace. Examine your heart to find your true self and niche; then develop this uniqueness and tightly focus on it. Think of your niche as a yardstick, use it to measure every step you take and you will find success. Can you write down three words that describe your photography?

Pivotal Decision #2: Selling with Suggestions and simplifying

The lifeblood of every business is making enough money to keep doing what you love. As photographers, we love pushing that button hundreds of times, but if you don’t edit your images to get a handle on them and then specifically suggest to your client what they should purchase, you will drive business away by tiring, confusing and frustrating your clients. Ask yourself this question, “How much time do you spend in the sales room explaining vs experiencing?” If your answer reveals that you have too much going on to allow your client to emotionally experience their images, you need to simplify. Make it easy to do business with you by creating a streamlined process. Look at your price lists and products; can you simplify them? I suggest our VideoCap, Selling with Suggestions to get more in-depth insight on this topic.

Pivotal Decision #3: Hiring a “Marketing Director.” 

In re-shaping our business and implementing the Relationship black and white style, we needed someone who would spend several hours each week pounding the pavement and getting us better known. At that time, we were more interested in our market knowing us than loving us, and our Marketing Director did just that. Visiting businesses, she arranged exhibits and created new partnershipswith them. With her artsy background, she linked us with the arts and charities in our town. Because of her diligence, our name soon rose to the top in our area as she arranged speaking engagements and appearances. With her time, she extended our reach outside of our four walls and into the community. And the best part…she was a mom who wanted a flexible and creative job for a few hours each week, not a marketing executive demanding a huge salary. Her strengths: being able to understand our vision, passion for photography,love of people,creativity,diligence,persistence and loyalty. You too have a “marketing director” in your midst; now, can you  go out and find her?

Pivotal Decision #4: Understanding the power of emotion, the x-factor

Before we created Relationship black and white portraits in the mid-90s, our photography was simply recording a face in a nicer way than our clients could (no emotion). As we proceeded down the path of Relationship portraits, we were climbing an exponential learning curve about what people want and why people buy. One strong factor that emerged was emotion. So, for the first time in our history, we started putting emphasis on creating emotionally charged portraits, learning our clients’ stories to go along with their portraits. Knowing the stories changed us as photographers; we became more sensitive and emotional ourselves! With these emotionally charged portraits came emotional sales, enhancing our bottom line. Emotion adds value-in fact, it is priceless! We started using emotion in our marketing as well, and the phones started ringing again. The bottom line is this; people want to feel and see emotion in their portraits and the emotion that trumps the rest…LOVE! How are your portraits showing emotion?

Pivotal Decision #5: Working together

The photography industry is unique in the large number of couples working together. For us, it has been the right decision for over thirty years. In the beginning, we were warned against it as being too risky financially. After all, one of us needed a salary that was stable and not dependent on the photography business. However, we would not be where we are today if we had followed that advice. Being there for each other 24/7 is our strength. We experience the same joys, sorrows, frustrations and challenges. These experiences have merged us together in a way that working apart would not have done. All business decisions are made by both of us and we are a sounding board for each other’s ideas. We know that in the big picture, employees will come and go, but we will always be there for each other. That is the promise we made to each other during the tough times of the past and it is a promise we intend to keep.

Have a great week, everyone!

Bev

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