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GOOD is what gets people in the door, like a newspaper headline or a “special” at the supermarket. Good is what makes you competitive.
Don’t offer just one service, offer choices.
Don’t assume the deal that encourages people to get in touch with you is the one they’ll commit to later (once you’ve open their eyes to how good you are, and what you can do for them).
And don’t assume that they won’t go even further once they’ve fallen in love with their own photographs.
That’s the essence of Good Better Best. Three offers, three deals — not one.
GOOD is what gets people in the door, like a newspaper headline or a “special” at the supermarket. Good is what makes you competitive.
Good shouldn’t be too good. You need most people to buy something better.
BETTER is the deal you’re budgeting on. Might seem expensive, but it’ll make sense when they see it. Better value than good. Makes them say “Wow”.
BEST is aspirational. Best makes Better seem a bargain, but they’d love it if they had the money. If you sell too many Bests, up the ante. Maybe your Better and Best aren’t enough of a stretch.
Points to bear in mind…
1. GOOD needs to be an honest offer you’ll do with good grace.
2. Illustrate your offers with actual products which they can see in your studio and on your website.
3. Your word-of-mouth prospects won’t come in looking for GOOD because they’ve already seen something BETTER that you did for their friends. If sample albums are your silent salesmen, client albums are traveling salesmen.
4. If people don’t say “Wow”, you need to rethink.
5. Be obsessively different, so it’s hard to compare you on price.
6. Above all else be flexible. And when you’re negotiating, remember that sweeteners are better than discounts.
7. Finally, don’t talk yourself down. Bob told us that one reason his new sales assistant was so successful was that she had no idea how much she was expected to sell.
The Crown Jewels
If you want people to upgrade, you can’t give them everything they want in the cheap seats.
An American couple told us that album sales made up half their turnover … but that didn’t happen until they made a major change.
What they had been doing was deliver their wedding customers “proof books” with large images in them. Clients loved these (no extra charge) books … so who needs an album?
They started putting thumbnail images in the proof books instead, and their album sales instantly went up.
I call this giving away the Crown Jewels, and it’s something photographers have been doing ever since I can remember.
The Crown Jewels are what your customers value above all else. If you give them away as part of your Good (cheap) deal you’ll kill your Better and Best packages.
These days, for most people the Crown Jewels are the digital files (“Shoot and Burn” or “Shoot and Share”). You’re whistling in the wind if you expect to maximise up-selling and revenue but give the files away at your entry-level price.
Our American customers said, “We’re artists. People love our work and they buy it, we don’t have to push it. I want every product we make to be unique and artful.” The studio began including a product credit in their packages, which the clients could spend on whatever they like.
Deals
We all know that when we discount a $1000 product by say 10% we’re kissing good-bye to $100. But that’s not 10% of your profit. If your profit is $400 it’s 25%.
You can argue that $300 is better than nothing, but it all came out of your own pocket.
Instead of lowering the price, think about giving extra value – something with a high perceived value but less cost to you, such as a print for the wall, maybe, or extra time at the shoot.
Or if your base price is too high for your client, could you remove something to justify the reduction – less time at the shoot for example?
Could you style your packages and prices to factor in these little opportunities?
After all, they get to ask the discount question, but you get to write the price list they’re responding to.
Credits, not products
If I was selling packages (pricing my coverage and the product together) I’d think twice before trying to get my clients to commit to a specific product, like a 20-side 10x10 album, or a 20x16 framed print. That’s because I don’t want to limit their thinking or discourage them from upgrading.
For that reason a lot of studios frame the product component of a package as a “deposit” or “credit”. I would certainly make it clear that they don’t need to make a final decision until after the wedding.
Would that be devious? Certainly not. They can read what the deposit will buy them from the price list, and of course there will be perfectly satisfactory products available that they won’t need to pay extra for.
How to discount
I told you how I bought the most expensive laptop bag I came across for my new MacBook Air. It was such a beautiful machine I thought it deserved the best. What I didn’t say was I got a deal.
You’re not to know this but I’m a shrug-and-pay guy. It’s my role in life to pay full retail, so for me to ask for a discount, let alone get one, is unusual. But on this occasion that’s what I did.
What struck me was how the store projected itself, and I thought there was a lot to learn from it — beyond thinking I should do this more often myself.
There wasn’t a sale sign anywhere. Nothing to suggest times might be tough, or please make an offer, or we’ll match any price. Just a confident up-market establishment selling quality goods. The sales assistant had to make a phone call to authorise my discount.
So how do you avoid creating what Seth Godin calls a “clearance sale culture”?
First, accept that while discounting is something you may never want to do, the alternative could be too many people walking away.
Second, don’t lower your base prices: that sends the wrong message, and everyone gets the discount, even those who don’t need it, such as me (I would have bought anyway).
Third, if someone asks for a discount, consider whether you’re prepared to “sharpen your pencil”, and by how much. Then do each deal one-to-one (everybody you agree to deal with will feel pleased with themselves and their negotiating skills).
There’s danger in slashing prices and/or under-delivering. You must be clear how much you can afford to discount, and also what for. For example, are you just trying to stop the customer from walking away, or could you negotiate on price to secure a bigger sale?
One of my photographer friends used to get very frustrated by competitors who sharpen their pencils to get the deal. But it seems pretty normal commercial behaviour to me, especially if the outcome is to secure a better commitment from the client.
They get to ask the discount question, but you get to write the price list they’re responding to.
Transparency
It’s understandable that many photographers are coy about their prices.
The Good Better Best approach doesn’t make it any easier, because, like a car salesman, you want people to come in and experience the wood trim, leather seats and 18-speaker sound system for themselves.
What do you do? Tell them how much for the base model, with rubber floor mats, vinyl seats and no backing camera? Or scare them off with the price of something that — unlike the car — they’ve never seen?
You could try saying:
“My prices start at $XXX, but I offer a range of plans because every job is different.
“Why don’t you tell me more about your event? Venue, number of guests, wedding party etc? And what you’ll expect from me?”
Well that’s a mouthful, but it’s sensible and honest. It would be even more honest if I told them how much a typical client actually spends, which you probably should.
But I showed this post to our Resident Bride and she said all my suggestions would frustrate her! She just wants a straight answer. Right there on your website.
I can only think of four sensible things to say about that.
1. You don’t need a lot of people in your community to say yes to you, and as time passes more and more of them will know you, through their friends and your reputation.
2. All the more reason to spend time and money on beautiful products that you can put in their hands, or admire on your website, so they can jump straight to saying, “Wow, how much is that?”
3. Don’t just show them photographs. They may look beautiful but no one will know how much they’re worth. Beautiful presentation adds context and value.
4. Try something. See how it works. Try something different. Repeat.
However you do it, if you come across as straightforward and transparent, you win. No surprises.
“My prices start at $XXX, but every job is different. Why don’t you tell me about your event?”
Surprising and puzzling
To succeed in business we have to make the most of our opportunities. In the context of professional photography here are a few things that surprise and puzzle us.
— How often the images are released by the studio before the sale is finalised.
— How the album planning/sales process can take months, sometimes years.
— How there’s often no attempt to up-sell after the event.
• How albums and other products are treated as costs, not profit centres or marketing tools.
— How album planning is treated as an obligation not an opportunity.
— How studios go with the crowd, instead of standing out from it.
None of those maximise your opportunities, and there are probably less opportunities to go round now than there used to be.
Maybe you’ve thought this all through, or maybe you need to work on your sales strategy. Try it out on real live clients. Use the experience to make it better.
Just because you love what you do doesn’t mean you’re not a business.
Sadly, how much images are worth does not depend on their quality or how much time someone spent on them in post-production.
Instead it depends on how they were marketed and sold.
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