Lessons

Lesson Info

Consultations

helping pet owners plan for portrait sessions to consultations. Do consultations. I know most of you're probably like me. I would go toe all these different conventions and workshops and there's always photographers thing to consultations, do consultations. And when I started my business, some, like who wants to come into the studio again? I don't know what to talk to people about. We can just pick a background when they get here. It's a whole another appointment that they have to make. Like I said earlier there already coming in for the portrait session for the ordering session for the pickup appointment. I'm gonna ask them 1/ time to come in like that's just kind of a lot to ask. And like I said, I don't really know to talk about you guys kind of feeling that sometimes. Okay, I thought the same thing. So I said, You know what? I'm going to start doing consultations just cause everyone's saying to do it. I don't really know what to do, but I'm just gonna do it on Dmanisi like if it wo...

rks. So what I realized was you can actually shoot sessions with a purpose and with a plan. So I had a client called the studio a couple months ago, and this is the Easter Bunny client that she calls and she says I want your gift card at a silent auction. So we donate to silent auctions. Were talking about that tomorrow, too. And I'm so excited cause I've seen your work everywhere and I want to get my dogs photographed, and it was around Easter, and they have bunny ears, and I'm gonna bring your Easter bunny ears in. And I'm so excited. Okay, So what's the first thing you guys think that sales gonna suck, right? Your links is going to get an eight by 10 with the Easter Bunny years, right? That's what I'm thinking. Some like. Okay, so, yeah, that's great. We can do a shot with their Easter bunny ears, just like the holidays. My answer would be the same. Um, let's do a couple shots without it to. I want you to have year round portrait's. So let's pick a time. But the session I'd like to do a consultation we offered to all of our clients. For us, it's not required. It's something that we highly recommend in the way that we word it. We offer consultations to all of our clients. It helps you plan for your portrait session. We can take, make a bunch of the big decisions and get those out of the way. So your portrait session day isn't so stressful and you're not having to make so many decisions on that day. Most people are going to go. I don't want my portrait session day to be so stressful. So again, it's not required. If people want to do it over the phone, I'll talk about that, too. You can do consultations over the phone. Absolutely. Doesn't have to be done in your studio. Some of you don't have a studio. I get that. But so consultations the book a time for her to come back. Her name is Kelly. She comes to the studio and we give her tour. So the first thing I ask is Who's gonna be in the portrait's? And she's like, Well, I mean, just dogs. I mean, I don't Maybe I'll jump in for one, but, you know, just kind of the dogs. Okay, But maybe I don't know. I mean, I don't know if I'm gonna look good in portrait. Okay, Perfect. So we just want to, you know, do I need to know that? Well, we just want to know, because I like to shoot in order of priority. Right? And we talked about that. I want to make sure that we're getting the most important images first. So just start thinking about that if you want to be in some of the portrait. So I just want to make sure that I'm not waiting 1/2 hour into the session and you decide to jump in. And the dogs have already heard all the noise. Is so just something to think about suggestions for what's aware. So we talked about that already. She's like, Oh, I don't know. I don't really think about what's aware. Well, we want you to contrast with your pets coloring. Here's some samples. Let me show you. And again, think about this. If you're doing this over the phone, this could be a pdf. You could be on the phone with your client. This could be links on your website. Okay, So click on photography yet go to the what to wear section. Perfect. And you're walking them through it If you're doing consultations over the phone, I really recommend that you're doing something visual. Just talking to people. They're gonna go. Uh huh. Okay, Yeah. Uh huh. And they're driving, and they're not really paying attention. But if you force them to stop and slow down, do you have 10 minutes? Right now, we can do the consultation right now, or if you're busy, we can schedule it. And I can give you a call later this week. It just takes about 10 minutes. I just kind of want to prepare you for the session. So I'm telling Kelly. Okay, so here's some suggestions on what to wear. What's your home decor like? It's so important to ask. I know she's just asking about Easter Bunny years, but if you want to do a wall portrait, I want to make sure this matches your style. I don't want you to have portrait's and I do a pink vintage couch, and you're like, Oh, that's so not me. My house is very simple, very plain. She's like, Oh, okay, so I'm showing her all the different options we have, and I'm like, and she says, like most of your clients, are going to say I don't know your the photographer. Can you just pick something? Yeah, I can pick something, but I just kind of need to know. Do you want pink vintage flor daily feather pillows? Or do you want plain simple contemporary? Maybe just a plain simple blanket. I can pick something, but I kind of want to get an idea. So just try and get a little bit more out of them. So she's like, Oh, definitely not like a vintage couch. I'm definitely more of Ah, um plain simple kind of person. Okay. And she says, Well, I kind of like the color red. Oh, perfect. Here's three options that we have for red. We have a red couch, which we can do like a cream colored background behind. We have a full red muslin looking me behind you and under you, or we have this really cool contemporary couch with these red pillows. Oh, okay. So where you gonna be? Displaying the portrait's is just like I know I haven't even thought about that. That's okay. We just want to know, because if you're gonna be putting in a certain spot and the portrait, it's gonna fit better vertically. We need to know that when we're shooting, because I might shoot all of your portrait's horizontal. So I need to know if that portrait, if that space accommodates horizontal, vertical or square better so she's like, Oh, this is a lot to think about. I don't know. I didn't even think about that right? Preference and your dog's mouth open or closed. This seems like a silly thing when you're not a dog person, but it's important this is. A lot of people have a strong preference. I like my dog when they're smiling. That's their personality, or I like them when they're closed. I don't like when their mouth when there panting. So always ask people. Do you have a preference? And the first question I always get is. Can you control that? And with noises I can control mouth close. I can usually always get a dog's mouth closed unless they're really hot. But with mouth open, you guys saw when I was live shooting. You're just waiting because you can't do anything but wait. So keep smiling, Mom, keep smiling yet I'm just waiting for his Melville McKee, smiling up there. It is and don't make a noise when they open their mouth, because when you do, they just close their mouth again and perk up because when they're focused, they close their mouth. So when they'd, when you're waiting for that mouth open shot, do that. So she's like, Well, that's a lot to think about. I don't think I really have a preference. OK, so we sure the product menu. And when we go over the product menu, this is like like we would in are full ordering session, like we used a few years ago before we did consultations. Okay, so let me show you everything we have. We have canvas gallery wraps and we have signature portrait's those air, two different styles of wall portrait's that we offer. I just want to know if you have a preference. Canvas is a little more painted looking signature portrait's. If you want to do a frame and kind of match other woods that you have at home, then we can do a frame and she's like, I don't know. I haven't really thought about that. So you guys might be thinking This really isn't productive. She's not really giving me anything, but I'm still going to the hole. Consultation. Some people are like I want this. It's hanging in this spot. It has to be a inch. It has to be vertical, like All right. Cool. Like perfect. But some people are gonna be like Kelly like, I don't know. I haven't really thought about it so and I just explain the reason I like to know. I don't really know. I don't need to know right now if you want canvasser framed. But I need to know if there's certain products that you want, because if you want a collage, for example and you have two dogs, remember? I was explaining with shepherds Let's do the two of them together. And then let's do head shots. If you didn't tell me that you wanted that, I might just shoot good portrait's of them and one might have full length. One might have a head shot. Yeah. Can you zoom the full lengthen? Yes, but how big are you getting this? Am I gonna lose quality? So I want to know when I'm shooting on a shoot for specific products. The other reason to, as I tell people, because I don't want to shoot in all those different backgrounds and like a little on this and a little on this. If you want a wall Siris of three images, it just looks better if all the images match. So I want to know that. But if you want an album, it might look nice. If we do all three reds. Let's do a couple in the red couch. A couple with the red pillows, a couple with the red background that we your album isn't so boring. They run background, red background or a background. Of course, she is not looking at just the background. She's looking at their expressions, but you can get a lot more variety if I know that you want an album. So it's just important for me to know before start shooting. So Kelly goes okay, so she goes home and she says, Oh, come on, look your website a little bit more and let me think about what I want to dio. So she comes in for her portrait session and says, Okay, so I decided I want to do the cream colored couch with red pillows. Okay, perfect. And we had talked about what to wear. Don't wear red red pillows, red shirt. So she wore a different color. Everything looks good, dogs air standing out. So she said. The other thing I want to do, the most important shot I decided is me and the dogs together. I do want to have the three of us, and it needs to be a horizontal image because it's going to go here. Okay, she said. Also was on your website, and I love the photo pillows that you have sweetie, photo pillows and photo blankets, and it's one of those products. That's what I love about pet photography is You can kind of get away with products that could be kind of cheesy with kids or with like, ah, high school senior on like a pillow is kind of weird, like with pets. It's like, adorable. So we sell different products like this photo handbags and photo blankets. So she said, and I want to do photo pillows, and I was thinking, I want one on each end of the couch, but I want one dog looking this $11 looking this way. Cute. So they're looking at perfect. Okay, so we know it back from were shooting on. We know which image is the most important so we can shoot in order of priority. We know what products were shooting for so long. Story short. Kelly comes in for the ordering session, and she spends $ on Portrait's. I'm not bragging about $1000 sale because that's like our minimum, that we're trying to get clients suspended. That's like our minimum that we need to meet to meet, reach our goals. But my point is that that wasn't eight by 10 Easter Bunny ear client. She was like gay Easter Bunny ears and because we educated her because she figured out Wow, this is a big deal when clients realize and the light bulb goes off. Wow, this is a big deal. There's more value to that session, and clients will spend more money on something that they value. Twitter quote. Clients will spend more money on something that they value. So when you're doing consultations, it was adding value. Could that got hurt. She didn't even bring the bunny ears. It was never brought up again, didn't bring it to the session. Never heard about him again. because she realized this is the big deal. If I'm gonna do this, I want to wear the right thing. I wanted to look good in my home. It's not just about your clients spending money. I want her to be happy. She spent way more than she planned on spending. She just got this gift card and she was the girl in a couple $100 couple eight by tens Easter Bunny years. But she's leaving our studio super happy. She's even our studio going. This was a great experience. I'm gonna tell all of my friends about this as opposed to going. Um oh, that was fun and cute. Cool. She's going. This is beautiful. So I have two questions. Yes, I just want to say you saved me the price of my plane ticket. That is amazing. You just She pre sold herself by having that consultation. That and also you could find out if she truly was Justin eight by 10 clients, and then she could do a mini session, but told, That's fabulous. It's pure marketing. Good. And what you said was so powerful. Just now you can find out if she's an eight by 10 client and just do a mini session. Perfect done. You know what? It's going to save everybody so much time. You really just want those Easter bunny ears. I don't want to turn you away. We don't have minimums. Let's do the Easter Bunny years. Maybe try and sneak in a normal shot, too. But you know what? Show it to you right away. Get your eight by tens and then you're done. They're still gonna be good portrait's. But I spent way less time with you and having to commit a whole hour long session. I think one of the struggles that I know I have in my market is competing with the $ kg photographer who has a disc of images Can't lion and for the end client to get this disc of 100 images, please pray and pray. Whatever they Here you go. This totally blows that that's not even a competition. It's not even a it's. It's not even in the same ballpark. So that pricing menu, which a lot of people probably look at your prices at first and go absolutely $ for just pet photography. But that one image on the wall like you're saying you've qualified at to the point where that's all they really need. Is that one picture on the wall from the session? This is amazing. No good. I'm glad. Um and I appreciate that. And you said something that made me think of something. They were losing thoughts between each other. They're just bursting out in the air, but consulate? No. But the thing I said before is unless you're doing a mini session, if you're doing a regular class succession, your spending seven hours with that client anyway, not actually the with them, but working on their order between shooting you booked off an hour and 1/2 between editing their portrait. That takes me about an hour and 1/2 to show them images. They're ordering session. That's another hour and 1/2. Then I retouch all the portrait that they got to send to print framing, packaging the pickup appointment, confirming everything. You're gonna spend seven hours on them. Why not add an extra 15 minutes? So know what? The clients going to get to shoot with the purpose. They're happier. You're happier. Everyone's happy. Hey. Yeah, Paula, Do you when they do come into the studio for a session, Do you ask them to bring their pets? Or do you? I don't Her preference. Yeah, there's some people who say to me, It doesn't make a difference. You know, I kind of don't want them there in case I'm doing the consultation and, like my girls were doing a consultation and I'm shooting. If you guys were working alone, that doesn't really matter. But I don't need their pets there. Some people say, like, Hey, can they come because they're better and they're going to be more comfortable if they visited the studio before people know their pets the best. So that's fine. But I really don't think it's important. I don't think it's gonna change the way the animals are so okay, that's what I was wondering, helped with the environment. I'm seeing it first. I don't think it. I don't think it matters. I think it's such a calm environment where when I'm shooting in any way that when they get there, whether it's the first time or the second time, they're just gonna hang out and relax. I have a question from pro image pets who asked. I love the where you displaying the portrait's question. How do you handle when clients shut down? If they're feeling overwhelmed by all the questions, That's perfect. And actually, I'm so glad you asked that because my goal and consultations is overwhelm people, not my goal. But I want to overhaul Mu now. And I want Kelly to leave and go. Whoa, This is a big deal. I really need to think about this. I don't want to overwhelm you at the session. If you guys don't do consultations and you're trying to get all these questions answered, people are like, Oh my gosh, I don't even know what my hair looks like And I'm all stressed out and we've already been here for half are we haven't been picked a background and someone else is going to show up in 1/2 hour. But you're trying to figure out all these things and they don't know the answer. That's what stressful. That's what's overwhelming. If you're trying to cram that all into a portrait session, So, um, losing my thoughts. So the question was, do you want them to be? Do you want them to kind of feel overwhelmed because that makes you it makes it a big deal and it makes you seem like you have everything together and you know exactly what you're doing and that is well or I felt it was given. But I think it just makes it a big deal. It's just cause this is a big deal. So if they leave over, I don't care if they leave overwhelmed that day because it's not the day of their portrait session. They still have a week before they come in. They can call me, They can email me, they can come in for another consultation. They can think about it. I don't care if they're overwhelmed, overwhelmed that day. That's almost my goal for them to go like who? If they just leave and go, OK, cool. You're gonna get an eight by 10 if they leave and go. I really need to think about this. There's the value. There's the importance. So right And we had a question. How often do you get repeat clients? So you mentioned you had someone that wouldn't do indoor out once a year six. When I started my business, I kind of plan that I would never have a repeat client. Just so I had kind of a marketing plan and a business plan because I thought, you know, once dogs or a certain side, they don't look any different. They're going to look the same now as they are three years from now, unless there a puppy and then growing up, or unless they're turning really gray and kind of changing color. So I thought no one's really going to come in again. And what I found is families air changing so much, especially with PET. Third lives aren't that long, and families really change a lot. A lot of our clients are adopting new animals. That's a whole new session. You have a whole new animal. A lot of clients air, um, doing sessions every year, even though they've done it in years past, because they want the holiday cards. That's and, of course, we're trying to sell them while Portrait's. But a lot of people they want to make sure they're getting their family portrait's every year to do holiday cards. I have a lot of clients who will do like our many sessions are limited. It's limited edition sessions, so they're doing like the Big Family session, maybe one year and then maybe the next year. They're like, we're just gonna do that cute little Valentine's seem that you have, and then we don't need Family Portrait every year. But I still want to capture him, and he looks a little bit different, and that's a really cute scene. It's different than are other things. So that's why I try and offer so many different sessions and offer specials throughout the year. And I'm not really heavy on doing themed type of sessions. I'm very picky about that, and I'm gonna talk about that later today, too. But we do have a lot of clients who are every year clients. So okay, yeah, great. I have a question from Deb's 316 Who would like to know when you do the consultation? Is it a couple days after you make the point that the appointment scheduled, or is it a number of days prior or it's any time between when they book and when they're session is it can be the same day, just as long as it's before their portrait session. It could be the day before, so it doesn't matter. And like I said, I touched on it a little bit, But you can absolutely do phone consultations. Like I said, if you don't have a studio space, you can totally tell people when you book the appointment, we do consultations with all of our clients. If you have 10 minutes right now and if you're at a computer, I would love to just kind of go over everything, takes a lot of the stress and give them reasons why. Don't just say, I want you to do it cause I want to spend more money with me. That's all that sounds like is me, me, me. I want to do it cause I want you to be less stressed. I want you to do it so you're prepared for your portrait session. If you're an outdoor shooter, part of your consultation when you're showing that if you're doing over the phone, it could be a PdF. It could be links on your website. But here's popular places that I like to shoot. That's one the things that we're talking about. So I'd like to shoot a lot at Red Rock. Here's what it looks like, or this is kind of Mount Charleston. Or if you just want, like, green grass and trees here, is that look. But you're picking a background for them and you're kind of preparing them a little bit more for their session, even over the phone and bluebird us. How do you handle clients that expected by the digital files as well as Prince? Are you gonna talk more about that? I can talk about it right now. Okay. I don't do high rez. I don't sell it. It's not an option. You could give me $10,000. You don't get high res images from me. So it's just There's a lot of photographers when I hear them speak and they say, Find a way to say yes. And that's just not my theory thes air my policies. This is what I do. If you want higher is images. I'm not the photographer for you. So I want to do the printing. I want to control the quality, and again, when people ask for higher is images. I'm not just saying no, I want to make more money. You're not to spend money. I'm giving them the benefits you always want to show the client the benefits of them. So I keep the high res images. I'm sorry. Don't sell them, But I want to do all the printing. Because if I give you these images, I don't know where you're gonna print them. And I can't control the quality. And I care about your wall portrait. I care about your eight by tens that you're going to give your family, and it might not represent my work. And my reputation is really important to me, so? So I don't sell them. But we do low rez, anything that you purchase imprint you got a low rez file of. There's no charge. I don't sell them. You just you have to purchase an imprint. So and that could be a wall portrait. That could be a photo handbag. Darcy that low researcher giving to the client Facebook album. Facebook Website 72 dp I prior to use for I put my logo in the corner. I don't watermark across their face. But is there for you? Absolutely. Yeah, we have a little script. Just we copy and paste it to every email. When we send low res images, we just say, um do's and Dont's and the boozer and bright green and the don't share in red. And it just has do. Share this with family posted on Facebook. Put it on your blog's loaded on your phone. Don't crop these images corporate logo out. Print these images whenever. So yeah, I mean, but at that point they've purchased it. It's not printing quality. I'm happy for them to have it. I'm happy for them. Toe showed on Facebook. But now I don't do high rez. I don't sell them. There's quite a few people out there asking about pricing, and I know that. Well, sure, we'll get to that tomorrow. We're having a segment on pricing. We're talking so much about pricing tomorrow, more talking about my experience and photography X experience that we give people. Is there more to that question? Is that the question? Oh, I'm just letting you know that there are a lot of you know. I'd be happy to answer that. I mean, I'm not not teaching a pricing workshop, and I'm not really the person to come to to be like How should I press these things? I'm actually working with P P. A SMS management. If you guys have ever heard of that or done that, p p a. Professional Photographers of America and they actually offer consultations that you can do with them and they're very specific. And it's a tax person, like a C P A. That works with you. It's a very business oriented. They want to know all your numbers. They want to know where is your money going? Where's your money coming from? Your cost of goods should be this much, and they actually have graphs where they say your cost of goods should be 25% of all the money that you're spending. And, you know, if you have a home studio about like, $125, is about like the average that you should be making to run a profitable business. Having a studio storefront, a retail store, you need to be more around 2 25 $250, to be running a profitable business. So a lot of that is free information that you can just get on pp a two. So that's really valuable. So you're not just pulling a number out of the air like I don't know. How much would you pay for an eight by 10? Mom? $50. Okay, that sounds good. So they can really help you with the numbers and like the business end of things. But as far as pricing, like I said, I have an initial creation fee up front. We don't have any minimums. I'm not. A lot of photographers have them. Part of the reason I don't have them is because when you're working with animals, animals lives are so short and a lot of clients come to me because they're dogs were dying and their cats are dying. And I do so much work with the rescues in the shelters, and that's kind of a soft part in my heart, and it might not be the best business decision, but I could just never have an $800 minimum and turn someone away and their dogs dying and not do portrait's for them. So I'm not saying that all of you should do that. I'm not saying that it's the best business decision, but morally for me to be able tow, capture those portrait's for those people, even if they just do many session and get eight by 10. They have that beautiful image of their dogs. So that's my main reason for not having minimums. Um, so why I mentioned that I'm glad that we cover that because there are, like I said, a lot of pricing questions coming up. So it's good to be like we're not going to really be taking questions like, How much would you charge for this specifically? But like more general, a question did come up that waas. Basically, do you charge to charge your session or not your session fee, but a basic fee before you do the consultation? I not necessarily. If someone books a session and they're committed to the session, I always you need to pay for your session in order to reserve it. So if you don't pay for your session, it's not reserved. So if you want to come in for a consultation because you're not sure yet, that's fine. But that times that you were looking at might not be available. It might be it might not be, but your session is only reserved, and it's paid for. It's nonrefundable, so some people come in for consultations and then pay for the session then, but it's whatever excuse me is available at that time. Okay? Perfect. Yeah, yeah. And then pricing to another thing to throw out there. I threw my pricing online detailed. Here's made by tens. Here's my my twenties. I mean, I have my detail pricing online. That's just a personal preference. No photographer that I've ever worked with that has mentored me, has ever recommended that everyone's like, Get your pricing offline, What are you doing? But for me, it was just easier. I'm doing pet photography. So many people expect that it's going to be fun, cheesy, goofy A. And I just didn't want to weed out all those phone calls. I just don't want that many people calling my studio. So for me, it was a way to kind of filter people out. And the people who are really serious about Portrait's were calling. Some people say you want to get them on the phone, you want to get them hooked. But for me, for pet photography, I feel like I would get a lot of the and some people who don't find our pricing on our website. They just kind of skip over and don't realize it's there. I get a lot of the just like fun. Yeah. Can I come in today? Are you available in 1/2 hour? Like And just for me putting pricing online And I don't I don't do printed pricing on pamphlets for clients to take home with them. I just do it all online, so my pricing is changing a lot. I'm updating it every year. Every six months, we increase their pricing. One of the things this is totally getting off subject. But I think it's probably interesting to people. I haven't raised my eight by 10 price in like four years. I raised all of my other prices Oh, to compensate for it, because what I found is people are always about eight by tens, how much you charge for eight by tens. And it's not that I don't want to charge more for those, but people have something to compare it to. They go, Oh, arc is eight by tens or this much and Darcy's eight by tens or this much, and that's what they're basing us on when they're looking at pricing, where if I keep my eight by tens at a reasonable cost. I charge $70 for made by tens, so I'm not charging $100 or 150. Like a lot of, um, other photographers were like speaking on creative life and things like that. But for me, I raise all of my canvas prices on my wall portrait prices because I'm making the difference there because no one's going. Oh, arcas, 36 inch canvas is 10 and Darcy's like they're just people just know eight by tens. So that's just my little bit of psychology that if I keep that reasonable to people, they're not doing the math on all the other ones. They're just like, Oh, yeah, that's worth it for what I'm getting, even though in the long run, like their spending 1500 or $2000 up front, they weren't going all my gosh or eight by tens or $150. So I love it, but I do. I just put everything online. It's there. There it is,