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Establishing Strategies for Making the Sale

Lesson 12 from: Inside the Home Studio

Tony Corbell

Establishing Strategies for Making the Sale

Lesson 12 from: Inside the Home Studio

Tony Corbell

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Lesson Info

12. Establishing Strategies for Making the Sale

Lesson Info

Establishing Strategies for Making the Sale

okay so let's talk about this so established the strategies for making that sale if you're going to do collections if you're going to do books if you're going to wall portrait I know that on the collections think about groupings think about wall groupings that are possible you know maybe maybe it's the family and you did the family you did the three kids and then you did the mom and dad great so maybe there's a thirty by forty horizontal of the family and next to that on this side is a vertical sixteen twenty of mom and dad and another side maybe there's a slim line horizontal of all the kids together think about collections and think about selling it as a collection put names to him if you want to but make it easy for the clients to buy him by not over thinking how you present it financially how about collection one up to four images up to these sizes and here's one price then you can work out the sizes you know but let's not nit pick everything but a single thing because then you're ...

asking every single family to fit into your formatted presentation maybe not something works for them I think that's that's where that's where I'm coming from is that it's like weddings if you have if you have three wedding prices well we'll do a two hour coverage and we'll do sixty five pictures and an eight by ten album and it'll include seven you know x number pictures or second choice is it will have four hours of coverage two photographers and you're going to get eighty seven pages with ninety one pictures okay great or the big package which is five hour coverage to photographers and you get x number of pictures in the albums well what if what I'm doing doesn't fit in one of those collections I'm different I kind of want mohr and smaller pictures not fewer and bigger or maybe I want fewer and bigger just don't make him fit into your your plan you need to fit into their plan tell me what you want for your wedding how do you want your wedding to feel you've been thinking about your wedding all your life your groom has been thinking about it about six months you started thinking about it when you were six the first time you saw cinderella that's when you started thinking about it he just thought about last week you have been thinking about your shoes for four months with your dress he rented a black suit that's the difference ask that bride tell me what you want when you think about your wedding photographs tell me tell me the picture give me give me a scenario give me the picture that's in your mind tell me what it looks like you get excited about that and you start talking about brides like this you're going to get weddings and it's the same thing with the family when the mom books the session because the mom's gonna book a family session mom tell me what you have in mind tell me how you see this is this your is this a fun loving family in the leaves in the backyard throwing a football around what is this tell me what you got in mind how do you see this how do you see your family or are they a little bit more serious and everybody wants to be a little bit more button them starched and put all together with a navy blazer and a red tie what do you have in mind mom tell me a little bit about what you see if you start showing some interest in what this is gonna look like you can start showing a lot more interest in what it's gonna cost him I think correct me if I'm wrong I know I'm doing awful lot of talking and you guys were doing off a lot of listening does anybody want to do a little bit of talking everybody's like nope we're not saying a word I do I mean I think it's so interesting because I really have never heard anyone talk about their offerings to their potential clients like you just described so I think it's really interesting that the concept of of it feels so bespoke and customized and boutique in terms of you I'm not going to give you just a like I give you what what I give everybody else you did you start that way or did you come to kind of figure out that those were the right types of clients for what you wanted I came to that when I decided I needed to charge a lot more for everything I did I know you won't come to that point there's a there's a point where you think wait a minute I'm not doing this anymore let's not start making some money I got really mad at a wedding once in west texas uh and I can tell you when it was it was late nineteen eighty five and I got really mad at a bride's mom and I called my studio from the reception and left a voice mail well it wasn't voicemail it was answering machine but I called and left a message to my assistant who I knew would be at work on time monday morning and I always took mondays off after I shot a wedding I called and I called I says do me a favor when you walk in the office on monday morning throw every wedding price list in the trash effective immediately we are doubling all of the ala carte pricing on our weddings and we're tripling my feet a photograph of wedding on all our wedding levels effective immediately and I hung up I walked in the studio on tuesday and she said you're never going to another wedding and I went great the next year I did double the number of weddings I got a phone call two weeks after I did this from the number one florist in our community who was very high end this guy sure this is nineteen eighty four eighty five dollars this guy's minimum for him to do your flowers at your wedding started a twenty five thousand dollars I am not even kidding he called me out of the clear blue sky two weeks after I dump my prices and doubled and tripled everything and he says thank you I can finally I recommend you to my clients and I said what are you talking about he said you're pricing has been so low I told him to go out of town and bringing photographers for years now I can recommend you to my clients I said why didn't you tell me he says didn't think you wanted to work the hard I never thought about it it was all about the number here is his pricing and here's what the country club was pricing and here's what I was pricing so they would bring in people that were pricing here didn't matter about the quality of work or the type of work and none of that mattered what mattered was the number had to be consistent in commiserate with everybody else that was a vendor it was the smartest thing I ever did and it was shortly after that that I started giving them everything and then I even I mean as I moved back to california and as I got all that all worked up and going then I started including everything then I came up with the concept of of uh photographing the bride and her mom or her sister or maid of honor matron of honor at the gown fitting that's when I came up with that bambi cantrell take it another step she said in addition to that at her biggest package price which she put another zero on top of she said I will go anywhere in the continental united states to photograph your engagement session with your husband to be anywhere you wanna go toe have this portrait done I'll go with you to shoot it and it knocks your charge that's how much she charged for those weddings well let's say you guys want your living in santa you know san francisco or seattle but you met a school in florida maybe he proposed to you on the beach at key biscayne maybe that's where you want to go for your engagement session bam you're getting a plane and fly with me and shoot for two days all included you start thinking like that and all of a sudden you've just raised the level of the of your value to your client the number doesn't matter you guys at that point does it all of a sudden you became valuable to them and you showed that you cared and for you guys on the audience they're listening in this you better get in touch with your feminine side and you better know something about some of these designers and you'd better know the number one shoes and you better know who makes ganz and you better know something about vera wang because she rules the world you know you better learn some of that kind of stuff and have these discussions and talk about that stuff okay sorry well we'll move a little bit on uh books I do think the books make a lot of sense I do think a nice coffee table book of a collection of all the things and especially in someone's work like megan's where she's as boudoir sessions it's not one post they're not looking for that perfect post she's doing about twenty that she's probably delivering in a book as a collection of work that considered a coffee table that khun b in there or as a gift to the husband right now I'm sure there's going to be a wall portrait for their bedroom but still this is a very private thing from her to him usually I would imagine and those book sales have to be really important because how can you sell the collection you're not just going to send him a cd of pictures that ever got printed this here's my vow this year guys this is the year of the print last year three hundred and eighty billion with a b photographs were taken that were never printed that's the number of photographs that were taken last year that were emailed using slide shows r I am to somebody never print three hundred and eighty billion photos we're not gonna have any pictures you can't go to your grandparent's home like we did as kids and look through old photo albums there's no photo albums anymore we're not gonna have anything to play the pictures that we shot yesterday if we don't make prince in another two generations nothing will play those cf cards in two generations so you better make some friends let's make some books let's make some collections let's make some wall portrait

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Essential Home Studio Gear Guide.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

Sean
 

Another great course by Tony Corbell. I loved this course. Tony is a great teacher, great photographer and great business man. He's enjoyable to listen to and a great teacher. He holds nothing back and shows how to shoot great pictures even in small shooting environments or on a low budget. I would buy again Tony's courses.

Penny Foster
 

Wow! Tony is fantastic! So many hints and tips, crammed into this great course. I shoot portraits out of a small converted garage, about 9 ft high, 9 feet wide, and about 19 feet long. Tony has shown me so many ways to make this small space work for me, for which I am eternally grateful. What this course highlights is that whatever small space you have, there are ways of making it work. You need to buy this course and watch it over and over because, every time I watch it, I gain more and more info that I missed the first time around. Brilliant!

Kat Ciemiega
 

Absolutely wonderful, I cannot praise the content enough. I value Tony's stories as much as the information he is giving away, because it puts the data in the perspective and practical context of the actions we take. Thank you for this class!

Student Work

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