Experiencing vs Explaining…which do you do more?
I have been teaching sales principles for many years now and one of the most important concepts that seems to be the hardest to understand is “simplicity”! How ironic! What do I mean by simplicity? It is this…how complicated is your sales process? As a matter of fact, how complicated is it to do business with you? We are constantly working on making it very simple to be our client, from the beginning of the process to the end. When you keep it simple, you can spend your time and energy on providing an “experience” instead of explaining your processes!
The sales appointment is where it can get complicated; I understand that! What I say here could be controversial, but all I can tell you is it works for us! I love to share ideas with you, but you need to sift through them and apply them as they fit you and your business. Here are some thoughts on our sales process that keeps it simple for us at Walden’s:
1. Each price list (ie: Color, B&W, Senior, Bebes, etc) MUST fit on ONE 8.5×11 sheet. If it won’t, we have too many things and it becomes too complicated, so we subtract something! Keep in mind that we segregate our shooting into Color, B&W, Senior, Bebes, etc. and don’t mix them together. Our clients choose which direction they are going at the Design Appointment. For more info on our “divisions”, you can go to our studio website at www.waldensphotography.com. With this process to do only one type of portraiture each time, we keep it simple.
2. We edit the images down to only the best ones which is approximately 25% of what was shot. We use ProSelect to then group the images with the 25% left being the most images we keep. We create another group called Favorites with even less and then we select from Favorites to formulate our Suggestions. See our VideoCap on Selling with Suggestions for details on this process. At this point in the sales, we present to the client what they should do with their images such as which pose and what size. With less images, we keep it simple.
3. We don’t offer packages and specials; that can get really complicated and takes lots of explanation! In our history of over thirty years, even going back to when Tim’s dad ran the business, we have never offered packages or discounts. It works for us, but you need to decide these things for yourself. What I can say is that I don’t have to spend a lot of time explaining our prices and products. Instead, I spend that time experiencing the images with my clients, oohing and ahhing over the wonderful images on the screen. It creates an emotional atmosphere and is a wonderful way to connect with clients. By pricing a la carte, we keep it simple.
Our goal is to spend 90-95% of the sales appointment experiencing the images with our clients and only 5 % explaining pricing and products. It requires taking a close look (be honest) at your price lists and product offerings…what can you do to make it more simple to do business with you?
Have a great week!
Bev
Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou. Your posts seem to hit at the right time. We were talking about cleaning things up to streamline the consultation and selling process. Thanks for sharing.