Today, I’d like to talk about a topic I am learning more and more about, and that is telling stories. What does this have to do with business? Everything! In the book “A Whole New Mind” by Daniel H. Pink, a quote is stated that goes like this, “Humans are not ideally set up to understand logic; they are ideally set up to understand stories.”   Roger Schank, cognitive scientist. Where do we, as photographers, have the most trouble getting clients to understand the value of photography and how they can use it in their own homes? I would have to say in the Sales Room.

The Sales Room is where I have learned how valuable stories can be in promoting understanding, both of our photography and its value. For instance, when you have a repeat client who purchases wall portraits each trip, how are you going to handle it when they say they don’t know where to put any more wall portraits. Or you have a client who says they just don’t have much wall space. When I hear this, I instantly think of a story my good friend, Sarah Smith of Kent Smith Studios, told me. She said this, “Art will always travel the home, just as an art museum puts up a featured exhibit, but then moves it as a new featured artist comes in.”

What does that mean to you? I will tell you what it means to me in a story. We have two daughters, grown now, but can you even imagine how many wall portraits we have of them? Each portrait is valuable, depicting a special time in their lives, so why would I want to remove them from my walls at home? The answer is I don’t, but I do move them around, just as a museum might do with a featured artist’s exhibit. Let’s talk about the rooms in a home. Here is where I always ask them what is the primary wall in their home where they could see and enjoy a portrait the most. Many times, the answer is over the mantle in the den or family room. Bingo. I say to my clients, “That is where you will always display your most current portrait, just as an art museum would display its featured artist in the main area of the museum.”

Then I go on and say, “Now, what about the portrait that is already there? What do you do with it? Well, let’s think together about a secondary spot in your home where a portrait will still be seen, but maybe not in the top prime spot.” I then give the example of my home as my story continues…the secondary spot in our home is actually in the kitchen where we have a sitting area and we are in the kitchen all of the time. Surely, anything there will be seen very often. Then I ask them to tell me their secondary spot. You see, if you can give examples on your own home, it helps them visualize theirs. We then go on to the third spot we might consider moving a portrait, the forth spot and so on. I give many examples of where I hang portraits in my own home through STORYTELLING. It helps them visualize cold, hard facts in context and with emotion of me telling them about our girls growing up and how quickly that happens.

In fact, I also tell them a story about Tim’s mother and something she once said about her home. She has a small home, but has more furniture, art pieces and beautiful flower arrangements than you could imagine would fit, yet it always looks so put together and striking. I remember she once said that if she loved something, whether it be a couch, a table or another piece for the wall, she would find a place for it. She did not consider, before she bought it, where she would put it. No, her thinking is just the opposite. So, that is another story we can tell in the Sales Room when someone says they just cannot imagine where they will put a wall portrait in their small home.

So you see, you need to arm yourselves with your own stories. I want to end this blog with a quote from the book “Thing That Make Us Smart” by Dan Norman. “Stories have the felicitious capacity of capturing exactly those elements that formal decision methods leave out. Logic tries to generalize, to strip the decision making from the specific context, to remove it from subjective emotions. Stories capture the context, capture the emotions…stories are important cognitive events, for they encapsulate, into one compact package, information, knowledge, context and emotion.”

Have a great week! Bev

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