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Archive 2014 · 5 Most Important Factors to Secure a Sale...

  
 
P Alesse
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · 5 Most Important Factors to Secure a Sale...


1) Exclusive access of shoot locations
2) Killer photos with glass that is twice as long as any parent in stands.
3) Ease and speed in delivering images to eyeballs and only the images that a parent wants to see. This may require time built into the event to see the photos.
4) Difficulty of stealing images. Right click, screen cap, cell phone photo.
5) A price that makes it impossible to pass up.

There are no other factors. If you can control these 5 factors, you will be successful. Plain and simple.

Discuss.



Jun 08, 2014 at 09:55 AM
jcnemy
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · 5 Most Important Factors to Secure a Sale...


Paul - great overall guidance! Got #5 solid (at least I think so...)....and a partial on #'s 1 and 2. Need some work on #'s 3 and 4...which are my goals for this upcoming fall.

Thanks for reiterating!

JC



Jun 08, 2014 at 02:16 PM
BlueReptile
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · 5 Most Important Factors to Secure a Sale...


2) Killer photos with fast glass and extremely high ISO performer for low light

6) Friendly and approachable sales staff
7) Offer same day delivery on USB drives



Jun 09, 2014 at 08:30 AM
timgangloff
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · 5 Most Important Factors to Secure a Sale...


Those are cleary important factors, but I think there might be an even more important factor. For those factors to be successful, you need to be shooting an event that sticks out. You can do all of the above well, but if you are shooting just another soccer tournament or just another football game, the parents may have 30 other such events a year and may not really care about the event you are covering. And, some of the other events may have had good photography as well. So, I'd suggest covering events of significance, not significant to you, but significant to the buyers. I know with that little baseball thing you do, you got that covered.


Jun 09, 2014 at 10:05 AM
P Alesse
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · 5 Most Important Factors to Secure a Sale...


timgangloff wrote:
Those are cleary important factors, but I think there might be an even more important factor. For those factors to be successful, you need to be shooting an event that sticks out. You can do all of the above well, but if you are shooting just another soccer tournament or just another football game, the parents may have 30 other such events a year and may not really care about the event you are covering. And, some of the other events may have had good photography as well. So, I'd suggest covering events of significance, not significant to you, but
...Show more

Absolutely. Pick the right event. Especially if there are going to be a lot of overhead costs and you're not grinding it out on your own.



Jun 09, 2014 at 11:06 AM
JohnPinette
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · 5 Most Important Factors to Secure a Sale...


P Alesse wrote:
1) Exclusive access of shoot locations
2) Killer photos with glass that is twice as long as any parent in stands.
3) Ease and speed in delivering images to eyeballs and only the images that a parent wants to see. This may require time built into the event to see the photos.
4) Difficulty of stealing images. Right click, screen cap, cell phone photo.
5) A price that makes it impossible to pass up.

There are no other factors. If you can control these 5 factors, you will be successful. Plain and simple.

Discuss.


I would add Marketing. In our case it is similar to #3, but not exactly the same. We show the best 1 or 2 images of each athlete on multiple 46" monitors that are positioned facing the parents in the stands, close enough so that they can identify their child in the photos. These selected images are displayed shortly after an athlete competes. The athletes, especially the young ones get excited about seeing their competition photos on the screens as well. This does more to drive the parents and athletes to our viewing stations than anything else. An generally they come with the specific intention of finding a photo to purchase. Of course they will then look through lots of other photos of their child once they are at the booth.

John



Jun 11, 2014 at 02:37 PM
Corillien
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · 5 Most Important Factors to Secure a Sale...


Among many of these, I'm still trying to figure out 5. I tried readjusting prices to make the larger prints more appealing (i.e., not having 4x6's wicked cheap relative to the 8x10s) but still have only sold 4x6's. I also realized that I need to work on 4... I had a parent recently mention "Oh yea, you're getting good press - I saw your photo of so and so's kid on facebook." So parents are apparently giving positive reviews and chatter about what I'm doing but somehow photos are ending up on fb...I was a bit taken aback and didn't really know how to answer. I wonder if they were posted with the watermark or what as no one has ordered digital photos from me yet. Any suggestions on that?

Not sure if I'm also running into what tim's saying - shots from the weekly games may be ho hum for parents instead of playoff/championship games?



Jun 11, 2014 at 09:39 PM
John Patrick
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · 5 Most Important Factors to Secure a Sale...


You have to sell digital these days. If not, you are losing money, and more money than reprint sales.

80% of my sales were digital. 15% were custom collages/posters. Only 5% were standard prints.

Also, remember:

younger players > older players
state event > local event

John



Jun 11, 2014 at 10:45 PM
Russ Isabella
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · 5 Most Important Factors to Secure a Sale...


Corillien wrote:
Among many of these, I'm still trying to figure out 5. I tried readjusting prices to make the larger prints more appealing (i.e., not having 4x6's wicked cheap relative to the 8x10s) but still have only sold 4x6's. I also realized that I need to work on 4... I had a parent recently mention "Oh yea, you're getting good press - I saw your photo of so and so's kid on facebook." So parents are apparently giving positive reviews and chatter about what I'm doing but somehow photos are ending up on fb...I was a bit taken aback and didn't
...Show more

Stop offering 4x6's. Strong image quality deserves a larger palette, and it may help your pricing issues as well.



Jun 11, 2014 at 11:00 PM
innaeddy1
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · 5 Most Important Factors to Secure a Sale...


To expand on Russ's (stop offering 4x6), if you want to keep selling them make them a notch below a 5x7. I offer 4x6 and 5x7 but my prices of the 2 are so close most go with the 5x7, it cost me maybe a couple of cents in differance to print, when people see the price they usually go for the 5x7. My pricing structure is pretty much the same up to a point, like my 11x14 are slightly more than an 8x10, but cost bout the same to print, clients see a value in the larger size, even tho it cost them more $, so in return it makes me more $

Andy



Jun 12, 2014 at 05:05 AM
BlueReptile
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · 5 Most Important Factors to Secure a Sale...


John Patrick wrote:
You have to sell digital these days. If not, you are losing money, and more money than reprint sales.

80% of my sales were digital. 15% were custom collages/posters. Only 5% were standard prints.
....



We're not in the business to sell 8x10s anymore. 90% of our sales are USB drives and parents get them onsite. No shipping, no waiting, no hassle, and much much larger profit margin!

Majority of the photos now days end up on social networks more than in a nice frame hanging on the wall...



Jun 12, 2014 at 12:43 PM
glort
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · 5 Most Important Factors to Secure a Sale...


Russ Isabella wrote:
Stop offering 4x6's. Strong image quality deserves a larger palette, and it may help your pricing issues as well.


Couldn't agree more!

I have been harping on about this for years and always get the " But my customers won't buy/ can't afford larger prints or some other horse feather excuse.

I did sports events for over 3 years and NEVER did 6x4's. Only did 5x7's by special request and then 2 at a time. My basic offering was 8x12's and never had a problem with that. Base price was $30. They went up for borders and mag covers to $40. I don't remember anymore than a handfull of people ever whingeing about price. Of course I'd be worried if someone didn't.

For social events I was doing 5x7 and a min but have now gone to 6x8's as I can cut A4 paper in half which is a lot more economical on the price I can get than 5x7 sheets. People are always wowed by the larger print size.

I think the people that won't stop doing 6x4's are the people that have never had the gumption to stop offering them for their own insecure reasons. Of course if you train your customers up to getting used to buying postage stamps for $2.50 ( and yes, I have seen loads of people at that price point!) then trying to get them to spend more on larger prints is going to be an ask.

I really don't get how people offering Postage stamp 6x4's make any remotely worthwhile money.
The amount you have to sell to add up to anything decent for a days work would be worlds beyond any event I have covered and the stuffing around going through the files finding the ones you want, prepping the images and print or burning it is exactly the same as you have to do for larger, far more profitable pics.

I buy A4 photo paper in bulk for about .16C a sheet. I sell said print for $30+ How much am I going to get for a postage stamp? $15 would seem to be pushing it way hard where I am. $10 would be the max I think people would not rensent. Maybe. So I would have to sell at least 3 times more pics to break even on what I'm doing now with the larger ones. Not a hope in hell that's going to happen!
Only so many people at an event and they buy what they want generally as cheap as they can get out of it not buy more because they are cheap.

At most things I do, there is no way we could keep up with 3 times the printing. I know ordering is more important but if I posted the prints, that's more time and cost in packaging for a start. Also there would undoubetely be lost or damaged orders in the post.
Forget it.

A4's @ $30 work just fine for me and I'll stick to it.



I agree with the 5 rules posted here with the expantion of point 3, ease and speed of viewing. I think this goes hand in hand with ordering. I'm just amazed anyone does online ordering / viewing as their primary sales method these days. My experience was I may as well just put the pics on a computer at the event and let people come up and burn their own CD's or copy the images to a USB drive.

If I couldn't do onsite ordering, I wouldn't even bother considering doing a job. In 99% of cases I do onsite delivery as well be that by prints or on USB. I know some very successful people do online sales as a backup to their onsite ordering but from what I have seen, that is a very secondary strategy to the onsite mainly to pick up extra orders not as their core business.

Online has so many problems these days I can't for the life of me understand why people contemplate it as their only sales strategy. Sure, by doing onsite ordering only you will sose some orders. The thing is though, at the end of the day you'll make a lot less money and lose far more orders with online.

People go on about the problems and cost in setting up Vstations etc. I bought 2nd hand computers, laptops in the end, cheap as chips that worked perfectly and used Free software to run it all. The software NEVER gave me any grief and apart from the occasional networking glitch that we could always work around anyway, there were never any big issues.

I tried the online, I mean I REALLY tried to make it work but it just didn't. We promoted and wallpapered every car in the carpark with the web address but the orders were non existant. All I did achieve was to see a big drop in my onsite sales as well from all the people that were going to order when they got home but clearly never did.

I stopped the online ordering and the few people that complained the loudest were the ones that said they didn't have time to look at the event then hung around looking longer and ordering more than everyone else.
YA!




I also agree with the comment of offering Digital. In one of my most lucrative markets I have gone to that completely now. It eliminates all the problems of onsite printing and/ or postage, it allows just as many or more pricing/ bonus value added strategys and above all has a lot of customer wow factor.
My average order with the USB's is a LOT higher than with the printing given we offer attractive multiple image bundles.

I am getting themed USB sticks from Chinese suppliers at less than a buck each and have a variety of styles suitable for boys and girls and something more stylish for adults. I also get the USB's styled to the events I'm doing. Fish, sharks, whales and Nemo's for the swimming, Ponys for equine etc.

This works great in replacing the big yes/ no/ cost decisions to the minor " What charachter would you like your pics put on?" which makes it easy to close sales with the assistance of kids pester power and guilt factor to the parents.

I have read loads of waffle from shooters whom overvalue their self importance and that of their work carrying on about garbage relating to " What if they have a bad print made at Costmart from the digital files? " and other ignorant sentiments with the implication that their reputation will be so sullied that no one will ever hire them to take another photograph in thier lives and their family name will be tarnished for the next 10 generations.
Piffle!

So what if they do get a bad print made? You think there is anyone out there that stupid that they are going to look at a perfectly good pic on their computer screens, get a crap print and then blame you instead of who printed it? If anyone does think that they ought to stop reading crap on the net and got out in the real world for a reality check.

I have sold THOUSANDS of digital images over the last 5 years alone and never had a single person complain about bad prints or anything else and a lot of these people I sold to numerous times over several years. Not like they couldn't find me or let me know if they werent happy.

Digital is much more in demand now and people want images that way for portability as much as anything else. people want to have digital for slide shows, to put on their phones, email and all the rest. They can still get prints made so it ticks all the boxes.

People who refuse to sell digital files are going to get left well and truly behind although it may wake them up to the fact of satisfying the needs of the customer is more important than satisfying the needs of their own ego massaging.



Jun 12, 2014 at 08:32 PM
josh_jordan
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · 5 Most Important Factors to Secure a Sale...


Would like to thank everyone for replying to this post as it makes it painfully aware to me just how much I don't have a handle on the business side of the camera.


Jun 15, 2014 at 03:33 PM
Marty Bingham
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · 5 Most Important Factors to Secure a Sale...


It's all in the presentation. Here's a great example.

http://tinyurl.com/lpeo2cg

Marty

(you will need about four minutes of free time)



Jun 16, 2014 at 07:38 AM
dj dunzie
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · 5 Most Important Factors to Secure a Sale...


Paul... Great formula.

This past weekend we put some 50,000 images up on screens at a huge men's hockey tournament and I'm going to add a #6 to your formula... The right event. There's a complete formula involved within that too. Parents of real young sports stars buy at a very different rate than parents of 16 year older who've been doing tournaments for 10 years and aren't making the bigs. Although they will still buy, you need to find a different spin than what they've been seeing at every event for 10 years and that isn't always easy.

A funny thing happens though when you shoot adult sports. Suddenly they're interested in seeing themselves in action back pursuing their big league dreams again.

Also having a central facility that channels competitors and families by your setup and is pretty accessible to all games is huge.

So the best combination of your success plan and a great event can make for success. Even in this day and age of digital social media and economic struggles.




Jun 16, 2014 at 11:01 PM
glort
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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · 5 Most Important Factors to Secure a Sale...


dj dunzie wrote:
Also having a central facility that channels competitors and families by your setup and is pretty accessible to all games is huge.



I agree.
Hammy told me about 10 things when I started as indicators of good, profitable events. They were all 110% spot on and I added a couple of extra rules as I went.

As well as having the right location, the right event/ sport/ organisation is also important in that people have time to look at your pics. If you do something where the object is to get out of the joint 2 seconds after it is finished, your not going to do well. Even if you have the pics online, it's a million dollars away from the sales you'll make onsite.

Events where there is a hang around time is a big bonus.
That said, I used to shoot a lot of equine. At some of the comps the riders knew they had a minimum of 1 and usually closer to 2 hours to wait till the scores were announced. We always had the best location in the place being 30 Ft ftom the canteen, 40ft from the office 10ft from the toilets(!!!)
and about another 30 ft to the BBQ and seating. We'd get people coming through looking at the pics but still, after them sitting not more than 30 ft from us for over an hour, we'd still get a rush after the results and prizes were handed out which meant we were there another hour to 90 min doing those orders before we went to pack up and go home.
Never failed to amaze me that one!!

We did a couple of events where we had crap locations. Behind buildings out of site as that was the only place we could pick up power on at one event, the only place where the Mud wasn't a foot deep.
It killed our sales badly.

Another one was weather.
Even with indoor events I do now, if it's a gloomy wet day, people just don't buy the same as when it's sunny. I have proven this time and time again now.
Obviously weather is not something you can control but If I had to do a long distance event and it was an odds on bet it would rain, where possiblye I'd pull the pin. The reports I got back were always that the attendence was way down and that other vendors felt they wasted their time and money.

And of course the No.1 rule when you are doing onsite sales: you NEVER, ever can even imagine, to have too many Viewstations!

My first event was 5 which was patheticaly too few for an event of 100 competitors. Went to 12 a couple of weeks later, then 20 then finished with 32.
Still wanted more but even though I had laptops by then, it was getting a bit tight and heavy to fit anymore in the trailer I had.



Jun 17, 2014 at 08:56 AM





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