nolaguy Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · What, in your opinion, is the best senior portrait business model? | |
Salesographer wrote:
Thanks, Chuck/nolaguy for letting us know about this discussion.
Salesographer - started by Spencer Boerup, acquired by Chris and Adrienne Scott (I'm Adrienne). When MagMod blew up, Spencer went looking for someone(s) to take over Salesographer. We'd gone through the course (a downloaded PDF/worksheet and some videos and a couple resources) a while before, doing in-person sales profitably for a handful of years ourselves. At this point we were also running Preveal and thought that Salesographer and Preveal would be two great complimentary products for photographers wanting to make more money. We've since used Spencer's fantastic course as a skeleton and really beefed it up with a ton more resources (hello, email templates!) as well as interjected when we felt we were doing things differently that worked, to give photographers other ideas.
So now I think everyone's caught up on Salesographer's background.
We really strongly push pre-session consultations. You can call them whatever you want. For us, they gave us the ability to do a few things. We could cut away potential clients who didn't really want what we did. We knew exactly what to shoot for (product wise, aspect ratio wise, location/wardrobe wise, and even to narrow down poses). Talk about earning more: cut down on your shooting time, editing time, and prepping time! Plus the client leaves the consultation knowing a fairly good estimate of how much they're going to spend (but typically spend more with upsells at the sales meeting). Consultations set the stage for your client/photographer relationship when you show how much you know (without being annoying) and clients will learn how you work and how you handle sales.
But here's the rub... in-person sales aren't for every photographer (I know, aren't you surprised I said that?!). Some business models of high volume are fantastic and profitable. Most photographers don't do that right though, and do some kind of hybrid of high volume with too much time cost per client. Or assuming you'll make a certain online sale and you don't, and now you're not meeting your client averages you need to stay profitable. Also, most clients think they want digital files and then never do anything with them. We personally found our clients to be happier with physical products.
Hopefully that clears some stuff up about what Salesographer is and what we think about the process at a really, really basic level. :-)...Show more →
Adrienne, thanks a lot for joining the discussion and so nice to meet you. I'm glad I revisited your site and realized how much more development had taken place. I appreciate you filling in the blanks and helping ensure better info in this thread. Best of luck to you two and I really like where you're taking things.
Cheers,
Chuck
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