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Rangefinder Magazine
June 2004

An Alternative to Paper Proofs by Jeff Smith
Learning to Sell in the Studio

Why do we use paper proofs? Although so much has changed in our profession, the majority of studios in this country present their work to clients in the same way as it has been done for the last 60 years. What has kept paper proofs as the chosen method of presentation? One word: Fear! Fear of presenting your work to your clients and actually hearing what they have to say. Fear of learning to sell the product you produce or having to hire a qualified salesperson to sell it for you!

You go into a jewelry store and ask to see three small diamond rings for your daughter. After looking for a while, you just can’t make up your mind. So, you ask the salesperson to bag up the three rings because you need to take them home to have your wife/husband help you decide which one is best for your little girl. You tell the salesperson you don’t mind leaving a $75 deposit, but it had better go toward the purchase when you return that $1500 worth of jewelry.

After you have the rings out for two weeks, the jewelry store calls you to see if you are ready to return them. You explain that you have been really busy, but sometime in the next few weeks you will stop by the store. After four weeks go by, they call you again, explaining that if you don’t return the rings, you will lose your deposit. Now, you’re upset because the jewelry store is starting to act like you intend to keep the rings and not pay for them. You assure them that you are going to buy one of the rings and that you will be in within the week. Another two weeks goes by, and now the salesperson is really mad. She calls and leaves a message that you have lost your deposit, and if you don’t return the rings immediately, you will be sent to a collection agency.

Selling a product in this manner creates such a nice relationship between the buyer and the seller. Who do you blame for this situation? The client or the jewelry store that lets something of great value leave their business? Most photographers would say the client, of course. Wrong! Clients act like clients. They (and everyone else in the world) put everything off as long as humanly possible. It’s human nature.

Jewelry stores would never think of selling their product this way because they know the value of what they sell. Photographers sell their products this way because they doubt the value of the product they have to sell. When you doubt what you have to sell, you avoid selling at all costs. You leave proofs on the counter and run the other way. I know some photographers that mail proofs to the client’s home. They must want to avoid selling pretty badly to do something like that.

The first question that has to be answered is: Are paper proofs still around because the client expects them, or is it that photographers refuse to learn to sell their product? National and mall studios have used instant previewing for years with great success.

As a matter of fact, without the impulse buying that instant previewing offers, I think they would be hard pressed to sell all the packages they do. These studios explain that they don’t offer paper proofs and yet they still have customers. And, judging by the lines I see at Christmas time, quite a few customers!

A limited number of professional photographers have used instant previewing systems over the years and found that their sales averages went up and the number of clients not ordering from their sessions went down (provided a qualified salesperson showed the orders to the clients). We have a volume senior portrait studio. Our senior counts aren’t in the hundreds, they are in the thousands. With film, the only means of dealing with our volume was using paper proofs and a sales appointment in the studio. They could take the images home for a short time with a deposit.

About 35 percent of the clients returned with their proofs on the original sales date. Approximately 45 percent ordered over the next six months of the school year, prompted by various reminders and deadlines for Christmas and graduation. Nearly 20 percent of the seniors/parents kept their proofs beyond their graduation day, even after countless mailed reminders and notices as well as several phone calls. They ended up in collection.

This meant that each year I could count on almost 20 percent of the parents I photographed seniors for not returning to our studio for their other children. Some photographer would think of this as a good thing, “They are stiffs anyway. We don’t need clients like that!” Not being quite as negative as many of my brethren, I realized that most of this 20 percent were not trying to get something for nothing or rip me off.

They simply realized they could put off the buying decision until later, and later never came. The money they had planned on using for portraits was used for something else, or something changed in their financial lives, making it impossible to order senior pictures. Financially, nothing lasts forever. This family’s economic slump would probably be over by the time the next senior was of age, but with them having the unpleasant relationship with my studio (going to collection), that upcoming senior would go somewhere else.

This is one of the many benefits of clients knowing they will view and order immediately after the session. If a client can’t afford to order at the time of the session, they won’t book the appointment. This saves your time for productive sessions that will be ordering and lets the 20 percent of clients that would end up in collection wait until their economic conditions improve. It is “cut and dry.”

When the studio went digital, I saw the perfect opportunity to do away with paper proofs once and for all. After looking at the total cost of shooting digital, I realized that the time involved would make shooting digital more expensive than shooting film. I knew I had to increase the size of orders and number of orders to pay for the additional costs to my business.

I remembered when I first opened my studio, I was confronted with the same problem. I had a certain number of sessions each month, and to pay my bills, as well as have money to live on, I needed to generate more money from the clients I had. At that time, Charles Lewis and other photographers were talking about using Transviews, which are 35mm transparency proofs produced by our lab from negative film.

We set up a sales room that looked like a mini-living room with sofa and other designer touches. We put a 40x60 frame over the sofa. We projected each image into the frame to show the client what their images would look like in a wall portrait size. After the room was complete, I started practicing how to sell what I had created. I hated it, and it wasn’t easy, but it was necessary if I wanted to make a living in this profession.

I couldn’t afford to hire a salesperson at that time, so I did each sales appointment myself. I heard all the complaints that photographers fear: “Why did you pick that background with that clothing?” “How come you charge so much?” “We need to have something to take home!” But hearing what my clients had to say made two things happen. First, I started to put more effort into my sessions, realizing I would be the one to face my clients with the images I created. I learned how to coordinate the colors, lines, textures and styles of the background with the client’s clothing. I wanted to be able to explain why I selected the background I did. I wanted to be able to show my clients that I was a good as I thought I was.

The second lesson I learned is that when clients are confronted with the reality of purchasing an item they don’t really have the money for, but they really want, they will come up with all kinds of little problems to avoid buying the item right then. People buy cars, clothing, jewelry and, yes, portraits everyday using money they don’t actually have. They complain, they stall, they come up with every reason why they shouldn’t buy what is being sold, but salespeople make the sales in spite of these objections.

Once I learned to sell, I consistently sold wall portraits, which I never had done with paper proofs. My orders were larger, and the money was in my pocket as we concluded our business (at least half of the money), which was the first time the client saw the portraits. Clients were well informed of the procedures of the studio, and if they weren’t ready to order, they wouldn’t make their appointment. I realize I lost some appointments by not having paper proofs, but of the lost sessions, the majority would have fallen in that 20 percent of lost customers anyway.

With digital, we couldn’t sell in the same way we had in our first studio. We have too many seniors in a short time frame, and the space for multiple living room areas wouldn’t be feasible at our current location, although the studio is 6600 square feet. To simplify the sales process, we created sales rooms where clients view their images on large computer monitors after the session is over. The sales process is the same as it was in the beginning. They first decide on the pose or poses they like. Once the images are narrowed down to their eight favorite poses (the number of images in the standard folio), they are taken to a separate sales room to go over the packages. Once the package is decided on, they are brought back into the viewing room to fill their package with the eight selected images.

Learning to sell your work is nothing more than realizing how humans make decisions. As a professional, you simply help your client make the decision that is in their best interests, even if they don’t realize it at the time. There are so many benefits to a client ordering portraits in this fashion. We are professionals that have a professional staff there to assist them in every step of the buying process.

At the studio, my sales staff is trained to help the clients by pointing out the subtle differences in two poses that appear to be almost the same. They can show the client what an image will look like in black and white or with other finishing touches applied to the image (in a matter of seconds). They can show them a selection of frames, which will coordinate with both their home and the individual portrait. This is a professional way of selling a professional product. This isn’t run and hide and hope for the best.

If you are considering this approach to sales, let me make two suggestions. First, realize that people can only make one decision at a time. They can’t decide on poses, package and framing all at once. It is a step-by-step process.

First, they select the pose or poses (for families we narrow it down to one pose, for seniors, eight poses) they will be ordering from. The next step is to have the families select a wall portrait size with which they feel comfortable. To give them an idea about sizes when using a projector, use a zoom lens to go from 40x60 down to a 24x30. Using 21-inch monitors, we have to show the sizes by using sample photographs in the studio. This method doesn’t have the same impact of seeing their own portrait in the various sizes, but it helps the client select the proper size of wall portrait for the room where it will be displayed. It also helps give them an idea of the facial size of the pose selected. After the size of the wall portrait is selected, they decide on a package or number of portraits they need for themselves and their family. After the package is determined, they fill the packages with the selected image or images. The final step is to discuss frames, folios and add-on items that increase the size of the total order without reducing the print sales, which are more profitable.

My second suggestion is to take selling seriously. Either learn to sell professionally or hire a professional salesperson to sell for you. Make sure their sales experience is different from a high-pressure sales experience, such as buying a car. If you decide you will do the sales presentation, then select books and tapes that teach professional selling, not high-pressure selling, because there is a big difference.

When I first attempted this type of selling, I was scared to death. My first sales appointment was a little rough. I stuttered. I said the wrong things at the wrong times. But I sold a 20x24 and two 16x20s to the parents of two small children. Up to this point I had never sold anything larger than a 16x20, and I had never sold multiple wall portraits from the same session. This experience made me a believer in selling a product, rather than letting something of great value leave my business and hoping for its return.

Jeff Smith owns and operates Smith & Co. Studios in Fresno, California. Smith is the author of Corrective Lighting and Posing, Outdoor and Location Portrait Photography, Professional Digital Portrait Photography and Success in Portrait Photography, all published by Amherst Media. The studio has its own web site: www.jeffsmithphoto.com/.