Buy my photos … please!
Have you ever heard of FOMO or fear of missing out? When you feel like if you don’t buy that thing right now, you’re going to miss out on it altogether.
It’s an emotional sales technique which works very effectively, and everyone uses it, you should too.
The value of consequences
If there are consequences to not performing an action, such as buying something, then that person will miss out of the additional benefit.
The repercussions will be that they may pay a lower price but receive a lot less value. Let’s have a look at how this works in the photography space, when I was trying to work out how to sell my photos I did the same things as all newbies do, I put them online so that the client would be able to choose, and let me tell you that’s something you should never do, the only way to successfully sell portrait photography is face to face.
It took me ages to figure out that using consequences to sell your photos is no different to ‘it all has to go by midnight tonight’ or ‘last days’ or ‘closing down sale’ that every rug shop or used car dealer in the world uses, if you don’t buy it by midnight tonight, you’ll never be able to have it.
That’s the message and everyone falls for it, I’m not saying people are stupid but why would these companies still be in business if it didn’t work — I know I fall for this strategy and I also use it!
Get people to buy with an attractive offer.
I’m Mark Lait and I’m just like everyone else on the planet.
I’m a sucker for a bargain but I took a lesson from the rug sellers and worked out how I could use that technique to increase my profit, if you want to learn more tips about how to increase yours, subscribe to my you tube channel, ring the bell and give us a thumbs up.
Get the complete guide to selling your photos.
My new book is also available on the website and everything I’ve learned about creating a successful photography business is in there.
You’re in the sales room, you’ve offered the client a boxed print set for, let’s say $3,500 and they’ve gone quiet because they’re thinking — just like you and me, that’s a lot of money, do I really need all of them, maybe we could go for the cheaper option and here’s something else, we don’t have a cheaper option in our studio but I’ll tell you about that another time.
Dropping the clincher
So the husband is sitting there, crying inside because his wife is expectantly waiting for him to produce the credit card so that she can have these beautiful photos, and then you drop the clincher, ‘if you buy these today, I’ll also include three extra mounted portraits which we would normally sell for $750’
Now you’ve got his attention, it’s gone from ‘I’m going to have to spend all this money’ to ‘Oh, I’m going to get something for free’ — the wife has already picked the extra three photos and he is deducting the $750 from the $3500 and his perception is that really he’s only paying $2,750 for something worth much more.
Buying your photos becomes easier when you know how to sell.
He can only get this deal if he buys today, while he’s in the sales room, right now. You’ve created urgency and consequences, if he doesn’t buy today, the consequence is that he’s going to miss out on $750 worth of products — for free.
He doesn’t want to miss out and his wife is still glaring at him … oh shit, he thinks, I have to! I have to buy them because I don’t want to miss out.
Creating urgency during the buying session.
That $750 worth of extra value will have a cost of goods less than $20 to produce so you will end up with $3480 for your print set.
Compare this with discounting where there really isn’t any consequences, if you offer the same amount of value as a discount you will get $2750 for your product and that’s a difference of $730 in your bank and even though we’re all money driven, my experience has been that extra value is more appealing than a discount.
That’s it for today but next week I’m going to talk about how you can turn your doubters into your brand advocates so I’ll see you then.