How to Sell with an Upsell - Photography Sales Tips

There's invisible money all around - but it's up to you to see it.

Just how many upselling opportunities can one have? Where does it make the most sense? Are there any golden upselling options when offering print products via IPS photography? We’ve compiled a convenient source of information and tested upselling tips for you to find out!

We’ll start with this: your upselling can start taking place before you even get to know your client. In fact, that’s how it already works for most conventional businesses, especially in e-commerce. Why not take a little inspiration from them?

Offer 3 Packages

This brings us to our first tip: to use the rule of three.

If you are a photographer who’s happy with openly showing their pricing, i.e., on their portfolio website or social media page, that’s where the upselling can begin. There’s a good chance you’ve already successfully implemented it.

By offering three different shoot budgets, you are nudging your potential client towards picking the “middle” offer, even if they had a lower budget in mind. This can also be considered as your “main” offer. You can, of course, utilize this even if you don’t show your pricing outright, which is what makes the rule of 3 so effective.

The rule also extends into offering photo products. Matching different products and packages into three respective price points will give your clients more options without overwhelming them and gives you an easy way to boost your sales - without so much as a suggestion.

However, your “more literal” upselling will usually take a less rigid approach - where you suggest an available offer if an opportunity arises. Naturally, this will most likely take place during your sales meeting.

Take time to know what your clients need

This leads us to tip number two: make sure the upsell you are doing is most relevant to your client’s needs, be it by directly addressing a need they have that isn’t fulfilled by the initial offer or by showing what the superseding option would be. Examples include:

• Offering a pendrive to go with their print product (looking at you, Explore the complete set on nPhoto.com!) This will give your client's digital files a physical place to go with their print.
• Offering more spreads for the number of photos they have. The markup for extra spreads can be an upsell in and of itself.
• “Tiering” your photo products in accordance with their features, such as making an Acrylic Prestige product go above the Exclusive collection line as a direct upgrade.

An Acrylic Prestige Complete Set would be a perfect fit for a completely topped-out offer.

A corollary lesson to this is that, generally, your upselling will become a lot easier and more natural for returning clients. This is because the probability of selling to an existing customer is much higher than that of a new client, usually estimated at around 60-70%, according to How marketing experts measure performance.

Keep your existing clients close - they are your best source of income!

Now, time for our third tip, which can easily work alongside what we just mentioned: Utilize FOMO marketing. The “fear of missing out” is a powerful tool that can be implemented in a completely unnoticeable way during your sales meeting. Examples include:

• List your packages in a table that compares all of them, starting with the most basic package on the left and your most lucrative one on the right. This way, your client will be able to physically compare how much they would be able to get with your better packages, or rather, how much they would “lose out” on if they picked a budget option.
• Offer a limited-time deal on an upsell.
• Have smaller, additional offers available with each “big” product package. Extra prints are always a great option due to their cost markup. It’s a bargain, both for you and for your client, so no one would want to miss out :)
• Mention to your client what others have gone for when presenting your packages. This creates a form of social proofing which may further encourage your client towards making their choice.

Even just having extra prints as an option opens your offer up to more upselling.

Moving on - you’ve done the sales meeting, and you’re done with the shoot. Believe it or not, there are more upselling opportunities to come. Your post-shoot thank-you email during the editing process is one. You can attach a mockup of one of the photos you’ve finished editing so far to show your client how it would look in an end product, perhaps even picking out some of the most presentable shots to use for a wall décor mockup.

You’re helping your client visualize it as something they could own. In other words, one last opportunity before getting to the stage of ordering their print products. This isn’t to say that you need to ask them if they want it, but simply having it take a spot in your photography email templates leaves an impact.

So far, this has given us upselling options before, during, and after working with a client. To conclude, let’s establish some ways you can iron all of this out.

• Establish a limit on how much you intend to make with a successful upsell. While we’ve established numerous methods of doing so, some without even explicitly offering anything, you’ll want to ensure you don’t overstep the client’s selected price point too much. Otherwise, they’ll either become discouraged or feel like they’ve gotten everything they need after your first interaction with them, thus decreasing the odds of them becoming a returning client.
• You don’t have to exclusively rely on upselling to make your sales - we’re going to talk about cross-selling and down-selling in some upcoming posts, so stay tuned for those. Using all three of these concepts will maximize your sales from each shoot, and not just when one of them becomes available.
• If implemented thoroughly, upselling will become a staple part of your income. This can come at a great advantage depending on its uses. For example, your base prices can be lowered to compete in a saturated market, while your upsell prices can stay the same, attracting more clients at face value.

As mentioned above, be sure to check in next time, as we’ll be covering cross-selling to add to your pristine sales strategy ;)

If you haven't registered an account, you can click the link below and head over to the registration page right away!