Do you want to increase your sales? Do you want to make more money with each sale? We thought so. Check out these essential top selling tips to give your pocketbook a boost.
What is it that every business owner wants to achieve?
World-domination.
OK, the second thing. What is the second thing every business owner wants to achieve?
Of course it’s more sales and more profits. And what's the best way to achieve this?
The best way to do this is to maximize each sales opportunity with effective upselling strategies.
And, don’t be fooled. You may be a photographer, but as a professional photographer you are, indeed, a business person. Your line of work is as much as about the sales and profit margins as it is the beautiful bokeh and post-edit.
So, have a look at these three top upselling tips to have you start realizing that dream of more and bigger profits.
1. Know your Customers: Take Time to Know What They Need
We know as professional artists you want to do things your way; AND we know business practice tells you to limit choice and remain a soft authority in the sales process, but don’t take this too far. Make sure you let your clients have some input in the direction and outcome of the experience. Take the time to get to know your clients – each and every client – that is curious in your service and understand exactly what they’re trying to get out their experience with you (remember: that’s what it’s ultimately about, not the other way around).
So from the minute a potential client sends the first email, places that first call, or walks into your studio, you can start the conversation to see what direction the sale will go. Even seemingly casual, non-sales-y dialogue can give you valuable information going forward.
Then, don’t fight the direction the client lays out. Instead find ways to use it to your advantage.
If the client seems open to suggestions, or not so firm in their opinion, you can find ways to subtlety direct them to your objective. For example:
Potential Client: Hi my name is Jim and I heard about you from a friend. We’d love our daughter to have some Senior pictures done before she finishes high school and goes off to college.
Photographer: Great! I’d be happy to help out. What did you have in mind?
Potential Client: You know, just a few nice images for us to have at this important time in her life and something for her to share with her friends.
Photographer: Got it. Is your daughter active on Social Media?
Potential Client: Yes, very. What teen isn’t these days?
Photographer: Yes, right. Are you and your wife?
Potential Client: No, not really at all. We’re ‘old-fashioned’ people….
Even from this short, casual discussion some important sales notes can be taken. It is clear, as one might expect, that the teenage daughter is an active social media user and, therefore, likely is interested in some digital files to share with her friends appropriately. At least, this can be a great angle to take later on for an upsell.
Equally so, with the parents being ‘old-fashioned,’ it will seem reasonable to additionally offer a quality print option for the whole family to enjoy.
Success to them, then, means both a digital and print option. They might not even know that themselves, but even from a few sentences it becomes clear this would be the best-case-scenario.
So, to help elevate your upselling game get to know your clients and keep your ears open for signs and signals of which direction to take the sales process. If in doubt, openly ask your client so they feel like they are being listened to and respected in the process. If they make passionate decisions, one way or another, don’t ignore them, but instead respect them and work with them.
As much as you might want to stick to your style, no client will stay if they feel like they are being completely ignored. Moreover, the more clients are satisfied the more likely they are to be big spending clients (and, later, returning ones).
2. Offer Upsell Options That Make Sense
Once you’ve gotten to know your clients and what their idea of a success is you need to be sure to find the appropriate upsell to meet their needs. There are dozens of different upsell, cross-sell, and selling tactics and techniques. Be sure to use the information you gather from your client to use the most appropriate ones.
For example, if we go off the scenario provided above, an obvious upsell would be a product upgrade. Instead of offering them simply a print product like a photo album, or simply a digital USB alternative, and leaving one of the parties unsatisfied you can upgrade the photo album to a Complete Set, or package, like we have at nPhoto. This will combine a printed photo album with a USB and even come with a durable, yet stylish album box to protect, and keep in one place, the album and USB.
This might go over something like this:
Photographer: It sounds like there are really two groups to please here: your daughter; and yourself and your wife. I say this because your daughter seems to be most interested in using these images to share with her friends on social media – which is ideal with a digital package, but, on the other hand, I don’t believe you and your wife would be happy with just digital files, am I right?
Potential Client: Yeah, we’d really like to have something we can see. I use my computer for work, but that’s as much as I can take of it. We were really hoping for something we can show off in our home.
Photographer: I hear you. This is why I suggest we go for my Complete Package. My Complete Package will give you both a printed photo album AND a digital USB with digital files so your daughter can easily share them on social media. How does that sound?
Potential Client: Is a digital USB really necessary?
Photographer: Do you want your daughter to love you? It’s not so easy to upload a photo album onto social media. I joke, but in all seriousness, this is an extremely important moment in your daughter’s life and you don’t want to take anything away from it. The digital product will allow her to use the images in the way she would like to. And while the Complete Package may be more than my Print Package or Digital Package on their own, it’s cheaper than combing the two together. This, to me, is the best option for you. What do you think?
As the conversation plays on more appropriate upsell options may become apparent. For example, product protection and customization opportunities:
Potential Client: OK, I like that idea. Let’s do that. Only….
Photographer: What’s the matter? I can see you’re concerned.
Potential Client: Well, no offense, but I’m going to be spending a lot of money on this package. What if something happens to these things soon after I buy them?
Photographer: Understandable. I guarantee these products are of the highest quality and will last you generations, but if you’re really concerned, for a small amount, I can give you a lifetime warranty. With this, should anything happen, just come back to me for a re-print – on the house. How does that sound?
Potential Client: Perfect...Oh, and could I get my daughter’s name on these things.
Photographer: Sure, I can do personalization for $x per item.
3. Limit Your Upsell Options
So, so far we’ve talked about gathering information from your client and then using that information to later offer them appropriate upsells. The next way to make sure you’re efficient and effective with your upselling is to keep the upsell options limited.
In the same way, and for the same reason, you don’t want to offer dozens of products to your clients to begin with, you equally don’t want to inundate clients with dozens of upsell options. Too many upsell options will overwhelm and demotivate your client in the same way too many product options will.
Worse yet, the more upsell options you offer, the more you start to sound like a dirty salesmen. Keep upsell (and/or cross-sell) options limited and appropriate to ensure their success and effectiveness.
In a perfect world, upsell opportunities will just present themselves naturally, as in the examples scenarios provided above. We undertand this isn’t always how it works, but never feel desperate and try to force the issue.
Likewise, don’t offer a million options thinking you’ll ‘cover all the bases’. This, too, will make it seem like you’re trying too hard and ultimately frustrate your client(s)(and, only frustrate you trying to keep track of everything).
BONUS: Don’t Overdo It
Speaking of not feeling desperate, our bonus tip cannot be stressed enough: don’t over do it.
Use upselling and other sales techniques appropriately. Stick to the mantra ‘quality over quantity’. Use the advice above and make sensible suggestions only when appropriate – even if it means (or at least seems) not very often.
As much as a successful upsell can benefit your business and your client-relationship an unwanted upsell that feels like a cheap sales push WILL more profoundly turn off your potential client; often times completely.
This takes us back to the beginning; stressing even further the importance of starting your sales journey with information gathering so you can be confident knowing what to offer and when.
OK, so, learning more about your client, offering upsells that make sense, and being sure not to drown your client in a cascade of possibilities may not help you take over the world. But, they will help you take over your local photography market.
