Zenologue

I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that getting confirmed bookings for our wedding photography services, no matter how long we’ve been in the business, can be a very challenging and often frustrating task.

How often have you gone into a sales presentation with an apparently ideal prospect, who seemed keen and enthusiastic, only to come out of it feeling let down because they didn’t end up making a booking? It’s very annoying and frustrating, not to mention confusing and painful. It’s certainly happened to me more times than I can count, and I know it will undoubtedly happen again in the future.

As hard as it can be to deal with sometime, we’re in the people business, and being able to handle rejection is one of those “necessary evils” that come with the territory.

But what can we do to make sure that we keep rejection to a minimum? How can we raise our booking percentages and make each one of our sales presentations count?

Wedding bookings usually start with an email or a telephone call, or perhaps someone you know approaches you directly to ask about photographing a wedding. Irrespective of how it begins, it always leads to the need for a detailed sales presentation, in person, if we’re to have any real chance of making the booking.

Some time ago, I realized a couple of important things: 

1. Nobody books all their prospects
2. The sales presentation is a two-way process. The client needs to decide if they want to work with me, but I also need to decide if I want to work with that particular prospect.

No Salesperson Closes Them All:

This is a simple, but important, fact of being a salesperson. If we expect to book every single client we meet then we’re destined to be let down. However, if we calmly accept the fact that we won’t book everyone, it takes some of the pressure off and we can relax a little more. Ironically, being more relaxed, in itself, can help to raise our booking percentage at least a little – because if we are calm and relaxed, then the prospect is more likely to be that way too.

Who’s Interviewing Whom?

When I started out in the photography business, I viewed every sales presentation as a sort of job interview, where the prospect was simply deciding whether or not to hire me for their “job”. However, it’s really much more than that – if we accept that we’re not going to work with everybody, then some prospects will qualify as clients and others won’t. The sales presentation is really a way for us to work out whether or not the prospect really qualifies as a client, and to help us decide if we really want to work with them, as much as it is about the client interviewing us.

There are many things that might make a prospect unqualified. For example, they may not agree to our studio policies or we may feel a personality clash with them. Perhaps they are too demanding, or we simply can’t make a real connection with them.

The main point here is that the sales presentation is a two-way affair, which makes it a lot easier for us as the salesperson by removing some of the pressure of “having” to make the sale.

But what should a typical sales presentation look like?

The Sale Presentation Dissected:

Although this article refers to the sale of wedding photography services, the same principles apply to other areas of photography service just as easily.

Through my research on this subject, I’ve learned from the likes of Zig Ziglar, Charles Lewis and others in the field that an effective sales presentation is composed of 4 basic steps, each of which should be taken in sequence. If any step is left out, skipped, or performed out of sequence, the chances of making the sale dwindle significantly.

The four steps are: 

1. Build rapport
2. Generate interest
3. Education about USP’s (unique selling propositions)
4. The Close

Build Rapport:

This phase of the sales presentation is the initial meeting and time spent getting to know your prospect. Asking very general questions and chatting with your client is a great way to break the ice, as it were, and it gives you both a chance to relax. You can ask them how they met, how they got engaged, for example. Exchange stories with them about weddings, and try to find areas where you share common interests. A good sense of humor can go a long way here, but be careful not to overdo it or resort to anything not in good taste.

Building rapport with your client is not meant to be any form of confidence trickery or manipulation. You simply and genuinely want to get to know your prospect and have them get to know you a too.

Generate Interest:

Photography is an emotional sale, and our job as the salesperson is to generate interest, emotion and enthusiasm about what the prospect is looking to buy from us. We need to be enthusiastic and interested too – not just in what we’re selling, but also in the prospects themselves and their wedding. This is the place to ask them questions about the wedding, the color scheme, the dress, the flowers, the bridal party etc.

Use this stage of the selling process to discover what their main buying motive is. There are many of these, but some examples I’ve seen might be: 

• They want to find the cheapest photographer
• They’re looking for something original and different
• They want someone interested in capturing all the details
• Looking for a photo-journalistic style
• Or, they may want a purely traditional style

When you know what they are mainly looking for, it makes it easier to sell to them, as long as it’s something you know you can offer them – otherwise they won’t be a qualified client.

This phase of the process is also useful for you to show them how much you care about them and their wedding, which is very important.

Education:

Now that we’ve built rapport with them and have talked with them awhile, it’s a good time to show them samples of our work, and educate them about our unique selling propositions (USP’s).

There should be at least ten USP’s for our business – things that really set us apart from the other photographers in the area. We can use their answers from previous questions about them and their wedding to volunteer some of the USP’s, or we can supply them in answer to questions they may ask or any objections they raise.

USP’s are, by definition, unique to each specific business, and I found it was well worth the difficult effort it took for me to set mine down on paper. They can be very hard to identify, but it’s critical that you discover what they are.

Beware though – USP’s are not things like “my photography is high-quality” or “I take 1000 photographs of your wedding”. They are much more personal than that and are usually connected more with your methodology, approach and philosophy than anything else. A good example might be a solid guarantee, which means you firmly stand behind your work.

This phase of the sales presentation is one of the most important – this is where your prospect will learn the reasons they should book with you, and it’s also where they might develop the internal “excuses” for booking with you, excuses that give themselves permission to go ahead and book. We all use this when we are making a significant purchase – for example, we might justify it to ourselves by thinking “I deserve this after working so hard for so long.” These are very powerful motivators in helping someone to come to a buying decision.

The Close:

The final phase of the sales presentation is the close. I was truly amazed to discover that around 63% of all sales presentations are made without the salesperson actually asking for the sale!

From personal experience, I know that the close can feel very uncomfortable; this is the point in the sales presentation when we find out if we’ve been successful, and there is the very real possibility of rejection, which can be hard for us to face head on. But, it’s crucial that we attempt to close the sale if we’re going to make the booking.

The close can be made a lot easier for us to say by cushioning it with good vocabulary. For example, we might say something like, “I hope I was able to answer all of your questions – how do you feel about what we’ve talked about?”

Hopefully, the answer to this is a positive one, in which case we can go on to say, “Your wedding sounds so romantic, and I would really love to work with you. At the moment, your date is still available and I can take the deposit now. Would you like to pay by cash or check?”

This is a closing statement, and we’ll either get a booking or hear a stall. If they object to something, or stall the sale then we can politely address it and try to close again.

It’s not uncommon to hear at least 4 or 5 stalls or objections in the closing phase, before they will finally book. Don’t make the mistake of giving in too easily at the first hurdle. This is a cyclic process, and we must go round and round, addressing each concern, until they make a booking, or it becomes clear that they cannot or will not book.

A word of caution: do not confuse this process with pressure selling or manipulation. This is simply a structured approach to the sales process that ensures we honestly answer all the prospect’s objections before they commit to a sale. It may be that they simply don’t have the money, or they don’t agree with your policies, or that your packages don’t suit their needs – in those cases, and others, it’s perfectly all right to not make the booking. In fact, it’s the salesperson’s duty to not allow the client to book in those instances, since it would not be the right action for the client.

Summary:

I honestly believe that a well-structured and well-prepared sales presentation is an invaluable asset towards increasing our booking percentages. A structure allows us to direct the sales presentation in the way we want it go, and we can prepare ourselves to handle most of the objections we’re likely to encounter. Of course, every client is unique, and there will always be surprises, but this is where we build our experience by adding those to our repertoire.

Sales professional photographer, selling