8 Tips for Photographer In-Person Sales

If you haven’t tried in-person sales (IPS) before, now is the time to give it a try. This method of selling has been known to double, if not triple your online sales! We have heard many success stories of people who started IPS in the past year and the results are incredible! Several people even increased their sales from $150-$250 per sale to $2,000+ PER SALE! I think it’s definitely worth it to give it a try. We have some tips to help you get started:

1) Make the process as simple as possible!

The easiest way to run a quick and painless IPS session is to first go through all of your edited images with your client. Arrange them into groups – ‘yes’, ‘no’, and ‘maybe’. You can tell from the number of ‘yes’ photos the client chooses, what you have to work with when figuring out what kind of collection to place them into.

2) Using video slideshows can be a wonderful addition to IPS.

With slideshows, the client gets immediately caught up in the emotion of the photos, and they raise the energy and excitement in the room. People love their videos, so you can use them as an incentive for your highest package or to clients who spend over $X.

3) Have some prints on hand for cash and carry sales.

Having matted prints is been time-consuming but amazing; clients love getting their hands on their images and seeing what they’ll look like printed. Print some 4×6 images and mat them for the reveal and make them available for immediate client purchase. If they don’t purchase these prints, you can always take their images out and use the mat for your next session.

Don’t print a lot of products or large prints unless you are certain a client will purchase it or you have a signed model release and have somewhere else you can use it if the client doesn’t purchase.

4) Show them examples of their photos as wall designs.

The Shoot & Sell app is wonderful for wall design sales. You can even put your client’s own rooms into the system so they can see what images will look like in their home. This is a great way to sell them on wall prints.

5) Your main focus should be on selling prints and products.

You can still sell digital files, but be sure that digitals are more expensive to drive clients to purchase prints. You can also then use the digitals as an incentive for clients with higher sales. Many clients love social sharing of their images, so you could provide low-res files for that purpose of all purchased images.

6) Try to bring emotion into your sales pitch.

Talk about the heirloom quality of your products, the chance for your clients to preserve precious and fleeting moments for the rest of their lives. Talk to them about how fast children grown and how different they become through the years. Without these images, they could inevitably lose some of those memories. By having these photos, they can actively cherish this time, all the time.

7) Under-promise, Over-deliver!

Give your clients longer deadlines than you know that it will take to receive prints and products. If it takes a week for your lab to get it back to you, tell them 2-3 weeks, then surprise them with early delivery. You never want to promise that something will be here in 3 days, if it could take a week. You want your clients to receive everything early, never late. Don’t set yourself up for failure – always allot plenty of time with wiggle room to get your products in and delivered.

8) Listen to your clients.

Pay attention during your session and during your IPS session to what your clients say about photos that can give you a sense of direction on what to offer them. What is it that really gets her heart going? Is it the thought of seeing her child’s images on the wall when she comes in the front door? Is it the thought of having an album they can look through together over many years? Is it preserving memories that the family will have down the road after everyone is grown? Listen for these kinds of cues, and then reflect that language back in order to nudge clients to the next higher package or product.

>>> IPS is a great way to bring in more income without having to constantly find new clients. Want more ideas on how to make money with clients you already have? We have just the guide for you and it’s on sale! Save $75 if you purchase this guide today – no discount code required! Click here for more details.

>>> Have a question about these tips? Feel free to message me by emailing bp4uguides@gmail.com or commenting on this post.