Much have been said about the skill of selling, and a popular way of understanding the act of sales is to break it down into a check-the-boxes type of list of techniques and skills.
Depending on your character as a photographer, the techniques-based conception of selling may not work for you. Not only have you not made more sales and closed more deals, but you are subjecting yourself to a level of self-doubt that you can no longer cope with.
Now indeed, having attended countless photography client meetings and pitches myself, there are best practices that I would advocate for as well.
But if selling becomes a process so dreadful for you that you feel you are dying a little inside, you are missing something that’s greater than these piecemeal techniques.
This article will point you to the things that generic marketing tips don’t touch on - the Art of Selling, and the psychology behind.
Firstly, we will study why selling is such an intimidating thing for photographers, and creatives in general. I will break down the process of selling the way I see it, which has enabled me to close deal after deal with high-end clients. Firstly, there is a non-contact stage where selling takes place without actual conversation, and an active contact stage where the photographer communicates ideas via words. After a brief description of what these two stages are, we will study how selling takes place in reality, supported both by my personal encounters and psychological theories.
It is key to understand the ability to sell stems from within. In order to be effective in promoting your photography services, you must first put yourself in the appropriate state of mind, which does the selling for you. This state of mind manifests itself both before a potential client comes into contact and after. Once you are in this state of mind, all selling strategies and techniques subsequently falls into place.
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In relation to techniques related specifically to what to say inside a meeting room with photography clients, here is a video about the practical aspects that would help you close a photography deal.
Why does ‘Selling’ and ‘Promoting’ Intimidate Photographers?
It is because of the way we conceive the act of selling and promoting.
Usually as understood, the underlying process of mastering the two is the spirit of ‘fake it till you make it’.
Psychologically, humans do not like the feeling as a result of lying. Our natural instincts cause us to feel uneasy when we are dishonest.
It takes serious mental effort to pretend to be something you are not.
So if you perceive ‘promoting’ and ‘selling’ as buffing and making things up, you are bound to feel uneasy - you are psychologically wired to feel this way!
The orthodox ‘fake it till you make it’ model does work for some, and that it is totally a legit way to go about it if you could cope with the uneasiness,
But this is by no means the only way to approach photography sales - if someone tells you that you must fit into a certain formula of doing something to achieve success, that is often a lie.
This leads us to the alternative way of understanding the selling process, as outlined below.
Two Types of ‘Selling’ Activity
As briefly mentioned in the intro, there are two types of selling activity going on, not just in running photography businesses, but in everyday life.
Sometimes we play the consumer, sometimes we play the salesperson. Almost everything falls into one of the following two buckets - non-contact marketing, and active-contact selling.
Non-Contact Stage/ General Marketing
This is the phase where a brand becomes part of the potential customer’s general knowledge.
Let’s put it in the context of photography. Here are some examples of what it means in practice:
The client does not need photos in the near future, but he acknowledges your existence as a photographer in his town.
Or, the potential client randomly comes across your work, and takes a good look at your logo and name.
Or, a friend of yours mentions to another friend of his that your photos look really cool.
The gist of this is that people get to know you and your photography without a purchase intent. You don’t necessarily talk in this type of ‘selling’.
But they associate your work with a positive connotation either formulated through their own value judgment, or that of people around.
So when such a need for photos arise, they get in touch, which transforms the nature of the ‘selling’ into the following type.
Active-Contact Stage/ Selling
This is the phase where the client needs photography services and communication happens on a verbal level.
Again, in the context of photography, here is what it might look like:
Bouncing ideas off in DMs
Presenting portfolios in in-person meetings
Answering client enquiries over a call
This seems more like the traditional way ‘selling’ is understood, as a form of active persuasion.
At this stage, it becomes apparent to both parties that some substantial talk is taking place, in which the photographer is to sell, and the client is to be sold (potentially).
The photographer would be providing information on his service offerings, while the potential client inputs such information into his head and runs a calculation to decide if he should hire the photographer.
Selling as a Subconscious Language
Let’s start with the first stage in the selling process - what really underpins this stage is promotion on a subconscious level.
We will first look at, on a psychological level, what does subconscious communication mean and why is it important. We then move on to talk about how such kind of promotions happen in real life, with my own actual encounters provided as examples.
This section is intended to provide a fuller picture to the techniques-based angle that you might have taken in approaching photography sales.
The Psychology of Subconsciousness
It has long been proven that the bulk of human communication, aka the exchange of ideas, happen subconsciously.
In the case of promoting your photography business, most of the marketing doesn’t happen with you talking people over it; it happens with you and your work slowly creeping into people’s lives.
You are talking to people’s feelings, not their logic. You are leaving in their heads your vibes, not reasons.
One reason why we hate sales calls so much these days is because we are being sold to on a conscious level without first being sold on the subconscious level.
When done properly, people are already sold 80% on the subconscious level. The remaining 20% is merely a negotiation of minute details like the scope of work and the exact pricing etc.
It is the subconscious, non-lingual stage in which people decide if they want to shoot with you. They don’t realise it, but it is happening.
So, how do I sell to people on a subconscious level?
I will give you examples from my own experience, so that you can fully visualise yourself achieving the same! Here is how.
Repost your Wins!
Did your previous clients publish your work on their official pages? Did a magazine feature your work? Did a curated page select your entry?
Repost all of these on the platforms where people in your network are watching!
Give yourself credit and celebrate your achievements. You must first put yourself out there and make a loud noise before you can expect others to notice you.
Here is a story for you, to show you it actually works.
A while ago I walked into a meeting with a friend that I met two years ago, who reached out on behalf of the company he is working at regarding photography.
The first thing he told me was that my photography seems to be going really well for me as he sees all the work I have been constantly posting on my Instagram stories - when his boss asked him to book a photographer, I was the first person he thought of.
The takeaway of this story for you, is that firstly, you need to keep promoting yourself on a subconscious level so that people remember you as ‘the photographer’. Not seeing any response yet? Keep reminding them.
And that secondly, while promoting your photography business on the subconscious level works brilliantly, it is not an overnight success and it can often take months or even years to reap the results. Solid results, though.
How I make my work known to as many people as possible - by uploading the behind the scenes after every shoot I do and compiling them into a highlight under my IG bio.
Show Awesome Behind the Scenes!
Did a glamorous shoot with really awesome gear? Share these moments with the people around!
Now I know you are probably rolling your eyes if you are not there - I’m not there yet, but here is the thing.
Of course you don’t get to shoot cool stuff all the time, but I am sure you have shot a few.
Of course not the entire shoot looks glamours, but I am sure there are more glamours and awesome parts.
So broadcast these parts as loud as you can!
Whatever you release into the Universe, the Universe returns more of it to you.
Tell the world you are doing incredible things with your camera? The world will get you to do more of it.
Here are some personal encounters to substantiate what I just wrote.
Regularly after each shoot I did, I post my behind the scene videos onto Instagram stories showing how professional my services are - how I guide models in posing for photoshoots, how I lead a team of creatives to style the outfit, how I set up my strobes etc. Later it became such a huge collection that I created a story highlight below my bio to hold all of them, for potential clients to see.
I also filmed myself shooting client work and upload these clips onto Youtube, both as tutorial demonstrations and branding materials.
How I market myself as a professional photographer via creating visual demonstrations and branding videos on my Youtube Channel.
Seeing my uploads, many friends have come to me saying how professional I look. Now whether or not I was indeed professional is not the issue; all that mattered was that they recommended me to their friends who were looking for photographers.
I do book quite a few shoots every month from people who I am friends of friends with.
The take away here for you is that people often don’t know what you mean when you say you are a photographer. But deep down you know you do really amazing stuff!
Show them, so that they could see how amazing it is to work with you!
Walk Around with your Camera
Given that we are in the digital era, physical marketing is often left in the back-burn as we get excited by the online buzz.
But the very reason everyone pushes online marketing so hard these days is because we want to replicate what we do physically with our persona online so as to scale it up.
That is, the promotions you do online should be an extension of your physical presence as a photographer, not a replacement of it.
In practice, in the case of marketing for photography services, it basically means walking around in your camera so that people see you doing your thing, as a photographer.
While it sounds rather counter-intuitive to the direction everyone is pushing, here are three real-life examples I have come across.
Some years ago I was in London shooting street photography. One day I set up my tripod at Bank Tube Station hoping to get some light rails as the train departs. Because I was blocking so much space and that Bank was a very crowded station, people started noticing me and eventually a personal trainer came over and handed me his business card. He recently started a gym and needed photos to get his social media up and coming.
Another time I was back in Hong Kong carrying my Canon 5Div and a Godox reflector on the MTR. I wasn’t even shooting, I was just on the way to a portrait shoot. The guy standing next to me suddenly said ‘nice camera’, and we started talking. He had to hop off after a few stations but he left me his business card, saying that his friend is an architect and needs some interior photos.
Just recently, as COVID hit Hong Kong really hard, I wanted to shoot some documentary covering how the city reacted to the 3rd wave of the pandemic. Restaurants were suffering terribly because of dine-in bans as a reactive measure, and I happened to walk past a waiter smoking outside a restaurant. I pointed a camera at him and he asked if I want to shoot the interiors of the place. Turns out he owns the restaurant, and was looking for a photographer to shoot the new menu.
The takeaway here is that nothing markets for your photography better than your very self.
Maybe you are not getting booked as much, but you can for sure shoot your own projects.
Go into your natural habitat and start doing your thing - people will start noticing.
Selling as a State of Being
Off to the second stage in the selling process, in which a prospect gets in touch with you to enquire about your photography services.
If you find it very taxing to apply the ‘tips and tricks’ that get thrown around so much, and that they seem to be working so well for everyone else but yourself, here is why.
These techniques are pieces that help you put together your pitch, but just having a lot of pieces doesn’t give you a pitch - you need something to glue all of that up.
People ‘break down’ the pitch for the ease of teaching, but you must not overlook the need to ‘glue up’ the whole thing so that you are actually reaping the benefits of practicing such tips.
Here are some mindset fixes for you, the practice of which will help you develop your sales efforts into completion, without you even knowing.
Present yourself as a Personality, not a Photographer
Feel free to share with me what you think, but depending on the niche you are in, clients are actually not as stingy about the photos being perfect than you think.
Mostly people just need their photos to ‘look decent’ in their standards; they couldn’t care less about what gear gave you what results, or what editing software gave you what effect.
I have a feeling that when it comes to photography, the chief concern a client has is whether or not the photographer is easy to work with.
Because they are paying you, the ultimate aim is to produce photos they are satisfied with and can use to further their branding, while that might mean shooting and doing things in a way you don’t normally follow.
They want a person who they could deliver results that fit their instructions. Some qualities you might want to demonstrate then, would be your ability to adapt, to solve problems, to plan and organise etc.
Demonstrate your Capabilities, not Techniques
Selling is to build trust, and in this case as a photographer, you are trying to convince your potential clients that you are an able person.
That is different from showing off your photography techniques. Especially with clients who have worked with many different photographers, they already know a bunch of professional photographers who could produce technically flawless work and you wouldn’t be value-adding in terms of that, frankly speaking, as a young photographer.
This was literally what a potential client told me in a recent meeting, that if they were simply looking to hire a photographer with the best techniques, they wouldn’t even consider me because they already have contacts. But I got my feed in their door because I showed them that I have the ability to understand their specific needs for this specific project. And the big players didn’t.
Think about it this way - your techniques are a pass-fail test, which you must pass of course, but that is hardly a selling point.
Look inwards and ask yourself what are some special abilities you have? Eg. resourcefulness, understand other’s needs, business sense …
The takeaway here is that you are supposed to present yourself as a whole being - your personality and abilities should speak for you, not some ‘do’s and don’ts’, not some mechanical ‘how to respond when client says x’ phrases.
Do you see how these simple mindset shifts encompass the fragments of techniques? If you know who you are and where you edge lies, you will naturally know what to say.
Trying to say something that doesn’t genuinely come from within you adds stress, whereas talking about yourself as you are is an incredibly comfortable process.
Look thoroughly inside yourself because that self is a capable salesperson in itself.
Summary
In this article, we talked about:
Why selling and promoting intimidates photographers,
What they two types of selling activities are,
How to sell to prospects on a subconscious level,
How to pitch to clients on a conscious level.
More sharing coming soon!
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