For some reason, this hit me this time like no time before, and it seemed very relative to our world and our industry. Our future ins’t what it once was thought to be. Things have changed, a LOT.

Don’t get me wrong, I love what technology has done to our art. I am now only limited by my imagination, and the quality of work we can produce now is far superior to what we could produce years ago. The technology that has made our craft so awesome is also a double edged sword. It has opened a floodgate of people rushing into our industry, hanging a shingle, with little or no real understanding of what we do or what they are about to do.

I find that there are a lot of photographers that failed to keep up with our changing industry and the public’s needs and desires. They thought they had it made and were safe in our business, that they had “arrived” and needed to put forth little additional effort.

But their perceived future at that time is not what they have now. Many are struggling to stay afloat, many have closed their doors and seeked other ventures. They failed to evolve.

In our lives and in our industry, there are unforeseen things ahead. We must be able to look ahead and see things on the horizon, be prepared to handle them and willing to adjust our navigation to get around them. It’s changing fast, we can’t sit idle at all.

For Pamela and I, we are constantly looking at where our market is going and what we have to do to stay on top of it. Do we love all of those things? No, not at all. Some ideas we like, some we are indifferent to and a few we despise. But they are coming anyway. Our future is determined by how we handle what’s ahead.

Let’s talk about the positive side of packages. What makes packages work? I think packaging has a psychological effect, they imply to people “this is what you need”. This can provide a floor for orders and can help them to a certain level. The package fills their needs as well as frequently offers some price incentive to the customer as well.

The downside of preset packages is that no only do they provide a floor to our orders, but they also create a ceiling. That same implied “filling of their needs” can begin to work against us on the top end. If our package fills their needs, it’s unlikely they will buy more. This is why people rarely add much onto packages.

In our studio, for our seniors, we offer a Create-a-Package. This offers a lot of flexibility for our clients, which has a lot of appeal. We stress these benefits to our customers. And like the benefit of packages, it provides a floor for our orders. But unlike set packages, our system has no ceiling, clients can keep adding things that appeal to them, with no limit applied by our pricing structure, only by the client’s ability to buy.

Let’s look at another aspect of packages, the discount. In each of our businesses, we have a certain amount that we need each client to spend for us to run a profitable business. We can call that our “base sale”. Unfortunately, unless we have minimum order, some order will fall below our base sale. What we sometimes see photographers do is offer discounted packages that are below our needed base sale. If we stop and think about it, that really doesn’t make much sense. Why would we DISCOUNT an order that is under what our base needs are to be profitable? It may be OK to offer a smaller package to create a starting appeal, but it should not be a discount from your normal prices. Who says that a package must be cheaper than your regular prices? In no way should we discount any package that is under our base sale needs. It’s probably even wiser to begin any discounts at our average order. If we take this approach, we are providing incentive to the better half of our clients.

So look at your packages. Do they make sense? Are they encouraging your clients to spend more?

First of all, keep one thing in mind, a price list is NOT a marketing piece. It’s a selling piece. So it doesn’t have to be cutesy and loaded with graphics that you think are cool. It’s business time. Marketing might be aimed at seniors for appeal, but the price list should be aimed at the PARENTS who are making the buying decisions. Now, even with all that, we make sure that our price list matches the LOOK of our marketing for consistency. But keep it CLEAN AND SIMPLE, that’s rule #1.

Avoid any confusion. We want people to spend money right? If there is any confusion whatsoever, people are resistant to letting loose of their money if they are confused. So if your price list creates more questions than it answers, it’s BAD. If you have too many packages and people can’t decide, it’s BAD. Now it might make sense to YOU, you wrote it, but it could have all of your customers scratching their heads. So hand it to a few people and see if they get it without you making them a dissertation on how to interpret it.

The next major factor is that our price lists should maximize DESIRE and minimize PRICE. But so many that I see do the opposite. They FLAUNT the price really large without appealing descriptions or illustration. Look at these two examples:

FILET MIGNON $38.95
A succulent slice of the finest
beef, wrapped with apple
smoked bacon and served with
our stuffed baked potato
and french bread

FILET MIGNON
A succulent slice of the finest
beef, wrapped with apple
smoked bacon and served with
our stuffed baked potato
and french bread
39

Fine restaurants have done this for years. They know to make us want it, get our mouth watering and us thinking “Wow, that sounds great!”, then in smaller type “oh yeah, it’s this much”. And notice the LACK of dollar signs. Dollar signs emphasize price.

Are we trying to be deceitful? No, not at all. We do want to make their mouths water for our products. Since our work is visual, and people often don’t know what we say when we state an “8 opening folio”, to them, they are saying “hmmm what exactly is that? Is that the think that your cousin got?” So we try to illustrate many of our products in our price list. Hey, you’re a photographer, right? Take a picture of your finished product!

These are a few things that can help make your price list a little easier to sell from and encourage larger orders.

So I’m going to make an attempt to make a post to this blog at least once a week. With all that we have going on, it’s going to take some effort, but I’m going to try.

I want to post about photo techniques, photo business and some great ideas and sources.

If you want to take your business to the next level, enroll in UBOX