Recorded: Welcome to The ReWork with Allison Tyler Jones, a podcast dedicated to inspiring portrait photographers to uniquely brand, profitably price, and confidently sell their best work. Allison has been doing just that for the last 15 years, and she’s proven that it’s possible to create unforgettable art and run a portrait business that supports your family and your dreams. All it takes is a little rework. Episodes will include interviews with experts from in and outside of the photo industry, mini workshops, and behind-the-scenes secrets that Allison uses in her portrait studio every single day. She will challenge your thinking and inspire your confidence to create a profitable, sustainable portrait business you love through continually refining and reworking your business. Let’s do the rework.
Allison Tyler Jones: Hi friends, and welcome to The ReWork. If you’ve known me even a minute, you know that I love sales, I love spending time with my clients, brainstorming a project, I love to quote them prices and figure out how it is that we are going to create some amazing wall art or albums for their home, but I wasn’t always like that. I’ve shot myself in the foot so many times, and I want you to benefit from the lessons that I’ve learned, so I’ve created this three-part series, the Sales Sabotage series, and this week’s episode is number one, Predict. It’s all about finding ways to predict the future in ways that are not going to paralyze you, but instead will propel you forward, and I have a really good exercise for you that’s going to help you get out ahead of some of the objections and questions that your clients might ask, so that you can feel really confident in knowing how to answer those questions, or how to even answer them before they’re even asked by predicting in a way that will propel you forward. Let’s do it.
Allison Tyler Jones: Welcome to our first episode in our Sales Sabotage series. In this episode, we are going to discuss predicting the future. So whether you have a crystal ball or not, we tend to like to predict the future, we kind of like to know what’s going on, but we can predict the future in a couple of different ways. We can predict the future in a way that paralyzes us, or we can predict the future in a way that propels us forward. So, many times when I’ve been speaking to groups of photographers, I’ll ask a single question, “What is holding you back from the sales that you want in your business?” And I’ll say, “Don’t be afraid to be a whiny baby, tell me all the things, give me all the excuses, all the reasons why you can’t seem to make the sales that you want to make.”
Allison Tyler Jones: So what some of those answers sound like is, “People are going to just think I’m a used car salesman. I can’t do all of those sales tricks that I read about in the sales books, overcoming objections. I’m pretty sure that my clients are going to just think I’m trying to shove this down their throat, and that I don’t have their best interests at heart.” Or “I’m pretty sure that my clients are going to think that we’re just too expensive, they’re not going to like me, and that they are going to be thinking, ‘Who do you think you are for charging this much for this work?’ Or worse yet, they’re going to go tell everybody, ‘Can you believe she’s charging that much for those portraits?'” We’re afraid that we’re not going to make any money, that our family was right. The siblings, the cousins, the husband, whoever told you that you can’t actually make it as a portrait photographer and have a sustainable business.
Allison Tyler Jones: So all of these predictions pile on top of each other until we’re paralyzed, we’re in the fetal position, thinking of all the negative reasons why we can’t do it. And really at the bottom of all of that, it just comes down to fear, we’re afraid. And this is true of whether you’re new in the business, or you’ve been in the business for a while, because maybe you have a pretty good business, but you’re trying to make some changes to your branding, your pricing, your product lineup, or you want to make some changes to your processes, maybe in the rules. Maybe you want to start saying, “Look, I don’t want to sell a bunch of little stuff, I want to start putting wall art on the wall for my clients,” but you’re afraid to tell your clients that they need to put something on the wall before they can buy the little stuff.
Allison Tyler Jones: But whenever we make change, it’s going to be scary, and these fears are going to raise their head, and we start telling ourselves those stories all over again, and we become paralyzed because we’re predicting doom and gloom, we’re predicting the worst. And so in this episode, I want to encourage you that that’s a very human tendency, to predict the future in a negative way, but if we flip that on its head and predict in a new way, use prediction in a way that will benefit us, that will help us, that will propel us forward rather than putting us in a box and making us scared.
Allison Tyler Jones: One way to do that is by just realizing, okay, we are in business, we are putting our art out there in the world, and we are going to sell it, and when you put something out in the world to sell it, there are going to be objections to that. People are going to have opinions about it, they’re going to have questions about it, and just because they have questions, doesn’t mean they don’t want what it is that you’re doing, or that they don’t like it, or that they hate you, or they think you suck or shouldn’t be doing it, it just means that they have questions.
Allison Tyler Jones: I prefer to look at questions, or pushback, you could call it a lot of different things, as a good thing, because that means they’re actually interested enough to have a conversation about it. But something that they really didn’t want or weren’t interested in, it’d be like, “Oh, okay, moving on.” But if they’re asking questions about it, like, “Well, how about if we did it this way? Well, what if we did it that way?” They’re engaged in the process, they want what it is that you’re doing. But because we’re sensitive and we’re creative, we want people to just jump in our lap and lick our face and love everything that we’re doing, and not ask a bunch of questions. We get our feelings hurt when they do, and we twist ourselves into knots.
Allison Tyler Jones: So how can we use prediction in a positive way that can propel us forward? I’m going to give you a challenge. What I want you to do is I want you to get a piece of paper or notebook, and a pen, and I want you to quickly, without really thinking too hard about it, write down every single solitary question or objection, thing that you hate to hear, or that you hear often, whether you hate to hear it or not, just common questions, objections, common comments that come up again and again that you hear. What are the constant questions that you’re getting in your business that you feel like you don’t have good answers to? Can you predict what those questions will be and when they’ll happen?
Allison Tyler Jones: So, let me give you a few examples from our business. “Wow, I had no idea that this was going to be that expensive. Wow. Do people really pay that much for pictures?” So this comment might be heard during the first phone call or in the consultation, which is exactly when I want to hear this. I do not want to hear that comment after I’ve already photographed the family. They might also ask, “Is it possible to just get all of the digital files so that I can print my own canvases and holiday cards?” If we hear this anymore, it’s usually during the first phone call.
Allison Tyler Jones: Another one I might hear is, “I really want my kids photographed now because they’re getting older and I want to freeze this moment in time, but you know, we’re remodeling/moving/building a new house, and so I can’t make a decision on wall art right now, so can we just photograph the kids now, and then I can decide what I want to buy next year? You hang onto these, right? And then we can decide when the remodel is done.” Again, something that comes up during the consultation usually. Another one might be, “We have absolutely no wall space left in our home at all.” Another one, “I think it’s kind of vain to have pictures of ourselves on the walls, so we like to have them in little frames on our bookcase, but yeah, I just… I can’t put a big picture of my family on the wall, that’s just too vain.”
Allison Tyler Jones: So pause this recording and make a note of any other difficult questions, objections, or comments that clients say that they come up with that you feel like, “Ugh, that one’s coming up all the time, and I just don’t feel like I have a good answer for it,” or “I hate it when they ask that, it just makes me crazy.” You heard me talk about it before, those frequently-asked difficult questions, or those continual, constant objections that you’re hearing again and again, write them down. This is how you’re predicting in a good way, in a way that’s going to propel you forward, so pause and go make your list, I’ll be here when you get back.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay, I hope you did it, and if you are driving or walking your dog, I hope you do it when you get back home. So if you took the time to make that list, good job. I’m a big list-maker, I love writing things down, I find it therapeutic, and what I find especially therapeutic about this exercise is that looking at all of those scary questions, at all of those comments on a piece of paper, I realize, “Okay, this isn’t that bad, I can find answers for these. I can look at all of these objections and all of these questions that make me crazy and realize there are only a few answers that I need to come up with.”
Allison Tyler Jones: So as you’re going through this list, be on the lookout for the common phrases and objections, and are they falling into certain categories, like wanting digital files, or not wanting to make a decision, or not wanting to commit to a final order? Those are generally really common areas that objections are falling into. And then you’re going to come up with your personal answers for all of those things. So each of these questions or directions, I can’t emphasize enough that your answers need to be in your language, how you talk, that’s comfortable to you, that they need to be answers that are easy for you to say, so they’re not too complicated, not over-explaining, and if you have employees, it needs to be easy to train them to say them, but still consistent with your brand.
Allison Tyler Jones: So let’s go back and look at those questions that I just asked and answer them. “Wow, I had no idea it was going to be so expensive.” Our response to this is always, “Yeah, it is, it’s amazing.” And so we’re validating our clients, we’re not arguing with them, we’re not being defensive about why it’s more expensive, because it’s custom-framed or printed on fine art paper, whatever. We just say, “Yep, it’s not an inexpensive proposition.” There’s no need to be defensive about that, it’s amazing, this is going to be great for your clients. So no need to throw out big excuses and be defensive, we can just validate. “Yep, it’s expensive, and it’s going to be amazing.”
Allison Tyler Jones: A follow-up to that might be when people say, “Do people really spend that on portraits?” “Yeah, they do, and our clients love it, and it’s amazing for them to have this wall art in their home that they get to walk by every day and see what is most important to their family.” So basically what we’re doing when we’re answering that question is just highlighting what the value is to the client, how we’re creating art for their home that when they walk by that every day, it makes them realize how lucky they are to have the kids they have, and it shows what their priority is in their home to their family, to people that visit their home, and to themselves.
Allison Tyler Jones: So what about that other question that we always hate to hear, the digital file question? Depending on how it’s asked will depend on how we answer. So how I had it in my earlier example is, “Can I just get the digital files so I can print my own canvases and print my own cards?” That’s sending a signal that maybe we might be dealing with someone that is a DIYer, do-it-yourselfer. They just want us to create the images for them, and they want to go do their… Whatever they want with those images.
Allison Tyler Jones: So I tend to get out ahead of that in the first phone call, before they can ever even ask the question about digital files. I predict that they’re going to ask that question, and I answer it ahead of time, instead of being on the defensive. So when we predict that we’re going to ask that, I’ll say something like, “You know, we’re not a typical portrait photography studio,” or “We’re not normal.” However I say that, it’s one of those things, or “We work a little different than most photographers,” so there might be one of those lead-ups is how I’ll say that. “And how we differ is that we specialize in wall art for your home and custom-designed albums,” and that way, they know exactly what it is that we’re doing.
Allison Tyler Jones: They might have a follow-up question to that. “Okay, but can I get the digital files?” “Of course. Anything that you put on the wall or in an album, you’re going to receive the social media files of those images to share online and with friends and family, post on social media, et cetera. They’re not for printing, they’re for screens only.” So that’s how we answer that question. It’s letting them know what it is that we do, not defending what we don’t, and in a really nice way. We’re not saying “No,” we’re not saying that “We’re not going to give you the digital files, and you’re stupid for asking that,” we’re simply stating what it is that we specialize in. “We are about making it special. We are about creating the most beautiful work on your wall. It’s printed to perfection, framed to perfection, and installed to perfection for you. We don’t want you to have to worry about that.”
Allison Tyler Jones: And in fact, we often say things like, “Our clients are not interested in DIY, they just want everything handled, beginning to end, and that’s what we do, but we know that not everybody needs that level of service, we completely understand that.” So we’re kind of letting them know what it is that we do and what it is that we don’t do, but in a nice way, and that way, they can decide whether they want us or not.
Allison Tyler Jones: Are you sabotaging your sales and you don’t even know it? How are you supposed to know if you are? Well, we have created a Sales Sabotage Evaluation Tool, and it’s available to you free on our website at dotherework.com. Go to that website, download this tool, and see if you’re making one of the seven deadly sales sabotage mistakes that might be just screwing it up for you, and you’ll be able to see how you can quickly flip the script, get out of your own way. It’s free, go get it now, dotherework.com, and look for the Sales Sabotage Evaluation Tool.
Allison Tyler Jones: So let’s just say they come up with the, “Well, we can order later, we don’t have to decide now,” so maybe we have a delay of decision-making, that’s a really common situation that might come up in many different ways. “I need to talk to my husband. I need to go home and measure. You hang on to these, don’t you? I don’t have to decide right now.” There’s a lot of that going on. So this is tough, because right now it seems like the whole world is remodeling, moving, building, or some combination of those three things, and we know that when we capture the images, if they don’t order right away, it is unlikely that they will ever order, because it just falls down on their priority list. They’re busy, they don’t think about it, and it just slips out of their mind.
Allison Tyler Jones: So how do we answer that one when we’re confronted with “We’re moving, we’re remodeling, I can’t order right now,” whatever? So I will just validate that and say to them this… Of course, all of these conversations, remember, are happening in the consultation before we’ve photographed anything.
Allison Tyler Jones: I will validate them and say, “The whole world is building and remodeling right now, I’m in the middle of a remodel myself, and what we’ve done in the past with clients is your kids are going to change, your kids are not going to wait for your remodel and be frozen in time, they’re still going to grow and get bigger and change and be different, so it’s so smart to just go ahead and capture the portraits right now, because they’re never going to be this young again, and then we will decide what’s going to work best on your walls. If we need to work with your interior designer, with CAD drawings and elevations, we can do that. We will print the images now, frame them, and then we’ll store them here in the studio until you’re ready for us to come and install once your remodel or your new build is done.” That’s how we handle that, and we have lots of portraits in storage right now, just for these very kinds of projects.
Allison Tyler Jones: Okay, what if we have somebody that gives you that whole, “I don’t have the wall space, that’s so vain to have your pictures all over the walls?” It’s always funny to me when people say, “We have no wall space” or “Isn’t it vain to put portraits on the wall?” You kind of think to yourself, “Well then if you don’t want portraits, why are you here, what are we even doing? So if you have no wall space, then do you want an album?” Of course, I’m not saying to them, “Why are you even here?” I’m just thinking that in my head.
Allison Tyler Jones: But what I would say to them is, “Okay, so if you have no wall space and you think it’s vain to put images on the wall, then are we looking at an album project? Is that what we’re going to create, some kind of amazing storybook for your family?” Then kind of more to the vain idea, I’ll say, “Well, if you think it’s vain to have family portraits, why are you here, what are we doing, if you don’t want to have family portraits on the wall?” And I’ll say that maybe in kind of a fun, conversational way, but sort of putting it back on them to help them think about, “Well, yeah, why am I doing it?”
Allison Tyler Jones: And then maybe what they’re thinking is maybe what they’ve seen in the past has been very camera-aware, very posed, very… Maybe really, really large faces, or maybe they just felt like however it has been done in ways that they’ve seen it, that they didn’t like it, but maybe we can show them something that’s different. Maybe they don’t want to be camera-aware in the picture, maybe they want to be laughing and having it be more candid, where they’re not looking right at the camera.
Allison Tyler Jones: So that’s a conversation that needs to be had and listening, but I don’t think it’s a bad idea to kind of joke around a little bit and say, “Okay, well, so what were you thinking? Where we thinking an album?” Or if they think it’s vain, again, back to the album, or “What is it that your thoughts are?” Because we want to help them capture their children, their personality, and the family at this stage, because it’s never going to be just like it is right now. That’s why we do this, that’s why we create portraits, we want to capture time. But that doesn’t mean that they always have to be on the wall and have to be huge and big, they could be in a private area of your home, they could be in a custom-designed album, there are a lot of ways that we can do that.
Allison Tyler Jones: So when I look at my list of questions, I can see that they generally fall into three categories. One is based on price, where people are asking about price or complaining, or saying, “Wow, I can’t believe the price.” Really what they’re asking, “Is this going to be worth it?” And so how are we answering that question? How are we answering the worth it question? And that almost never involves talking about what something’s printed on or how it’s framed. You might mention that, you might mention, as I do, that these prices include custom framing, delivery, and installation, so that’s one way you can go. That’s why it seems more than if I was just… They were buying digital files or whatever.
Allison Tyler Jones: But what they really want to know is is this going to be worth it? So you have to paint that picture for them and help them figure out whether it’s going to be worth it to them or not, because it might not be worth it to them. We know what we do is totally worth it, we know what we can do, and we know how amazing we can make it for their family and their home, but they may not want or appreciate the level of service that we are providing.
Allison Tyler Jones: They may just want some disposable imagery done very quickly by someone who is better with a camera than they are, and if that’s the case, then we’re not talking about the same thing, that’s not the type of business that I’m in, so we need to actually find that out quicker and sooner than later, and not allow ourselves to think, “Well, when they see the images, they are going to be so excited about them, they won’t help but be able to fall in love with everybody, and then they’re going to pay for it because they’re so excited about it.” That’s not necessarily the case, and if we haven’t been clear up front, they’re actually going to be mad and feel like they’ve been ripped off. Even if they buy something, it’s likely that they will not return, and you are going to be sorrowful when you get into that sales room and then your client is not going to be happy, so, not a good idea.
Allison Tyler Jones: So when we’re talking about price, or asking about price, or objecting about pricing, what they’re really asking is “Is it worth it?” So that’s the question that you’re answering. When you are listing those questions out, start thinking of how it’s worth it, and not how it’s about you, but how it is about them. What problems are you solving for that client? You’re creating something that’s decorating an entire wall in their home. You’re preserving time. You’re capturing moments. You’re freezing their kids at this darling age. There’s a lot of problems that you’re solving.
Allison Tyler Jones: So another common objection falls into the category of the delay of decision-making, and most people don’t really love to be forced into making decisions, and there are some clients that are incredibly either indecisive or just decision-averse. They don’t want to say “Yes, I really like that.” They don’t want to just finish it off, so they put up a lot of roadblocks early on. “Well, we don’t have to decide this right now,” or “I can’t possibly decide this right now. How am I ever going to decide?” That sort of thing, and so that is going to require you to predict and get out ahead and have the words to explain to them how your process works, and what you are and are not willing to do as far as how and when decisions are made, and how you help them be made, but make no mistake, decisions are going to be made.
Allison Tyler Jones: So that in our business might sound something like when we’re setting the three appointments for their consultation, their session, and their view and order session, we will let them know, “So the view and order session is about a week after your portrait session, and that is where you will decide on your portraits, you will order your images, you’ll decide at that point with Allison.”
Allison Tyler Jones: In that initial consultation, we need to get an idea if they are kind of wishy washy like that. If it seems like they’re really having a hard time coming up with a day to book the session, or they don’t really know what they’re going to wear, they don’t really… They’re saying a lot of things like they’re very, very indecisive, then you need to be paying attention to that, because what that really comes down to, that decision-making, that delay of decision-making thing, and not wanting to close the loop, is that they don’t trust themselves, and when they don’t trust themselves, it’s almost impossible for them to trust you.
Allison Tyler Jones: And so this is, I find, the most… One of the most challenging types of clients. And so I wish there was a litmus test that you could have them suck on one of those pieces of paper that can tell you what… If it turns purple, it means that they don’t trust you. Then you could say, “Look, go find somebody else.” But that is a really hard client to deal with, is when they don’t trust you to do what it is that you need to do for them, that’s going to be an upward battle, and sometimes you just can’t tell until you get to the end. They might say all the right things, and then when it comes right down to making the decisions, sometimes it can get very difficult. So I feel like if they can’t or don’t ever want to make a decision, then maybe we shouldn’t be doing this right now, so I try to get to that in the consultation before we photograph anything.
Allison Tyler Jones: The other category that many of these objections fall into, or questions fall into, is who is in control? Sometimes the client wants to be in control, or more often than not, I find the client actually wants us to be in charge. The best clients want you to be the expert to come in and just say, “This is how I think we should do it. This is how we’re going to do it. This is what I think you should wear. This is how I’m going to shoot this session. This is how I think it should be printed, this is where I think it should hang, and this is what I think you should buy.” That’s what they really want. It’s basically like, “This is how it works. This is how the process works, and this is how we’re going to move through this whole process and create this project together.”
Allison Tyler Jones: And so those latter two problems, or those latter two difficulties, the delay of decision-making and figuring out who’s in control, are all solved, both of those are solved by having a process and a product, which is sections two and three of this series, and that’s where we’re headed next.
Allison Tyler Jones: So to wrap up our prediction, or the predicting part of our Sales Sabotage series, is to get a piece of paper and list, and go back and listen again, list all the objections. Maybe you have the same ones that I do, maybe you have ones that I’ve never heard of before. List all those questions, but also more, so much more valuable, is to come up with your own answers for them, answers that feel true to you, answers that are in your own words, and that you can drill, drill, drill, until those become second nature, they just roll off your tongue. Put those words on your website, tattoo them on your wrist. If you have to use them in your consultation, train them into your employee’s brains, and then you’re going to bake them into your sales process, which is the next step in our Sales Sabotage series.
Allison Tyler Jones: So make your list, and if you are having a problem, a hard time coming up with your frequently-asked difficult questions, we have a new booklet on the ReWork site, dotherework.com. You can go there and download our frequently-asked difficult questions and the answers that we have for them, and it has a little workbook where you can put your own questions and you can work through that. So dotherework.com, go there, look for the frequently-asked difficult questions booklet, and it will help you. It has questions that I discussed in this podcast, but also others that I haven’t, and the answers that we have for them, and then you can look at our answers and decide if there’s anything you want to take from that and make it your own.
Allison Tyler Jones: I find the best thing in the world, the best way to predict that helps propel me forward instead of paralyzing me, is if I predict, of course, I’m going to predict that people are going to be shocked or that people might say maybe not negative things, but challenging things, or objections, and so if I can predict that, but I can also predict if they’re going to ask those things and they fall into these very common categories, then I just get out ahead of that and have my own answers for them so that I know they’re going to ask it, and then I find the most effective way to answer the questions is before they are asked, before they are asked.
Allison Tyler Jones: So an example of that would be where if we’re in a consultation or in our first phone call and somebody is saying, “Okay, well, how does this work?” Then I can say, “We’re not a typical portrait studio. We specialize in finished product, which is fine art for your walls or custom-designed albums for your home, and we deliver and install, so we’re a beginning-to-end process, and that’s how it works. So we’ll schedule a consultation, we’ll do your session, and then about a week later, you’ll come in, we’ll select the images that we have already talked about ahead of time, and then a few weeks later, we will bring them and hang them on your wall.”
Allison Tyler Jones: So, that gets out ahead of a lot of things. Now, that doesn’t mean they’re still not going to say, “Can I get digital files?” Or whatever, but I’ve made it very clear what it is that we do, and so they know, “Oh, this is a different type of service.” So mainly what I want you to take away from this is I want you to break down your fear, that instead of predicting doom and gloom and getting stuck in the mindset of, “Our clients are just never going to do it the way that I want to do it. They’re never going to see the value of my work, or the value of finished product,” or fill in the blank of the thing that you want them to see the value of, I want you to turn it around and use that prediction process to predict in a way that will propel you forward.
Allison Tyler Jones: I know they’re going to ask these things. I know they’re going to worry about this. I know they’re going to worry about price, because they want to know if it’s worth it. I know they don’t want to make the decisions. They’re going to delay that decision-making to the last possible second, or try to get out of ever doing it, and I know they’re going to want to know who’s in control, so I’m going to be in control. I know they’re going to ask the questions, I’m looking at my list, it’s taking the power away from those questions. I’m going to have the answers that are true to me, that I can say day-in and day-out. I can answer those questions for my clients, put them into my sales process and my business, which is where we’re going next in episode number two, becoming the expert for our clients and bringing them through our process, and helping them end up with the best product possible.
Allison Tyler Jones: Get your list out. If you got back from your walk with your dog, or you’re home in the car, make your list, and go to dotherework.com and download the frequently-asked difficult questions booklet and make your list, and get ready for episode number two, all about the process. See you soon.
Allison Tyler Jones: Do you know someone who would really benefit from this episode of The ReWork? Maybe a fellow photographer who’s in the trenches with you and always looking to level up their biz, or perhaps you have a friend who is struggling to make their business work? I would be so grateful if you would share this episode with them. All you have to do is head to the platform where you are listening, click the share icon, and text it or email it to the person that you think could need it most. Thank you so much for doing that, and while you’re there, if you have a chance and can give us a review, it would mean the world. We are a micro, tiny podcast, and we’re trying to get the word out to as many portrait photographers as possible to help them build better businesses and better lives for their family, and if you would help us do that, it would mean the world. Thank you so much, and we’ll see you next time on The ReWork.
Recorded: You can find more great resources from Allison at dotherework.com, and on Instagram at do.the.rework.
