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, many 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. This is episode number three of our sales sabotage series about product, developing product for your business. And rather than even specifically what the products are, but intentionally developing product that’s consistent with your brand and easy for your clients to understand, and profitable for your business. Let’s do it. Okay. Let’s talk about product as it relates to portrait photography studios. What are you selling? Are you selling prints? Are you selling art? Are you selling albums, photos? Whether you’re a brand new photographer or been around forever, you’re probably constantly adjusting what it is that you’re actually selling, but is your product mix intentional? Is your product mix consistent with your brand? Is it simple and easy to understand? And most importantly, is it profitable for your business? Have you focused on what’s easy or on what everybody else is selling? Generally, a lot of little things, digital files, gift prints, little stuff. I started out selling what everybody else sold, but I soon learned that my product should match my intentions and my brand.

Allison Tyler Jones: So how do you see it? It’s important that as an expert as you’re guiding your client through the process that we talked about in episode number two, to have a point of view, not just showing pretty images, but what are those images printed on? How are they presented? How would you like your work presented? What’s your vision for the end result of your work? If these were your images of your kids and your family, what do you think the client should have? How do you honestly feel like this should be printed, presented, framed, not framed, hung on a wall, where, how, lit, all the things, what is an ideal sale for you? So all of these questions are just helping you pre-envision what that goal is and what that is worth from a price standpoint and what that’s worth to your client. So sometimes it’s hard to envision these things from a positive standpoint. So if it’s easier, start with what you don’t like. What do you not like?

Allison Tyler Jones: So again, I’m going to ask you, get a piece of paper and a pen and let’s make a list. What is it that you don’t like? All right. So we’re going to go back and we’re going to say, I’m going to use myself as an example. I use my brand as a filter when deciding to add new product to my business. And I am looking at what I’ve created in the past. Maybe some ideas that I’ve had of things that I’ve always wanted to create in the future. And so when I think of making my own list of things that I don’t like, I think I really don’t like my images on mouse pads, on purses, on jewelry, but I love wall art, and I prefer framed wall art. I hate a lot of little things. To me, that’s just a way of a client not making a decision.

Allison Tyler Jones: And that shows me that I have not guided them through the process properly if they are wanting to just buy a lot of little things, because maybe we didn’t do the consultation, we didn’t nail it down exactly what it was that we were shooting for. When they’re buying a lot of little things, something has gone wrong in the process. I love big, like larger scale images or a big grouping of smaller images hung together. I to shoot full length or maybe three quarter. And so it looks better when they’re larger. I don’t really love small prints and tabletop frames, but I do love custom albums that tell a story. I don’t love complexity, but I do love simplicity. I really don’t like multiple images in a single frame. So I don’t like triptix in a single frame or like a nine up or anything that’s digitally matted. That is not on brand for me. And I don’t love digital borders in my work. So those are the things that I don’t like. Those are some of the things that I do like. So iconic single pieces or a grouping.

Allison Tyler Jones: And so that’s consistent with my brand and my work. So what’s consistent with your brand and your work? What makes you happy? What is distinctively you? There should be a reason that you’re offering these products. A reason beyond that the lab was selling them at the last expo that you went to. So our studio specializes in large wall portraits, iconic wall portraits, or albums. It works with my style. I have a fine art background and I like family as art. No distraction or environment, only personality and connection, and we call it art that happens to be your family. So you can collect that in a single piece, companion pieces or gallery series, or a custom designed album to tell the story. My background is I owned a scrap booking store in a previous life, and I’m a big fan of albums. I love telling a story with multiple images.

Allison Tyler Jones: And then I want to make sure that these products that I’m creating are profitable for my business. So there have been times when I thought, “Oh, I love this really sexy, amazing album,” but it was so expensive to produce the album that I could never charge quite enough to make it worth it. So sometimes we have to make those trade offs. So it’s no accident that we sell what we sell in our studio. And that’s what I want for you. I want what you’re selling to your clients to be intentionally selected. Not just because it’s the cool new thing that the lab is showing, but because you have considered it, you’ve run it through your own brand filter and thought, how is your work best collected? How is it best presented? So if you’re new to this and you’re just starting out, you may think, “Where do I begin?”

Allison Tyler Jones: Or maybe you’re just sick of everything that you’re already selling and you have too many samples everywhere. Things have gotten dusty and fingerprinted. And you walked in one day and just realized, “I need to throw half of this stuff away,” or maybe the images are older and you’re 20 years at a day and you need some new samples. So that’s a good time to think about, especially as we’re in… Right now, as I’m recording this, we’re in March, 2022. So this is a time where for many portrait photographers, this is not really the off season, but it’s not in the middle of the crazy busy fourth quarter. So this is a time when many of the labs are offering deals to print samples. And so you can try something new. Find some of your favorite work from some favorite sessions of 2021, and have some new products put on your wall.

Allison Tyler Jones: So when I think of those things, when I think of my pricing, my product list, that sort of thing, I don’t want something that is confusing or very, very busy. So I want you to think about, what does Applebee’s menu look like? There’s so much stuff on there, or cheesecake factory. There’s a million different options, a million different things, and in pictures of every dish. So that’s definitely not a high end experience, whereas when you think of a more high end restaurant, the menu is very spare, it’s very clean. There’s just a few things on it. That’s what my price list looks like. So what we are selling is basically [inaudible 00:08:30] in three different formats. So a gallery print would be a framed fine art print. Our museum is a fine art print with a mat. And then our exhibition is framed gallery rep.

Allison Tyler Jones: So basically, there’s three different ways that you can collect my work. Framed fine art print, a fine art print with a mat on it, or a framed gallery rep. And so it’s very, very simple. Now, of course, there’s so many sizes within all of that. And then there’s different ways that that can be framed, but presenting that in that way is very, very simple, very clean and very easily understandable. 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 a 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.

Allison Tyler Jones: It’s free. Go get it now, dotherework.com and look for the sales sabotage evaluation tool. So you also want your work to be profitable. You want the products to be profitable. So take a hard look at your pricing. Now this is not a pricing class. We’ve done a pricing series, but I would suggest… I would refer you to ppa.com, professional photographers of America. They have great resources for pricing, and we have a huge pricing section in our art of selling art course. We spend two weeks on our pricing module because it is a big… It’s a hairy deal, but it’s important and nobody wants to do it, but it’s important that you are priced correctly because that’s how your business is sustainable. Your cashflow is the lifeblood of your business, and you have to be intentional about that. And I would say, especially right now, coming out of the pandemic, with all the supply chain issues that are going on right now, I know for us, our frame molding pricing was raised about 20% to 30% in 2021, and it just has jumped up another 30%.

Allison Tyler Jones: So all the prices are going through the roof. So if you’re not paying attention to this, you really could be negatively impacting your business in a big way. So go to ppa.com, look for those pricing resources, or the next time we roll out the art of selling art, you might want to think about signing up for that because the pricing module is really amazing. So assuming that you’re priced correctly and profitably, after you go investigate all of those resources that I just talked about, then you want to ask yourself, do you have the right product mix to accomplish the sales average that you’re trying to create? Have you created a sales plan? And so what that looks like is just looking at what is an ideal sale for you. Going back to that vision of what it is that you want the client to have, how it is truly that you think your work is best presented, but what you really want them to have.

Allison Tyler Jones: So my ideal sale would be a large wall portrait of the family group if that’s the best image that really shows the family off, or the large wall portrait might actually be of the kids. It might not be the family at all. I love to have a secondary area that has a gallery, even a small gallery of companion images. And then, because if we’ve planned it ahead of time in the consultation and they’ve expressed an interest in creating an album of storytelling images, then we will create that as well. So the ideal sale for me would be a big portrait of either the family or the kids, a wall gallery of companion images and an album of the storytelling images that kind of fall between that. We’re very well known for our holiday cards, and that is my ideal sale. So now not every client of course is going to buy all of that.

Allison Tyler Jones: But when I have in my mind, and I know that that is the best use of my talent and abilities for this client, then that’s kind of where we’re starting. And then we can pull things apart. If they’re thinking that they don’t want to have an album, they feel like they would never look at it and they’re just not into albums, they want only wall art, then we don’t worry about shooting for an album, but those are the separate types of products that we offer and that is my ideal sale. So, that makes it very easy to look at product. It makes it very easy when I’m going to an expo that I’m not looking at all the latest little tiny things and how images can be printed on things. I’m developing products for the high end of my price list because that’s where the profit lives and that’s where the sustainability lives.

Allison Tyler Jones: So when you think about your products and the products that you have in your studio, in your business, are there products that you need to add or delete to your lineup? So write those down right now. If there’s something, whether it’s a sample that’s just janky and you need to get rid of it, whether it’s something that you’ve been selling and maybe you sell a lot of it. Maybe those little accordion albums that have 15 pictures in them, and everybody just loves them. They’re so much work. They’re so much work. They’re not worth doing. It’s impossible to charge enough for them. Or maybe you have those as a value add onto one of your best packages or something like that. So don’t let me tell you not to do things you wanted to have your vision, but just think about some of this that I think we tend to get caught up in doing a lot of little things.

Allison Tyler Jones: So are there products that you need to add or delete? Write them down. And as you are looking at new product during a trade show, run every new product through your filter. And the filter is, is it consistent with your brand? Is it simple and easy for your client to understand? And is it profitable for your business? So that’s product. Those are the suggestions that I have for product. So to wrap up our series, we’re going to predict in a positive way, we’re getting out ahead of our fear. We’re not predicting to be paralyzed. We’re predicting to develop answers to those hated, frequently asked, difficult questions, and flipping the script to serve instead of sabotage ourselves and our clients. We are developing a process. We’re going to find one thing to drill in on our sales process. We’re going to take control, and we’re going to be incredibly clear. Figure out the areas that are hanging us up and that area if fixed, what area is that that will make all the difference in your sales?

Allison Tyler Jones: And then lastly, today’s episode, we’re going to take a hard look at our product line and add what needs adding and delete anything that is not brand, consistent or profitable for your business. I love talking sales with you, and I hope that you found some value in these episodes that can help you go away and help you think differently about predicting the future in a positive way, working with your process, your sales process, and tightening that up in your business and then developing the ideal sale and the ideal product for your clients so that you can move forward and have the profitable, sustainable business that you deserve to support your life and your dreams. We’ll see you next week, same time, same place. Thanks for being here. 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.

Allison Tyler Jones: 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 it next time on The Rework.

Recorded: You can find more great resources from Allison at dotherework.com and on Instagram @do.the.rework.

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