Wedding Photography Techniques - Selling Your Work

No matter how good your wedding photography techniques, if you are in business your work has to be sold.

The idea that good wedding photography work will sell itself is nonsense. You will starve in the meantime! So whether you do the selling yourself, leave it entirely to another, or in fact handle some of it, you need to be aware of the characteristics that go to make up the expert sales person.

You've heard the clichés "Salesmen are born, not made"; "Selling is a skill that can be learnt like any other". You need both acquired skills and personal qualities. The skills come from training and experience, but they only result in fruition if the individual has a number of personal qualities.

The basic ones are belief in the job, empathy, enthusiasm, integrity, loyalty and friendliness. Many people have these qualities but they do not have the training needed to succeed, or they may be restrained by inhibitions.

Let us look at some personal characteristics required by the wedding photography salesperson: -

Belief in the job: You must believe that what you are doing is a worthwhile job and that your product - your wedding photographs - is a benefit to the client. If you are interested only in taking the photographs and sell under sufferance, you will fail.

Empathy: This is the understanding of the customer's feelings and opinions. You may not share your client's views, indeed you may differ on many counts, but you need to understand and respect his or her viewpoint.

Listening will tell you what the client needs and wants in way of photographic coverage. You will then have the opportunity to fill some of those needs. Steer the conversation round to the wedding and find out all you can about the day, the family and the bride's expectations.The essence of salesmanship is listening, allowing the customer to talk.

Most people have a tendency to talk on, but the salesman needs to check himself and encourage the client to do the talking. As the client does so, you must listen intently, and not be thinking about your own sales pitch.

Alertness: Willingness to listen needs to be reinforced by alertness. Observe carefully as they speak; body language may be telling you something else, not expressed in words.

Enthusiasm is good; it stimulates attention and generates conviction. But do not become the bore that you have met so often! The most difficult thing here is to strike a balance between being enthusiastic so that you excite and stimulate the client on the one hand, and being over enthusiastic on the other. The latter can turn the customer right off you and your photography.

Be positive: A conversation can easily drift into a series of moans! Control the situation and keep it positive at all times. Be the optimist for whom the glass is half-full, not the pessimist who sees it as half-empty. A positive attitude produces sales; allowing the conversation to become negative loses them fast!

Be open minded: Although you have a particular style and package to sell, be open minded to alternative ideas that may be suggested from casual remarks or specific requests. Many good sales are made by being receptive to the desires of the client.