I often see photographers posting in groups asking about how to upsell a gallery. Sometimes clients have pre-selected a collection and then when the gallery is delivered they stick with that collection, or else they they’ve only paid a session fee and have purchased the minimal collection when presented with the gallery.

In many of these cases, the photographer has also priced things on the lower side, hoping to upsell to make up revenue to their minimum financial allocation to support the business. This is never a good idea. Even with the sales strategy I’ll introduce here, you need to assure your base expenses are satisfied in a guaranteed sale. Yes, this means increased pricing on the front end, so if there is an issue around pricing, I suggest doing a browse on the mindset category of this blog to work on that. You are in business to create a dream life and bringing in money through the business is what makes that happen.

The thing is, the sale doesn’t happen when you deliver a gallery. I hear your response to this: well, Lucy, when else would the sale ever happen? That’s when the client receives their photographs to look at and decide!

Yes, I know that this is where an order is placed. But a sale and an order are different things, when you open the door to the psychology of buying behaviour.

If you consider typical buying behaviour, most purchases are made long before a person steps into a store. Aspirational advertising and media, testimonials and influencers on social media all serve to create or awaken desire within us and that desire then propels us to visit our favourite online retail site or go to the local mall. The sale doesn’t start at the mall, it ends at the mall.

Your clients aren’t presented a photo gallery in a vacuum. They have interacted with you long before the delivery of that gallery. They first decided they needed a photographer. They found you, inquired, got booked, had the session. If you’re waiting for an impulse buy at the end of that process, then you are missing huge opportunity to create the sale you want through several key touchpoints.

Most of us think that sales aren’t created or primed; that they just happen. Photo proofs are in the gallery and that’s the moment where the person decides what they will buy. That we have no control over that process. The truth is, that the sales industry invests A LOT of money into assuring the sales they want, through psychological tactics that pave the way for those sales to happen. As mentioned above, things like testimonials and aspirational advertising are part of it. The other part is leading people from entry to exit, similar to how IKEA stores literally lead you through the store with arrows on the floor.

Before you prime a photography sale

The very first thing to establish is this: what do you want the client to walk away with? This is a critical answer to all that follows. A car dealership doesn’t just want to sell you a car; they want to sell you the top-of-the-line model with the extra warranty and the Gold maintenance package. No salesperson walks into the job in the morning hoping to sell the base model and then hoping some more that you might upgrade when you make the decision to buy the lowest end car. They do everything in their power to introduce the sale they want, and even if they don’t get it, they are trying for it. And because the industry is known for its fast-talking tactics, it can also give sales a bad name. But you can still sell without the unsavoury tactics of car salespeople. Remember, there can be a better way and we don’t have to believe that because car dealerships use these tactics that they are spoiled for everyone else. Simply not true.

Serve your clients by knowing the ultimate sale you want to make. While it’s usually the most profitable to you, it provides them with the best value and that is of great benefit to them. Win-win. I want my clients to buy the full gallery and you probably do too. Don’t hope for that upsell; use every sales tool available to assure that sale as strongly as possible. You can leave the less than savoury tactics with the car dealerships. Use these sales tools instead:

Sales tools for priming a sale

Website

Your first sales tool is your website. We talk a lot about having a high-performing website that does its most important job: getting the prospect to contact you, but most think of it not as a sales tool but as a photography display tool - showing your work. But there’s a sale component embedded. The act of a prospect contacting you is a sale waiting to happen. If you see it as the first place of a budding sale, it may help you understand why a website needs to be designed with a lot of thought and not just a drag and drop with your favourite template. There needs to be a sales strategy baked in there. While many have enough on their website to get some clients to contact them, knowing this information can lead you to looking at your website with different eyes, especially if you feel you don’t get many inquiries or get wrong-fit prospect inquiries. Here is the opportunity to not only show them incredible work but to fan their desire through your brand messages and lead them on the site to all the places where their desire deepens so that they feel compelled to reach out. The ultimate indicator here is an inquiry that is already pre-sold - someone who reveals details about themselves, compliments your work and sounds excited. Rather than the “what’s the price” inquiries.

Response to Inquiry

The second sales tool is your response to the inquiry that comes in. How you respond matters. Most may respond with a friendly hello and a price list but that’s a lost opportunity to prime a sale. First, the way you contact them matters. Think about the brand energy you want to impart - a well crafted email with a smiling photo of you in the email signature can be way more powerful than a text with emojis. A photo of you smiling at them helps with the psychological principle of liking, and building trust (and they’ll already feel they know you because they saw another smiling photo of you on the website.) People hire people they like and trust. The simple act of your photo in that email is selling the client a little bit further.

What you say matters. Use the inspirational brand words and language that they experienced on your website (builds more trust and familiarity), build excitement, and right here you can tell them what most people invest in, or your how your x collection has the best value, or how your clients love receiving their purchases. You can support any of this by linking to a blog post (i.e. of someone receiving and unboxing a canvas, because you asked them to record or you delivered and recorded), showing a slideshow of the most popular package, or placing a testimonial of how a person came to decide to get x collection and loved it, directly into the body of the email. At the same time you are serving them - helping them understand their purchase options and providing pricing - you are also planting the seed of what most people buy.

To bring this point home, imagine this: you respond with your typical “thanks for your inquiry, here is a link to my prices,” without this extra communication. Their gallery is delivered and they have the price list. They haven’t been told what most people buy, what the best value is, and they are left trying to decide on their own. Imagine instead that you primed the sale. The collection you talked about, showed them, built up excitement for, now jumps off the page for them. It’s like deja vu - something feels familiar. They will then gravitate to that familiar thing and often, they will choose exactly what was suggested.

Session

Tailor the entire session experience to align with the ultimate sale you want to make. For example, I want my clients to purchase an entire gallery - no photo left behind. I shoot for a story. So during the session, I look for and/or create the story. I look for the elements of that final sale. I need a full set of beautiful and well-flowing story images. Another way to put it, I don’t shoot with my smallest collection of 10 in mind.

Delivery

When the client gallery is delivered, I have created a specific flow for how I release the information, telling the story of that ultimate sale. I help them see the story through a slideshow, and hint at that being the best value collection again. This is the final step before they are left to fill in the order form. And even my order form is created to bring attention to the collection that makes up my ultimate sale.