THE ART OF SELLING YOUR PHOTO BOOTH EVENT

 

Get Them Talking

Everyone has dealt with pushy salespeople. For this reason everyone's guard is up. This is the number one reason why it seems like everyone's first question is “What is your price”!

There is a fine art to lowering their guard and making them want to deal with you. If you seem like you are desperate to get the sale, rest assured you will probably lose it.

The key is to focus the conversation from the customer's point of view. Effective selling requires patience,  the ability to listen to what the prospect wants, and then the skill of being able to present to them exactly how you can help them achieve their wants and needs.

Everyone likes talking about themselves. By asking the right questions and showcasing your knowledge about the product, in this case a photobooth, you create a dialogue between yourself and the prospect. This dialogue is essential in being able to close the sale. As a rule of thumb, if you can keep them talking for 5 minutes on the phone, chances are pretty good you have the sale.

Ask Open Ended Questions

The best way to create a dialogue with a prospect is to ask relevant open ended questions. Try to avoid simple yes or no questions as this does little to advance the conversation or find out what the prospect truly wants or needs. Here are a few examples:

Tell me about photobooths you have experienced in the past.

Tell me what you know about our company and what we can do for you.

Tell me a bit about your dreams for your wedding day.

Listen intently and then use the information you received to help your client achieve their dreams.

Don't Go Cheap On Advertising

I learned this one the hard way. In the early 90's I was ahead of most people in terms of the quality of my advertising and it paid off big time.

When I re-started my business in 2011 I was trying to save money – I did not go full-color and made up the materials myself and I did not get the results I wanted.

What I saved actually cost me money.

I learned my lesson and in the future will go for full-color professionally printed materials.

Use a Graphic Designer If You Can Afford It

Create an image and then keep it consistent. You may well be the best photobooth operator in the world, but what good does it do anyone, most importantly you, if you don't do the proper job in spreading the word.

You are only as good as your weakest link. Don't waste money on wedding shows if you are not going to maximize the investment by issuing top notch marketing materials. 

Build It And They Will Come.......NOT

You Must pound the pavement, especially in the beginning. If you need to do so many sales, you need to make so many presentations. To get so many presentations you must make so many approaches. Always plan your marketing. To truly succeed you must have a well-conceived and consistent marketing strategy

Start Off With A Logo and Mission Statement

Take in all the marketing seminars you can afford both time-wise and money wise. If you are running your own business, your marketing skills must match your operational skills in order to be truly successful.

If you are starting your own business, write down your mission statement. Create a logo. Center yout marketing effrorts around this mission statement and logo.

While word of mouth will always be the premier business driver for successful businesses, social media is becoming more and more important with every day that passes in getting your info out there.

Do you know how to maximize your results on facebook, twitter, youtube and more recently linkedin, pinterest and instagram? Maybe not, but there are many people willing to teach you - some for free and more often for a price.

Never throw away something that works, but always measure the results (How did you hear about us needs to be a mandatory field). Stay in tune with the market and constantly re-invent your business model.

Use Personalized Appointment Cards

Relatively few people book right at the briday show. Your success at the show will depend highly on your ability to make an appointment with them after the show to close the sale. One tip is to have personalized appointment cards at the bridal show. On the front of the card use whatever you have on your regular business cards. On the back you could use something like this:

APPOINTMENT:

Mon___Tue___Wed___Thu___Fri___Sat___Sun

Date___________________________

Time______________AM___PM___

If you are unable to keep your appointment for whatever reason, please contact us as soon as possible.

Look For A Specialty / Niche

Think hard about what markets do you want to serve and what makes you special?  If you are part of a particular community use that to your advantage. Use any leverage you can get to get your foot in the doors.

Build Relationships

Always get in contact with the hall that you will be setting up in. Build a relationship with them, or at least try to. Calling them and giving them a heads up is the best excuse to market yourself at the same time. It is also a part of providing superior service to your clients.

Send out Christmas, other holiday and maybe even anniversary or birthday cards to prior and regular clients, complimentary businesses and even competitors. Snail mail works best but can also be time consuming. If this is not possible then at least send out the cards online. One site you can do this with is 

www.birthdayalarm.com

The free component at this site is adequate for most purposes.

There are other programs out there that allow you to keep in contact and stay top of mind with your prospects and clients. Here are a few:

www.sendpepper.com

www.aweber.com - allows you to send emails at intervals of your choosing, including the number of days before the event or wedding date.

Write a series of emails to send 12, 9, and 6 months before the wedding, and then 2 months and 1 month before. Personalize these with the bride and groom's names, wedding date, and location. This way, while the emails are sent on autopilot, they seem personal and friendly.

Every Monday (or Tuesday if you take Monday off) send THANK YOU cards to everyone you worked with at the wedding:

-Photographer

-DJ

-Florist

-Banquet Manager

-Officiant

Thank them for their professionalism and teamwork in making the bride's day a success.

Snail Mail

I like snail mail. Because everyone is so focused on the net, if you send something in the mail it makes you stand out. Depending on what source you look at and how you do it, somewhere between 90 and 99 percents of advertising emails are never even opened.

If you have the time personally address the letter – just make sure everything else is professional. Get a co-op student with good handwriting to address the letters. People are more likely to open personally-addressed envelopes.

Evaluations

ALWAYS send out EVALUATIONS and always follow up with your clients. I used to get a 60–80 percent return rate on evaluations with the majority being perfect. Enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope. With email I have seen this dip to 10-20 percent. In the evaluation always ask for a testimonial you can use in your website or other advertising materials. Testimonials are like references. Get them as often as you can.

When sending out evaluations by snail mail always put a stamp on the return envelope – this makes them feel obligated to return it. 

Send a coupon (at least $100) that they can give to any of their friends.

If you still want to use email consider using a survey program

www.esurveyspro.com

www.surveymonkey.com

Go Above And Beyond

Have you ever heard that you should always exceed expectations? Sure it may cost you a little bit of money upfront, though sometimes more its time, but what it does is to lock in customer loyalty.

Would you rather spend more of your time chasing business, or spend more of it exceeding expectations. I think we all know the answer to the question.

In any business there are two types of businesses, low price leaders and industry leaders. In commodity based businesses, low price leaders tend to do quite well because people can see what they are getting. If you can buy a car for 30,000 but get a supposedly better car for 25,000 which are you going to choose?

I don't always buy the “you get what you pay for” theory when it comes to commodities, but pretty much always buy it when it comes to service. After all, people will generally charge what they can get. If their service is in high demand the price goes up. If they can't get work the price goes down. There are of course exceptions but that is the general rule of thumb.

Now you could choose to be the low price leader but you will continue to be frustrated by someone who undercuts you by a few dollars, and at the end of the day do you really want to be working for peanuts.

Achieving excellent service is something that is more difficult to do than cutting your price but at the end of the day you reap your rewards.

Part of going above and beyond involves contributing to the health of the very business of which you have chosen to make your living, or at least a part of it.

In my particular case I chose to write a book. I didn't do it for the money. I did it because it is usually the teacher who learns the most. By setting this goal I advanced my ultimate aim to become a true expert in the field. I don't have all the answers, but because I am always looking for them I am learning at the same time.

Competing With The DIY Booth

I am sure I will have some people asking, what is a DIY booth? DIY simply means Do It Yourself. If you go to youtube, there are people that will try to show you how to create your own photobooth experience for less money than it would cost to hire a professional company.

Of course this doesn't just apply to photobooths. If a wedding is on a severe budget, it is cheaper to have a pot-luck dinner than to hire a professional caterer. Picking your own flowers is cheaper than going to a florist. A 13 year old friend of your cousin will probably DJ on his or her ipod for a lot cheaper than a professional company will. Can someone run their own photobooth? Probably they can try. Can they do it as well as you? I hope not. If they can then you probably should not be in the business.

I remember reading a blog where this lady explained in great detail how to create your own photobooth at your wedding, and how she did it at hers. There were no instant pictures. Nor was there live view. At least she did use a DSLR camera, because that was what her sister owned, and she borrowed it from her.

After going through all the work getting the booth ready for her wedding she forgot to do one thing. Her sister never charged the batteries for the booth, so at her wedding all she got was two minutes worth of photobooth. Of course a real photobooth would have used an AC adaptor so this would not have been an issue, and would hopefully have had backup.

I guess if the worst thing that happened at her wedding was she did not have a photobooth, then things could be worse, but she did teach us a good lesson.  Apparently, her brother did make some use of the backdrop with his click-and-shoot camera, so they did get a few pictures.

Competing With DIY Booth Photographers

There are some photographers out there offering excellent photobooths, just as there are DJ's offering excellent photobooths.

However, some photographers call their setup a photobooth when in reality what they are offering is their body holding a camera, as well a backdrop.

As long as they clearly explain what they are offering there is no issue. More accurately what they are offering is called doing a photo shoot, and they may be very good at it.

They may add some props to enhance the experience and there is nothing wrong with that too.

There are 2 main features however, of a REAL photobooth that a simple photo shoot does not offer.

1.             LIVE VIEW – people really like seeing themselves on the video screen as their photo is being taken. On the screen they see a countdown such as ``6 seconds to picture 1 of 4``.

2.             INSTANT PRINT – remember those Polaroid cameras in the 70s and 80s. People don`t want to see their picture next month or even next week. In today`s society there is a demand for instant gratification. People want their photos instantly. If there are no instant photos then I personally don't think someone has the moral right to call what they are offering a photobooth.

Yet there remain many times people will call  something that is not a photobooth – well - a photobooth, and often at a very low price.  Most commonly, some photographers will include a so-called photobooth as part of their package.

While some photographers do use real photobooths (and I have sold real photobooths to some excellent  photographers) very often this so-called photobooth is nothing more than the photographer's body holding a camera, maybe with a backdrop. If you are lucky, maybe they have some props.

If you are competing with such booths, it is very important for you to point out to your prospect as I did above why a real photobooth is a far superior experience to just a photographer with a backdrop.

Make sure you stress the value of a real photobooth that provides instant pictures. One of the reason for the success of photobooths is that people like instant gratification, and appreciate a memento that they can take from the party or the wedding. Two weeks later for the first picture just won't (or shouldn't) cut it in the photobooth business.

Second, part of the appeal of the photobooths is the ability to see yourself (or your group) as the picture is being taken. Without the live-view aspect a photobooth just is not a photobooth.

Furthermore, being able to see the pictures recently taken on an external monitor adds to the complete experience. While a pseudo photobooth may be OK and better than nothing, it is no replacement for a real photobooth.