I’ve heard all the excuses in the book.  My clients are awful.  They don’t buy enough.  They don’t buy when I want them to.  They buy greeting cards and frame them instead of purchasing prints.  They scan the prints they bother to purchase.  They put my images all over Facebook without my permission.

I once had your problems. I spent two years working in a MotoPhoto, which is now closed.  The franchise model is part high-volume, low-end portrait studio and part film-processing lab.

It was while trying to sell the VERY EXPENSIVE $65 Single Pose Package to total strangers that I learned to sell stuff.  If I could just get them to buy three portrait sheets — a sheet being 1 8×10, 2 5×7′s, 3 4×6′s, 4 3.5×5′s, or 8 wallets — I would meet my sales goal.

I laugh at the $65 goal now, but it was very real!  I had to convert people who were given a free sitting and a free 8×10 print into paying customers.  During that conversion process, things often got ugly.  Many customers attempted to bully, cajol, and/or demean me.  They did whatever they thought would get me to lower the price or add some free stuff to their order.

I was new to photography, happy to have a job, and unsure of my skills.  I let people tell me my work wasn’t worth spending $30 on. I let them alter portrait packages, make deals, and generally make me feel like poo in the name of getting a few more dollars in the register.

And then something happened.  I began to respect my work.

When I began to respect my work, others did, too.

Yes, they still tried to heckle me into giving them free stuff, but I could say no.  I could defend my lighting skills, my focal points, and my choice of composition as I grew.  I didn’t apologize for cutting off the top of a child’s head because it let me get closer to their eyes in the shot.  I didn’t apologize for my choices in shooting or in editing.  I stopped apologizing, period, and took charge of the sales sessions that were taking place.

The average sale went from under $65 to over $300. (Remember, it’s a low-end chain!  This was extraordinary!)  I created portrait collections that made sense and that were based on what my clients wanted.   I began to offer retouching as a matter of course and raised prices accordingly.  I asked clients to trust me, and they did.

I expected clients to trust me as a professional, and to pay accordingly for my professionalism.

(Was this enough to save the business?  No.  Out-of-control overhead expenses and diminishing film-processing habits were beyond my reach.  Anyway…)

If you’re still encountering people who refuse to respect your work, your time, or your policies, I’ll bet you’re not respecting yourself first.  It kills me to see individuals on forums who are still griping the same gripes as two years ago without having changed their policies or their pricing to reflect a respect for their own artwork!

Fabulous portrait sales begin with respect for yourself, your time, and the artwork you create.  I can teach you the sales process, but the respect is up to you.