Photographing Families: Tips for Capturing Timeless Images

8: Selling Your Portraits

Photographing families is the fun part of the portrait photography business, but for many people sales can be frightening. However, with the right instruction and the right tools, it can be extremely rewarding to make a good living doing what you love. In this chapter I will help you understand how anticipating and overcoming client objections early in the portrait sales process can make the final sale smooth. I also cover how to help indecisive clients though the decision-making process. If selling your portraits scares you to death, hang out in this chapter for a while — it’s packed with easy techniques to make sales easier for both you and your clients.

Conducting the Pre-Portrait Consultation

Without a doubt, a pre-portrait consultation may be the most important meeting you have with your client. This is the time when you showcase your work, plant the seed for large wall portrait and album sales, find out about your client’s needs, manage expectations, and make clothing and location decisions. It could be your client’s first impression of you if you have never met before.

Take plenty of notes about your meeting. Write down which sample images and locations your client prefers. This is the time to ask about the children if they are not there. If the children are at the meeting, depending on their ages I ask them questions as well. The more ...