Continue to prune products that are not making you money and not optimal. Remove less than optimal product lines (sick and not getting better) and ideas that are dead.
Move on! Keep HOPE and remove WISH!
Avoid your clients experiencing "decision fatigue."
WHAT IS DECISION FATIGUE?
“...it is the mental exhaustion from making decisions and processing choices. Decision fatigue can wear people down, causing them to make impulsive decisions without carefully thinking through consequences, or it can causes them to do nothing due to the energy needed to weigh options."
~John Tierney
SIMPLIFY THE BUYING OPTIONS
When you have too many products, too many sizes, too many finishes, too
many “packages,” you are creating a lose-lose situation. Your client will lose
their excitement to purchase what they came to you for and you will lose the
potential of that sale as FATIGUE, FRUSTRATION AND CONFUSION
take over.
Decision Fatigue!
Then what happens? The client makes a decision based on the path of least
resistance; the default option in their minds. And typically, it is not the best
choice.
Or even worse, they want to get out! Leave! They can’t take anymore! They
want to put off making the decision which we all know is a POOR
DECISION!
When that happens, you will have a very LOW DOLLAR sale.
Unless you have a plan (we call them our Suggestions), you are asking
your client to make decisions in an area where they are not the
expert ...YOU ARE THE EXPERT!
And to keep from looking stupid, they will make decisions that are not the BEST. But they are thinking, “At least, I made a decision!”
Help your clients so they are not forced into opting for what is “just good
enough” rather than becoming confused to the point of inertia (a
tendency to do nothing.)
“But the idea that choice is bad for us flies in the face of what we’ve
been told for decades. The standard line is that choice is good for us,
that it confers on us freedom, personal responsibility, selfdetermination,
autonomy and lots of other things that don’t help when you’re standing before a towering aisle of water bottles, paralysed and increasingly dehydrated, unable to choose.”
~theguardian.com
YOU WILL NEVER HAVE A 2ND CHANCE TO RE-CAPTURE THE EXCITEMENT.
Once your clients lose the initial excitement of seeing their images, they
also lose their excitement to purchase them in any substantial size or
dollar amount.
We saw how much excitement fizzled once the images were seen, but the
sale was put off until later when we did a mini session of our high school
senior reps in the summer before they were seniors to give them some
images to show others and to give us images for our materials.
We found they almost never ended up purchasing them once we did their full
blown session later in the year. The first images were now “old hat” and not
exciting anymore. Remember that saying, “Familiarity breeds contempt?” In
these cases, it is, “Familiarity breeds complacency.” And complacency
means low sales!
That is why you need to get the sale completed at the initial
appointment when the excitement level is the highest it will be EVER!
PRUNING THE DEAD WEIGHT
Here’s what we did to pare down the choices.
ONE: Session Fees: Years ago, we decided to eliminate all of the different Session Fees and now have just two; One for In-Studio and one for Location.
TWO: Small Prints: We lump every print 8x10 and smaller into a group called Tabletop Prints and charge the same for all of the sizes.
THREE: Finishes: We used to have several, but now, we have two. We do canvasses and flat mounted prints, both requiring frames. Wall portraits are mounted onto masonite and smaller prints are mounted onto styrene. All are sprayed with a lustre coating to finish them off.
FOUR: Seniors: We have moved seniors over onto our regular studio price list. We don’t have packages...everything is a la carte.
FIVE: Notecards: We have combined the pricing structure for Christmas and Senior notecards so they are now the same.
Finally, we are continually revising our product mix and pricing to stay relevant in the marketplace. We also prune products we don’t feel are living up to our expectations and we keep a close eye on the profit margins.
What can you prune? How can you make doing business with you easier?
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