The headache of too much choice

"The single biggest driver of stickiness, by far, was “decision simplicity”—the ease with which consumers can gather trustworthy information about a product and confidently and efficiently weigh their purchase options."

~Harvard Business Review

Over all the years of coaching other studios on their sales processes, the one issue that pops up more than any other is complexity...in other words, making it hard to do business with you...because you offer TOO MUCH!

It is not helping the client...it is hurting them and your bottom line!

I thought it would be a good idea to talk about the principle of SIMPLICITY today and share an experience that happened to us years ago that illustrate this point.

We were asked to do three different "sessions" and the sale for all three in one day due to the long drive these clients had. If you know how we operate, you know we don't combine sessions together. But, in this case, we did a Senior session, a brother and sister session and a family session, all ending at 3:00. By 6:00, we were ready to start the Sale.

SIMPLICITY SAVED US!

Because we have limited products and use Suggestions (still one of the best ideas we have ever had) for every sale, we were able to narrow down the images, show them only the cream of the crop, have a Suggestion ready and complete the sale with minimal confusion, frustration and fatigue, killers of a great sale.

You can imagine that this scenario could easily have ended with them going home after the three sessions and asking us to just post the images online since it had already been such a long day.

But, for over thirty years, we have ALWAYS done our sales in-person with projection, using Suggestions, and this situation was no different.

The KEY to making this work...SIMPLICITY.

Too many photographers have too many product offerings.

"A decision by the client becomes nearly impossible and you hear those dreaded words, "Can I just go home and think about it and get back to
you?" You do understand, don't you, that this statement is the death of the sale. When a client leaves your studio without making a decision, that sale is literally gone or diminished to the point that you won't be able to stay in business if they all ended this way.

“Researchers say it's all but impossible for our minds to process more than seven bits of information at any given time. For a long time people have said that the best way to make a decision is to be rational," and yet, in recent years, scientists have discovered that the rational brain can only take in
a few bits of information at any given moment. So, you start giving it too much
information and it starts to short-circuit and sputter." Sunday Morning

Pare down your offerings for success!

Here's how we started SIMPLIFYING our offerings...

"We used to have five different Session Fees; a single person or business head and shoulder, two people, a group, a bridal and location. Now we only have two fees which are studio and location. We don't count the number of people and charge by that-too confusing!

We used to have four finishes a client could choose from; now we have two, canvas and flat! Once we realized that we were just causing confusion with all of these non-essential details, we started deleting them one by one. We did this pruning over several years, so use wisdom in pruning your products.

What the client really wants is to know is are you the right photographer for them and will you make them look fabulous. The proof is in the pudding, as they say, and our clients are so satisfied with our finished product that we don't need all of the extraneous stuff (products.)

Another way to cut down on too many choices is in the actual number of images you are showing. Can you pare that down some? We use ProSelect and edit, edit, edit the number of images we want to show our clients down to the cream of the crop, then put them into groupings and name them.

CLICK HERE TO GRAB OUR PDF ON SUGGESTIONS AND HOW THEY WORK.

What may have started with 80-100 images shot ends up being 10-12 images shown to the client as their Suggestion.

I hear some of you gasping right now at that thought. What I show our clients (my number one goal) are images that we "fix" meaning these images are beautifully retouched, contrast is adjusted, they are cropped properly, etc. I do have another group which I am not hiding, just not mentioning as much, and this is the group the Suggestion images came from. This group has about 25 images in it and we do all of our selections from that.

However, because the Suggestion images have been properly prepped and are the best ones (in our eyes), they are the ones usually chosen.

Don't tell Baskin Robbins, famous for its 31 flavor campaign, but in fact, more choices may actually hurt sales."

"Every brand thinks it’s the most important thing in their user’s life. Seldom is this true. A user’s experience with a brand is just one event in an action-packed life. Good brands map out their customer experience looking for opportunities to simplify, eliminate steps, confusion, and complications in ways that add value. Great brands look to where the brand and the experience fit within their user’s overall life, looking to make not just the experience easier but a user’s overall life easier." www.fastcompany.com

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The headache of too much choice

"The single biggest driver of stickiness, by far, was “decision simplicity”—the ease with which consumers can gather trustworthy information about a product and confidently and efficiently weigh their purchase options."

~Harvard Business Review

Over all the years of coaching other studios on their sales processes, the one issue that pops up more than any other is complexity...in other words, making it hard to do business with you...because you offer TOO MUCH!

It is not helping the client...it is hurting them and your bottom line!

I thought it would be a good idea to talk about the principle of SIMPLICITY today and share an experience that happened to us years ago that illustrate this point.

SIMPLICITY SAVED US!

You can imagine that this scenario could easily have ended with them going home after the three sessions and asking us to just post the images online since it had already been such a long day.

But, for over thirty years, we have ALWAYS done our sales in-person with projection, using Suggestions, and this situation was no different.

The KEY to making this work...SIMPLICITY.

Too many photographers have too many product offerings.

Pare down your offerings for success!

Here's how we started SIMPLIFYING our offerings...

"We used to have five different Session Fees; a single person or business head and shoulder, two people, a group, a bridal and location. Now we only have two fees which are studio and location. We don't count the number of people and charge by that-too confusing!

What the client really wants is to know is are you the right photographer for them and will you make them look fabulous. The proof is in the pudding, as they say, and our clients are so satisfied with our finished product that we don't need all of the extraneous stuff (products.)

Another way to cut down on too many choices is in the actual number of images you are showing. Can you pare that down some? We use ProSelect and edit, edit, edit the number of images we want to show our clients down to the cream of the crop, then put them into groupings and name them.

CLICK HERE TO GRAB OUR PDF ON SUGGESTIONS AND HOW THEY WORK.

What may have started with 80-100 images shot ends up being 10-12 images shown to the client as their Suggestion.

However, because the Suggestion images have been properly prepped and are the best ones (in our eyes), they are the ones usually chosen.

Don't tell Baskin Robbins, famous for its 31 flavor campaign, but in fact, more choices may actually hurt sales."

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