Here at C&C, we changed the entire way we did sales for photography, the reason being — our industry has changed a lot.
We went from the most lovey industry where you’d meet and have wine with your possible photographer to sales emails, cold calls, marketing, and a lot of other impersonal things.
So, we changed it back — we’re leading the path to keep wedding photography personal, loving, and provide a killer client experience.
Now, so that couples can understand the things to steer clear of — here are 7 sales tactics usually used while people are price shopping
1. Major pricing changes
If a photographer’s website says they begin at 6500 and then they all of a sudden are talking about 2500 packages, you’re most likely being somewhat played.
This is in psychology called the door-in-the-face tactic, this is where they’re throwing a huge number at you so anything else seems reasonable, even if it’s out of budget.
Plus, you might not want to trust a studio (or photographer) that claims to be 6500 quality at a 2500…
2. “Meet me at Panera”
This doesn’t have to do so much with price shopping and more with professionalism, if a photographer doesn’t have an office space or even room in their home for a meeting they might not be the quality you want.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t go to Panera to sign a 3000 dollar contract.
3. Promotions…
This might not be true everywhere, however, I have never ONCE seen a true photography sale except for on the cragslist-buy-a-photographer sites where you never know who’s showing up till the day before.
Promotions are usually not real. With photography the pricing has so many elements they most likely have just excluded something or swapped it out for a cheaper product and knocked down the price accordingly then called it a sale.
4. Limited time offer
Sometimes we hear studios do limits on offers, we do this with extremely discounted custom deals and nothing else. So, if a studio is offering you an okay deal and forcing you to sign across the line within 24-hours, you might want to run.
To reference the point above, promotions aren’t a thing in the wedding industry. Photography doesn’t come with discount codes or Spring Sales.
5. “I only go over pricing in person”
If the pricing isn’t transparent and on their website publicly (like ours and many others) be careful.
Non-transparent pricing is where the largest variations on client-by-client basis and overcharging come into play. It’s extremely easy for someone to increase the profit margin 10% because your budget is a little higher than their normal, so at the end of the day ask for a pricing guide BEFORE providing a budget if the pricing list isn’t public.
Also, if you’re ever wondering about pricing check Wedding Wire and see if they have a published “average cost” ours is 3200.
6. “Social media digital files”
This is where the rant begins, social media files DO NOT equal good files, they’re the low-res, usually watermarked files with a brand new modern name slapped on them — “social media files”.
We always provide every client their full set of beautifully edited high-res digital files un-watermarked, because you hired us to take them so why should we charge more just so you can see the outcome??
If a photographer is asking for more just to access the files there will usually be more pricing gimmicks involved you haven’t foreseen yet.
7. Overtime
Overtime is where most photographers try to make the biggest profit, because instead of them billing at the normal rate for staying another hour most bill at 3x the normal rate.
Whereas at C&C, we stay till we captured everything. No fee because you needed one more thing photographed.
All these crazy sales tactics is why our owner has moved us to go off the most transparent and wedding-friendly pricing system where we default to transparency. If you inquire with a budget bellow our normal, we’ll usually say “Just so you know we start at 2800, would that be possible” we don’t try to loop you in then tell you pricing once you’re sitting in front of us.
If you’ve seen any crazy things we didn’t cover, send them over!