How to Master the art of Selling Portrait Photography.-installment 19 

6. The ‘I’ll think it over’ Close
I’ll think it over, we’ll sleep on it, We don’t jump into things, let us mull it over -

When you hear any of that stuff after you’ve learned this close – you’ll own this one, when people say those things, they expect you to leave-if you do, will they think it over? NO.

The Professional does the following –

• Agree with them – That’s fine Mrs. Smith. Obviously you wouldn’t take your time thinking over unless you were seriously interested, would you?
• Confirm the fact that they are going to think it over – Since you’re interested, may I assume that you’ll give it very careful consideration – (speak very slowly)- they’ll say yes.
• Make them squeak – Mrs Smith, you’re not telling me this just to get rid of me are you? – you need to act like you’re licked. – They usually answer oh no, we like the portraits.
• Clarify and twist harder – Just to clarify my thinking, what is it that you wanted to think over, is it the integrity of the studio?
  • What’ll the client say – Oh no the studio is great, is it my personal integrity? Is it the size of the portraits? Is it the size of the album, is it the colour of the frame?
  • Is it? Is it? Is it? Every time they say no, they really are saying YES.
  • You ask about every benefit or feature the prospect wants that you can supply.
  • Ask them questions that will cause them to say how good your product or service is.
  • What will people do when you’ve learned this technique and are working it effectively on them. They’ll say to themselves – I know what he’s doing.
    So what will they grab?
  • One of the objections-once they have one, what do you have? The final objection.
  • Normally it will be the MONEY.
  • Is it the investment that’s involved in purchasing the portraits?
  • Usually they will say, well we don’t put out that kind of money without really doing a lot of considering.
  • So the problem really is the money, isn’t that right?
  • In most cases it will be the MONEY – money is the major objection we have to face on nearly every sale, isn’t it?  
  • With think it over- there is nothing to grab onto- we need a final objection.
• Confirm that it’s the money – Ask them if there is anything else they are unsure about except the money. Confirm that it is the final objection before proceeding to the next close.

7. The Reduction to the Ridiculous close – have you ever heard – “ It’s more than we wanted to spend”. Don’t look at the total, but for the difference. The first step is to find out how much, too much is. When the client expresses the idea that it costs too much, you say warmly and pleasantly – Today it seems most things do. Can you tell me how much too much you feel it is?

• Let’s suppose the cost of the portraits for Mrs. Smith is $1,500, and the prospect says they have only budgeted for $500. So the money problem is really only the $1,000. The prospect did not expect to get the portraits for nothing. So you start on the difference, which is the smaller amount
• So really we are talking about $1,000 aren’t we Mrs. Smith? All right. My thought here is that we should put it into proper perspective. Here.
• Hand Mrs. Smith the calculator. Let’s just say you will own and enjoy the portraits for at least the next 20 years – ok, divide 1000 by 20 and we get $50.00 a year. Divide this by 52 weeks and we get less than $1 a week, which is about 15c per day.
• You then smile and say – “Mrs. Smith do you really think less than 15c per day should stand between your enjoyment of the portraits and pride in your family, and not having this beautiful moment in time captured forever, for you to enjoy.”
• Usually, they say, well yes if you put it that way – you then go to the next sequence and say, “Then we’ve agreed , haven’t we. By the way when would you like to take delivery of these portraits?”