00:00:00               Welcome to the hair of the dog podcast. This is Nicole, and this is a special podcast episode, brought to you directly out of the hair of the dog Academy. Inside the Academy, our members have the opportunity to schedule laser coaching calls. And not only are these calls beneficial for them, but they get shared inside the community so that all of our other members can benefit from them.

00:00:21               What we've done is we've taken the very best of our laser coaching calls. The ones that I know you guys have questions for as well, and we are bringing them to you here as some bonus episodes on the hair of the dog podcast. Now I'm not promising them every week, but periodically we'll be releasing new laser coaching calls out here on the podcast on Thursdays.

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00:01:06               We'd love to have you inside our pack. Now stay tuned for the laser coaching. And when I say laser coaching, is it just me? Or do you picture little cats with laser beams too? That would make this even more fun, but I'd aggress, no cast with laser beams, but some incredible business knowledge about to happen. Enjoy Welcome to the hair of the dog podcast.

00:01:29               If you're a pet photographer, ready to make more money and start living a life by your design, you've come to the right place. And now your host pet photographer, travel addicts, chocolate martini, comma sewer, Nicole Begley. Hey everybody. I'm Nicole here and I'm here at Italia and we are going to be talking about things, some inquiry type stuff for planning sessions,

00:01:52               right? Yeah. Planning sessions. Yeah. Tell me a little bit, yeah. How I can help in, in what your question is. So yeah, the thing is I'm seeing, organizing how my business is going to work. I've never had a bank line before. So I mean the process of deciding which sessions I'm going to have. So,

00:02:12               and I've been listening about in the classes that I've taken about the planning sessions. So some people say it's a good thing to have. Some people don't work with that. I can't figure out how important it is. And if it's important that I think it is. Yeah, it should have the like before the contract, after the contract, is it free?

00:02:38               So yeah, there's so many variables here and there's no, sorry. There's so many variables here. There's not really a right or wrong answer. And even within your own business, like it might change depending on the client. So the first question I is a session important. Yes, absolutely critical. You have to have a planning session before a custom session.

00:03:06               In my opinion, does that planning session have to be in person or can be on the phone or on video? Any of the three in my experience works fine. I Went through and tested at one point requiring my clients to come in and do a in-person planning session. I did not notice a significant increase in sales or Results. So versus doing it on the phone,

00:03:39               I give it an a so, so that made me, well, I don't have to, it made me think I didn't want to make them do that because that's more time for me. It's more time for them. So what I do is I've always given them an option and tell them, you know, we do our planning session. Well, it might do it on the phone or we do it on the phone.

00:04:00               If you'd like to come into the studio, you're welcome to come in. We can set up a time for that. So I leave the door open for you to sign in on how you want to do that will depend on, you know, where you're meeting them. If you need to meet them at a coffee shop or a studio or, Or your home or their home.

00:04:21               Well, yeah, actually I'm not going to have a studio right now. I'm all like outdoor photography. Like, and then I'll probably set something in like home. I would like to have a place to do the IPS session after. So that's where I'm planning to receive, to do the meeting, the planning session. Perfect. Perfect. And you know,

00:04:47               and depending too, for those of you guys listening in the future, we're in the middle of 20, 20 pandemic year that throws a wrench into where you might not want people in your home, or they might not want to come to your home. You might have to be more virtual, but you could certainly do a planning session over zoom like this,

00:05:09               where you can still kind of show them products, talk to them, they see you, like it's more in person than the phone. Yeah. So yeah. So you could certainly do that and you can require it to be video. You know, it doesn't, if you don't want to do phone at all, you can require it to be either video or in person.

00:05:31               You can really set it up for however you want to do it. But it is important to have that conversation, you know, to, to talk about where and when you're going to shoot, which is pretty basic. But then to also let them know like how the session's going to be like what to expect and let them know that they don't have to worry about how their dogs behaving.

00:05:51               Most people are going to think their dog is misbehaving. They're not because everyone gets stressed about that. And then of course, the really important stuff to be talking about during that is how they want to display their artwork and starting to kind of show what you offer, getting them kind of on the same page. So you know what you're shooting for, because really the sale ends up really starting here before you even choose it's,

00:06:21               you're talking about what we're going to do. So for when that happens, again, depends a little bit, you know, I've had people book and then we hold that or I've had people that want to hold that first. So I give people really the option for both that on my website, they can book a session and then they book the session and then we schedule the planning appointment.

00:06:48               And if we got to that point and maybe they weren't aware of the pricing, and then we realize it's not a great fit, I will refund them their session fee that they had paid. Like, I don't mind doing that if discover, you know, if they pay first and then we discover, Oh, maybe this isn't what I expected. That's fine.

00:07:07               And have your money back. Yeah. That's what I was thinking, Sergeant for up to that's what it was about when doing it, because I was trying to do not like waste time, like their side, you know? So I was thinking if there's a way that we can figure it out too, to have this planning session, like before they,

00:07:30               they say, well, you are my photographer and I know you probably my clients. So then we were going to start all the work and then we do the planning session. But again, there are other people that maybe do that before the signing the contract. Well they know each other. Yeah. So, so here's the other side of that for the people there's,

00:07:51               you know, a handful of people that are going to say, all right, I look at your website. I know you from the, you know, the local area have had referrals. Like I know I want to work with you. So they'll book a session and then you can go play again. But on the other side of the coin, there's going to be,

00:08:06               I think even more people that need to learn a little bit more about you and your business before they make the final decision that they need to work with you. So I think it's also important that you offer the ability to sign up for a consultation. You know, a no obligation consultation. I just do like a 15 minute consultation they can sign up for,

00:08:30               or I talk about the experience. I asked them fall, it starts off. I ask them about their dogs, ask them what they're looking for, ask them if they've thought about how they want to display their images. In which case I start to lead into what I offer and that I do all our albums prints and digital files are usually an add on the other really important question to ask there too,

00:08:54               as you know, what, what they value most or what they're most looking for in their photography experience, you know, and, and speaking to that. And so then after that conversation, you can just ask them, is this, does this sound like something that interests you, does this sound like, you know, would you like to schedule a session?

00:09:17               Because generally once people commit to the consultation, a high percentage end up booking, so it's worth the time to do that beforehand. Yeah. Yeah. I love this, this idea about the consultation consultation. Sorry. No worries. No worries. Well, yeah. I love this idea because like I said, the time let's say for 15 minutes and then they get to know me.

00:09:49               I get to know them. If they say, well, I'm interested and then I'll say, okay, so let's book the session and then we go planning session. That will probably last like way more than 15 minutes, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, no, you can definitely do that. And actually by then, like the planning session, if you've had that first consultation in my experience,

00:10:10               the planning session really isn't all that long. Like they have already booked you, you've already had the conversation about why you offer. So you're going to talk a little bit more about where we're shooting when we're shooting, you know, how to prepare their dog, what to expect while they're shooting, what happens after, but you've already kind of talked about that before,

00:10:31               and then you do want to talk a little bit about what they want to do with their images. So, you know, so it's really kind of having that consultation conversation again in a little bit, you know, just to kind of confirm those things and adding in choosing, you know, the date, the location I see. And should we talk about price Nicole in the consultation or only in the planning session?

00:11:00               I like to talk about it in the consultation in general terms. Like it might not be exact terms unless they're asking, but, but after the consultation I do send them a full price list. Like I don't want to hide that until after they book. And I usually just speak in terms of, since everything's custom, the total that people spend varies,

00:11:22               most clients can expect to spend at least a thousand dollars on their products. So that kind of gives them a starting point. Yeah. I think that's very, very important. So they, they know they don't like they don't go into the planning session when after booking. Everything's like, Oh, that's how much I'm going to stand. Yeah. So on the consultation session,

00:11:43               I'll give them, I say a thousand, I used to say, most clients spend about five, at least $500. So where you start really depends on, you know, you're going to be newer at it. And you know, like you could start off with 500 depending on where your pricing is. Like, I usually would pick whatever, like a small piece of wall art costs and do that.

00:12:04               It's most clients spend at least that. And then, yeah, you're talking price they're generally. And then I'd give them my full product guide. After I said, I'm going to send you a full product guide. So you can look at all of those things. Most times spend at least this. And then if there's any ways that there's value built in,

00:12:28               then I always mentioned that to them too, that, you know, when you get the full product guide can look through that. But please notice that I have a build your own collection options. So if you do X, Y, and Z, you save this, or if you purchase a 16 by 24 wall piece or larger than the digital files are half off.

00:12:49               So if there's anything like that, that has savings. I mentioned that to them. So they know to look for that, but then usually you've talked about it and they've seen it. So then when you get to the planning session, they already are kind of familiar with that. So you're talking about all right, what, where are we thinking of hanging anything in your home?

00:13:09               Are you thinking about Walmart? What walls can you send me those walls? So that way, you know, if it's a vertical space and you can almost start to design that before you even shoot, you can think of albums. What's that? Sorry. I think about the color too, right? Yeah. Yeah. You can think about the color and like the design,

00:13:28               like maybe their house is really, really modern, so you're not going to want to like shoot at an old farm with like Barnwood or something, you know? Yeah. And it, it just helps kind of plan that. So then when you get to the sale session, I mean, they've already, you both know what they're pretty much gonna buy extra stuff cause they love the images.

00:13:55               Cool, awesome. Excellent. And keep us posted in the Academy Facebook group and the excellent. All right. Good to talk to you. Bye bye. Thanks for listening to the hair of the dog podcast. If you want to check out the show notes for access to any of the links that we shared in this episode, as well as any additional resources,

00:14:16               simply go to www.hairofthedogacademy.com/six five. That's just the number six and the number five. Thanks for listening to the hair of the dog podcast. If you want to check out the show notes for access to any of the links we shared in this episode, as well as additional resources, simply go to www.hairofthedogacademy.com/six six. Thanks for listening to this episode of hair of the dog podcast.

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