The Prospecting Email

Get it right and effective email prospecting can help you can significantly increase your lead generation hit rate.

Some pointers:

• Decide on the purpose of your email:

1) to get an appointment?
2) to keep in touch with a prospect?
3) to make a prospect aware that a competitor has bought your solution (so they better get their act together). You cannot build a house without first having sketched out what you are going to build.

remember: emails do not sell a product.

• understand you target audience:
• in certain geographies people only respond well to short, sharp, factual emails. Other geographies respond differently.
• individuals at certain levels within the company hierarchy will respond differently to unsolicited emails: a "C" level individual only has attention time for a couple of lines whilst an IT person may well read a longer email. If you do not know then find out (ask other salespeople). Don't drone on and shoot off all your product benefits bullets in one email - you will hopefully have plenty of time for that at your face to face meeting.
• research the target audience individuals (so do not send the same email content to everyone within the company: different people are interested in different touch points of your offering)
• make it personal; don't send "ads" they could as easily see in a newspaper
• make it appropriate: exactly how does your product help their particular industry at this particular point in time
• Most importantly, refer to 2-3 success stories: companies that have bought your solution. Briefly describe how they have benefited through its implementation and usage. Nothing sells a product better than a reference. But keep it short and to the point.
• Finally, before sending, put yourself in the receiver's company role and frame of mind (as best you can), and ask yourself how he would react to your email - then ammend accordingly.
• CHECK THE SPELLING!

Selling your photos

Fact: there are many, many, many photographers out there in the real and cyber world trying to sell (and I use the term lightly) literally millions of images!

The reality is that unless buyers are looking for a specific image at a specific time and you've taken just such an image and it is actually possible for them to find it then you might, if you're lucky make a sale.

Of course you might strike gold and sell gigabytes of images simply by being in the right place at the right time with the right images. Or not!

So, do we as photographers give up? Of course not! The dilemma we must deal with is exactly the same one as that faced by car/soap/technology/etc manufacturers who all face a vast array of competitors, all selling ostensibly similar products, on a daily basis.

At this point the purists out there will argue that the points I make below fall into the category of Marketing rather than pure Sales. Well, there is some truth to that. For those who struggle with the difference between sales and marketing, the first is typically one to one (or one to a few), whilst the latter is one to many.

Regardless of semantics, if you want someone to buy your images you are going to have to sell them. In other words, what is in it for the buyer to part with his or her hard earned money to purchase your image?

So lets start at the top - the image.

Your image/photo could be exactly or close to what the buyer wants. Whether he knows it or not he wants to know about the benefits of purchasing that specific image (its beauty, its ability to help him sell product/impress his wife or boss/etc).

You could argue that he has seen the image somewhere (a microsite, your website, Flickr) and simply decided to buy it. But is the sale of one image enough? How do you get him to buy another, and another, and yet one more?

It pays off to research your audience. What are buyers looking for? And remember that, fortunately for us, what a buyer seeks changes over time. Once you know this go out and photograph appropriate images and post them in relevant locations. Say something about the image (how difficult it was to take, how long you had to wait to take it, how rare such images are to find, how may more similar inages you possess, their very competitive price, etc). Selling the image means not selling the image: rather ir means selling the short and long term benefits to the buyer of purchasing that specific image.

But I want to photograph what I want to photograph? This is good too. But art for art's sake might not make you as much money as art for the buyer's sake. If the buyer doesn't matter, or if the money doesn't matter then you're probably in the wrong blog:-)

A lot has been written about where best to display your images so I do not want to go over old ground. All I can add is that if you want to sell your photos/images read about this topic as much as you can. You can never learn too much.

Then there is you, the photographer. On you website, microsite, even at your fleamarket stall, tell the audience about your experience, your ability to shoot the images that interest them, your willingness to go our on a limb professionally, financially to capture just the right moment in time, just the right facial expression, just the right color or lighting. Start a blog. Get involve in other people's blogs. Write in appropriate forums. Connect with successful photographers you have read out. You may well be suprised how many will respond to your emails and willing they are to dispense some words of wisdom (don't harass them though:-)).

Slowly, over time, you will differentiate yourself and you may just find yourself earning more money for your images.

Go out and actually SELL your images! Sell yourself! Most importantly, focus on the benefits to the buyer because what you think is of no consequence, only the buyer's opinion matters.

Selling isn't confined to work

Unless you're single and/or have no parents or siblings, you need to interact with family members. In order to get anything done talking is not enough: you need to sell, of which negotiation, and knowing how to close, are integral.

Talk really is cheap. Words do slide off people like water off a ducks back. And to me words = facts.

We hear so many words (read facts!) throughout the course of our lives we almost become de-sensitized to them.

As people though, we are swayed by arguments. And by arguments I mean the putting forth of pluses and minuses.

To put this into context, in order to "get" something, whatever that may be, we need to sell/talk/argue "benefits". The listener at home will be swayed by benefits - what's in it for him/her to give you what you want. The car salesperson calls this closing. At home we call this being smart. Sell benefits. And last week's benefits may not apply this week. In the old days this was known as knowing how to "push the right buttons".

Telling your child to do his/her homework because if they don't they won't get into college which means they won't get a job simply doesn't cut it. Pointing out that not doing their homework will ultimately mean no travel, no new clothes/shoes, no iPod, laptop, Flatscreen TV (or whatever technology will exist when they grow older), and no freedom to leave the boss they hate because they are stuck for life in the job they were lucky to get in the first place, will probably elicit a different response.

So even though you may not know it you are now selling!!

In a similar vein, negotiation (a discipline of the sales process) is not just relegated to the car yard. In order to "get" what you want/need from your husband/wife or kids you may well have to give something up.

Again, you are selling!!

Finally, when it looks like you are going to achieve your goal of getting what you want, ask for it!! Too many times we argue our point (professionally or otherwise) only to forget to ask if the person with whom we are interacting actually agrees with us. Unless you do this throughout the course of the interaction you are in no position to judge whether or not you are on the rightr track. If you are not getting positive feedback (read agreement) then you need to alter the course of your argument (read restart the selling process).

Sales as a profession probably ranks up there with being a lawyer or a traffic cop. But whether we agree with this or not we are actually all selling (or ought to be) in just about every aspect of our lives.

It makes sense then that knowing something (even a little) about the sales process ought to help us in our every day lives. As far as I am concerned the most practical, easy to read book about Salemanship is "How to Master the Art of Selling" by Tom Hopkins (no, I am not getting a commission from Tom or anyone else for that matter:-)). The reason I love this book is that it is a book for everyone and not just the professional salesperson.

So, the next time you need your husband's or wife's approval to do or buy something, think about what's in it for her to agree with you.