The Sales Pitch
I was recently talking with a friend of mine who is an absolutely incredible salesperson. You can walk into his studio to bring him a cup of coffee, and within five minutes you’ll probably be discussing whether you need a painting or a sculpture. He is good at art, and he is good at selling his art.
And it got me thinking about how often photographers say, “I’m terrible at sales.” But like my friend, maybe we aren’t that bad. Maybe we’ve simply been thinking about the wrong kind of sales.
In this week’s podcast, episode 598, we’ll discuss the right way to think about sales and a sales pitch. Because every time we make a photograph, we are actually making a sales pitch. We are assessing whether what we are seeing, editing, processing, sharing, and printing is worth the cost. In this case, I think cost is equal to attention.
I know that some of you think the word sales is bad, and sales is one of those words that makes a lot of photographers uncomfortable. We often say we aren’t good at selling our work, talking about our photographs, or sharing what we create.
But here’s the thing: photographers are making sales pitches all the time.
We’re just usually selling the photograph to ourselves.
We buy our own products.
When you’re walking around with your camera, and something catches your attention, you begin a conversation with yourself: There’s something here. You look at the light, color, composition, moment or whatever. You move around. You might change lenses or wait and convince yourself that it is time to press the button.
That’s your first sales pitch to yourself. You sold the making of the photograph.
The second time you make a sales pitch to yourself is when you edit. Out of hundreds of photographs, how do we decide which ones deserve our time and attention? We’re asking again: Is this photograph worth working on? Is there something I can develop here? Again, making the sales pitch.
Now, I am not saying that we always get our sales pitches right. I mean, if you are like me, you have fallen for some bad sales pitches and bought some bad stuff over the years. The photos are no different, but rather than saying I was suckered on a bad deal, I call it useful feedback. 😀
Sharing is sales
The same thing happens when we share our work. WE are making the pitch again. This time we might consider an external audience, but we have to remember there’s a big difference between “I believe in this photograph, therefore I want to share it” and “People liked this photograph, therefore it must be good.” The first begins with our own conviction. The second gives that conviction to somebody else.
Printing is really a big sales pitch.
Printing takes the idea even further. When I commit a photograph to paper, I’m saying I believe enough in it to invest my time and materials.
The cost goes up. I have to really do a sales job when I am printing work to have it, or to sell it; the story, value proposition, evidence all have to point to something good, or I end up with a Midnight Home Shopping Network binge buy of a photo on my wall.
Wrapping it up
Ultimately, we’re not really selling photographs. We’re selling ourselves to our work. We’re deciding what is worth noticing, photographing, selecting, editing, processing, sharing, and printing. The goal isn’t to know which photographs are objectively good. It’s to become better at recognizing which photographs we believe in and when we push our creativity with a hard sell.
Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you in the next episode.
