Free Stuff: Business Articles - Comeback Sales Boost Profits

One of the most important parts of your selling strategy is what I call Comeback sales. It is one of the best strategies to insure your success. It's also the most overlooked profit center in photographic studios.

What is Comeback or Add-on Selling? It is all the products or services you sell to clients after they have made their initial purchasing transaction with you.

Photographic studios should be Comeback businesses because a bulk of the sales, cash flow, and current profit can come from doing a better job at building Comeback customers. Most of us are dependent on repeat customers and their referrals. With a Comeback business, your goal is to make it as easy as possible to get as many people as possible to begin their journey in becoming part of your photographic family.

In some instances you may not you make much money on a client the first time they come to you. The amount of money made on their first visit depends on the amount of money spent on the campaign and the number of people who take you up on your original offer. The most important thing is making it easy and desirable for them to "Come back" to your business.

How many times they come back and what they spend, has a lot of impact on how prosperous your business becomes. Getting customers who used to come back once a year to start coming back once a quarter, or once a month, can multiply your profits enormously.

Getting customers who used to purchase just one or two products to start buying additional products in an ongoing way can add tremendously to your bottom line.

It can be expensive to acquire a customer in the first place, because you might have to pay to run an expensive direct-mail marketing campaign with support of radio, newspaper, Yellow Pages,or phone calling follow up. But the cost of reselling a customer once they've done business with you is only the cost of a phone call, a sales letter, or a display.

So what does this mean to you? Plenty. It means you need to start focusing on better ways of getting our customers to buy more often. They may buy the same product, a related item, or a totally unrelated product or service.

Your purpose must be to help your customers get the maximum benefit you are capable of giving them, so they are more likely to become preferred clients, your best client status.

Many studio owners make a marginal profit because they spend most of their time on generating new clients and not enough time on building return clients. Once you have the program for bringing clients back over and over again, your studio becomes transformed into a lead generating enterprise, with the focus on building repeat business.

A solid referral system and Comeback system takes most of the burden of generating new customers off your shoulders and allows you to reap residual income from repeat customers and add-on sales. Let me illustrate this.

When I began my studio, small schools and daycare centers were some of my first lead-generating clients. I didn't do "just another school picture". I made these portraits of my young clients the very best I possibly could. I used creative backgrounds, good lighting techniques and extra time with each student. These factors made my "school pictures" stand out from the crowd. I changed from a prepaid system to a proof system (with inexpensive contact proofs). Instead of doing only one exposure, I did at least two of each student, a close up and a half-length. Was this new system more trouble? Of course! But it was more profitable and it endeared me with the parents of these children. I also kept great records of my clients and their buying habits. I had a rating system for each client and each type of client (life cycle). This gave me a tremendous source of leads, qualified leads! I would send different promotions to different clients according to their rating.

For example: I might send a "Free session plus a Free desk size photograph (4x5) to "A" rated clients, knowing they were not "Take the Free one and run" type of people. However, a client with a "C" rating might receive a promotion of: 1 - 8x10 and 2 - 5x7s with a mini session for $79. I would never send the first promo to the "C" client.

The result? I built a profitable children's business and a family business. Plus I developed a following of clients who knew I would go the extra mile for them.

I did the same think when I photographed sports teams, proms, dance schools, Santa Claus, and other promotional type of photography. I considered these sessions as paid advertising. They paid me for me to advertise with them! And they became "fans" or Comeback clients.

Because I understood how important these repeat clients were I built a profitable business and a business that I was eventually able to sell. A business that is still benefiting from my Comeback clients.

See how looking at your business as a Comeback business can make your business a success and your bank account fatter?

Stop for a moment, get out a paper and pad and make a list of all the additional purchases your clients should be making with your existing products and services. Use this when you make your sales scripts for all of your products. (See Telephone Scripts for making scripts).

This is your Comeback list of possibilities. Look at all the products or services you can sell to your customers and prospects on a fair, profit-basis.

Just a few examples of Comeback possibilities:

  • Frames for all portraits
  • Canvas finish on regular portraits
  • A Children's Portrait Club to current children clients
  • Parent albums on all weddings
  • Invitations, business and personal stationary and Christmas cards
  • Family albums to family portrait clients
  • Black and white wedding coverage at weddings (see Add Black and White to Your Wedding Photography)
  • Family sessions to senior portrait clients
  • Romantic portraits of your women clients, especially brides