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- [00:00]
A
People's expectations are broken.
- [00:02]
B
50% of them will not buy from you, ever. That's proven. That's actually been proven across all industries. And I wish I knew that before I started selling 37 years ago.
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C
It happens all the time. And when we actually do get them on the phone, many of them thank us for being persistent.
- [00:18]
D
Life is happening and they're doing life. The top thing they loved us for was the fact that they felt we never gave up.
- [00:26]
A
Hey, difference makers. Welcome back to the Difference Maker Revolution podcast. And today we, we have the four amigos back. We have Ronan, we have Janine, we have Steve, we have Jono. And I think today we're going to talk about something that we see pop up over and over and over again with businesses, and that is this idea and this, this understanding. I mean, I'm going to be blunt here, right. I love being blunt. Nowadays, it's just being direct is way easier.
- [00:57]
D
We have another word for it, Johnno.
- [01:00]
A
Yeah, I mean, some people say, look at that asshole. Anyway, like this fundamental misunderstanding of what marketing is and what it means to market your business and get bookings and what's actually required, I think there's a huge. I think people's expectations are broken. So let's. Let me set the premise of this and then I'll let you guys. I'll let you guys off the hook and unleash you guys on it, right? So here's what I see. Often I see people say that so and so person fill out a form on my website. They found my website, they fill out the form, and I called them and they didn't answer me. So they're ghosting me. You know, they don't respect me, they don't value me. You know, why aren't they booking? And then I see, as we know, Facebook ads are one of the most effective forms of marketing and advertising for any business out there. And what I see happen is I see people run an ad and they get. Generate, maybe let's call it 20, and I'm going to say the word leads, which we call potential clients, because we view every lead as having the potential to be a great client. So they get 20 potential clients or leads and they call. Maybe they call them. They call the 20 clients, potential clients. And, you know, nobody answers the first time they call them. And then they say, oh, Facebook ads don't work. Facebook ads suck. You know, these leads are crap. They're not qualified. And I think this is where expectations are broken because. But the good news is, right, the good news Is that this isn't just photographers. This is every business under the sun. Right. I was sharing with the team. I've been speaking to agency owners who run ads for other industries and they say, Jonathan, your industry is not unique. Get over yourself. Every business has this problem.
- [02:51]
B
Jonathan, I tell you this all the time, that it's not just the photography industry, but many things. And you don't believe me, huh?
- [02:59]
A
But what they did say was interesting is what we teach in the difference maker evolution about earning. The conversation and about following up and about persistence and about mindset and about knowing your numbers is vital for any business in any industry. So I just wanted to kind of break this whole misunderstanding and lack of awareness about what it actually takes to successfully market your business and make. Create quality clients and make bookings. So that's setting the stage.
- [03:27]
B
Okay, so can I come in now then? So I'll just come in and just say like, Jonathan was very direct there and if you're feeling a little bit upset, this is not your fault. If you are like that. This is the result of our industry valuing the wrong thing and encouraging you to attach your ego to the quality of your photography and your artwork rather than attaching your ego to the difference you make to your clients. And I understand your perspective because I've been there. So let's just talk about that. First of all, until I had my eyes opened. So I had my eyes opened when I trained with a marketing and sales expert. He was primarily a marketing expert, but understood that marketing and sales were related to each other. So they're like a married couple, but they're two different things. And often we see them as one person rather than two different people who have an attachment with each other. And he said to me that marketing is merely. Your client is raising their hand in interest that they want to have a further conversation about the possibility of can you solve a problem for them if they're reaching out to you? Right. And no matter how good your marketing is attracting the right people, and that's really important that you do talk to your potential client avatars. But no matter how good it is, not everybody who inquires is going to want to do business with you for a whole lot of reasons. Not just maybe that, you know, they just don't have the money to invest right now. There's a whole load of reasons why now may not be the right, right moment, but in that moment that they fill out your form on your website or on, on Facebook or Instagram or reach out to you in messenger or TikTok or WhatsApp or whatever it is, right? You've got to understand that across all industries that have every hundred client potential client leads you generate or, or potential client inquiries you generate, 50% of them will not buy from you, ever. That's proven. That's actually been proven across all industries. Right? So when you think about that, the photography industry is not special over all the industries in the world. Right? And that number is going to stay real for you too. The other thing that's often misunderstood is that the 50% who will buy from you, not all of them are ready to buy from you today, but they will buy from you. And this is what all the research also shows. They will buy from you between day one and two years out, provided, provided your marketing, your nurturing is up to speed and that of that 50 who will buy, 15% will buy today, provided you are persistent to have the systems in place to not make the fact that the person doesn't answer you straight away about your ego, but you make it about you really want to make a difference for these clients. And as Steve says, you're not going to give up on them. So that's my summary.
- [06:42]
D
So how many, how many people do you think Ronan are nurturing? One lead consistently for two years?
- [06:53]
B
I would say out of every in our membership, the people who are with us the longest probably are more likely to be doing it. And I don't know the exact numbers, so I hate making guesses because I prefer to rely on the data. All of us.
- [07:11]
D
But you hang around with lots of photographers.
- [07:16]
B
Oh, oh. If you take it outside the difference maker revolution, I would say one out of 100, max. I'd be surprised if it's more than one out of a hundred. So if you think about that, those 50 potential client leads who will buy from you between day one and day and two years out, and only seven are ready to buy today, you know you're missing out on 43 clients based on the stats across all industries.
- [07:44]
C
Well, I think it's interesting to note too, Ronan, that if, if those listening to our podcast don't want to believe the directness of the two of you, but they should, they should look at their own purchasing habits, right? Like, I know that, especially now that social media has really turned to this, as they call it, interest media, you'll receive ads, posts of things that the algorithms think you're interested in. Right? So like right now, summer's coming up, I'm going to be traveling, I'm getting tons of ads for Comfortable sneakers and walking shoes. Right. This is just an example that I'm sure other people can relate to. There are two that I find very interesting. Never really ready to buy. Now I'm not going on my trip till June. But I've liked them all and I have filled out some things for some of them, knowing that in like three months I'll probably make my purchasing decision right now. These are brands that are very good at follow up. I've already received information. I keep getting their posts now in my feed and I'm now getting weekly emails from two of the brands. Right. So they're going to be on the forefront of my mind until June when I'm ready to buy these sneakers. Right. If there was a brand I was interested in and they weren't keeping up with me, I wouldn't buy those sneakers because they're going to have fallen off of my radar by the time I'm ready to make my purchasing decision. So just taking it kind of to the retail because I think a lot of people listening to this podcast probably do something similar.
- [09:19]
A
Janine it was actually fascinating. The same thing happened to me. So I became aware of this and I became aware of it when my own behavior. When I saw a marketer put up a post, he's built like a tracking software for ads and stuff and he was sharing. He also runs ads for his own products and sells products. And he was sharing how one client clicked on the same ad seven times before they actually went ahead and bought. And this is like a low value Item, like under $20. And what was fascinating was I started thinking about my behavior and just becoming aware of my behavior when I'm on Facebook and Instagram and stuff. I was like, I do that too. Like I click on an ad, I see an ad, I click on it, I read it, I'm like, oh, I'm kind of interested in that. But I don't really want to do anything right now. So I X out of it. I continue scrolling and then the next day, because of how amazing Facebook is, I see the exact same ad and I click on it again. Like, oh yeah, let's have a look more closer at this. I am busy now. I'll come back to it. I'm watching tv and then like the next morning I'll come on, I'll see the ad I click on again. Oh yeah, okay, right, let's do this. Right. So like I was like, shit, I do this same thing as well. Like as you were describing, like it's very rare where people will see an ad once, click on it, fill out the form then and there. And even if they do that, and that's why it's all about not only the front end, but also the follow up. So when I was talking about, you know, when someone fills out a form, calling once isn't enough. Emailing once, texting once. You have to be persistent and consistent because we spoke about this before, but like Janine, you make a call and the person might be in the middle of something or something might have happened or something pops up and now it's just not a good time to answer the phone to you. Right. It doesn't mean that they're not going to be a great client. It just means that they need another opportunity. You need to give them the opportunity to speak with you again. And you need to keep giving them that opportunity.
- [11:25]
C
I mean, and it, it happens all the time. And when we actually do get them on the phone, many of them thank us for being persistent. We've had multiple clients fill out that form for our product, our service when they're on vacation and they're not going to answer the phone, but they wanted to make sure that they got the offer. And when we continue to call them or continue to text them or send them the are you still interested? Conversations, they reply, oh my gosh, thank you so much for continuing to follow up. I was on a cruise for the past 10 days. Or, you know, we've had fun reasons like cruises, vacations, whatever the case may be. We've also had sad reasons like there's been an illness or there's been a death in the family or, you know, there's so many things. We are very busy, busy people, very busy society. I know, Vernon, you say it like busyness is now the, the new people equate things by how busy they are. And that's not really good. Is that Steve who said that it's. And it's so true, but it, so it's harder to get through to people. Doesn't mean they want, don't want to get through. They don't want to be gotten through to. It's just they need you to be persistent to get through to them. And also you have to try the different channels. Right? So that's why, you know, we always say you have to try. You can't just phone call, as Jonathan alluded to. You know, you have your phone calls, your text messages, your emails, you're, you're, you're trying all the different methods to get to them. And maybe one of Them, um, persistently, we'll get through.
- [12:53]
B
It's interesting because Jonathan had an onboarding call with a new client this morning. You know, and part of that onboarding was, so how did you hear about Difference Maker Revolution? You know, and, and we already knew that this particular person was on one of our webinars some time ago. Right. But what she remembered, because it was probably her last contact with us before she pressed the button to go ahead, was she said, I have the podcast. I listened to the podcast. But we know that she had other touch points along the way before that. But she remembers the last one, Ronan.
- [13:29]
A
What she also said was that she'd been listening to the podcast for a year. And the research shows, like in all, across all industries that, you know, 2 to 3% of people are ready to buy now. And even for those 2 to 3% of people that are ready to buy or book now, you still need 11 touch points to actually get them to book or buy now. Right. And those other 97 to 98% are the ones that you talked about needing the long term nurturing and reminders and everything. And I think this is where in the title of the podcast, your expectations are broken. I think most people's expectations are they'll see an ad once, they'll click on it, they'll be price qualified, they'll already know magically what they're going to buy for their home and that they'll book and they'll have no objections and that they'll be a great client and that they'll answer every time and that they won't have any objections throughout the experience and they'll love all of your wonderful photos and they'll be a great client. Like, if that was the case, I wouldn't be sitting here right now. I'd be on a beach, I'd be a trillionaire, I'd have solved this problem for every business in the world. And like, I'd be probably playing golf anyway. Like, it's just, that's not reality. That doesn't. Nobody can do that. The luxury, luxury brands don't do that. And I think that's a preconception, an expectation issue here too, with that. You know, they think that it's the style of maybe marketing or ads or I can't run an offer because, oh, I'm a premium brand and they're buying for my premium work. And that's a whole lot of crap too, because, you know, if you think that you don't understand why people buy, quote, unquote, luxury or Premium. They don't buy it because it's a luxury brand. They buy it because of the identity shift or what that is allowing clients to feel or believe about themselves. Like, trying to move this price qualification. Like, in my head still, the best place to do a price qualification is under discovery call, with the discovery call script that Steve's written and that we use and teach. Like, that's where it's done. That first price qualification, trying to move it earlier in that experience. And that marketing process is just a recipe for disaster because you're filtering out people, you're creating so much friction that you're actually screwing yourself up because you're turning off people who have the potential to actually spend 10k or 20k or 5k or 2k who won't fill out your form because you're trying to price qualify them too early in their experience.
- [16:17]
C
You're absolutely right, Jonathan. And in all the conversations that I've ever had with all of my fellow photographer friends, everybody has an expectation that the market knows what they do and has an appreciation for photography and portraits and portrait art and portrait artistry and all the fun, fancy words you want to come up with that there is a general knowledge and understanding in the marketplace of what it is that we do. There is not, hate to break it to you, there is not a general understanding in the marketplace. Also, it's not an impulse purchase, which I think that's another expectation that people get wrong. We're not like a 20 item where someone can just click on it and, you know, go to Amazon and buy it and be like, oh, this is cool. It's a higher. It's an investment of time and it's an investment of money. And so that's going to take many people more touch points and more understanding and a discovery call and seeing what it is more than, you know, an $80 pair of sneakers. Look, the sneakers I'm looking at are $80. And I'm still not willing to make the decision until it gets closer to the time of my travel, you know, and we're not talking about 2, 5, $10,000, right? So you gotta, you gotta have that understanding of, of, of, like Jonathan said, expectation versus reality in this.
- [17:41]
A
And it sucks. Janine, I'm just gonna be blunt. There's no, like, I take this path, I'm at a Y in the road and I go right, and it's like, you know, euphoria and amazement and utopia and everything is so good. This silver bullet solves all problems. And I go left and it's pain. Your choices are choose your pain. I can either choose the pain of not having any clients and trying to search for silver bullets over and over again and constantly getting disappointed because there is none, or I can choose that pain and of actually running an ad, picking up the phone, making all those calls that feel so painful. And I'm sure Steve will give us mindset hacks to make them feel easier and choose that pain instead and actually make a difference to our clients and create bookings. So choose your pain. There is no, like, euphoria.
- [18:30]
C
Like, I'm sorry, Choose the pain of not being poor.
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A
Yeah, there you go. You got to choose your pain.
- [18:36]
D
Don't forget, Jono, there's a fine line between pleasure and pain. So, you know, sometimes the two feel very similar. So maybe. Maybe what you're feeling isn't really pain, but you're just on that precipice of it actually being pleasure, not pain. Because there are people that absolutely love being on the phone and love connecting with people, you know, a lot. Everything that you're saying, you know, I can relate to. I'm that same person who, you know, I want something, but then you think, oh, should I get it? And you put it off, and then should I get it? And then you put it off. But the other thing that you said, Jono, that a lot of people do is they make up these stories about the clients don't value me. Why did they fill it out? Why aren't they answering the phone? And, you know, and you all said it, they're doing life, right? Life is happening, and they're doing life, and we don't know what is happening at the time that we're calling. I think the biggest danger is, and we see it all the time, is that people are then making stories up about what's happening in that person's life, and they're making stories up about they're ghosting me. Why did they bother? They don't value me. They don't value my photography. And all these stories come up, and what we then do is start to look for evidence that backs all these stories up and these beliefs that we're beginning to. To create for ourselves so that when we do get people on the phone listening for evidence that's going to back up, they don't value me. You know, they're going to be a waste of time. And when you. You're filtering for something, and, Janine, you have, you know, the blackboard theory thing, what you're looking for is what you tend to find and what we hear a lot of on the phone calls at the very beginning is that before we even start, let me just tell you what you're in for. And they try to price, qualify and justify themselves, but we haven't shown them the value that we give and we haven't shown them that this is something they deserve yet. And so I think sometimes that mindset of what's really happening can affect the way that we address the calls and the way we approach the calls. And so, you know, that's quite damaging too, right?
- [20:48]
B
I do two things, Steve, based on personal experience. Let me tell a story. So when I started selling first, right, in those days, guys, we didn't have great things like Facebook and Instagram and online marketing. So you had to physically go and knock on the doors and see, would someone see you? And so when I first started selling, that's what I had to do. And on reflection, I, I now know the reason why, what, what used to happen to me because I remember when I started first, like I would drive my little van to a potential client's business and I often spent an hour outside trying to pluck up the courage to go and knock on the door, right? And, and that, and the reason for that was I had attached my self worth and my ego to that person wanting to talk to me. And therefore the fear of rejection took over. So I think that's an important thing too to understand is, is that these are all normal understandings, right? But when you change your mindset to not make it about you, but make it about your client, and as Steve says, making somebody's day, that helps enormously with that because it's now not about you, it's about that person and you trying to make their day. And I wish I knew that before I started selling 37 years ago.
- [22:10]
D
It's really important. It's important to know that everybody's doing the best they can with what they have today. And we can't take on, take on other people's stuff. Most people who come to us, we're in a feel good industry. We're in an industry where our job is to elevate people and help people feel so much better when they're closed, when they hang up from us than when they first picked up the phone. And so we are in this privileged situation where, you know, our goal is to help people feel more and have stronger beliefs about what's possible for them. And by the end of the call, they should leave a better person than when we started with. And that's a privilege of what we do. But I think if we approach the call with a mindset of they don't value me, they don't, um, they're just going to be price shoppers. Then we start looking and translating what they're saying to try and prove that. And it's, it's not the right mindset to go into. I have a strong belief that what you resist persists. And the more that you resist and the more you fear something, if. So if you fear that somebody's going to slam that door in your face, Ronan, the more you fear that, right, the more you're going to make that happen because you're looking for things and you're going to be awkward. And the more things that you look for and find the more awkward it's going to be, the more likely that door's going to slam in your face. So it comes back to our mindset again of how you approach that.
- [23:41]
B
And it's funny too, Jonathan, like you talked earlier about, you know, the numbers are the numbers, right? And it's always been the same. It was the same then. Like they used to say, it's a numbers game. Like, unless you knock on 10 doors and nine people say, I'm not interested right now, you know, you'll eventually get your one, you know, and then you need another 10 doors to get another one, and then you do another 10 doors to get another one. Like that was just. It's, it's, it's. These things have never changed.
- [24:09]
A
Just some of the tools and what
- [24:12]
B
we use to make contact with our client have changed.
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D
How exciting would it be to get to number 10?
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B
Absolutely.
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D
To knock on that 10th door like you're like, I'm at number 10.
- [24:20]
C
Yes.
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D
But it should be the same with
- [24:24]
B
our phone calls and what an injustice you're doing to your potential client. Leads like the injustice you're doing to them. Because as a difference maker photographer, you know the value that you bring to your clients when you, when they have their full experience with you. You know the value you bring on the discovery call when they get to talk to you. So not only are you doing an injustice to yourself and your business and your family and everything else, you're doing a ginormous injustice to those people you give up on.
- [24:53]
D
If we honestly believe in what we do, we would want to share it with as many people as we possibly can because we know what we're doing is something incredible for most people, really important.
- [25:04]
C
And I think it's important. I'm glad you shared that story, Ronan, because I think that another thing that photographers feel, and I've, because I've heard people talk about this and I've seen people post about it in the community groups is that because it's their art, they feel it very personally. And so they take when someone rejects them as rejection of who they are. And they feel that it's so unique to the industry because they're creating art and people are rejecting the art. But from the story you've said, this is, this is human nature and nobody wants to feel rejected. This isn't. Again, this is not unique to the photography industry just because it's an art form. Nobody wants to be rejected. So I think if, you know, if, if people can get out of this mindset that it's so unique, that everything about this is unique to us. It, it's. I don't know if comfort's the right word, but it kind of slaps you across the face and kicks you in the butt that you can't just wallow in the fact that everything's so tough for us. It's, it's, it's the same for everyone, like Jonathan said. And it's not just a rejection because it's your artwork.
- [26:11]
D
I think it took me 10 years to realize in this business, to realize, Janine, that we are in retail, right? And probably another three or four years to work out that we are in the business of people, not in the business of selling art. We are in the business of people. And I think unless we know what we're in the business of, it's really difficult to pick up the phone and convert people into great clients because we need to know what we're selling. We need to align with what clients are wanting. You said before that you know, your clients are the one thing that they love the most is that you're persistent. We hired a marketing company to survey our clients. The top thing they loved us for was the fact that they felt we never gave up.
- [27:01]
A
Right?
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D
And they said, I can't believe you called me five times or however many times it was. And so it was the top thing the market through survey across our clients to find out what we were doing well, what we could improve. And it was incredible to hear that the one thing that we kind of feared the most, that we were bothering people, was the one thing that they loved the most.
- [27:21]
C
Can I dovetail on that really quick, Steve? Even though I know we're at like our 30 minute mark here and Jonathan's about to give you guys some amazing information, But I know, like, the beginning of this podcast, and most of this has been about marketing to new clients, but what you just said has been crucial in our business, in our studio, for getting our existing clients to come back in again. And so I'll give you an example. We have. We run seasonal promotions throughout the year, whether it be baby ducks in the spring or Christmas in the fall. We do some Mother's Day, you know, different things throughout the year. And we call our existing clients, we email our existing clients, we text them both through our CRM. And I will actually text some of our VIP clients. Imagine this manually through my own personal cell phone. So some of those clients might. I could look at it, like, five, six, seven touches to get them to book their holiday portrait session. Some of them will do it on the first time. Some of them will do it five, six, or seven times, like, you know, touches later. And then we'll still have some who be, I totally forgot. I didn't even know. Didn't you ever contact me? And you're like, are you kidding? Like, I've reached out to you in every sort of way I could possibly imagine, but it didn't register for them, right? And then they get annoyed because they feel like we didn't connect with them enough. I'm like, oh, my gosh, what else could we have done, Right? So you're not bothering people. You're not. And. And so even with your existing clients, this podcast is really important because if you want your clients to come back in, guess what? They're not usually just going to think of it on their own. And as we know, our best source of new business is our existing business coming back in again. And so you have to be persistent with them as well. Again, we might think it's obvious that after a first birthday session, you're going to come back in for a family portrait or the second birthday or for a Christmas portrait. But it's not obvious to them. They've not done this before. And so it's up to us to make sure we have those conversations in every possible way to do it so that they can have that experience and receive that gift that we give them.
- [29:32]
A
All right, so if you're not already in the inner circle, like, what's going on? Do we need to have a talk? All you need to do to get in the inner circle is click the link below this video, this podcast, and apply to join. And when your application is successful, we will invite you to join Inner Circle, where you can not only join a community of difference maker photographers who want to see you succeed, but where you'll have access to all of the tools, including our 24.7ai coach, KCB, who's going to help you fast track your success and help you to implement the strategies and tactics you need to create quality bookings and create a successful business. So click on the link below, apply to join Inner Circle and we'll see you on the next podcast.
- [30:24]
C
Bye everyone.
- [30:25]
A
Bye bye. Bye everyone.