Boost Your Visibility | Grow Your Business with Brenda Eckhardt
Resource for creative entrepreneurs seeking to grow their product or service-based businesses while prioritizing family and well-being. Hosted by Brenda Eckhardt, a successful photographer and brand strategist, this podcast offers the latest strategies and how-to's to increase online visibility, work smarter, avoid burnout, and find inspiration for both professional and personal growth.
Boost Your Visibility | Grow Your Business with Brenda Eckhardt
Consultations That Convert To Sales: Skyrocket Your Bookings
The secrets of client conversion mastery with Brenda Eckhardt, a seasoned expert in photography and marketing with two decades of experience. Brenda unveils her foolproof strategies for elevating client consultations, blending fun and ease into every interaction. She reveals how to embed respect and trust into the core of client relationships from the get-go, leveraging your website as a potent pre-consultation educator.
But Brenda doesn’t stop at just sharing wisdom; she guides you through enhancing every facet of the consultation experience. From delivering immediate, personalized value to mastering the art of follow-up, she ensures your business stands out, far beyond a mere appointment. Her strategies are not confined to photography and marketing realms; they’re invaluable for any service-based business eager to attract and secure their ideal clients. If you’re ready to amplify your business’s voice and turn your consultations into a powerful client-attracting force, this is an episode you can’t afford to miss. Transform your approach and watch your business’s visibility soar.
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Hey, thanks for coming back to Boost your Visibility. I'm Brenda Eckhardt, photographer and marketing coach. I've worked the last 20 years with people taking you know photos, doing photo shoots and building a business that, basically, I out marketed myself. I became, thankfully, so busy that I had to make some big changes in order to do my best work and I'm not saying that in a boastful way, those are facts and I don't have a team around me, I don't have co-workers to be able to say that after 20 years, that is just how it is. So, over time, I started to have photography clients that also own businesses and I started to work with them and take photos for their products, services and all of those good things, and then they realized that there's a lot more power to the pictures, but they just didn't know how to use them. We're talking when Instagram first began. That's how long I've been doing this.
Speaker 1:So I spent the last two years setting my own business aside meaning photography and coaching to work in real life, one-on-one with local small businesses, to learn firsthand and see with my own eyes, hear with my own ears what the real struggles are, what are the day-to-day challenges when it comes to marketing, content creation and all of it. And now this last couple of months, I'm back to doubling down on my own business and releasing a lot of those clients. They're ready to stand on their own marketing feet and basically I have gone in and taught them everything that I can possibly help them with and empowered them with the tools that they need, and that's what I try to do with this podcast as well. So along those lines, I've noticed some through lines meaning some similarities to what I have done as a photographer that I didn't realize. I was creating a system that works in any industry. But one of those systems is the way that I run consultations, the system that I've created that helps me to work smarter and not harder, and I want to share that with you so that if you do consultations, you can convert those consultations to either real customers or to refer out if they're just not for you. So I'm gonna run through my thought process and how I've arrived at a 99% conversion rate, meaning when I have a phone or an in-person consultation at my studio, whether it's photography or marketing, 99% of the time if I want them to schedule, like if I'm okay with them scheduling they schedule. The other 1% is usually due to you know them not being clear on what they want or maybe not having it in their budget at the time.
Speaker 1:But the way that what has worked best for me is to start pre-educating, and this I highly recommend doing pre-educating through your website, by adding some verbiage about what your North Star is, what it is that you really would like to bring to life and how you want to work with customers, because we need to remember that we're not for everyone, and that is okay. Everyone's not for us either, and I understand if you're in the early stages of business and you want to grow. The tendency is to just work with anybody that wants to schedule, and I can tell you, the biggest mistake that can be made is to just have online scheduling with no pre-qualification of those people. You're never going to elevate your business if you just put a fishing line out for anybody that wants to bite. So, with consultations when people schedule with me, there is a good paragraph about what the goal is, and the goal is to make sure that we are the right fit for each other.
Speaker 1:That does a couple of things. It helps people to realize that I I have standards of who I'll work with, and it's not that I will judge people or anything like that, but there has to be a common courtesy between us. There has to be the trust in what I know and what I do, that I'm allowed to do it because, for example, in photography, if I didn't do that, there would be a lot of moms interrupting me just as I lift my camera to take a picture, saying no, no, no, no, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Is that the right angle? And I can't work like that. I will never do my best work and my prices are not low. I've been there where I have had very low rates and worked my way up, and now, because of the level that I'm working at and the amount of people that I have in my fold, I need to be smart about it and I need to make sure that they understand that I communicate in a certain way and I really do need them trusting and engaged in the process. So I highly recommend coming up with a couple of phrases that you just keep in your head, that you even say in your consultations, and I have two of them that are helpful. It helps people to kind of snap into the reality of what this is and how I work.
Speaker 1:One of them is if it's not fun, I'm not going, meaning we cannot have stress. This should be fun for everybody, including me. Or what's the point? Life should be fun. We're only given so many days and let's make the absolute best of it. Let's go have a photo adventure or on the business side, this should be fun. Social media or marketing should not be completely overwhelming to the point that you avoid it. It should be fun and there are ways to bring the joy in it. For me it's adding in like 80s hip hop music into my reels and those little glints of joy. So if it's not fun, I'm not going.
Speaker 1:And number two is if it's stressy, it gets messy. Sounds funny, but if it gets stressy it gets messy every time. I share that with my customers because they do get excited and get very stressed about things, especially if you have a business and you have high hopes of getting this marketing going and you just want to have it go. Well, but the more you stress about it, the more you're going to avoid it, the more procrastination comes in. And then there's imposter syndrome, and that even applies to photo sessions. You know, if you are a mom and you're going to have family pictures and everybody's stressed as they're rushing out the door and everybody's fighting and dad's grumpy. I understand that that happens, but don't bring that to the session is the theme that I try to talk about, because if we don't call out all the possible struggles, we can't avoid them, we can't replace them with positives. So I talk about that in my consultations and then that sets the tone for where we're headed. And then it's what is your dream for this partnership? What would you like from us working together? What is your ideal photo session? Or what is your ideal goal with Instagram and Facebook or email marketing? What does that look like for you?
Speaker 1:And then I shut up and listen and I do a lot of repeating the last few words to let them know that I'm listening and I'm hearing what they're saying, because validation is huge and it's important that people feel like you're listening in order to gain, for you to gain their trust. So I do a lot of listening and I do a lot of note taking. I use acuity scheduling and it's pretty much my client management software. So when someone schedules a consultation, that's where I put all of my notes. During the consultation there's a private box that you can have notes about the either the session or the customer's journey that they'd like for marketing. Whatever your line of business is, if it's doing wedding flowers or if you are a cake decorator and you have specific details, that's where you put that information. And I'm sure, whatever you use for your note taking, even if it's just a pad and paper, taking really good notes so that you don't forget in the busyness of the upcoming weeks between when you meet for a consultation and when that transaction actually happens.
Speaker 1:So after that, I recap what I heard, to validate, to make sure I understand, and then I talk about what I do best. And an example on the photography side is my style, is their style, but I lean toward nature. A lot of my work is in nature because I feel like people are very much open up and feel free and themselves. It's wide open but yet it's private, so that you don't feel exposed but yet you're just in a beautiful place. And with marketing, I like to either meet at the studio or a coffee shop or wherever that business owner is comfortable, so that we can really capture what it is, what the goal is and what we're both hoping for in the end. So after that then you have your notes, you have your understanding of where you're headed as together, because you are going on a journey together.
Speaker 1:Nobody's working against each other, which I do recognize and see often in a business transaction going to a car dealership, for example A lot of times even the sales person feels like they're going to have to fight for the sale and ultimately we all are trying to head the same direction and we want the same goal. So why? You know there's no need for hard selling, there's just a need for being real and validating the goal and what it is that you're looking for. So this creates that personal connection and the trust and those dynamics. So at that point in the consultation it's helpful to talk about how. Again, the purpose of the consultation is to make sure we're the right fit for one another so we don't schedule a session or we don't go forward with a marketing consulting partnership. At that meeting we both need to think about it and make sure that they're ready, I'm ready, and that we have the same style of communicating. Again, I'm not for everyone, you're not for everyone, and they're not for you or me, and that's great, that's okay. That's how we kind of slough off all of the time consuming miscommunications, struggles, even price complaining and so on.
Speaker 1:So once you've gotten to that point in consultation, then you talk about rates. I don't talk about them in the beginning. Nobody has the rates before that, unless they've really dug through my scheduling system or my website. But I don't just pull out a piece of paper and say here are my rates. I say what's your budget? Do you know what marketing consultant costs? Or do you know what a photographer charges for family pictures? What's your experience or your expectation? And then again I'm taking notes and a lot of times it's almost exactly what I charge, or more. So don't ever apologize for your rates. And in a consultation it's really important that you're confident in what you charge. So if you have to fake that, fake it. But that creates the trust and people then understand the value of what you're providing, what you bring to the table.
Speaker 1:Once we go through rates, we start to hone in on what this partnership might look like, whether it's with coaching, would it be through Zoom? Do we meet in person? Are you living in Ohio and I'm in Wisconsin? We start to work out those things. And then, what's your schedule like? Would you like to meet once a week, once a month? Do you just want to have a one time meeting to see if we can go through your social media and assess where you're at and get some quick tips, or do you want to actually try to really make this work and do three to six or 12 months together and then you know?
Speaker 1:On the photography side it's when are you hoping to schedule? What season are you thinking? What season is you? I ask a lot of questions when it comes to the photography portion, because here in Wisconsin we have a lot of heat and humidity and mosquitoes and all those things that nobody ever thinks about. When you're 17, you just want to be in the wildflowers and who doesn't? But if you turn magenta purple in your cheeks when you're hot, you probably don't want that in your pictures. It's really important to get down to those granular details, because not only does it help you to do a great job when the day comes that you're going to work with that person, but it also helps them to just have a sense of relief.
Speaker 1:This should not be work for the customer unless they're learning something and uptaking information from you. Your job is to make it easy even still if that's the case. So at the end of the consultation again I repeat what I'm seeing, what I'm thinking if I have suggestions, quick ideas, and I do try to give some quick wins at the end and that could be like what to wear for brand photos. Here in email I'm gonna send you is what I'll say. I'm gonna send you a link to some inspiration boards for brand photos so you can start thinking about what you might want if we're gonna take your headshots or your team photos. This is what a content schedule looks like for a totally separate industry, a different customer. But I want you to be able to see and imagine how much of relief that could bring to you to have a really great, solid plan.
Speaker 1:If it's a high school senior, then they get rates. I'm sorry. They get what to wear suggestions, senior guys, high school senior guys it even talked my information even talks about when to shave, when to get a haircut, what belt goes with what outfit brown versus a black belt. What do guys really wear? Do they really wear a suit? No, a lot of times parents assume that that's what they do. So the number of outfits you see how specific I get in these consultations and I don't care if they take this information and go work with somebody else.
Speaker 1:My goal is to empower people and if I just did a free consultation and they take all that information and go somewhere else, that's on them, that's not on me. If they do, in a year or two or even a month from now, when something either doesn't work out or they're struggling or maybe that other experience wasn't the best, you know where they'll be coming right here to me or to you. So at the consultation, at the very end, I promise that I'm gonna send an email and within an hour they get a thank you email for coming in. It is automated and then, depending on the session, it has that how to prepare things to think about. Thank you so much. All of those good things and then within a few days I'll send them an email and say I really think that we're on the same wavelength. I'm so excited to work with you and I start to bring those little glints of joy and relief and excitement to the process through that email.
Speaker 1:It's very short, but I say if you'd love to schedule with me, I'd love for you to schedule. Here's the link. Feel free to choose. Some times it sounds like we're gonna shoot for X month or X week. I made sure there's openings.
Speaker 1:So that, in a nutshell, is how to run a consultation that will convert to a customer. And again, that doesn't mean that every single consultation is is going to be your ideal customer. But generally when you start to create this consultation process and it doesn't take long it probably takes a day or two of you really honing in and getting your system in place of how you're gonna do this. Once you have that in place, then you almost pre-engineer the consultation so that people don't even schedule a consultation if they're not for you. They already know it and see it based on your website information.
Speaker 1:So it really slumps off the the tire kickers, the people that aren't as serious, and I don't know about you, where you're at in business, but I really am at a stage in my work and my life where I only want to work with people that want to work with me specifically and maybe that sounds arrogant, I don't mean to come from that place, but why would I want to work with or why would you want to work with someone? Sorry, hi Sky, I'll call you right back. That was my daughter, sorry. Why would we want to work with someone that has a list of five other people that they're competing against? Do I know? Yes, that is business and that is how you go about a business transaction, but that's just not what I'm looking for and that has served me well to not even consider that.
Speaker 1:I don't ask who they're talking to or who's my competition, or are you doing consultations with others? I don't care. I am here to empower you through my camera and through social media or marketing, and I know what I do best, and somebody else has their own flavor and maybe that's your flavor. But if you want to work with me and what you see on my website and what I've created with others, then schedule a consultation. That's what your website should do for you, as well as your social media, and I know a lot of people talk about a brand and what is a brand or your brand message? It's all of it. It's all of it. It is all of the authority and confidence and results that you've created in the form of your garbage on your website, how easy it is to navigate, how professional looking it is, and then, with your social media, all of those things, but also your personality, the fun, what you put in stories you know every day or every few days, to help show who you are and what it's like to be with you, what it's like to work with you, and if that's fitting for someone, then that's awesome and that's the fastest, most productive way to stack your schedule with qualified consultations that turn into sessions, that turn into dollars in your pocket, and that's the goal.
Speaker 1:And this is again coming from somebody who I, who literally out marketed herself. So I would love it if you ask me questions. If you have questions, you can put them in the comments. You can always reach me through my website, boost your visibilitynet, and I'd love it if you followed me on Instagram. It's at Brenda Eckhart and also the podcast. Instagram is at boost your visibility and you can follow there, definitely like and subscribe. I would love to have some interaction from you and to learn you know what industry you're in and what you're looking to learn. I hope you found this helpful and I look forward to seeing you at the next on the next episode of boost your visibility.
