Jamie is passionate about sales strategy, LinkedIn, socialmedia, and sales training to help businesses improve their revenue and processes. Focusing on selling to different personalities! In this show, he talks about setting up an e-learning course, and we could do this as photographers. After being a podcast guest, the host asked Jamie if he wanted to make an e-learning course with him. They used software called Zenler for the course. Jamie provided the content.
When building a course, you need to think about who your target market is. And why do they need your course? You also need to think about the cost of the course. But the real key is what the value and outcomes people are going to get from taking part in this course.

For Jamie’es e-learning course, each module contained amodule made into a video with Jamie talking over the presentation. Sam says that making the videos can put people off doing this. Jamie says to start with the end goal and think of recurring income to spur you on to create the resources. Butit does take time. Sam also suggests running some of the course modules as webinars and then recording them. These recordings can be used for the e-learning course. This way, it’s part of your marketing.

Pricing is another challenge in working out what to charge.Introductory offers are good at the start, but then it’s also getting the affordable price. Jamie’s e-learning course also has an add-on option he sells where they can get some personal input at the end.

Sam asks what you need for an e-learning course. Jamie sayssome guides and workbooks would be good. Video, auditory and written resources for learning. It is also vital that your e-learning course is unique and different to whatever else is out there.

Jamie says creating the course is not enough. Promoting the course is a key part of the success of the course. The course will not sell itself. It’s essential to think about whether the people you already market to are the target market for your course or not.

• Marcus thinks getting some training to help you make the course and understand how people learn could be helpful. Although the course is a passive income, you have to put a lot of time and effort into marketing the course. It will not sell itself or print money for you.
  Final top tips:
  Look at setting up an affiliate scheme so others can sell it
• Get testimonials and use those to promote the course.
• Tap into other networks
• 
  

You can find James on Linkedin here

The first Shoot to the Top Webinar is on the 2nd of April and it’s all about getting higher value clients for your business. Tofind out more and book click here.

To get the Shoot to the Top Podcast in your inbox every weekto ensure you don't miss an episode,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠clickhere ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Join the⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Shoot to the Top Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ group to meet fellowphotographers, guests and Sam and Marcus.

To get the Shoot to the Top Podcast in your inbox every week to ensure you don't miss an episode,⁠⁠⁠⁠click here ⁠⁠⁠⁠

Join the⁠⁠⁠⁠Shoot to the Top Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠ group to meet fellow photographers, guests and Sam and Marcus

Marcus says street photography is about capturing incidentshappening around you. He also says there is so much to learn from street photography that all photographers should be doing it. He says the need to work at the moment as you see things is perfect training for other types of photography.
Equipment
A street photographer needs to be mobile and discrete. So, no huge camera bags. A camera and a lens or two. He says the lens should be 50mm or wide angle, and the photographer then needs to be close and involved with their subjects. Somestreet photographers use flash for street photography.

Location

Marcus says it needs to be where people gather. Otherwise, it’s landscape photography.Martin Parr photographs in gas stations, country fairs and other places. Tony Ray Jonesisanother street photographer. He photographed a lot of beach towns on the East coast of Yorkshire.
How

Marcus says you need to be invisible as a street photographer.Marcus says one approach is “shooting from the hip”. So, having the camera by your waist. Marcus also thinks pre-focussing also helps. Marcus says misdirection is another approach. He says to get your camera out walk towards them, but photograph off to the side. But with a wide-angle lens, they are still in the shot, but it doesn’t look like you are photographing them. The third option is simply to ask people’s permission to photograph them. They will very often say yes. Sam asks about the issue of photographing people without their permission. Marcussays the law is on your side as a street photographer taking photographs.
Marcus’s final approach is called “pick a spot” This approach is to find a photographic location and wait there for people to go past.

What are you looking for?
To start with, take some photographs. It doesn’t matter what, just warm up. Then, you are looking for people interacting with each other. People interact with the background or environment.

To get the Shoot to the Top Podcast in your inbox every week to ensure you don't miss an episode,⁠⁠⁠⁠click here ⁠⁠⁠⁠

Join the⁠⁠⁠⁠Shoot to the Top Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠ group to meet fellow photographers, guests and Sam and Marcus

Abi and Giles have a background in film and TV. Abi as a producer. They met while working on Jonathan Creek. Abi says she does the organising side doing the paperwork, keeping the clients happy and getting the next client while Giles does the creative stuff.

Giles started doing stills photography as an assistant in the movie industry. He then moved into being a movie cameraman. Eventually, they both got tired of the long hours in the movie industry and set up their own business. They ran the company alongside their film careers for about five years.

They now do video. Having done just stills for a long time they are now doing some video. However, they are sticking to short videos and outsourcing to filmmakers for longer work.

Marcus and Giles talk a little about equipment. Marcus says he is quite a technical geek and loves focus-stacking. This also allows him to change the look of an image later on if the client wants it. He uses a Sony mirrorless camera now and thinks they are now good. He has moved from Canon to Nikon to Sony over the years.

Sam’s asks how they get clients. Abi says word of mouth has been key for a long time. There are a lot of connections and conversations with people. Their clients tend to stay with them for a long time. Their oldest clients have been with them for over fifteen years. Once they get new clients in the studio or on location they tend to keep them. Also, they work a lot with marketing agencies and they have a high staff turnover. This works well with them as staff they have built a relationship with in one agency move to another and then they get introduced as great photographers to the new agency.

Abi spent lots of time chatting to clients over lockdown as the clients were feeling low. Her day-to-day job is keeping those connections alive. They are also always suggesting new ideas to current clients. Giles likes to run new ideas with old clients and they really like that and like trying them.

Sam asks about their approach to AI. He says it’s here and they love it and want to embrace it, but also he is keeping the enemy close. Giles did do some talks on it but stopped due to the hate mail he was getting. Giles says the generative AI is so much better if you give long prompts giving lots of technical terms to do with the lighting and style of shoot. Giles says it’s great for generating ideas so you are not staring at a blank page. It helps spark ideas.

Marcus mentions Scott Choucino of Tin House Studio who does food photography. Marcus says due to AI he is going to make his photography more organic and doing things like shooting on film. Giles thinks it’s great to go back to film. You can listen to our show on film here. But Giles thinks commercially it’s essential to stick to digital.

As final advice, Giles says to stick to your rates and value your experience. He also recommends working out how much you need to charge hourly as a minimum to survive with the lifestyle you have.

Martyn is a sales trainer; he is a non-pushy sales trainer. Everything he helps with is non-pushy selling. It’s all about helping, the opposite of the cheesy 1980s pushy salesman. Marcus asks what social selling means. This is around social media. If your customer is on a platform it makes sense to be on that platform and interact with them there. Martyn says his target market is LinkedIn so he is on there at least once a day. He says social media allows us to share what we do without being “shouty”. Marytn was either making a video a day or a blog a day to keep getting content out there.

Sam asks about moving people from social to being more firm leads and how to do that. Martyn says he is waiting for them to direct themselves to him, or refer people to him. Martyn says being in sales and not performing is a very difficult place to be as there is lots of pressure from home and work.
Martyn says he found Daniel Disney was a game changer for him in terms of the way he approached social selling. Martyn recommends this book as a good place to start: The Ultimate Linkedin Sales Guide and the Ultimate Guide to Linkedin Messaging.

Marcus asks what makes a good salesman. He says the best salespeople are slightly introverted and great listeners. We have a past show about being a good listener

A desire to help and curiosity. Curiosity is really important. Great listening means great questions. If you are having problems in sales, questions can help you. What questions could you have asked to get a better result on a sales call?

These could be bold or challenging questions. This still isn’t pushing, it’s showing you are trying to help. Asking questions can mean you offer a solution to their problem that they hadn’t thought of. Martyn says you are trying to be an advisor, not a salesman looking for a close.

Sam asks after this gently, gently approach do you need to then apply a little pressure for a decision. Martyn says there are three things around this.

1. People need to prepare better

2. They need to ask better questions

3. You need to agree on mutual actions during your current discussion.

So this final part says you have pre-determined what you will both do after the call. So this isn’t a hard close but it’s about asking if they want help with their problem. He also suggests sending the quote with a title that will get their attention. Maybe linked to something that they are trying to achieve. Also in your call make sure you book the next time you are going to speak, so you never lose track of the conversation.

You can find Martyn

To get the Shoot to the Top Podcast in your inbox every week to ensure you don't miss an episode, ⁠⁠⁠click here ⁠⁠⁠

Join the ⁠⁠⁠Shoot to the Top Facebook⁠⁠⁠ group to meet fellow photographers, guests and Sam and Marcus

Sam explains that a marketing funnel is not complicated. It’s simply a way to move someone from being unknown to us to a lead and then a customer.

Instead of talking about this in theory, Sam will create a sales funnel. On that basis, Sam and Marcus will create a marketing funnel for a brand shoot.
What happens first? Let's say our target market is solicitors. I need to “get them into my funnel”. Sam says his go to place to find solicitors would be LinkedIn. A good start would be connecting with solicitors on LinkedIn. Sam says that you then need to know what you will talk to the solicitors about. So he suggests a free Webinar “How to make the most of your personal brand online.” So you now have a free event that you can talk to the solicitors about.

So then search for solicitors in a fixed area using a connection message. Make it clear in the connection message why you are connecting. This is a positive way to connect. Anyone who then connects to you is “in your funnel”. Some people will reply to the connection and you can start a conversation about the event. For those that connect but don’t respond you can start a conversation with them. During the conversation, the chat uses open questions and guides them to booking the event. This is “moving them down the funnel”. The further down the funnel you go the fewer people there are, but the more likely they are to become customers.
You then run the webinar. Once you have planned and done one it’s really easy to repeat it. Marcus said he did something very similar and ran a day teaching solicitors how to take their own brand photographs. He says it works well.
It's vital that you allow time in the webinar to talk about “what next”. What are you going to offer them to move them to becoming a customer? Sam suggests something small, like a slot at a headshot day. Something small, but, they have to pay. The other option is to offer another free event.
Those who take you up on the headshot are customers, but this isn’t really the end of the funnel as this isn’t really what you want to sell them. Then at the headshot or when the photos are delivered have a chat about the headshots they have, ask if that is going to be enough or if they could really do with a bigger bank of images. That’s when the main sale can happen.

Remember that all the people who didn’t drop down to the next stage of the funnel are still in the funnel. Some are still getting emails, many are connected on LinkedIn.

Make sure that you have put the effort into getting people on the mailing list that you are using the mailing list and sending out email newsletters.

Sam and Marcus discuss niching, and this funnel is niched. There is a show on niching.

To get the Shoot to the Top Podcast in your inbox every week to ensure you don't miss an episode, ⁠⁠click here ⁠⁠

Join the ⁠⁠Shoot to the Top Facebook⁠⁠ group to meet fellow photographers, guests and Sam and Marcus

This is Gillian’s second show with us. Gillian uses social media a lot as one of her marketing pillars. Today's show is about the extra ways we can make money, the extra money we are leaving on the table while working with our clients.

Sam and Gillian discuss the fact that in many cases our clients want the extra services we offer, but simply don’t know we offer them. Offering these does not need to be salesy or pushy. It can just be letting our clients know these extra services exist.

Gillian shares some real examples with us.

1. Having a lower ticket offering

Gillian says we all should be offering premium luxury services. But there is always a space for a lower ticket offering. These will often be short photo shoots. Gillian says these are great for those who can’t afford your core offering. You don’t need to advertise this lower ticket offering. But you can personally offer it to some leads who clearly cannot afford or are not ready to go for your core offering. She says that nine times out of ten someone who turned down the higher ticket option goes for the lower ticket option. And in most cases, they also go on to become a customer of her other services. Gillian says she always makes it feel exclusive getting access to this lower ticket offering.

It's important to ensure that you make it very clear what the lower ticket offer includes. And only provide that.

2. Add-ons and upgrades.
When someone has purchased a package with you is there anything else you can add on? Gillian says that when she was a newborn photographer she had a one-year photo shoot as an add-on for a newborn shoot. Wall art, books etc make great add-ons for a range of types of photography. You can ask about add-ons at the moment your new client comes on board or later on after the shoot. Explaining that “most other clients” go for an odd on makes clients much more interested in it. Never be afraid to ask if can I offer anything else.
Marcus asks about add-ons for branding. Gillian says she has sold wall art for an office, she has sold a branding book as an upgrade to branding clients. It could also be social media help or something a little different like this. Sam mentions that subscriptions leading to regular brand shoots are another way to upsell. Gillian says most of her subscription clients start on a standard brand shoot and then upgrade to regular brand shoots.

3. Expansion – Where can you expand your service offering

What services can you expand into as well as photography? This could be video clips, audio, gifs made from images, accountability services, or social media marketing. There are all sorts of areas that you could expand into. A lot of these expansion services often provide extra recurring income.

Having aspirational packages is also a good idea. 10% of customers will want to go for the top package you offer, so having a high-value aspirational package is a great idea and a small percentage of clients will go for it.
Sam says it’s important to be quiet once you have made an offer. It’s very easy to just talk, but once you have made an offer be quiet and wait for the client to speak. Along these lines, Gillian said it’s also important to be super aware of what you are saying to clients. We often say things like “this is too expensive” about one of your services.
Gillian is going to the Societies Convention that is on as this show goes live. Gillian is hosting the business school at this event and a talk on brand photography.
Gillian has a five-day free mini-course coming up, which you can join. You can get hold of Gillian here.

To get the Shoot to the Top Podcast in your inbox every week to ensure you don't miss an episode, ⁠click here ⁠

Join the ⁠Shoot to the Top Facebook⁠ group to meet fellow photographers, guests and Sam and Marcus

Sunjay Singh is this weeks guest. He is in the sales and marketing world. He has a video agency which he runs with his co-founder, live media UK and a small marketing company which provdes marketing managers for small businesses called Lambardar marketing.

Marcus asks how it started. Sunjay says Will (co-founder) and him had never had “proper jobs”. Sunjay said when he was 14 or 15 his Dad walked in told him he had to photograph a wedding and then left. Sunjay had never taken a picture before in his life. His Dad had always enjoyed photography, But he ended up working at British Aerospace. But his Dad always had a side hustle and was doing two jobs. So for a while he did wedding video and photography and Sanjay was the photographer. The weddings were British Asian weddings which were a minimum of 3 day events. He said there were so many people, often 50 to 60 people in a 2 bedroom house in Cardiff. Each wedding day could be 14 hours. He could leave one day at 1am and be back the next day at 5am. He says he got better very quickly as he was talking so many pictures in such a short space of time.

They stopped doing British Indian weddings as the hours were so long and pay so low and moved onto British weddings. But eventually he got fed up doing weddings, he had done too many. He was then getting more corporate work and they dropped weddings. But what that time gave him was a work ethic. Sunjay says if you want to get good at your craft, you have to do the reps. Do it again and again. It’s not just about working on one shot it’s about doing it again and again. If you are creative and not constantly developing your craft that is a dangerous place to be.

Now Sunjay is running a video agency using videographers who work for him. He also uses photographers in his agency. Sam asks how Sunjay decided which photographers to work with. Sanjay says that anyway running a business needs to wear many hats and possibly masks. When you are speaking to Sanjay and talking about logistics, don’t be a creative, at that point you need to be a business person. He says if it helps, where a tie when you do your emails. Get into the mindset of being a business person. When you are on the shoot, be creative. But be the reliable business person at other times, especially when discussing logistics. The other thing Sanjay looks for is composure. He needs them to be confident and composed. If the photographer doesn’t turn up composed and confident then that is hopeless. The photographers needs to stay calm no matter what the shoot throws at you.

Speed is another thing. Both getting the shot and getting the photographs back. Clients expect the photos back very quickly. They know it is digital and so expect the photographs very quickly.
Yous presentation is also important. Sanjay has seen too many scruffy photographers. By being scruffy you are showing don’t care about aesthetics. You are signalling that you don’t care about aesthetics which gives the wrong message.

Sam asks how a photographer can go about getting agency work. Sanjay says there is no clear answer, but the key thing is relationship building and being in the right place in the right time. For example Sanjay meets lots of photographers, but he doesn’t have a shoot that week and the photographers never get in touch again. They need to stay in touch.
Sanjay then says make a list of ten people you want to work with. Get in touch every month and then every other month arrange an in person meeting. Don’t chat work, or ask for work, just build a relationship and some of them will give you work.

Sanjay mentions a book The Creative Act, Rick Rubin. He says this is an amazing book.

You can connect with Sunjay on LinekdIn

To get the Shoot to the Top Podcast in your inbox every week to ensure you don't miss an episode, click here

Join the Shoot to the Top Facebook group to meet fellow photographers, guests and Sam and Marcus

Anthony is going to be talking about photography apprentices. He has been a photographer for many years but was recently approached to create a photography apprenticeship. He says he has a learner who, four months in, is taking amazing photographs.

Anthony explains what the apprenticeship looks like from the point of view of a photographer and apprentice.

For the photographer, you have a full-time member of staff.

The staff have training once per month online. They also get skills coach learning and that involves the photographer and the apprentice.

From the apprenticeship point of view, you are with “ real photographers” and learning from them. Sam asks if you are a photographer why do you want an apprentice. Anthony says it is pointless if you don’t have work for them and can’t afford them. Perfect for those with studios or perhaps wedding photographers who need multiple people taking shots at each wedding. The apprentice needs to be paid at least the apprentice minimum wage, which is around £7.40 an hour. Even if you take new staff on they always need training, even if they have a degree.

An apprenticeship is an 18-month course and so usually the apprentice is trying to prove themselves over those 18 months so will always be working hard. At the end of 18 months, a photographer has a choice between moving the apprentice to being an employee or letting them go and moving on.

Marcus asks what the difference is between an assistant and an apprentice. Anthony says it is basically the same, but there is a training framework and an end exam with the apprenticeship.

Anthony says apprenticeships now are much better than they used to be for both the learner and photographer.

Anthony works for the JGA group in his apprentice work.

If you want to move forward with an apprentice contact the JGA group here.

He says you can ask JGA to find an apprentice for you. But it often works better to find one yourself. His advice is to find a person who is passionate rather than qualified for this.

The 18 months is a commitment. There are ways out if there is a major difficulty but the business really needs to commit for the full 8 months.

Marcus asks how the apprenticeship works with portfolio building and if is there much cultural studies. Anthony says they have teamed up with the BIPP to help the apprentices build a portfolio. As part of the course, they must build a 20-photo portfolio. The portfolio also goes to the BIPP so that they can get an award there too.

Anthony says the cultural studies are not structured as they would be in university, but they end up being discussed as part of the learning days.

Sam asks what you should do if you want to become a photographer apprentice. He said to go to the government apprentice website you can find the documents available. You can also find employers that are looking for apprentices on indeed.com.

It is key for a new apprentice to find an employer to work with on the apprenticeship. He says one of the simplest things you can do is pick up the phone and call a photographer.

Marcus asks what photographers get paid once they have done an apprenticeship. Anthony says it varies. The apprentice minimum wage is £7.50 an hour. That is the minimum. Some are salaried at a higher rate. After 12 months an apprentice then needs to move up to the national minimum wage. Most photographers will then be paid £18 to £20k as a starting salary.

Sam asks if the apprentices are taught how to run a business as that is so important for so many photographers.