All language subtitles for 11.04 - Tracking Inquiries & Pricing

It's important that we talk about our price

sheet because landing a nice price sheet is

very different from the norm.

Here it is.

This is our price sheet.

That's it.

It's one page.

It's one choice.

And it's very, it's been very intentional.

And we've, I should say though, that we

have tried several different pricing structures, but this

is what works for us with our market.

So the clients really only have one decision

to make.

Do they hire Two Man Studios?

Or do they not hire Two Man Studios?

If they hire Two Man Studios, they get

the full Two Man Studios experience, which I'm

gonna go into.

But if they don't hire Two Man Studios,

they can't just hire a part of the

Two Man Studios experience.

And this is really what high-end brands

do, or what we feel.

Like when I pay for an experience, a

top-notch experience, I don't wanna have to

decide which parts of the experience I want

and which parts of the experience I don't

want.

I know that if I'm paying for a

top-notch experience, I'm gonna get that top

-notch experience in everything that comes with it.

So you'll notice I've also kept the price

sheet very simple.

I haven't added on the album, which we

include.

I haven't added on the engagement shoot, which

we also include.

We have all these different things that we

include within our packages, but they're not on

the price sheet.

A, that's for people, because I don't want

people saying how much without.

How much without the engagement session?

Because my sister's a photographer and she's gonna

do the engagement session for us.

Or how much without the album?

Because I'm really into scrapbooking and I'd like

to do the album myself.

And I don't want people asking that.

And all those little elements are part of

the experience that we provide.

They're part of the experience that give the

clients the feeling that they're left with us

with.

If we take out those ingredients, the client

has less of an experience.

So I don't want them asking how much

without.

And also, when you go and buy a,

I don't know, what's a really high-end

car, like a Mercedes, you're not gonna say,

how much is this car without the power

windows?

I just really want the windows that you

can manually roll down because I don't wanna

pay the extra couple hundred dollars for the

power windows.

Can you quote me how much without that?

So it's really the same philosophy with our

price sheet.

Everything's included.

And if they have questions about it, it's

a really good opportunity to meet up with

them.

And that's the other key thing in the

email.

The key thing in the email I send

with the price sheet is, let's schedule a

time to meet up over Skype so we

can hear more about your wedding and answer

any questions that you may have.

You'll also notice in this email where I've

attached the price sheet, this is where I

address the cost of travel.

So we just charge air, travel, and accommodation,

just whatever our costs actually are incurring travel

directly to the client.

And this gets added to their second invoice.

Now let's talk about the actual price because

that fluctuates from year to year.

Sometimes it even fluctuates from month to month.

And it's directly correlated to the amount of

inquiries we are receiving and our conversion rate.

So every inquiry we receive goes into this

spreadsheet.

And I can keep track of how many

inquiries are coming in and how many of

them are being converted into weddings.

Typically, we're getting about 500 inquiries a year.

And Lani and I know that we wanna

shoot about 10 to 15 weddings a year.

So with the 500 inquiries, we only have

to convert 3% of those.

So three out of every hundred inquiries into

actual clients.

And that's kind of terrifying.

It's terrifying to live through because when you're

responding to inquiries and you're only hearing back

from 5% of them, it's terrifying.

But if you're a business like us and

you're not going for volume, it's necessary.

So these spreadsheets actually help me keep track

of all that and they keep my anxiety

levels low.

I reach a point every year where I'm

like, oh my God, we only have seven

weddings booked and we're gonna have to lower

our pricing because we've only got these seven

weddings booked and if we don't get another

six weddings, we'll have to sell a car

or whatever.

But I can go back to the spreadsheet

from the previous year and I can say,

oh, oh, last year we only had six

weddings booked this year and we managed to

get the full 15 by the end of

August.

So that spreadsheet really sort of keeps my

emotions in check.

Now, it also helps me realize where we

have to invest, right?

So if our inquiries go down, if our

inquiries go to 100 inquiries a year, then

it means A, we have to lower our

prices in order to convert more of those

inquiries or B, we have to invest more

in marketing to get those inquiries back up

again, right?

So our pricing does fluctuate slightly depending on

how our inquiries are coming in.

This last year was the first year in

I think eight years that we actually lowered

our pricing a bit because our inquiries started

to go down.

Our conversion rate still stayed at 3%

but our inquiries started to go down.

So we did two things, we lowered our

pricing a little bit so our conversion rate

would go up and we also invested in

SEO.

And this is, you know, investing in SEO

and Facebook marketing and Instagram marketing, we're not

gonna talk about that at all in this

course because we are definitely not experts on

that.

Plus it's fluctuating and changing so much but

keeping track of your inquiries and how many

you're converting into actual clients really gives you

data that'll help you to know what to

invest in.

So make sure you keep track of that.

Okay, they've seen our pricing now.

90, what was it, 97% of people,

we don't hear back from.

3% of people, we do hear back

from.

Well, actually we probably hear back from about

5% of the people and then only

3% end up booking us.

A lot of the times they just completely

ghost us and if it's a wedding inquiry

that didn't have a lot of details or

it just sort of looked like they were

fishing for prices, I won't even follow up

with those people.

If it was a wedding inquiry that gave

me a lot of details and they sounded

like they were really excited about our work

and they gave me a lot of backstory,

I might follow up in a few days

and just check that they received our inquiry,

or sorry, our price sheet and if they'd

like to meet up for Skype again.

Obviously a common email that we get back

is you're out of budget and it's usually

something along the lines of I love your

guys' work, but unfortunately you're way out of

budget for us.

This is still an opportunity.

It's not an opportunity to have them hire

us.

If we're out of budget, I am not

gonna push them to stretch their budget to

meet our requirements, but I can still leave

them with a feeling.

I can still leave them with a feeling

that they're being well taken care of.

So I'll often put together a list of

potential photographers that might be within their budget.

I also really empathize with them.

So a candy email I'll often use is,

I can totally understand that we're not the

most affordable option out there.

Heck, we couldn't afford ourselves either.

If you let me know your budget, I

can recommend a few other potential photographers that

might be able to provide a really good

service to you.

If someone asks us to go down in

price, which is a common question, I mean,

that's completely up to us.

Generally speaking, we don't go down in price.

We have in the past, for sure, especially

with our first couple destination weddings.

People often ask how we got into the

destination wedding market, and that was by going

down in price and making it happen for

those first couple ones.

But generally speaking, we hold pretty firm to

our prices.

And my language with that was somewhere along

the lines of, again, I can totally understand

we're not the most affordable option.

We couldn't afford ourselves either.

However, it's important that all of our clients

pay the same price so that they know

they're receiving the same level of care and

attention from us.

I also emphasize that we only shoot 10

to 15 weddings a year.

And the reason we do that is so

that we can pour our hearts and souls

into every single wedding that we shoot.

And most people respect that.

So we'll hear back from about 5%

of those people, maybe 4% or 5

% of those people, and then we'll go

on to the client's Skype, which is where

we'll actually chat with them about their wedding

and start educating them even more about our

process.

So let's go there now.