Objection!

[Lauren Tanzio]

Other than price, what is the most common objection you get from customers?

I know price is the main one, and there are several threads devoted to that issue, but does anyone else get other objections? And if so, how do you turn them around?

I'm asking this because I'm having an issue in one location with salespeople saying that they "just can't sell framing." I'm interested to see if anyone else has this problem. Bear in mind that custom framing is not the main business in my store, photofinishing is, so most people are not coming to get framing specifically.

[Bob Carter]

Lauren-We often do not "listen" to our customers nearly as well as we listen to each other. Many people will tell you that they simply do not have price resistance issues; that their customers never bring it up. Bless them.

The rest of us do and the consumers tell us loud and clear through every Consumer Survey that price is a factor-often the deciding factor.

The object isn't to sell the same prodct for less but to offer different products that fit those different buying segments. Some folks buy Chevrolets, some buy Pontiacs and some buy Cadillacs.

If your store (or market) has clients looking for Chevrolets-stock some Chevies. It may be as much to do with product mix as not. And don't overlook good sales training. Most really good salespeople understand overcoming sales resistance and sometimes it is as simple as offering the right products at the right price.

[Jim Miller]

The second most popular objection I experience is "I can't visualize the finished framing". But of course there is a fix for that now, which many of us have already or will soon put to use.

[Jay H]

I find that photography is by far the hardest images to design. Sepia and B/W isn't bad but color portraits get difficult. Combine a bit of dis inspiration with a finicky customer, and you have a recipe for disaster.

I don't have people walk out often. A few have because I was unable to come up with an inspiring design and I LOVE framing. I can imagine how an hourly employee in a photo shop might have a difficult time inventing inspiring designs.

You'll have to let somebody used to employees address fixing that problem. One thought I have had is offering a commission on custom framing. Put some responsibility on them and I'll bet they will find a way to sell custom framing. Does anybody else do this?

Send a secret shopper into your own store!

[Dave]

Do you use "Silent Salesmen"? Samples of beautifully framed photos not only suggest framing the photos they are picking up, but show designs. I would possibly show an unframed photo next to the same print framed with several different designs and price points.

The commission idea can work...or it can backfire if your staff is not team oriented. Maybe a full staff bonus for differing levels of weekly or monthly frame sales. This approach gets everybody on board or their fellow workers prod them to get with the program. Let your employees motivate your workers and it doesn't come off as you being the boss man over the grunts. Make the reward either a modest cash bonus or some other great perk and attainable. Could be as simple as a cook-out with you supplying the beers and colas at a nearby park on a Saturday after closing with wives and kid's invited...

Dave Makielski

[Patrick Leeland]

I think employees that don't know the product or are uncomfortable won't sell. They can sell sometimes, but only what they feel comfortable with. You might see alot of white mats, black frame. It could be difficulty designing, giving the price to the customer, knowing why to use a certain product, why one product is better than another...there are many things that can be at work here. If you know another framer in town, that you are close with why not put each other to work?

You go and test thier employees and you have yours tested. Now remember if you do this you need to act like Joe the typical frame customer. Not knowing what you want and be interested in high and low end things. See how the employees handle the sale. Be honest you could help each other quite a bit.
Patrick Leeland

[Lance E]

I have a similar business, I would suppose that the problem they are having is a lack of product knowledge, closely followed by a lack of confidence in design. Check your diary, you have training to do.

[DVieau2]

Hi Lauren,

You may never be able to get everyone in the photo shop to understand good frame design and techniques but you should be able to get them to suggest the benefits of a custom frame. Ideally they would deliver the customer, enlargement in hand, to the frame counter and let the framer do the rest.

If a framer isn't always in the store give them something easy to sell. Have several 12 x 16 or 12 x 14 metal frames with mats made up and ready to go. Get the crew to suggest one of these for EVERY 8 x 10/12 and larger print sold. We use Nielsen OEM with scrap mats . We sell 12 x 16 OEM metal for $45.00. Visualizing is easy and the cost is low. Anyone should be able to put fit this frame in less than 10 minutes. As the staff gains confidence and success with the easy stuff they will develop more enthusiasm for higher end framing.

Doug

[BUDDY]

Lauren ;
I thik it is a combination of Bob's suggestion along with the salesmaship thing. By this I mean maybe your sales staff dosen't feel out the prospective client enough before suggesting a design. If you show nothing but wonderful Cadillacs to someone who doesn't have that sort of taste or budget they more than likely are going to be disappointed with your designs, and the same is true if you show Chevy's to a affulante buyer.
So suggest that they feel out the NEEDS and TASTE of the client before suggesting a design and then remain FLEXABLE and say "which way would you like me to go "if it doesn't strike their fancy.

So I guess not suiting the clients taste is the next strongest objection. But then that should be easily adjusted to if you are a good sales person and KNOW your product.
BUDDY

[gemsmom]

I agree with Jim on people complaining about not being able to visualize the finished product.

Another complaint would be the time frame. The average job should not take longer than two weeks to complete. I'll bet many could be done in less than two weeks. I know I'm guilty of putting something aside until the due date, when I could have gotten it done early.

[Bob Carter]

While I do not disagree with our friends Jim and Pam, if visualization were such a hurdle, How the heck do Michael's and AB and the rest sell 5 to 6 times more framing than the average frame shop?

If we continue to cling to "safe harbor" rationalizations, we may never fully understand the problem.

We often feel that we have greater design, greater sales skills, greater creativity, greater people, greater knowledge and we continue to get "outsold" in spades

I don't know about the rest of you, but when I do not shop at a store (or fly an airline or eat a restaurant or buy a car), it is usually for a very specific reason.

We need to be brutally honest when we look at objections

Let's face it-most all of the things we "think" are obstacles are so easily corrected, often for very little expense.

The issues are larger

[Jim Miller]

Originally posted by Bob Carter:
While I do not disagree with our friends Jim and Pam, if visualization were such a hurdle, How the heck do Michael's and AB and the rest sell 5 to 6 times more framing than the average frame shop?.../I wouldn't say it is a sale-stopper, but it is an issue we have to address. And we do that better than any big box in the neighborhood. Their advantage is foot traffic resulting from superior marketing, not superior designs or sales techniques.

[JbNormandog]

Why not send your 2 most relied upon sales people to take some framing design classes.

It may open their eyes to things they didn't know could be done and even might excite them to push themselves and those around them a little more into our arena.

[Bob Carter]

Jim-My friend, you hit the nail on the head. It isn't superior sales technique or superior designs alone that will win this battle.

We have to give customers reasons to come to us in greater numbers.

The sooner we realize that the quicker we can turn around the constant erosion of market share that virtually everyone of us has experienced, the better

There are very few framers that can match Jim for his skill and design. We simply cannot rely upon the false premise that we are as gifted and that consumers will respond to that.

And see, I think that we do have clientele that do buy Cadillacs from us just as we do have clientele that want Yugos. Unfortunately, too many of us refuse to sell Yugos even when our consumers ask for them.

In today's marketplace, it is wise to offer as wide an offering as your clientele requires. The way you market your store indicates which type of clientele walks in.

As to visualization,several sources (Lifesaver being one) offer a very affordable visualization system that will integrate with their program.

And, bet the farm, that if it becomes a powerful tool, the BB's will have en masse in a heartbeat. Then, that too, will be a moot advantage

[Lauren Tanzio]

Thanks everybody! I do realize now that I'm looking at our staff list there, that half the people I trained 6 months ago are gone and I haven't trained any of the newer salespeople! Sometimes the answer is so obvious... We do offer an incentive program where employees get $1 towards their own personal framing for every $50 they sell. So far it's working at one location, but not at the other...

But it's still interesting to hear what other objections there are. I would say that the biggest objection I've heard(besides price, that is) is because they needed their piece in a hurry and conveniently forgot to mention that teeny weeny fact from the start. Usually we can work it out, but there are sometimes those stubborn customers that insist that they must have a finished corner frame in 2 days... Price objections are easy to deal with, and you can find tons of info on how to turn people around. I actually rarely get them anymore. It's the other objections that most of us don't know how to deal with.

[johnny]

Most common is the tug of war between us moving the frame sample to show more or less mat. Luckily, it's an easy one to solve. Explain the benefit of a wider mat then give them what they choose.

[HannaFate]

I get a resistance on using UV glass. I explain that the difference in cost more than offsets the replacement cost of the print, plus a refit charge. Even on an inexpensive print, this is still true.

Sometimes, though, they just want to cut that corner.

This wouldn't bother me as much if we were in Seattle, but this is New Mexico! Our flag has the SUN on it for a REASON.

[Baer Charlton]

Hanna, I would have thought that you would almost never sell reg glass... amazing.

Our mark is slightly less on con clear then reg, so it makes a smaller bump up. But even the mark is smaller, the profit is much bigger....

how you might ask.... a happier wiser customer...
who returns, year after year.

We default to ConClear and quote it out as "With the ph-neutral mounting, concervation glass, acid free mats, and concervation glass, and solid cherry frame it only comes to $265.46. (1 beat, 2 beat, 3 beat) Would you like to pay half or all of it today?"

Biggest complaint today....."I REALLY wish my husband would go back to work and leave the frame making to the professionals..." :D

[realhotglass]

Originally posted by HannaFate:
... this is New Mexico! Our flag has the SUN on it for a REASON. Hanna, great sale line there !

Originally posted by Baer Charlton:

Our mark is slightly less on con clear then reg, so it makes a smaller bump up. But even the mark is smaller, the profit is much bigger....

... ConClear and quote it out as "With the ph-neutral mounting, conservation glass, acid free mats, and conservation glass, and solid cherry frame it only comes to $265.46. (1 beat, 2 beat, 3 beat) Would you like to pay half or all of it today?" Baer,
Nail, head. Spot on with 2 good points.

Markups
We sell Guardian UV, and pass the different markup concept on to framers here.

Further, when you start to sell UV clear, it's a great opportunity to also markup reg clear a lot more, to reduce the gap from both directions.

I've developed a neat little Excel programme that enables reg clear to be compared with con clear (plus single sided non glares and any other glasses you want to put in too).

You can use different multipliers (markups) and show the net results between the different end costs of the different glasses.

Bigger markups for small sizes, reducing markups through the ranges up to larger sizes.

For example, a 12" x 10" rectangle.
2mm reg clear with a 10x markup is AUD$5.04
UV clear with a 5x markup is AUD$18.28
So, easy upsell (*if* the job warrants UV clear) for AUD$10.09 more profit in your pocket at the end of the day.

Do this with even 50% of your work, and that's a lot of extra $'s at the end of the week, month, year.

Re sales tech
Yep, 1 and 2 and 3 . . . if there's going to be a strong objection, it'll be in this time span.
Also the ". . . pay half now of all of it ?" is a good plan, asking in that order is important too.

[Lauren Tanzio]

I don't even carry regular glass in my shop. Now I work on upselling to museum glass, and if they don't go for that, usually they'll take to UV blocking Non-Glare.

I've had people tell me that they're having trouble visualizing the finished product, but usually that's code for "I don't really like what you're showing me." Try showing them something different or asking them what part of the design is throwing them off.

[Bob Carter]

Hi Lauren-Not to create an uproar, but why would you refuse to carry any product that has an overwhelming market share acceptance?

It only has that dominant position because there are many reasons why. When we self-impose selling restrictions due to personal reasons, we may not be responding to the market.

There are many, many things that come into all our shops that simply do not need that level of protection. Let's face it-That Scarface poster will fade no matter the glass and if you say that you never see that level of print, you may be missing out on a ton of business.

I will believe that regular glass is such a grossly inferior product that has no place in our industry just as soon as Tru-Vue quits making it and Larson quits carrying it.

BTW, I don't care if you do or do not carry it; I just think it is a poor business decision that reflects directly on the exact item that prompted this thread. That being the single biggest objection: Price

[Jim Miller]

Originally posted by Lauren Tanzio:
...I've had people tell me that they're having trouble visualizing the finished product, but usually that's code for "I don't really like what you're showing me." Try showing them something different or asking them what part of the design is throwing them off. That comment may represent a rejection sometimes, but I think customers really do have difficulty visualizing the finished framing. That's why Picture It First and its competitors may be the Best New Thing to hit framing since the CMC.

[Lauren Tanzio]

Bob- you misunderstood, the item that promted this thread was NOT price. I wanted to hear about other, less common, objections.

And, as for why we do not carry regular glass, the majority of what I frame are expensive giclees, original artwork, and family heirlooms. I would be doing my customers a disservice by putting regular glass on those items. Plus none have requested it, and most appreciate that it's all that we use. I make more money off the conservation glass then I would using regular. And besides, if the customer is putting out the money to have their Scarface poster custom framed, they want it to last. If they have a HUGE objection to using UV Blocking glass(which 9 times out of 10 they don't) then I direct them to the readymades I have out on the floor. I can see no way in which I lose business by not offering regular glass.

[HB]

Bob

You said:

if you say that you never see that level of print, you may be missing out on a ton of business.

As much as I (& most of the rest of us) really appreciate your input & are indebted to you for your advice, sometimes I feel you look at everything from a slightly different perspective then the rest of us.

I agree somewhat with Lauren's way of thinking though I do sell reg glass but no reg mattes. I am not sure we all care that we are... "missing out on a ton of business". Some of us want to be just where we are. Some of us Grumblers are happy not to get bigger so that we have to hire & if we use good business practices to keep the core customer group that puts bread on our tables & gives us pleasure to go to work every day, thats just what we want.

Granted, we still have to stay on top of things - & your advice usually is just what we need! I just had a little bit of a problem when you keep coming up with that phrase.

Well ...enough grumbling - keep up the good work

[Jay H]

"sometimes I feel you look at everything from a slightly different perspective then the rest of us."

I know he does.

I'm rather certain that those who are 100% satisfied with the level of business they have are in the vast vast minority. You don't have to look hard on the Grumble or HH to see that most shops are looking for niches, marketing strategies, products, and sales techniques to grow their business.

I'm equally convinced that Bob, and a few others, have found the answers to those questions.

This thread wasn’t specifically about price resistance but it was about selling more framing. Bob’s suggestion of offering a very wide price range is valid. Only then can you can be certain that price ISN’T one of the problems.

Lauren, you may be able to reach a comfortable level of sales rather you carry this glass or that frame. But it would seem that you’re not right now. The slump in sales could be from camouflaged price resistance as well as other things. How many customers have said “I really love your products but I think I would like to spend much less to get this framed so I’m leaving”? I think I’ve heard about everything except that.

There are ONLY two options.

1. They aren’t getting their stuff framed.
2. Other frameshops are framing it. There isn’t a third option. Because this thread exists, its safe to assume its #2.

Well somebody offers a suggestion and is faced with “No I’m not going to do that.” I wonder why their follow up advice isn’t “Well get used to it” or “You’re doing great, my business if flourishing because of what you’ve done.”

Carry on!

[lise]

Bob. I am going to play the Devil's advocate and suggest that Michaels and whomever else may sell 5-6 times more framing jobs but my intuition would say that they have 5-6 as many walk-outs as well. My closing rate is almost 95%, if their clientele is whom I think it is then their closing rate would have to be lower.

[Baer Charlton]

This is nothing personal Lisa.... or so I was told 34 years ago.....

"only losers keep their eyes on the walk-outs and wonder what they did wrong. Winners keep focused on what they did right, and keep doing it."

Only you have to say it in kind of a Southern California layed back Yiddish way....

If we could attract half of our local Michael's business volume, we would have to move out of our 732 sqare feet, I'd have to work full time framing and selling and managing 2-3 full time employees.

Is selling one of 150 mouldings, and a single mat from the specified 85 mats boring?

Painfully.... that is why they suffer the worker turn-over... but they still make money hand over fist.

[Bob Carter]

Hi Lisa-May i offer another lesson I learned to go along with Baer's?

I learned that it is a fool's errand to rely upon what we "think we know" as oppossed to what we "know we know".

We know they do 5-6 more volume than most of us. I'm not sure we "know" what their walk out rate is. Your rate is great and it ought to be. In truth, those that do walk in to your store, like most frame stores, tend to be "destination". They come to you (and us) for the specific reason of getting something framed with that specific product to be framed. (Now, I am doing what I cautioned against; that being suggesting what I "think I know" as fact).

But, using that logic as a "safe harbor" argument is like suggesting that Babe Ruth was a lousy batter because he had so many strikeouts.

It isn't about Michael's and what they do correctly or incorrectly and we constantly want to frame the argument into a good vs evil scenario.

Instead,we ought to be looking for those things that can improve our own businesses so that the spread isn't 5-6 times but maybe 3-4 times difference.

So, back to you and now I'll play Devil's Advocate and ask what single thing might you be able to "steal" from them that can shrink that difference? These guys must be doing something better than us or the numbers wouldn't be so tilted.

One thing we always learned in B School whenwe did case studies was to find the elements that could be "mirrored" (adapted) to other endeavors.

Surely, we ought to be find something that can be adapted successfully

[Baer Charlton]

While we are all "floating in the question" that Bob asks, I'd like to add in here.

I pound the table that the best, easiest, and cheapest advertising you can do is practice and polish a 10 second spot add, that you can rattle off under ANY circumstance as you pass out your card to ANYONE that comes within 3 feet of you.

My best example is handing my card to the cop, along with my licence and registration card so he could write me a ticket for popping a wheely acrossed 6 lanes of an intersection.

He didn't write the ticket, we ended up going deepsea fishing, and I framed a few things for him.

Now back to my :mad: lesson that I learned two weeks ago and about 2,000 cards later....

CAREFULLY check ALL information such as critical phonenumbers...... on your business card

BEFORE THEY PRINT THEM AND YOU HAND THEM OUT.

[DVieau2]

The photo store that Lauren works at is a member of Independent Photo Imagers. A report from the IPI forum is that the store in Metarie LA is gone!

Lauren, I pray your safe and hope the best for you.

Doug

[Phoneguy]

Originally posted by Baer Charlton:
CAREFULLY check ALL information such as critical phonenumbers...... on your business card

BEFORE THEY PRINT THEM AND YOU HAND THEM OUT. Baer, I think you gave me one of those cards, nicely printed on fabric, with little contact info on it....I figured that out when I tried to email you a while ago!

[Bob Carter]

Hey PhoneGuy-I checked my stack of Business Cards and I have Baer's. It shows his cell phone number, his business number and 4 "800" numbers of lines he reps.

Heck, with 6 phone numbers on it, I'm surprised that you find that "little contact info".

[DVieau2]

I'm posting this again because Laurens topic kind of drifted off.

The photo store that Lauren works at in Metarie LA is gone as a result of Katrina!

Lauren, I pray your safe and hope the best for you.

Doug

[Baer Charlton]

Bob, James is correct.... because the cards don't have an email address.

DVieau2, I was looking at some of the time stamps on her posts... she posted from work...

She may be elsewhere and will maybe need to ride someone elses horse to post. They did have multiple locations... and in a few months as power is restored, and the insurgents give back the streets . . .

Lauren, our thoughts are with you and hope for the best.