Photos are an emotional purchase
Sales and psychology go hand in hand. You’re selling an impulse purchase, emotion is involved. Don’t ever mistake that. Photos are not a must-have item. Yes, sure there may be a family out there who’s like, “I must have a portrait of my family on the wall.” But that is not the 80/20 rule.
So this is an emotional purchase, and all good marketers and salespeople know and understand this. Watch any commercial. If you start thinking about your sales process and start watching sales, or just advertising in general, when you’re watching TV commercials, fundamentally ask yourself after every TV commercial you watch, what message are they sending? If you find yourself scratching your head, like, I don’t really understand what I just watched. That means they did a bad job with that commercial. Right? Or is the point of the commercial to give you awareness, like, to understand their brand?
There’s a commercial that still to this day makes Sal laugh. The K-Mart “I shipped my pants” commercial. It’s a Kmart commercial, they were trying to get a message across about free shipping, and they did it in a very comedic way. Sal thinks the marketing agency did a great job. If you don’t remember this commercial, Google it and watch it. It was when they were probably on their way out and they were trying to come up with new ideas, they would have a guy laying on the bed saying, “I shipped my bed.” People would say, “I shipped my pants.” It was a good damn commercial.
Look for messaging you can use in your own advertising
When you start watching these commercials, start looking for messaging because that will help you get better and sharpen your tools when you’re trying to message to your customers.
Why? Because these companies are spending millions of dollars with marketing agencies who have people a lot smarter than all of us who are well versed in messaging. Sal tries to watch that and learn from that, and that’s made him a better marketer over the years. What is triggering people to purchase or not purchase? Ask yourself this question.
Triggers that screw up the sale
When you walk into Walmart, if there’s screaming kids everywhere, does that incite you to spend more money or less money? If your kid is having a meltdown and you’re somewhere, is that going to… Do you just want to get out of that store? Or are you going to stay in that store and have a conversation with Billy about being in timeout? Why does Sal say that? Well, he encourages families not to bring the kids to their preview because little Billy is going to have about a five minute attention span and then he’s bouncing off the walls in his studio, and mom’s just going to want to get out of there, right?
So we just have to start understanding the psychology behind everything that’s going on. Your job is to push it over the finish line and not screw the sale up.
