I am excited to be joining the NewbornPhotography.com community as a sales and pricing expert tonight for the live chat. I was asked a question in the forum by a member, Tamsen, and when I tried to reply, I had a few technical issues. In reality, my response was just too long, and so the web masters here at NBP.com have given me access to write it as a blog post.

 The question was:

 Hey Bryan! I do have a question. I am primarily a maternity and newborn photographer. I find my clients often come into their newborn ordering sessions tired and a little hazy, lacking in sleep as their baby is generally only 2-3 weeks old by that time. I want the ordering session to be a simple and easy time for them, where they can enjoy the process and not get more stressed. They always receive my pricing ahead of time, and I mention often to them to think about what they would like and where they would like their images ahead of time to make selections and sizing easier. To be honest, not many of them do it, as they have a lot going on in their lives! I have three packages available, as well as an A La Carte option. My A La Carte items are a lot higher, so often they'll go with the discounted option of a package, which I try to tailor to their needs. My question is this: how do I get my clients to order a large wall print? Often they are overwhelmed by the costs of a new baby.

And here's my answer:  

Hey Tamsen – I agree with you in that “sales” for maternity and newborn are very different than typical portrait sales.

For family portrait sales, we have the luxury of time and focus, however, after having been through the newborn thing only 7 months ago myself, I can now say confidently that this isn’t the case with newborn clients. Haha. We need to slightly alter our sales and pricing model, but this doesn’t mean that we can’t price properly and still make great sales.

Do I have the perfect answer? Not sure … I don’t personally specialize in newborn photography, so I haven’t exactly put these ideas through the system enough times to say that this is the best way, but I think that in theory it would certainly be viable.

I will speak to this both as a photographer and as a client, because I’ve been there as both. I would say that the typical order for a newborn client should be:

- 1 wall portrait of the newborn or a series of smaller wall portraits
- 1 or 2 favourite images to print at a decent size, and give to close family
- 1 or 2 favourite image to print smaller to give to distant family and friends

This means that we as photographers spend all this time at a newborn session, buying beautiful accessories and props, and then perfectly retouch the images, only to sell a few of the images (above). I personally feel that the best way to alleviate this disparity is through portrait books.

My wife and I have a portrait book that combines our maternity and newborn photos, and we love it. It’s a beautiful 12×9 VisionArt book, and is about 20 spreads (1/2 maternity, 1/2 newborn).

If we offer a portrait book, it does a number of things for us as photographers:

1) It gives us a reason to offer a maternity session
2) It gives the client something to do with the maternity photos
3) It gives us a reason to capture series of images and think of both sessions as a compilation
4) It is easy to design, present and sell (think of selling a portrait book as being 1/2 the price of purchasing the same size prints individually)
5) If we show a portrait book first, then it makes choosing the other images easy

Let me expand on points #4 and #5, above. If we sell a beautiful 20-spread 12×9 portrait book for $1200 (cost = $250 + retouching time), we can calculate (and show the client) that the same number of 8×10 prints (smaller than the book) would be $2600 at $65 each. The price for the book in this case is easily justified. The book itself easily sells itself. I would recommend leaving 3 or 4 books conveniently on a table where the clients will be sitting/resting during the newborn session. You have a captive audience right there to look through the books and become interested.

Re: point #5, if we design the portrait book with our favourites (as photographers), the clients will usually agree and be happy that you’ve taken the hard work away from them. Then, you can simply say “out of this book, which is your favourite for the wall portrait” (that one can also be the cover of the book), and then “which is your favourite for the family, and your friends?”. Now they’re choosing from 10-15 images (that are in the book) vs all the images that you shot.

In terms of selling, I think that we need to keep things really simple and eliminate options. In my opinion, the best time to discuss these are at the newborn session itself, whenever there is 5 minutes to talk/rest. I don’t think that you can pre-sell effectively for newborn photos, and I think that if you try and do it after the fact, you’ll be fighting for attention.

Here’s what I’d recommend (off the top of my head without calculating costs too much):

All collections include 2-3 hour session and soft proofing (online gallery):

Collection #1 includes Portrait Book, $1650 (remember that after you design/retouch the book, the images are already retouched so the prints to follow will be cheaper to produce)

+ Wall portrait (any presentation, any size up to 20×30) for $550
+ Small wall portraits (up to 8×10) are $50/each
+ Additional smaller prints (up to 5×7) are $20/each (make it affordable since they may want to order a lot of these, and you’ve already retouched them)

All orders over $2300 includes the medium-resolution digital files from then book. This means that they basically have to order the book, a wall portrait and at least 2 small wall portraits.

Collection #2 includes session and 20 retouched digital files for $1500

Booking deposit (to book date) is $500 and you choose your collection afterwards. If they choose not to pick a collection, they can order prints a-la-carte from an increased price list (i.e. $65 for 8×10, $30 for 5×7). Doing it this way means that you don’t have to go into too many details about collections at the point of booking and the “fee” to book (basically, session-only) is $500 regardless of package. When it comes time to discuss the collections, it is a bit of a no-brainer – it’s $1500 for the digital collection, or “only” $150 more to have a beautiful portrait book. Then, once they spend “only” $650 more to have beautiful wall portraits made, they’ll still get their digital files.

It’s a theory on pricing/selling, and I’m sure that things can definitely be finessed and fine-tuned for each photographer, but it’s a good start anyways.

Hope that helps!

Bryan