The Beauty Of The Sales Call
In May of 2022, I had the fantastic opportunity to be a guest on Nathan Chanski’s podcast, “Passion with Purpose.” We talked about sales for over an hour—from my philosophy and approach to sales, to how I prepare for the sales call, even to how I tackle upselling and more. Over the next few months I’ll be posting parts from that conversation that I feel are important to share.
You can listen to the full podcast here.
*The dialogue has been edited for clarity and brevity.
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Nathan Chanski: …You mentioned sales calls. You were talking about how some people are averse to sales calls. What's the importance of a sales call? Let's say I'm a photographer and I want to skip the sales call, and I just want to book them over an email. Or if I just don't feel comfortable in a sales call—What would you say to somebody about how sales calls or live sales calls have impacted your growth or your business?
Ellie McMakin: Yeah, absolutely. And this is something that I'll probably touch on a few times throughout the course of the podcast because I think a lot of photographers, especially when they think about sales calls, they're prepping themselves and priming themselves to have to give a pitch of some sort, like, “Okay, I have to come ready with this spiel, that I need to masterfully execute.”
If you just really can't do sales calls, I will never make you feel bad if you'd prefer to do it over email, because there's ways of winning over people in every situation.
The beauty of the sales call is the ability to have it done in a more conversational way that can really allow them to feel more comfortable and relaxed.
The way that I frame it is, rather than coming into a sales call thinking that you have to have this pitch, or thinking that you have to have it all together and say the right thing to get them to win with you, all you have to do at any point in the call is to be able to talk about what is important to them.
What I usually do is start the call trying to figure that out. When you go into a sales call with a spiel, half the time, they're not even listening. They're just like, “Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. What about this problem that I have? What about this thing that I'm worried about?”
When you start with saying, “I wanted to let you know, I'm really excited to talk to you, but rather than just giving you this huge spiel, I would really love to know: is there anything that you guys are curious about before we continue this call? Or anything that I can help you know about?” And that completely disarms—in a good way. They're like, “I actually was curious about posing. We're not very comfortable in front of the camera. What do you do with posing?” Or “My significant other is camera shy. What do you do about that?”
Now I will say this. There are times where people don't have that many questions, or maybe they're too early in the process.
What I like to do is start every call taking the opportunity to try and get acquainted with the things that matter to them. Maybe it's not a pain, maybe it's just something about the wedding day that they find that is important to them, or something that needs to be honored and respected. What that'll do is change the sales call from a rehearsed spiel that ends with a few questions, and turn it into addressing their questions, or asking a series of questions to get to know what's important about them, completely taking the rest of the call into a conversational, relaxed, easygoing tone.
And I promise that one switch has helped transform and book people more than any other tip that I've given.
So if you guys need to really take notes on anything, I would say their pain-point is the pitch. You're not going into it with a rehearsed sales pitch. You're going into it really trying to understand what's important to them.
When you operate in that way, you are doing what you do naturally. You're talking with other humans. And I think that's what excites me about the sales process: humanizing it again and taking it from this gross, for lack of a better term, car salesman feeling.
Nathan Chanski: So it's almost like more of a listening approach rather than a telling approach.
Ellie McMakin: Yes.
Nathan Chanski: That's so cool. And I think that even develops the relational factor too, because we all want to talk about ourselves and we all want to hear ourselves talk. When someone's breathing down our neck with what they have to say, it almost is a little bit of a turn off, even just from an interpersonal perspective.
If you were to say to a potential client, “Hey, I really care about you guys. And I'm just so interested in getting you exactly what you want.” And then, you blab on for a while. If you would've just started with, “How can I help you? What do you value? Are there any things that you have questions about?” Without even saying, “I care so much about you,” you're basically telling that without even saying it.
Ellie McMakin: Absolutely. I give this example in the wedding photography space, but full transparency: my dad was in sales for about 50 years. He sold ultrasound machines. He would go hospital to hospital and try to sell these huge machines to people, but the same is universal for any business. It's one of those things where if you can really master the art of, like you said, listening and understanding what you need to listen for and how to respond to it, sales becomes less about the pitch and more about learning to be an attentive human, which most of us are, and most of us are really good at that.
I hope that that can help people take a sigh of relief and be like, “Okay, I can talk with people. That is something I can do.” You do it all the time at weddings or at shoots anyway, it's just an extension of your natural process.
Nathan Chanski: Plus, for maybe those who are more introverted, or who feel like they don't always want to be talking, I think it's good to use that as your strength: that you're not always going to be talking over these people and that you're going to be more of a listener rather than always speaking.
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I hope this illustrates how sales calls are easier than you may think! You talk to people everyday—it is just a natural extension of that.
For more help with your sales calls, check out my course on sales, “Effortless, Ethical Sales” here!
For more from Nathan Chanski, you can follow him on TikTok or on Instagram.
Stay tuned for more updates from this conversation!
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