Some Tips to Improve Your Art Sales
Jason Horejs is owner of Xanadu Gallery in Scottsdale, AZ, USA and he writes Red Dot Blog. I’d like to share a recent post he sent to me regarding how to improve your art sales. His tips are things Michelle and I employ already, but we realize that for many, these may not be so obvious:
Put your mind in a selling state
Immediately before going into a selling situation – be it a gallery opening, an art festival or an open studio tour, take some time to clear your mind and shift into selling mode. Often you get so caught up in the process of preparing for an event – installing artwork, printing price tags, setting out wine and cheese, etc. that you can easily forget the purpose of all of that work. The stress of the final rush can play havoc with your mental state going into the event.
I want to encourage you to take a few minutes prior to your next event to prepare to sell. Allow yourself to forget about the pre-show hubbub and focus on one thing only: Selling.
Take a minute to think about the key pieces of art you would like to focus on during the show and what points you want to emphasize. What story are you going to tell about that work?
Listen to an energetic, up-tempo piece of music to bring up your excitement and confidence level.
You are now ready to throw yourself into selling with enthusiasm and energy. While it may sound simple, these 3-5 minutes of mental preparation will have a huge impact on your attitude and your success rate. Try it next time if you don’t believe me!
Always have your selling tools ready
Mental preparation is critical, but so is a little bit of good old fashioned physical preparation. Make sure you have all the tools on hand you will need to complete a sale. Again, this may seem pretty basic, but I have run into instances when, for fault of a simple tool, I have had to scramble to make a sale happen.
Develop a sales tool kit or checklist that you run through before each sales event. Items to make sure you have on hand:
Sales slips
Business cards or brochures
Bubble wrap/bags/boxes (I once nearly lost a sale for lack of a $2 box for a client to carry home a small sculpture)
Credit card processing machine (or a mobile payment processor). The ability to process credit cards used to be a nice convenience for your clients – it has now become a necessity. Most people don’t carry around a checkbook anymore, and if your art is more than a couple of hundred dollars, it’s unlikely they will have enough cash. If you have a smartphone you can process credit card payments right on your phone.)
Make sure your supplies are always stocked and ready to go.
Love your clients
Selling art is one of the few remaining businesses where the personal relationship still reigns supreme. Establishing a good relationship is the key goal of the sales encounter. Go into a sales opportunity primed to build those long-term relationships.
In order to build relationships, you first need to drop all prejudices. You may have strong opinions about the world and the people in it, opinions you have developed over years of experience. When it’s time to sell, however, you need to lock those opinions away. When selling art, there is no race, creed, color, political party, religion, sexual orientation or socio-economic class. Regardless of background, the only thing you need concern yourself with is a person’s interest in your art.
Never pre-judge potential buyers. You may develop, over time, a sense that only people who dress a certain way, speak a certain way, or come from certain places will buy art. This perception may be reinforced by years of experience, and it may even be largely accurate. The problem is that this sense can prevent you from putting your full efforts forth with each and every person you encounter – and over a lifetime, this can lead you to lose sales.
I can think of many clients who, on first glance, would never strike you as a good potential buyer. I have sold to people with holes in their jeans, and I’ve sold to people driving twenty year-old pickup trucks. Will you waste some time with people who don’t end up buying over the years? Yes you will, but it’s worth putting your full efforts forth with everyone for those times when a client turns out to be a diamond in the rough.
Finally, don’t talk politics religion or sports. It’s easy to see that this could lead to problems if you hold opposing views, but it can be just as great a problem if you and your potential buyer agree 100%. These subjects stir such strong emotions that the mere mention of one of these subjects will draw all attention away from your art. Don’t risk it.
He has four more tips on Red Dot Blog. Thanks, Jason!