T&I sales distribution question.

[DougAxford]

We shoot a lot of T&I (team and individual) and are having more & more problems getting our sales/price flyer in the hands of the parents. People care less and less these days and those that do care are overworked already. Looking for ideas.

We can take them right to the field and hand them to the coach with some leagues IF we can get hold of the league schedule. This seems insane, but we've found that it is well worth the extra time and gas in increased sales. Some leagues are fantastic and take care of everything. It's the ones that don't that I need help with.

If we can't get a full schedule or the league insists that we allow them to distribute the info, we get into trouble. Saturday we shot another baseball league. Info went out 2 weeks prior to photo day to the co-ordinator who swore that she'd get everything done immediately. On Photo Day, lots of parents arrived without forms because they had 'heard' it's Photo Day and just showed up. Some coaches were handing forms to their players when they arrived.

Problem is that parents take forever to decide on what to buy and our average sale is WAY lower because they haven't had a good chance to look everything over. Our goal is to sell at least x 2.5 the basic pack price. If they don't get the info in advance, the average is below 1.5. A lot of profit is lost.

We offer a free sponsor plaque to the league and free 8x10 team print or traders to the coach if everything is handed out in time. We can/should withhold this when it's not done, but the league says it's not their fault and threatens to go elsewhere and the coach says he got the forms too late from the league (blame game). We're stuck with lower sales and no one cares.

I really do NOT want to go the route of % sales, but it seems the most likely answer. My worry is that the league and coaches still won't either care or be able to do anything about it. In most cases, these leagues do not have a team manager/photo co-ordinator and won't give us phone numbers to contact coaches directly.

Suggestions from those who do it???

[larry_angier]

Years ago, we worked with a small, very rural league. Though everybody knew about the T&I photos, many parents wanted us to be the bank and would pay us "next week". Our policy was cash in hand, borrow from your friends, not us.

Finally, we gave this up. We now require the league to pay for the package (memory mate) with one check upon delivery. We suggest that the team collect at sign-up so the parents don't feel nickel-and-dimed and suggest that they add a bit to the itemization, if any, to make a few dollars in the process.

Come shoot day, no muss, no fuss, no paperwork. One person can handle all the photography. Parents don't even need to show up. A team takes less than 10 minutes and we only wait for the few kids who are always late.

For reorders, a half-sheet order blank is inserted in the memory mate. Two purposes for this: the parent gets to see the work before spending lots on a shot they would not be happy with. Second, with the photo in hand, there is little doubt that the order will be wrong upon fulfillment. I print the file numbers on the margin of the photo and that is 100% right.

Occasionally, someone will forget the photo number expecting me to guess which of several hundred images and then I have to call. Since going this route, I'm no longer the bank, I'm no longer stressed in keeping track of orders when I'm shooting, I can shoot without staff, I can fulfill orders with 100% accuracy.

Usually, I can get the photos back to the league in about a week since it takes a few days to get the correct number of memory mates since I order what I need after I have the photos printed.

HTH,

[DougAxford]

Thanks for the reply.

We used to do a lot of 'league pay' and completely got out of it because our profit is so much higher when parents pay directly - 3 to 4 times easily. I've never had a problem with parents wanting to pay later. We take CC. debit, cash or checks right on site. As long as they know ahead what is expected, that's the problem we have with some teams.

It may be that we simply have to put up with a few problems to retain the averages that we get.

[ChrisPerry]

This is my first year shooting t&i, but third as a parent with kids who play sports.
Around here the photo order form is handed out with the game schedules - so everyone gets one. Just make sure you get the order form to the person that distributes the schedules in time.
Another option is that if it's not profitable, then you have the option of not renewing - tell them about the order form bit and see if a little arm twisting will do any good. They may tell you to take a walk, but then they may not, or may not be able to replace you.

What I'd like and can't get is a roster of whose on what team so when bad check comes back I don't have to search 400+ orders only to finally guess a bit on who it might be (not all kids have names matching the parents...some parents pay for other peoples kids, or just plain get confused). Next year we putting team numbers on all incoming checks so that's an easy solution.

[DougAxford]

Thanks Chris. I would never hand out forms with the schedule unless I was photographing them within 2 weeks. We've found the sweet spot to be 10 days prior. We make sure the forms are in the coach's hands 2 weeks prior. Any longer or shorter lowers sales.

I hope I didn't leave the impression that T&I is not profitable for us. It is far from that. I'm just trying to get the extra $$ that is available for the getting.

We had one mother Saturday who had bought 4 sets of photos of her daughter this month alone. Lifetouch with their Spring photos, dance studio, soccer and baseball. She says she spent $200. total. She says she liked ours the best last year.

Doug

[ChrisPerry]

The soccer league I did had about 10 days to 2 weeks lead time and the average was $23.70/sale with about 350 sales - I was told there were 414 kids signed up so I was happy with that buy ratio, but they used all 400 forms I gave them and 50 more, plus they emailed it to a bunch of people. I heard that there were closer to 600 kids that signed up, and the older travel teams (about 6 teams with 15-18 kids/team) were pretty much no shows on picture day so 600 might be right.

While there I signed up a small baseball league and there was no time to copy forms - they made copies and emailed a bunch. I got a $34.20 average and a 100% buy rate. I was amazed.

I've been told around here the average is just under $20, so I'm pretty satisfied with the end results. Product costs are a tad higher than I'm used to (wedding/portrait I run about 13% of sales) at just under 30%. Since I've read that the national average for studios overall is 21% I guess i've just become average

[DougAxford]

Chris, your first paragraph is closer to what I am getting at.

If your average sale was $23.70 for 600 kids instead of 350, the sales would be almost 6K more and the profit would be over 4K more. That's money still sitting on the table to be grabbed. That's exactly my fight - how to get the league and coaches to get your info into the parents hands and have them show-up. You know that if they show up, you'll do a great job, they'll buy your photos and you'll make more money.

For the league we did Saturday, we're missing 150 kids. We decided today that next year, we'll pay someone on our staff to drive around the city taking them to the coach's homes or games if we can't get it done any other way. I've done the 'mail' option and found the personal contact is well worth the extra cost.

We've gone the route of booking more leagues and accepting less money and we've chosen to avoid fighting with the bottom feeders @ 5 to 8 bucks a pack and concentrate on maximizing what we have already. Sounds sorta like what Charles Lewis would say

Our averages are above yours, but we've been working on this for a long time. We're easily double the price of our closest competitor and we've got to be very careful to make sure we're delivering a fabulous product to keep our leagues.

Doug

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