As told to Cate Scaglione

In the photography world they’re sometimes referred to as the Texas Royalty for their dramatic aesthetic, their long-term success and their A List clientele … but spend five minutes with David and Luke Edmonson and you’ll discover they are anything but elitist.

I was fortunate enough to spend time with Luke, who generously revealed the Edmonson sales ethos. With over $100k in album sales alone, their rather emotionally charged sales approach might come as a surprise, often counterintuitive to our industry’s professed sales strategies.

To the Edmondsons it’s about looking beyond the transaction. It’s centered on simply understanding their clients' hearts and minds.

What’s right for you

“The single most important point I’d suggest to any photographer, is to identify your sales philosophy,” says Luke. "What feels right for you?”

"We feel fundamentally that people aren’t inspired by purchases, they are inspired by ideas."

Recounting their past sales practices, Luke describes several methods they tested:

“One approach focused on always including an album, no matter what the commission. Then at the time of sale, we induced an upsell by limiting options and customization.

“Another felt like a game of truth or dare — forewarning the client that we’d create an over-the-top album they couldn’t resist, and making it their challenge to remove or downgrade options.”

But while both approaches had their merits, the Edmonsons wanted to leave clients with a feeling of elation about the process, and take the emphasis off the transaction and logistics.

“We were uncomfortable with what felt to us like a predatory approach. Some really successful photographers are incredible working these methods. It just wasn’t suiting us.

“For us it became a matter of controlling the final taste we left in a client’s mouth. We began to ask ourselves:

Were our clients’ needs or requests listened to?

Were we creating arbitrary rules and conditions (typically based on a worst case scenario) to form our business policies?

Did we find ourselves saying “No” to clients, or nit-picking them with upcharges?

“We want to create the Perfect Album… but not for us, for them.”

The incredible power of the word “imagine”

The word ‘imagine’ is one of the most frequent and engaging that the Edmonsons use. Its purpose is not to “sell” to the client, but rather to “inspire” them to the perfect album choice.

“We take an inspirational approach with a bride. We capture her at the peak of her emotional state, where she has the clearest right-brain view to create a perfect album for her family. Our Imagination equation is really centered on three key questions…

1. How does she envision this story will be told?

2. Who does she envision embracing this album? We ask her to think about future generations of her family… Perhaps her little daughter on Daddy's lap, dreamily asking how Mom and Dad fell in love.

4. How can she best preserve the family’s legacy?

“We explain how most families don't have a book written about them. We ask her to imagine how she’d like to create an opportunity to tell a story to future generations about her family values, her love story, her parents, and the love stories of past generations.

“It’s about connecting one generation to the next, and we want to help her to do that.

“We send a questionnaire immediately, on the night of the wedding, and ask her to imagine some of those factors in her album display, using an intuitive online questionnaire process.”

The timing is ripe to determine what’s perfect for the bride on an emotional level. The Edmonsons catch her in her most vibrant, romantic state, unfettered by logic and un-poisoned by over-rationalization.

But curious, I ask, “—Really? On the night of my wedding? How can you harness this?”

Luke creates a little experiment for me. He tells me to close my eyes and picture myself on a vacation. “OK, can you see yourself? Where are you?”

“I’m on the beach in Bermuda.”

“What color is the sand? How does it feel?”

“It’s pink, and grainy and very warm.”

“How is the breeze?”

“It’s warm but very strong. It’s gusting through my hair.”

Luke says, “An hour from now, a day from now, even a week from now, I can ask you these same questions and the brain will recall the same answers, as if you truly experienced this. It’s the power of imagination, and you stay committed to your recall of these dreams. It works that way for a bride.”

Wide-eyed, I take a deep breath and return to my home state of New Jersey!

In 95% of cases, he says, the album purchase will remain consistent with the responses articulated through that questionnaire. “Because it’s the perfect album, the fulfilled commitment to her imagination.”

By merging these sensibilities, a top-of-the-line album becomes an inevitable choice for the majority of their clients.

Luke says, “We aren’t interested in engaging our client’s left-brain, analytical, transactional minds or leaving them with that memory of us. We want to engage with them on an emotional level, their right brain… their imagination.”

Only after the questionnaire is completed is the album price calculated.

Pricing in the context of “Yes”

The Edmonsons employ a no-pressure policy, offering the album sale before, during or after the viewing. “While it’s not included in our commission, it can be added by our client to their collection at any time.”

Offering both a “Base Album” and an “Elite Album” (the latter is a Queensberry), along with complimentary digital files for archiving purposes after the wedding, brides usually find the Elite album irresistible.

“We unified our pricing structure so that the process is ultimately about creating the perfect album for the client, not nit-picking about details and options. We want to price in a way that allows for whatever customization ‘feels right’ for them. We created the questionnaire to guide us in that process.

“We really admire the ‘Ritz-Carlton approach’, where the experience is customized and the answer is always YES. From album covers to page additions, digital files, limitless revisions… we want to give them what they want.”

What's her perfect album?

The Edmonsons' goal is to discover 'What’s her perfect album?' Is it horizontal, square or vertical? What suits her? Does she want a refined smaller display, or something huge and prominent? Does she want matted pages, digital flushmounts or the Duo album? Does she envision 30 pages or 60 or 120?

"We don’t over deliver on the initial album design, but we give the client what she wants based on her responses to the questionnaire. Thereafter, the client has the option to add images. add more sides or maintain her specs.

“This is where the imagination factor kicks in,” says Luke. The “upsell” is not a sales pitch, but rather a process of self-selecting options according to the client’s vision of the best storytelling device. In most cases, the higher-tier albums are chosen.

“While it’s true that 30% of brides may not buy an album from us, the strength of those 70% who buy top-tier albums is impressive. We know people have their reasons not to buy. They have notions of what they can or cannot afford. Life happens, that’s all okay with us.”

A Higher Visual I.Q.

“We like to say that our clients have a higher ‘Visual I.Q.’” said Luke, “When they see a Queensberry, it fits the prism of their imagination.

“We searched the market and did extensive research to create the highest perceived value,” he said. “The feel of the pages, the vellum overlay, the inherent value of professionally designed layouts… Queensberry really gave us the best way to tell and preserve the precious legacies of our clients.”

The Big Picture

Much like a signature Edmondson portrait, I commented that their approach seems to be “all about the big picture”.

“As photographers, we really have to shift the paradigm. We can’t decipher everything like a Chinese menu, basing our standards on strictly defined price points and add-on options, and not expect our clients to do the same. It’s much wiser to think about how you like to be sold to, and work from there…from an emotional standpoint,” he says.

Luke notes how our industry has changed dramatically, as wedding and portrait commissions are shrinking.

“Those who are selling twenty or more amazing albums a year are going to do really, really well. They are making themselves indispensible resources, as historical storytellers for the client. The others not selling albums, in my opinion, will not survive.”

“We need to think of ourselves as architects. We have an expertise and create value when we deliver their vision of their story, not simply ours,” Luke elaborated, “If they ask us for a ranch home and we give them a colonial, we aren’t fitting their vision. Give them a ranch with extra closets and top quality materials, we become invaluable talent and they’re thrilled.”

It’s the ower of imagination and ‘Yes’ that makes you indispensible.

And at the heart of it all…

“To us, an album is a not just a documentary of a wedding day. It’s an heirloom and a family legacy…

We like to think we’re not shooting for the past and the present…

We’re shooting for future audiences, the generations to come.

We want every grandchild, every great grandchild, to be able to look at an album … and see the story of their matriarch or patriarch…

“This is our fundamental vision, and our sales philosophy is simply a by-product of it. Our cameras give us an excuse to be invited into people’s lives and shape their legacies. That means everything.”

The Edmonsons … creating legacies, indeed.