THE INSPIRATION PLACE PODCAST
Miriam Schulman: I want to tell you about an art sale I lost about ten years ago. That I’m only starting to understand now. So I’m going to call her Cindy. Not her real name, obviously. I’ve kind of forgotten her real name, which also tells you how long ago this was. But I’ve never forgotten the sale. So she came to my open studio and she bought a painting 12 by 12in. She loved it. So she wasn’t a browser and not a maybe. She was definitely an art buyer. My work was already hanging in her home, and she told me she wanted something over her mantel. Now, if you’ve been listening to me for any length of time, you know what happens next. Because I teach this. When somebody is interested, offer to bring the art to their home, because home visits almost always close the sale. They just do. When I get invited into somebody’s living room with my art. That sale. It’s as good as done. So we set up a time. I loaded the car. I drove over, but I could not close her. I could not get that woman to make a decision. Not that day, not later. She never bought a thing for that mantle from me. And for ten years my explanation was something like this. Maybe I gave her too many choices. Maybe there’s too much pressure for it to be the perfect thing to go over the mantle. And that pressure shut her down. So maybe it’s a fine explanation. It’s probably even partially true, but it’s also completely wrong. And I want to tell you what actually happened.
Speaker 2: It’s The Inspiration Place podcast with artist Miriam Schulman. Welcome to the Inspiration Place podcast, an art World Insider podcast for artists by an artist, where each week we go behind the scenes to uncover the perspiration and inspiration behind the art. And now your host, Miriam Schulman.
Miriam Schulman: So here’s the thing that I want you to write down and take notes. Whether you close that sale is mostly determined before you even walk in the door. Not by your prices, not by your art technique or your sales technique, not by how charming you are in the conversation, by something that you can actually find out in about 30s, if you know to ask, here was what was actually going on. The detail that I skipped over there was already a painting over that mantle. The space wasn’t empty. It was occupied. Some kind of boat, ship, Sailboat type of thing. And knowing what I know now about that house and how couples work, I’m fairly sure that the boat was her husband’s. So I wasn’t selling into an empty wall. I was selling against an incumbent. And not just any incumbent one that belonged to a man who wasn’t in the room. So let’s talk about the single most useful distinction I can give you today. And I want you to start applying it to every conversation you have from now on. Is this a vacancy or a replacement? A vacancy is an empty wall. There’s a hole. The problem already exists and it bothers them a little bit every time they walk past it. You’re not creating desire, you’re relieving discomfort. So those sales are much easier to close and they feel like the client is easy. They’re not easy, but they’re ready. Of replacement means something is already hanging there.
Miriam Schulman: It’s fine. It’s been fine for years. Nobody’s uncomfortable. And for you to win, your painting doesn’t just have to be loved. It has to be loved enough to justify taking something down. Patching a wall and having a conversation with whoever put that other thing up there. And I was treating a replacement like a vacancy. I brought a car full of paintings for a wall that wasn’t empty. So tell me, think about the last three OMA sales. What happened? I bet you money that the ones that stalled or fell through the cracks was because the walls were already full. But I want to go one level deeper because it was a replacement. Still lets me off the hook and I don’t want to be let off the hook here. Honestly, I think you also are going to be so much more successful in your business. If you always look and take accountability for the things that you have control over, because if you say things like it’s the economy, it’s this, it’s that those aren’t things you can control. And when you take accountability and you find things that you can control, that’s when you make more sales. So the mistake that I made that I absolutely had control over was agreeing to the home visit with only her, with only one decision maker present. I drove over there in the middle of the day because that was most convenient for me and her, and spent an afternoon with a woman who was going to have to go home.
Miriam Schulman: Well, she was already home. Who was going to have to turn to her husband and say, oh, honey, I want to take down your boat. And that was never going to happen. No amount of charm, decisiveness. Rightsizing the piece with painter’s tape was going to get me between a married couple and a painting one of them liked. Now, here’s the part that stings. I had already solved this problem years earlier in a different part of my art business. In my portrait commission work, I had an absolute rule. After I do the photo shoot, the next stage of doing the portraits was having whoever commissioned me to choose the photo that we’re going to use. So after the photo shoot, what I always did. I went through the images. I threw out the ones that I absolutely didn’t want to paint. And then so I narrow it down. And I also picked out the three that I thought were the strongest. And then I kept the backups just in case they didn’t like those. But I presented those three to both of them together. That’s where the decision got made. That’s usually when I collected the second check. Now, the only exceptions to that rule was if it was a gift for the other person, or maybe if one of them had explicitly said, I don’t care, you handle it. So I enforced that rule for years, religiously.
Miriam Schulman: But I walked into Cindy’s living room alone because in my head, it wasn’t a portrait commission. It was a home visit to show some paintings. Same exact failure. And yes, by the way, I did arrive at that rule of having both parents there to choose the photo, because learning the hard way that if I only had one person can’t come and she had to bring the photos home, weeks would go by and the portrait would never advance. And yes, I’ve updated my process since the pandemic and everything like you could. We use Zoom now. You don’t have to have it physically, have both people in the room, but both people are there deciding. So Zoom room or in-person room doesn’t matter. So here’s what your homework is. I want you to hear this because I promise it’s true for you as well. You probably have a work that works beautifully in one part of your art business that you’ve never carried over to the other part. So go find it. That’s your homework before the fancy stuff. Now, let me tell you about a different sale that went right, because the contrast is the whole lesson. Now, this collector I can name because she’s given me a public testimonial. Her name’s Anita, and my husband and I got invited to Anita’s home for a barbecue, not a sales call, a barbecue. And her house was beautifully done. Beautiful matching, coordinated throughout the whole thing. Very put together, except the wall over the sofa was empty and the dining room didn’t have anything significant in it either.
Miriam Schulman: And I didn’t really notice very much original art. So I mentioned it kind of casually. But here’s the part I want you to circle. I mentioned it to the husband, and what I said specifically was, I can help you with that, not because I was being strategic, but that’s what I did. And that thing is why this story ended the way it did. So the assignment was the living room, that empty wall. However, I sold them two paintings because empty walls are contagious. Once somebody noticed one bare wall, they can start seeing all of them. That’s what a vacancy does for you. It does half your selling before you open your mouth. And I had both of them there the entire time. Let’s chat about wine for a second, because it’ll make the next part make a lot more sense. There’s a shop up in Jeffersonville, New York. It’s a tiny town in the Catskills. It’s actually where my husband grew up. And there is a little shop called Terra, and it’s mostly a plant store. It was actually there for a few years before I finally walked inside of it. They sell more than just plants. Beautifully curated things. Fabric napkins, beautiful potholders scented soaps from France, and wine. Yeah, and they run wine tastings with a credentialed sommelier who has a French accent. So you take him very seriously.
Miriam Schulman: And my husband sent me in there for a bottle of red wine, and he just gave me these instructions. Get me a dry bottle of wine, about $30. So I went in. I said, I want a dry bottle of red. About this price. That’s it. That’s all the information. I gave him those two facts. And then he asked me, did I want something full bodied? Well, I have no idea what that means. None. I’m basically standing in a plant shop being asked about body, and I’ve got nothing. So let me tell you what he did. He didn’t explain. He didn’t educate me. He didn’t make me feel like an idiot for not knowing. He switched to a question I could answer. He says, well, does he like Cabernet? Oh yeah. My husband loves Cabernet Don and the label on the bottle is beautiful too. That doesn’t hurt when you’re an artist. So I bought it 35 bucks. No hesitation, no second guessing. Walked out happy. But here’s what he actually did. He narrowed 40 bottles down to one and then handed me one. That’s a sommelier, not somebody who bosses you around, somebody who does the narrowing on your behalf because that’s what you came in for. Nobody in the history of restaurants has ever been offended that the sommelier has an opinion, but let me show you a different version. A few weeks ago, I got on a 15 minute Zoom call with somebody who had been recommended to me for an AI solution, and he spent the entire call mansplaining to me about the thing.
Miriam Schulman: He already knew how to build an email database, not the thing I came in for, the thing he was very comfortable with. And so I ended the call before he ever told me the price. Part of that was the mansplaining, but whatever. Okay, I want you to sit with that because that’s exactly what we do as artists. Sometimes somebody asks about our work, but we start explaining our process, the medium, the technique, why we use this particular paper, because that’s the part where the most comfortable talking about. Meanwhile, they’re standing there trying to figure out whether this will go over their sofa and what their husband would think if they took down the boat painting that she hates, but he loves, or whatever conversation they’re having in their head. So instead of selling the solution, you know how to solve, you have to find out what they came in for because that whole conversation will cost you the sale before price even comes up. Now I want to hear from you. What’s the question people ask you about your work that you have trouble answering? Because maybe I can do a whole episode about those questions. Share them with me. The three questions. So if you’re not going to lecture them about your medium, what do you actually say? I’m going to give it to you as three questions and that’s it.
Miriam Schulman: And none of them are about art. Them, you know, where is this going? What colors are in the room? What size are you thinking? Those are your three questions. That’s your narrowing. That’s everything. And notice these are all questions that a muggle meaning a non-artist can answer. Nobody has to know anything about art to tell you their living room is brown. Compare that to what draws you to this piece, which is a question that can make people uncomfortable because they don’t really have the vocabulary. And rather than admit that, they might say, it’s beautiful, I’ll think about it and then they walk away. So ask the questions that they can answer with Anita. I knew the answers before I loaded the car. Mauve wine, white in the living room. The dining room, which was. It was an open floor plan to. The dining room, which was like a chartreuse green was right next to it. I had a painting already I knew would fit perfectly. And she didn’t buy that one. She wanted a custom size empty wall over the sofa, which meant I could show up with a point of view instead of a catalog. Now, here’s the tactical part of this episode. If you want to take one thing and use it this weekend, make it this. When you do a home visit, this is what you’re going to bring. And I’m assuming that you do 2D artwork, but obviously if you do 3D artwork, something similar could work as well.
Miriam Schulman: Bring all the art you have, bring blank canvases if you’re a painter and bring painter’s tape, blank canvases and painter tape. Yep. Because here’s what happens. I brought Anita a finished peacock painting, a huge one. I was really hoping to sell that one. She loved it, but it wasn’t the right size. And instead of that being the end of the conversation, I taped out the dimensions on her wall so they could see what the right size was. And we stood there and looked at it. And that sale became a custom piece at a size that fit perfectly over her sofa. That’s the difference between she liked it, but it wasn’t quite right. And a sale and living room. Same thing. The piece I brought was a 24 by 30 inch rectangle. I don’t remember, but I want to say the piece we ended up with was three by three feet. Now my incubator and Inner circle clients, they closed this way on the regular. They bring pieces over so the clients can see it on their wall and they buy it, or they bring over a blank canvas and they get a commission. One of my clients just emailed me today. She got a $4,000 commission for a 24 by 36 inch painting because she used this sales technique. When they can see it on their wall, they buy it not because the artists are a better talker, because they have trouble visualizing it.
Miriam Schulman: And the biggest obstacle standing in the way between you and the sale is the fear the customer has, that it’s going to be a mistake. So you don’t just hand wave about a bigger piece, you hang up a bigger canvas, you tape out what that would look like, or you bring over the actual painting that they’re interested in so they can see how it looks like in their room, because the real objection most people have is, I’m not sure if it goes. I can’t picture it. Will it clash with what’s already there? If you’re in a booth and you can’t get to their home physically, you can offer to take it back. So yes, you take the money and you tell them, take it home, live with it, and if it doesn’t work out, I’ll pick it up tomorrow and I’ll refund you. That’s by the way, the puppy dog close, you know. Take the puppy dog home, and if you don’t like the puppy dog, you can bring it back. Nobody ever returned a puppy dog. One more thing. And it’s small, but it matters. It’s easier to close these sales at night because that’s when all the decision makers are there. Now, most of you are not getting invited into anyone’s living room this weekend, or standing in your ten by ten foot booth at an outdoor show, and the person in front of you loves the peace. But Not the decision maker might be nowhere in sight.
Miriam Schulman: So here’s the booth version of both people in the room. Put him in the room. I did an outdoor show years ago. I don’t even live in that town anymore. And I can’t even remember her name. Although actually, I think I do remember her name. Okay, so she she knew me from town. She fell in love with the painting, loved it, wanted it. And then came the sentence you’ve all heard. I’m not sure if my husband will like it. Now, that’s not a rejection you think it is? It’s not. That’s her telling you exactly what the obstacle is. Now, many artists hear that and say, well, think about it. And you had a business card? No, that’s kissing that sale. Goodbye. So I told her, take a picture and text it to him right now. And then I did the part that actually mattered. I coached her on what to text because how she wrote it was going to determine whether or not he bought it or not. So I gave her one specific piece of advice. I said, when you tell him the price, don’t use the dollar sign. Just write the number. So not dollar 600 dot, just 600. Period. Here’s why. And it’s got nothing to do with tricking anybody. The dollar sign makes it feel transactional. The second that symbol shows up in the text, her husband is no longer looking at a painting his wife loves.
Miriam Schulman: He’s looking at a bill. The question in his head changes from does she want this? I want my wife to be happy to. What is this costing us? When you take the symbol away, The question stays where it belongs. Do you really want this? No. I wrote about this research in my book, Artpreneur, but it’s definitely worth citing here. Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration ran a study with the Culinary Institute of America. 200 plus lunch parties, three versions of the same menu, and prices with a dollar sign prices spelled out in words and prices as just a bare numeral. The numeral only menu produced about 8% more spending per person. Now, I know this is one study, but I’ve noticed that in high end restaurants, they usually never have the currency symbol on the menu because they’re trying to keep your experience focused on the food, not on the transactional nature of it. So yes, we close that sale from the booth with a husband who wasn’t there and a different year, but actually same same art show. A woman photographed a piece and sent it to her interior decorator, who was another peacock, actually. So same mechanism. The person who had to say yes wasn’t there. So we brought her in. When somebody says, I have to check with dot, dot, dot spouse, decorator, business partner, don’t let them leave to go do it. That’s the moment your sale walks out the door and dies in the parking lot.
Miriam Schulman: Get the phone out. Get the picture sent. And if you need to help them, write the text. All right, give me a thumbs up. If you’ve ever driven home from an art fair. Thinking they loved it. But what happened? Hit that thumbs up. Just so that I know. Now I can hear some of you thinking. Miriam, I paint abstracts, I paint landscapes. I’m never going to customize anything for anybody. Fine. I hear you. But this still works. It’s just a little harder. And I want to be straight with you about why. If you’re only selling finished inventory, you’ve lost your most flexible variable. You can’t fix size. You can’t shift the palette. So what’s in your car is what’s available. And if none of it is quite right for the wall, you’re done. Now. You could still absolutely do it. Bring more than you think you need. Bring the tape anyway. Even for a finished piece, taping the dimensions helps them see it without putting a hole in the wall. Take it back if it doesn’t work, but understand you’re limiting the customers you serve. There are people who buy only if they see the thing finished and they pick from what’s finished, they want to know exactly what they’re getting. And commissions actually scare these people. They’re afraid it won’t come out the way they imagined. And honestly, it’s a reasonable fear. But there’s also people who want something made just for them. Bespoke.
Miriam Schulman: There’s nobody else’s. Those are two different buyers. Some people do it both ways, but if you don’t do commissions, you’re giving up those people. If you try to sell only a finished painting to somebody who wants something that’s all their own, that’s exactly the right thing. You’re going to lose a lot of sales and you might be blaming the wrong thing. And I just want to cycle back to and we’ll link to it in the show notes episode I did a few weeks ago, about $110,000 of art that’s sold in the month of June. And what the data showed was the average sales price for commissions was double what it was for. Not so. People were making a lot more money. Who offered commissions than those who didn’t? Okay, let me cycle back to Anita because there’s a piece of the story I love. Commissions don’t mean that they are directing every single thing you do with your artwork in the dining room. I knew that a tree collage would look good, and it was nice to have the contrast of a peacock in one room and a tree collage in the other, and usually I was building those tree collages out of piano music because the piano music from far away looked like Bach. But the husband told me that music wasn’t his thing. Funny, right? Okay. But that was his request. So here’s what I did. I knew the couple was Jewish and that they were hosting Passover Seders in that dining room.
Miriam Schulman: That was the room’s purpose to host the family. So I built the collage out of aggadah pages. If you don’t know what that is. Aggadah is the book that we use during Passover to tell the story. Now, this was entirely my idea. Nobody asked for it and I didn’t tell them I was doing it. I didn’t ask for their permission. I just did it. And they saw it when it was finished. And I asked them, hey, see if you can figure out what I made the collage with. That will be fun for you. Now, some of you might have gotten a little nervous by this story. Isn’t that presumptuous? Aren’t you supposed to give the client what they ask for? But here’s the line and you can write this down. Decisiveness without information is just a guess. Decisiveness with information is expertise. Think about the sommelier. He didn’t hand me a bottle at random. He asked me what I wanted first. So he earned the right to be decisive in about 11 seconds, and then he used it. I didn’t invent the Haggadah out of thin air. I knew the room. I knew the religious practices of this family. I knew what they were doing in that space. I knew what mattered and what was important to them. And I also knew what the husband didn’t want. You don’t have to ask permission to have taste. You don’t have to ask permission to do things in your style, but you do just gather enough information to be right.
Miriam Schulman: So then you’re right. And that’s the actual answer to Cindy, by the way. Not I should have been more decisive. I couldn’t have been more decisive because I didn’t have the right information. I didn’t know whose boat that was, or that there was a boat at all worth worrying about until I was in her living room and thought. Or that the decision maker was going to be a problem. So decisiveness is not a personality trait you turn on. It’s what happens and what becomes available to you once you’ve asked the right questions. What you’re actually selling. I want to end with what happened to Anita after the sale, because I think about this all the time. The living room piece was a peacock, and the peacock was my idea, and it was something I was doing a lot of peacocks of, and that’s one of the reasons I proposed it. I knew the peacock was a wonderful way to be sort of abstract and representational and pull the colors together, because I didn’t do realistic peacocks. I used the colors of the room. That’s what the peacock became. But here’s what I didn’t expect. For years afterward, her friends gave her peacock gifts peacock things, peacock cocktail napkins, peacock coasters. Peacock became her symbol, her icon, a shorthand for who she was to everyone who knew her. For everyone in her book group, to everyone who came to her living room.
Miriam Schulman: So I didn’t sell that woman a decorated wall. I sold her an identity. And it stuck for years. That’s what’s on the table. Every time somebody stands in front of your artwork and says it’s beautiful and walks away, a version of themselves they didn’t get to have because nobody in the room knew how to help them decide. Here is your assignment. And it’s just three things. One. Before anything else, find out if you are looking at a vacancy or a replacement. Two. Make sure that if you’re doing a home visit, all decision makers are present and three is. Ask those three specific questions. Where is it going? What’s the color scheme and what size are we looking at? Then you can narrow things down for them and make a curated suggestion. Okay? If you want the whole system, how to sell your art without chasing, without driving home from another show, wondering what went wrong. I’ve got a free on demand masterclass waiting for you right now. Just go to SchulmanArt.com/sellmoreart. More art. That’s it. SchulmanArt.com/sellmoreart. Go watch it and then come back and tell me what changed for you. And let’s end here. Stop selling them the solution you know how to handle. And ask them what’s on the wall. All right, my friend, I’ll see you the same place same time next week. Until then, it’s Miriam Schulman signing off. Stay inspired. Bye for now.
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to the Inspiration Place podcast. Connect with us on facebook at facebook.com/SchulmanArt, on Instagram at @SchulmanArt, and of course on SchulmanArt.Com.
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