Ask the agent
How do I get agents to value quality over the cheapest option?
You cannot make her care about quality, because she is not comparing photos. She is comparing how much thinking each of you costs her on a Tuesday. Keep selling better photos to agents who cannot see the difference, and the cheaper guy keeps booking while you keep editing.
She can’t see quality. She can see friction.
On a phone between showings, your edit and the $125 guy’s look close enough. That is not an insult to your work. It is a four-inch screen in a parking lot.
Keep selling better photos to agents who cannot see the difference and the cheaper guy keeps booking while you keep editing. You are competing on the one thing she is not measuring.
What she can see is how hard you are to book. A bare rate hands her six questions: how many photos, how fast, drone, video, twilight, what’s extra. Six texts before she can say yes.
She is buying one less thing to think about on a Tuesday. Whoever costs her the least thinking wins, and right now that is him.
Three packages on one page
Give her something she can compare in nine seconds. It is not a better portfolio. It is a page.
$390, $999, $1,499, each written as what she gets, not what you do. Every line answers the six questions before she has to text you. Photo count, turnaround, drone, video, twilight, all sitting there.
That is the nine-second comparison. His text says $125 and raises six questions. Your page says three things and answers all six. She is not comparing photos anymore. She is comparing a text to a page.
Don’t upsell from it. Ask one question instead: "Have you thought about social as a way to generate leads?" That opens the top package without you pushing anything.
A low price reads as risk
To the agents worth having, cheap is the scary option. An experienced agent does not read a low price as a deal.
She reads it as: will he show up, will it be late, will my seller see the photos before I do. Every cheap photographer she has used has cost her one of those.
I hired photographers for ten years as an agent and never picked the cheapest. I picked whoever’s email I could forward to my seller unedited.
That is the tell for the agents you actually want. The $125 guy wins the agents who list twice a year. The agents who list every month have been burned by cheap, and they read your price as a promise. Price like the photographer she would put in front of her seller. Better photos win once booking you is the easy part.
Have you thought about social as a way to generate leads?
Agents pay for less to think about. Better photos win once booking you is the easy part.
This week: rewrite your quote as three packages on one page and send it to the next agent who asks for a rate.
The three-package sheet I send agents
Put your numbers in it before your next booking. Free. Then take the sixty-second roadmap quiz and I tell you what to fix first.
Get the sheetGet my roadmapStraight answers
- Why do real estate agents choose cheaper photographers?
- Because on a phone between showings your photos and his look close enough, and he was easier to book. She is buying less to think about, not better pixels.
- How do I get agents to notice the difference in photo quality?
- You mostly can’t, not on a four-inch screen. Give her less friction instead: three packages on one page that answer every question before she texts.
- Does a low price make real estate agents trust you less?
- With experienced agents, yes. A low price reads as risk: will he show up, will it be late, will my seller see it first. Price like the photographer she would put in front of her seller.
Related questions
Julian Lundgren sold real estate for ten years before he shot a listing for money. He runs Cineminn, a Minneapolis real estate photography studio, and writes these answers from the agent’s side of the table. Send a question to info@cineminn.com.