Fine Art Doll Gallery

Trade Secrets

Dollmaking Tips to and from Dollmakers

» Marketing

Selling has become a concentrated study for Joe and me for a long time and in the past two years we think we are learning. Several years ago I was juried into the Artist's Guild of the San Diego Museum of Art (the first and only fiber artist) and then recently nominated to the Board of Directors. These two things have put me in closer contact with sellers and buyers of art. The puzzle for Joe and me was, "How do you approach a customer and ask for the sale, etc? Just what about my work creates the 'sizzle'?"

We found two wonderful books we used as our starting point and although they are expensive, we feel they are worth their weight in gold. One book is called The Art of Selling Art and the second book is called The Art of Creating Collectors. Both are by Zella Jackson and can be purchased on line at Barnes & Noble or Amazon. They are taken from her seminars on selling.

Armed with the information from the first book, I prepared lists of features and benefits of buying my work. I developed pages of "sizzle." It was very helpful in putting into my head and on my tongue some ways to handle the discussions of my work. These are two very important components of selling your work. Fact: I use only the best and most expensive materials. Benefit: This is a work of art that will be long lasting and of increasing value.

The two pieces of information most valuable to us were qualifying the buyer and asking for the sale. The first thing after greeting someone can be a qualifying question such as, "Do you collect art?" Another qualifying question can be "What type of art do you collect?" The question I used to most advantage was, "Do you make art or collect it?" And of course, asking for the sale is easy, right? "What do you need to take this home with you now?" or "Are you interested in acquiring this piece?"

We were juried into the American Craft Council Show in San Francisco last year. For five days we practiced these principles in our booth. The booth was packed everyday with people who smiled and chatted and generally responded positively to my work. And at the end of five days, we had collected names of a small list of potential collectors. More importantly for the first time, we knew specific information about the crowd who had attended the show.

We tried to speak to each person who came into the booth and between Joe and me, we mostly did. And we discovered that the crowd consisted of several groups. One group was people who had just downsized their living quarters or moved into retirement homes. They were getting rid of their possessions. (We found out that retirement homes had bussed in people for the day.)

The second group was women about to retire who now wanted to do something like I was doing and wanted information on how I got into making dolls. They weren't buyers either.

The third group was women who made dolls or quilts and were looking for ideas and suggestions and networking about what are the good shows to do, etc.

The fourth group was art collectors. Out of this group, we qualified people who we then asked to sign a guest book. We used the techniques from the first book. As a result, we decided that the ACC Show didn't draw our type of buyer. It became very clear that lack of sales was not due to prices or my work. This is a great bit of information to take home from a show.

When we got home, we followed through using the information from the second book. We established a communication with our guest list, which eventually lead to qualified collectors and sales. (We had already determined the profile of our collectors from previous sales and used this information as well in our marketing.)

Recently I was juried into an Open Studios event to be held this month in San Diego. People purchase a catalog at a Barnes & Noble store, which shows a picture of each artist's work, a map to their studio and a description of what they'll see.

Since we may invite our own guests to the show as well, we applied the principles from the second book and qualified our guests before sending them an expensive full color invitation with pictures of the work. We also extended a special offer to invited guests only. In this way, we are spending our money on our customers.

We did Open Studios one other time and sent out 500 picture postcards with all the information crammed into one half of the back. Only a handful of those who received the postcard showed up. We have learned that besides benefits and sizzle, qualifying is an important money saving piece of selling.

We are still learning and are getting better at it all the time. Now we are spending more time in targeting our customers and cultivating a relationship with them.

Lots of love, Jane

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