A few years ago, someone held up their iPhone while we were talking about some of the then new cameras on the market. “Why should I spend all this money on a DLSR that needs all this stuff and lenses and software and all this crap when I can just use my cellphone?” they asked me. This wasn’t the first time I had been asked this but this was the first time I rethought my answer. “So should you?” I asked. They stopped and I could see the thought wheels turning behind their eyes. “No, I guess I don’t really need a DSLR.”

A tiger’s success rate for killing its prey is 10 percent. TEN PERCENT. Lions have about a 25% success rate. Yet we idolize these kings of jungles and of forests as ferocious hunters with untamed glory. Trying to sell someone a camera has about the same success rate but yet we idolize trying to make someone walk out with something just to make the day’s numbers look better. As the great thought leader Yoda has said- there is no try. Back when I was selling cameras it took me only a literal month on the sales floor to realize that trying was pointless.

“A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them." -Steve Jobs

No one needs a camera, but everyone needs a purpose. Trying to convince someone that they need something is effort wasted. Why? Because you can never satisfy a need, but you can satisfy a desire. The person wanting a camera doesn’t realize that what they are looking for and what they hoping to get from it are two entirely different things. Social media, Amazon, holiday markdowns are already trying to convince everyone to need everything… and they’re doing a good job of doing just that. When you’re one on one talking to someone about gear, the last thing they should get from you is a bunch more of what they’ve already endured. My first question to anyone who asks me about a camera they’re looking at is “so what are you trying to create, what are you trying to do with the tech you want to get?”

Everyone needs a purpose, an answer to their why. You understand cameras, you know the gear. Discovering who the person is and what their desires are; what they are hoping to accomplish is the first date in what can be a long relationship. Theres a stark difference in convincing someone to part with a large sum of money versus giving them a vision for investment: letting them see what could be if they had the right tools/information/knowledge/equipment. Almost a decade after selling a good friend a camera that we spent hours talking over, I still receive texts and calls from them about advice and thoughts on new purchases. They don’t even own that camera anymore but they still trust my input because I gave them a vision, a purpose for the why.

One sale that I will never forget is a lady who had called my store and asked for a Canon 5D mkIII with 24-105 lens to be put on hold. When she came in to pick it up the first question I asked while starting to check her out was “what are you going to be using this for?”. No lie she started telling me the whole story that led to this purchase. How she had been saving up her money for about 6 years for when she retired and would be watching her grandkids. How she wanted to take the camera to find birds and take action shots of the grandkids and of her dog running around in the backyard. How she would be parting with money that meant hundreds of hours of work to save up. I looked at her and told her I couldn’t sell her the camera. She went pale.”Is it my card? I know the money is there!” I reassured her it wasn’t the card. I asked her to give me five minutes to show her something. I went to the display shelves with her and handed her the 5D/24-105 combo and took her outside. I pointed to a bird on a sign about 100 yards away, zoomed in to 105 and asked her to look through the viewfinder. The first two things out of her mouth: “where is the bird?” and “this is going to take some learning to get used to”. I went back to the display case. I picked up a Canon 7D mkII and Tamron 150-600. We went back out and found the bird. She took one look through the viewfinder and started dancing up and down “thats it! thats what I needed!”. She looked at the camera and lens- clearly a much larger combo - and said something about how it would be so much more expensive to do this. And then I looked at her and said “what if I told you this combo that’s going to help you chase birds is half the price of the combo you were about to buy?”. The moment of quiet after that was intense. It turned out that she had spent hours on forums and internet sites and they had all told her to get the Canon 5D mkIII but she never knew why. No one had told her about the 7D mkII with all the action features and crop frame that turned a 150-600 lens into a telescope that could see for miles. We went back to the counter, she told me she never wanted to see the 5D again and we proceeded to get her new combo all set up. We added cards, straps, another two lenses, a camera bag and tripod and all the things that would help her get the pictures she wanted including a few classes to attend at the store and my promise that I would introduce her to the birding photographers at the Canon users group we had. And thats when I found out she had saved a total of 10 thousand dollars for camera gear and even after getting her everything we could possibly add on, she was only spending 6 grand. I remember the look on her face when she realized she had enough left over to go on a cruise she had been dreaming of. She had thought that she would need all 10k just to have a camera and lens. Everytime she was in the store from then on she would tell everyone who walked in “talk to this guy! he helped me get the best pictures of my grandkids.”

Stop trying to sell, start purposely showing.

-JC