The Nuts and Bolts of a Well Run Art Sale

In this episode of Art Business Mornings, Patrick and Nick discuss the essential elements of running a successful art sale. From the importance of having an initial audience to the necessity of repeated marketing efforts, they cover the concepts of attention, incentive, and scarcity. They emphasize the continuous need for marketing and the significance of preparing for Q4, the most crucial sales period of the year. Practical advice on leveraging email lists, social media, and consistent marketing to build, maintain, and capitalize on attention is provided, along with an invitation to join Art Storefronts' special Q4 early bird sale and upcoming art business workshop.

Podcast Transcribe

Patrick Shanahan: Coming up on today's edition of the Art Business Warnings. Uh, we're talking about the nuts and bolts of a well run art show. Let's talk about sales in broad terms, the why, as well as a precursor to the tactical. All right. Audio sound effects are kicking. Oh, you got your coffee? Cheers.

The introductory step. So listen, the inspiration for this one came from. A few different places, right? And really it all started. You weren't on the office hours on Tuesday, but we had office hours on Tuesday and we've got this new customer that came on board and she's Indian. Her name is Savitri. So shout out to Savitri and typical chicken and the egg problem early on.

Right? So audience a hundred percent made up of friends and family. Right. That's it. Chicken and egg. No social following. No, none of the rest of it. So in, in, in that spot. And we have this marketing initiative, the first marketing initiative that we always tell people to do, like when they launch and they go to the site and she was asking some intelligent questions about it.

But because literally she was starting with just family and friends, there wasn't a lot of traction early on. That's how it goes. Right. And she's like, I think I've run this thing to its, to its extent, you know, to, to its, to its final, can I just move on and get going on with the other stuff? And I was like, yeah, you can.

But then, yeah. I had to jump in and encourage her and explain to her, like, all of these marketing initiatives that we're having you do are really, really hard to do. Okay, they're really, really hard if it's your first time doing it. If you've never done an initiative like this, they need practice. If I was to say to you, Nick, I'm, I want you to get really good, okay, at learning how to grill a steak.

How many steaks would you say you need to grill in the backyard until you feel like you are pretty good? It's more than five. A lot. A lot. For sure. It's a lot. So I, I, I thought about that. Right. And, uh, what do we know? Obviously Q4 is coming. Uh, uh, what is something we normally do in Q4? We have a sale. Why?

Why? Hardest thing to do, try to get humans to take action. So I wanted to talk. broadly, you know, as, as we take this thing down the line and as we keep going, we're going to get more and more and more into Q4, we're going to bang the drum more and more and more and more. And it's important to have fundamentals to go back and point to.

So I wanted to talk, you know, to a certain extent about the nuts and the bolts of a well run art sale and kind of break down the parts that are in it. And then we can offer some color commentary on each. Big picture with the sale hardest thing to do. Get us humans to actually take action. Right? So a sale fundamentally is about two things.

Uh, incentive. Okay. And scarcity incentive and scarcity. The incentive. Okay, is the deal, whatever it might be, whatever you're offering. And it's an incentive to take action to buy something right? And we can get into the nuts and bolts of all the rest of it. But the most important thing is that you have incentive and then scarcity.

What is scarcity? Okay. The thing ends, okay? It's on a finite timeline, meaning it expires in 48 hours. It's a flash sale. It expires in 24 hours. Or, you know, it's your, it's your Black Friday, Cyber Monday sale. Well, expires at the end of Black Friday, the end of Cyber Monday. And you have those two things.

You have the requisite, uh, uh, fundamentals, building blocks, if you will, of, of a sale. And boy, can we underestimate either of the two? The deal is important, but what's the most important of the two? In your mind, scarcity, scarcity is everything. The scarcity is absolutely everything. And I also think back, I also think back to we have this gal and I'm not going to use her name because quite frankly, I can't remember her name.

I'm not that good with names, but she wanted to change some of the language on the lead capture form about the deal. And take the scarcity away. She's like, and, and, and God bless her. It's just, she was like, nice. She's like, they just came to my site and they just signed up. These people are so nice. I love them.

I don't want to take the deal away in 48 hours or whatever the scarcity was. And I, you know, I had to break it down and do not ever under any circumstances underestimate the importance of scarcity. Okay, it is everything. It has the ability. It is like the water that like over a period of like 10 million years cut the Yosemite Valley, right?

It's like, it's that powerful. Like, do not do not mess with mess with the scarcity piece. So they're very important. So big picture, though, without going into like exact discounts and bogos and flash sales and everything else. Those are the two things you need to say. Okay, we're talking about incentives and scarcity at a high level.

Very important. The next piece I want to get into Is the tension. Okay. Um, stated another way, if a tree falls down in the middle of the woods and no one's there to hear it, does it make a sound? Does it make a sound? Do you think the falls down in the middle? It doesn't. It doesn't make a sound. Let's tweak that to sales.

If the sale goes down and nobody sees it, is anything sold? No, no, nothing. So in order for a sale to work, you need to have attention. Okay. We bang the drum about attention all day long. It's the currency of the land. What if this is your first time tuning in? You just tuned in today for the first time.

What is attention? Okay. Attention is eyeballs. It comes in the form of email addresses, traffic to your website, people on your snail mail list, people you're sending text messages to people that follow you on the socials, the audiences that are in your facebook account, anywhere in which you actively market, you actively get your art and photography out there.

That is attention. Okay? And it comes in two kinds, rented and owned the rented. It can be taken away at any time. I. E. You're following on the socials. The owned is really just the phone numbers, the mailing addresses that in the And the phone numbers, like if you text message the email addresses and the snail mail addresses, because those are the only things that you own.

It can't be taken away, right? You could say to a certain extent your web traffic, but even that can be taken away through through this, that and the other. So that's attention. Okay, so under the guise of attention, there are three aspects, okay, to three layers, if you will, towards running a sale and having one work, right?

And, and I say this again, big picture. We want to get into the tactical, but if you don't start high level with the three most important things, then you're in a tough spot. So let's talk about layer one. How effective your sale is. Okay. How much you sell depends on large part how much attention you have.

Okay. Yes, Thank you, Captain Obvious, but why we teach people pretty much all year long lead generation is because without a lead list and without the attention, uh, you're not going to have an effective sale. Those are just the rules. That's the first layer. This is your sort of your favorite topic. I feel like you got to chime in on something,

Nick Friend: but I mean, you're on a roll.

You're on a roll. So I'm staying out of the way for a second there. Great job on that, by the way. But yeah, of course, like, first of all, expectations, right? If you don't have a big following, you're expecting, you better have low expectations for when you're, you know, when you're asking people to close, right?

Because essentially. You know, a, a, an art sale, you guys, like, cause a lot of people, they debate, like, should I ever discount my art? Should I have an art sale? Let me explain this very, very clearly. You guys, everyone, right. A sale in any business and art sale included, right. But sales in any business are a closing tactic.

That's what they are. They are a closing tactic. Okay. So when. You know, Lexus does their December to remember sale and, uh, you know, the mattress company does their, their, their sales. Just realize those are closing tactics that they're using against you. Right. And I'll tell you why they work. They work.

Okay. Now, why do they work? Because think about your own black Friday habits, right? I mean, look at, look at the, look at the nation on black Friday, literally stampeding each other to get into stores for the sales. Right. And so the whole point is, The whole point is the reason it works as a closing tactic is because you get people who you have the attention of, right?

Who have been following you for some time or whatever, right? They may or may not even need art. They, you know, they, they, they may have an open wall space and they're ready to go, right? Or they may think they're going to have one in the future. But the deal is what gets them to go. I just got to do this. I know I'm buying this piece.

I've thought about it already. I just didn't need it yet. But I knew that when I was going to buy something, I was going to buy that one or something from you, the artist or photographer, right? And the, and the closing tactic. With the incentive and the scarcity gets them to take action. This is not, does this work?

This is not questionable of whether it works. It works 100 percent. Period. It always works, right? If you run it the right way with an incentive and with scarcity, and you also have the right mindset on it, if you're under the impression that like you're devaluing your work, I need to have a whole nother discussion with you.

An entirely different discussion with you because you're playing the game the complete wrong way, by the way, anyone who actually tells you not to discount and you're devaluing your work, like, like you really need to check who that person is and how much, how much sales they're having a year, like they're making a year.

Right. But going back, I won't tangent that. That's a whole nother art business morning topic that we will get into that deserves its own session for sure. But back to the attention. You got to have the attention, right? And you've got to be building attention all year long. Yep. Exactly. It's the number one metric of every art business, right?

Like it's, you're only going to close as well as you have acquired leads, right? And leads are, you know, emails and all that, all that stuff that you must be acquiring and you must be focusing on.

Patrick Shanahan: I wish that was it. I wish that was the only layer because then our lives would be much simpler. This is the one that infuriates me.

I, this one infuriates me. Okay. Equal measure. I love it. I love it because it's where I live. It's, it's where my creativity comes out, but how effective your art sale is. Okay. Does it depend on the attention you have? Absolutely. It does, but wait for it. It also depends on how effective you are at getting the attention that you You already have infuriating that one.

So Patrick, what you're telling me. Is that after I go and catch the fish, I have to catch the damn fish again. And sadly, that's the truth, right? It's almost like, I was thinking about this, like, what's the easiest way to explain this? It's almost like you're going to go out and catch this fish in a big ocean.

Okay. And you're going to pull it out of the water and bring it in, come home. And then you're going to put it in like your little backyard ocean. Okay. Well, you still have to catch the fish out of there. I E you have to get the attention of the attention that you do own. Okay. Okay. And where this, where this plays out is if you're going to have a sale, you need to understand how to effectively run a sale.

Okay. All the mechanics, all the tactical of how that works. If you think you're going to have a sale and you're just going to send an email that ain't going to get it done. That ain't going to get it done because you know, they're low. You've got the one email you have to understand omni channel marketing.

We're going to get into omni channel marketing more. I've covered it a bunch. You have to, it's literally war. It's like literally war is the best way to think of it. You get all of the troops, everything that you have at your disposal. Okay. All your troops on the battlefield, you get them coordinated, all fighting together at once and you win the battle that has a sale.

And what am I talking about? Hitting the socials, sending the email, sending the email to those that didn't open. Uh, how do you use Facebook ads in there? Uh, what about snail mail? How does that come in? How do I do hand to hand combat throughout the course of this deal? How to potentially extend the deadline, how to create even more scarcity, how to create scarcity on Instagram just as it pertains to stories just on a daily basis, just for the duration of your sale.

Okay. Bye bye. You need to learn how to run a sale. And when I started at the top talking about Savitri and running this first thing, it's like, I wanted to, I wanted to tell her, and it's hard to tell her. It's like, you have no idea how, what you just did, how great of a move that was. Okay. Because all you're doing is you're getting better and better and better at this thing.

If you, if I want you to learn how to cook steaks and be world class at cooking steaks in the backyard. You just threw five of them on the grill. You started to realize about the sizzle, about the heat, about how to turn and do the grill marks, what the timing looks like, when to pull it off, how long to have it on each side, there's no shortcut for any of that.

Okay. So layer two, which we're going to get into in the coming episodes, you know, it's important to just mention what this is without going into the tactical. Yes. We'll go into the tactical. We always go into the tactical layer too. It's frustrating. It is. Once you get the attention, you have to get the attention of the attention and stated another way for us.

Like it, it just goes layers and layers deeper. Like when we have a big marketing initiative. Like wanting all of our customers to get ready because the biggest Q4 in history is coming. We have to tell them again and again and again. We have to send emails. We have to send messages inside of our app. We have to post it inside of our Facebook group.

We have to tell them live. We have to create shows called Art Business Mornings, Tuesdays, Thursdays, twice weekly. Have your coffee with us. We have to create shows to tell them this is just as much marketing to our customers and getting them in the right frame of mind, Nick, as it is for non customers and trying to bring them in.

You can never stop marketing, not to your, not to the people that are brand new that you want to get to buy art, not to the people that have bought art from you 25 times, you cannot stop. That is just reality. Exactly. And that's why, like,

Nick Friend: it's the most, it's like these things, like they all tie together, right?

Like there's, there's, there's a lot of nuts and bolts that make a great art sale. It's like a, it's like a, It's like a four week process. It's a three to four week process, right? You know, like it's not just one email one day and Hey, this is the sale, right? Like last three days, that's it. That's not, that's not a, that's, that's a very poorly ran sale.

You'll probably get only 10 percent of the results, right? But the attention piece, you know, it's just, it's. It's so important. And, uh, and, and yeah, you got to, you got to market to all your warm attention. It's just, it's better and it's easier and it's cheaper to do. So once you have that warm attention, right, once you have the warm attention is the people on your email list.

People already following you, things like that, right? So that's why you want to acquire that. And that's what you're, that's the orange you're going to squeeze to get the sales out in order to have a great, you know, art sale. Yep. So that's layer two. So layer one of attention, let's just, let's just rehash.

Cause we're running all over the place is getting the attention in the first place. Layer two, hashtag most frustrating one, getting the attention of the attention you do have, I got to come up with a better analogy for that layer number three though. And this is an important one too. And not only do we need attention, not only do we need to be effective at getting attention, but, but, but attention, it turns out has a temperature to it.

Okay. There's cold, there's warm and there's hot. Okay. What do I mean? I mean, not all attention is equal. Okay. If you have attention that is not been warmed up, I. e. you have not been marketing to them consistently throughout the year and all of a sudden you whack them with a sale when they haven't heard from you in months.

That is not going to be an effective use of the attention that you have that attention is cold That attention needs to be warmed up. You ideally even want to get that attention hot Okay, another way to think about it is the attention that you do have is essentially a piggy bank Okay You want to fill the piggy bank all year long with goodwill such the time when you have a sale You're going to cash in on that goodwill.

Okay, you need to To be marketing, we call it romance marketing. You need to be marketing, i. e. not with the sale every damn time consistently throughout the year, such that your attention is going to go from cold to warm to hot, right? From cold to warm to hot. Those are the three layers. Okay. Those are the three layers.

And I think it's really important to state all three. Okay. Because if you're running a sale. Okay, and you're looking for results. Okay, and you're not getting good results. It is very easy for me as the doctor to come in and diagnose. Okay, it takes me about two seconds to diagnose and know exactly what's going wrong and why it's going wrong.

Assuming up top, let's go back to the beginning. If you've taken care of the incentive and you've taken care of the scarcity, Then it's obviously one of the 123 layers. Okay, it's either you have no attention, it's either you're not effective at getting the attention or that your attention is completely cold.

It's the three layers and almost without fail. Anytime somebody has a good, successful sale, it's because they nailed all three or a bad sale. You're missing on one of the three layers of attention. It's just that simple. And that's how it goes. Every time Nick was like, Hey, I had a sale and I didn't sell anything.

Okay. All right. Let me just go ahead and get out my checkbook. All right. Let's see. Uh, did you have incentive? Yep. Looks like you had incentive. Great. Uh, did you have scarcity? Oh, okay. Scarcity is solved. Let's look at the three layers of attention. 123 and then you just go check, check, check instantaneously.

You find out where the problem is. You explain it and they're unstuck and they're on the way, right? And they're on the way. Why? Why am I throwing this out there now? Why am I establishing this one? I need this bedrock so they can turn people to it to Why do we bang the drum for QThor so hardcore ahead of time?

One, it's the biggest time of sales for the year. Two, it's nice to have a goal out there, right? If you're gonna be training for a marathon, it's a good idea to have a race date set. Otherwise, there's no teeth to it, okay? There is still plenty of time. Between now and then to work on our three layers of attention, okay, on getting more attention on running some sales, getting some tests in the water, learning the trade craft, getting better at it.

Obviously, it's what we teach all day and three warming up the attention that you do have, right? Game of Thrones status. Winter is coming for us. It's it's it's Q four. Q four is coming. So I think all of those. Are just important in the grand scheme of things. And you know, you are going to watch, you're going to be so sick of hearing about Q4.

Okay. From Nick and I out of our mouths from now until the thing runs, you're going to be like, I can't handle it anymore. So I have to explain to you why we're going to keep doing it, because it's this big of a deal, right? Honestly, It's literally like we are, we are coaches training people to run a marathon, and the marathon happens once a year.

I mean, that's almost, that's almost the context of it, right? And we find that the sooner that we start banging the drum, the more we get you moving in the right direction, and poking, and prodding, and taking a step, and getting a little bit better, and contemplating these various things, and realizing that you have this big sale, the more successful our customers turn out to be.

It turns out the more successful our customers are, the better we are. Exactly. You know, there's selfish reasons. You want to call me cynical? Fine. I'll take it. But Q Thor is coming. What else do you have wrapping up on?

Nick Friend: Yeah, no, well, I'll just add, add some color onto that. Like it's the super bowl. It's, it's once a year, you got to get, you're either ready for it or you're not.

Right. And, and, uh, And right now, like the best thing that you could be doing, the only thing you really should be doing is focusing on getting attention, right? Acquiring leads, doing the marketing to bring in more people on your email list, more people on your social following. It's more important that you get them on your email list than their social follow by far.

But that's called lead acquisition. You should be doing that as much as possible. Okay. As much as possible. Cause that's the only way that you're going to have a big Q4. That's it. That's the only way there's no other way. That's it. So you have the recipe right now. We just gave it to you on exactly how to have a good Q4, right?

Acquire leads like crazy right now. Do all of the marketing that you possibly can right now. Okay. And, and then follow the nuts and bolts. of running a, you know, a good art sale. Okay. And, and execute all of that stuff, right? You'll do better than you've ever done before. That's what will happen, right? What are, what are most people going to do though, Pat?

I'll tell you exactly because we know this industry inside and out, right? There's almost no competition. From artisan photographers, almost none because nobody, almost nobody's willing to put in the work. Nobody's willing to put in the work.

Patrick Shanahan: And think you're going to get the thing in the water and think you're going to have great results and you're not going to get great results.

And then you're going to say some nonsense like art never sells online. Exactly.

Nick Friend: Or, or marketing doesn't work, or da da da, da, whatever it is. Right? And guess what're not allowing it? I'm not allowing it. Not allowing it. The few, the rare few, the 0.01% of the industry, right. Which I, you know, I, I, uh, heartwarming say is the Art Storefronts family, like our, the artists and photographers that we, that we coach, right, and mentor are, are the ones who are building those.

Intellectual muscles, you know what I mean? They're running those, those, those marathons, practice marathons, right? Getting ready to go. They are acquiring leads like crazy right now. It's all we're focusing on. It is all we're focused on, right? So all of you, like everybody's got to be focused on that. And, uh, and you got to do it.

You could like, look at this fundamentals. These are just the fundamentals of writing and growing and having a successful business like this. And they're not going to change. They haven't changed in the seven years that we've been in this. They're not going to change in the next seven years or the seven years after that.

So it's like the sooner you learn it, the sooner you get good at it. Like this is your job. This is

Nick Friend: Exactly.

Patrick Shanahan: Right.

Nick Friend: Exactly. Like, do you want to have like consistent income at some point? Like, is that what you're in it for? So that you can have like more freedom, you know what I mean? Go full time, have a full time artist career, photographer career, travel, whatever it is that you want to do.

Like you got to put in the work. There's no shortcut. You know what your pro and guess what? Here's the other thing. Products don't sell themselves. Sadly, if nobody's ever told you that ask any successful business owner, if their products sell themselves. They don't, they never have, and they never will.

Everybody loves to think that they do, right? I'm just going to throw this product out. If it doesn't sell like crazy in three months, I'm done. It's all over.

Patrick Shanahan: Yeah.

Nick Friend: Yeah. It's a product. Don't sell themselves. You got to market them. You got to market them. And as soon as you stop marketing. It's done. It's over.

Right. So you got to put in that work, but Hey, there's, there's look like, and here's the thing, right? We're talking about this in the context of the art industry, but what do you think every other business owner in every other industry is doing right now before Q4? Do you think they're doing anything different?

Then focusing on acquiring leads, the smart ones. No, they're all focused on that. Everyone is every single smart business owner in every single industry, you know, from top to bottom is laser focused on lead acquisition right now before the fourth quarter. True or false pat. It's not a hundred percent true.

It's a thousand percent true. Right. And so, so you now, you know, you know what you got to focus on and, uh, and then you'll have a great, you'll have the best Q4 that you possibly could have given your effort that you put in your art and ultimately how much attention you were able to get by that time.

Then you're going to rinse and repeat and we're going to give you a little time off and then we're going to start talking about Q4 again Yeah,

Nick Friend: Well there's other big art selling holidays throughout the year they're just not as big as Q4 right yeah, but outside of that Let's uh, let's let's chat about some announcements.

I should just I'll mention That, um, that, uh, we have a sale, a Q4 early bird sale. We are rewarding the people that are listening to this message, right? To get in early. Um, we have a big discount to join art storefronts to upgrade, you know, get a proper art gallery website. So you have all the features and functionality that you need to maximize your art sales online.

And then also. Bye. Bye. The business consulting and marketing consulting, you know, to get you more attention, more eyeballs, right? That's our secret sauce at our storefronts. That's what we specialize in. So if you're interested in learning more requested demo, okay, there's a link in this post on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube.

You can click on that to request a demo right now. And then, uh, one of the people from our team will reach out to you, uh, take a look at your art, learn what your goals are, make sure you're a good fit. And they can do a demo one on one and show you all the features and functionality and pricing and all the details, um, that you want to see.

And uh, yeah, so the, the Q4 special ends. At the end of this month, that's actually like less than 10 days or it's 10 days, right? Uh, in terms of business days, it's like seven. So request a demo right away if you're interested in taking advantage of this so that, uh, you get one of the available spots left to run a demo and you can get on board and hopefully make this the best Q4 ever.

Patrick Shanahan: Boom. Boom. And we can start breaking down the layers in future episodes too. Cause perspective, I'm just on a perspective kick. Like if you're going to cook steaks and can get really, really good at cooking steaks, be an expert at cooking steaks, you're going to have to cook a lot of steaks. Oh yeah. So

Nick Friend: Many incredible topics coming.

Oh, and also by the way, tomorrow we have an art business workshop, right? So all of you that are listening and you, and you want to get some free consulting. Um, we've got an art business workshop tomorrow, uh,

Patrick Shanahan: Friday at, um, it'll be at 12 p. m. or no 1 p. m. central. Yep.

Nick Friend: So 11 a. m. pacific 1 p. m. central 2 p. m.

eastern. I will be there running this. Okay. To give you guys the consulting and, and if you, if it's your first time here, I am, uh, I am the CEO and owner of Art Storefront. So I'm excited to see all of you guys there. I will be on there tomorrow. So bring, you know, bring yourself and, uh, bring your number one problem.

Number one roadblock or hurdle. that is in your way right now with your art business. I want to help you get past it. Okay. Whether it's some question you have in your mind or, you know, uh, some, whatever it is, whatever it is, whatever, what is the one, think about the number one problem that you have and let's get you past it.

Okay. Don't let that thing get in your way. Don't let it stop you any further. It's probably something not very big. These sessions, Pat, are they not amazing? They're incredible. These workshops, if you haven't been to one, please visit Make sure you go tomorrow. We want to see you there. Um, and if you want to watch one right now, you can look at our Facebook feed or YouTube.

We've got past sessions, but these things are like two hours long. We get people coming to multiple times, sometimes five, six, seven times, right. You know, and, and even if you just want to observe, it's just incredible just to listen to all the different problems, you know, from other artists and photographers that are like you.

And, uh, and we just rattle through them, just answering them and helping people get over them. Super valuable. And it's free, completely free guys. So, um, make sure you join, uh, and, uh, if you get on our email list, we will send out the link to the zoom call tomorrow, um, in the morning. So look out for that.

Also follow us on Facebook, follow us on Instagram. We'll also be announcing it there. You'll see us go live on Facebook at that time or on YouTube. Um, and you can also, uh, if you want to just binge through, you know, some past sessions, including art business morning sessions, make sure you check out our podcast, the art marketing podcast.

Okay. Art marketing podcast by art storefronts. Tons of great stuff in there. And all of

Patrick Shanahan: These are in there. All of these are in there and they will be in the future. Wonderful. Well, thanks always for listening. And as always, have a great day. See you next time, guys.

Thanks.