How Should You Talk About Your Art To Collectors?

(Transcript)

Have you ever wondered how to talk about your art particularly to someone who might be interested in buying your art? 

Well, there’s actually three things you need to consider and the first step really is just actually making a genuine connection and developing rapport. 

It really means listening more than it is talking. 

So if you can think about this in terms of percentages, you really should be listening about 80% of the time and talking no more than twenty percent of the times. You develop rapport, and how you do that is you’re actually genuinely interested in the other person. 

You’re not worried about whether or not they’re going to buy your art. 

You just show genuine interest & genuine curiosity in that person by asking open-ended questions, simple, natural, open-ended questions. 

Now, you know, here’s what you don’t want to ask. 

You don’t want to ask questions that are closed like questions that someone can answer with one word answer or a yes or a no, like for example, you don’t want to ask a closed-end question. 

Like ‘do you like art?’ because that’s going to result in a yes or no, but if you ask this question, ‘what inspires you about art,’ or ‘what type of art do you like?’ that is an invitation for them to speak and for you to listen Here’s the good news everybody, you know the ones who actually develop genuine rapport with more ease and more comfort. 

It’s actually introverts and a lot of artists a lot of visual artists are actually introverts. 

So if you’re introverted guess what? Studies show you’ll actually do better in sales. 

So step number one is developing that genuine rapport and that genuine connection with another human being. What is selling all about? 

It’s really all about talking to strangers. That’s really what it is. 

And so the more ease you have around that the better you’re going to be and that requires a couple things. 

It requires some level of emotional intelligence and also some level of social intelligence and just like making art the more you do it the better you get at it and the more ease you develop so step number one is really all about developing rapport. 

Let’s get into the Second Step, which is really about understanding your product. 

You know, when you’re an artist, you’re not selling goods, you’re not selling services. Your product is emotion. 

And that’s very individual. It’s very personal. So whatever inspired you or however you feel about your art doesn’t matter. 

It’s now about the viewer. It’s now about the potential collector. 

You want to get out of their way and let them have their experience allow them to express themselves and they may see something in your art that you don’t see they may attach meaning to your art that’s got nothing to do with what you intended. 

Who cares what matters is if they’re connecting if they’re feeling let them have that experience, allow them to enjoy that experience. 

That’s what’s going to inspire people to buy your art if they feel it, so it’s completely subjective, and it’s really none of your business about what inspires them about your art and what doesn’t. 

Now, let me give you an example. If you start talking about your art like you were trained to talk about it or you got used to talking about it in art school, you will kill your art sale because it is so full of art speak and your prospects are not artists. 

They don’t understand what you’re talking about. It was very little, people would have questions which is normal, but the conversations were more into personal issues, how I dealt with certain things in my life and just a genuine interest of people on having a conversation and how to go about it. 

And that was, that was actually one of the biggest things that I’ve learned. If I can give you one last hint, it’s this: you are not your customer. You’re not your customer. 

You don’t necessarily have the same motivation to buy art. You don’t necessarily have the same budget. You don’t have the same thought process just be open and really the key in talking about your art is to remember this, Relationships equal Revenue. 

So the more you can connect with people in a genuine way. The better you will be at selling your art and selling art is about talking to strangers.