What do your client meetings look like?
How do you consult and coach your clients? Virtually? In-person? Both?
Regardless, show your audience what it looks like.
As mentioned in past articles, it’s important to give your audience an inside look into how the sausage is made, especially when a part of the recipe involves their direct participation.
And that includes showing them what it looks like when they work directly with you.
Sometimes, you coach and consult with them online. Other times, you meet with them in the same room.
And for some of you, there’s both options.
When your potential clients see visuals like this, it helps demystify the process and create anticipation, which ultimately helps inform their decision as to whether or not you’re the person they will hire to help solve their problem.
That’s why during every pre-session strategy call, I ask clients about the way in which they conduct meetings with those they serve, whether in a consulting or coaching capacity.
During a recent strategy call with my executive coach client, Jenny, I found out that she does, in fact, conduct virtual and in-person sessions.
She runs in-person and virtual one-on-one sessions, as well as offers group coaching for executives via Zoom.
Okay great. In addition to the laundry list of other promotional and lifestyle photos that needed to be captured, these specific pieces were also added to the shot sheet.
Now, the only missing element needed to capture these photos is to recruit people that will be playing the part of her clients in real life and on the screen.
That was her homework assignment before her branded lifestyle portrait session.
Fortunately, when it was time to capture the magic, we had enough people to create a realistic look at what her coaching work looks like on a screen and in the same room:
By capturing each scenario in a variety of ways, this offers Jenny a chance to share hyper-specific stories that relate to her one on one as well as group coaching session efforts.
Within the in-person coaching session photos, you’ll notice that the face of the “client” is missing.
By cutting off the client’s likeness, that anonymizes the person sitting across the table from her, which helps keep the visual more streamlined for the viewer of the image to imagine themselves sitting in that chair.
While that was not possible for every shot taken of the virtual coaching work, many of the virtual image assets place the focus on Jenny while the impression is left that others are in the Zoom room, but their faces are intentionally out-of-focus.
You see a head and the makings of the face, but can’t quite identify them.
This anonymizing approach ultimately adds to the visual variety as you don’t want to constantly share photos of the same “clients” in the photos.
It not only gets repetitive and boring visually, but it creates an impression subconsciously that Jenny only has a small subset of clients and not a thriving business.
A small detail, sure, but an important one of which to be mindful during your lifestyle portrait session.
Before you next step in front of the camera, make sure that candid lifestyle portraits that illustrate what a coaching and/or consulting session look like are on the shot list.
Show people how you impart your magic on those you serve.
These images will go a long way to creating a deeper connection with those who are considering hiring you and your expertise.
For more information on visual storytelling for Experts who speak on stages, write books, facilitate, and work virtually, I talk all about it in my blog. Sign up here to receive these insights directly in your inbox.