Being a high-performing portrait/wedding photographer, according to PPA’s Financial Benchmark Survey, means your business grosses at least $25,000 in sales annually. La Crosse, Wisconsin-based family, senior, and wedding photographer Adam Mueller fits that description in large part because of his streamlined same-day in-person sales process, which he shares in a “Professional Photographer” podcast episode recorded in January at Imaging USA 2026 in Nashville, Tennessee.

“We took a step back and we just said, ‘How can we serve our clients better and how can we design an experience that they will love from start to finish?’” Mueller tells host Pat Miller.

One Step at a Time

That customer experience is key to why the process works, he explains: customers know what to expect. Mondays through Thursdays, Mueller works two family and/or senior portrait sessions per day. Fridays through Sundays are devoted to photographing and managing weddings. Mueller Photography portrait clients come either first thing in the morning or in the early afternoon for about four hours, which includes the photo session (typically off-site) and in-studio sales presentation. To ensure a smooth session, Mueller communicates how it will run before the clients even enter the studio, and they know that before they leave, they will have stunning portraits from the day to treasure for a lifetime.

“That client experience is really the foundation of why we did it,” Mueller says, as photographers frequently deal with hurdles such as clients calling to reschedule their sales appointments or only one spouse can make the appointment and must decide for a whole family. “So, we kind of took all of this and said, ‘Is there a way that we can do it better? Even if it means we have to think a little outside the box, or it’s a little bit harder on our end to pull that off?”

If it is harder, clients cannot tell. When they arrive at the downtown La Crosse, Wisconsin studio, Mueller sits down with them to talk about the session and discuss where on location they will capture the images, such as a nearby park or greenspace. Then, they head out with Mueller for the main event. “I get to go create all their portraits,” he tells Miller. “It’s a really fun experience. I’m fast-paced with the photography. We’re creating lots of high energy images.” When the session is finished after an hour or so, everyone goes back to the studio. During a 15-30-minute break there, the beverage station has been stocked with soft drinks, coffee and the like, and the clients are ushered into the private presentation room, with its soft couches and 85-inch TV, to view their images.

“Within a few hours after arriving to our studio, they’re already done,” Mueller says. “And then, a few weeks later, they have their printed wall portraits and their albums in their home.”

Having everything occur in one day works, he adds. “I think clients make the best decisions when emotion and clarity come together at the same time. And that’s what we’re designing,” he explains. “We’re designing an experience where the emotion is at its highest point. We just created these images. … And then they’re on that emotional high of, ‘I’m really excited to see what was just created.’”

Bite-sized Decisions

While the same-day strategy beefs up in-person sales, Mueller is sensitive to overwhelming his photo subjects. During the slideshow of images, the clients do A-B comparisons versus viewing the hundreds that might have been taken en masse. This typically takes them down to 80-150 images that they particularly like. Those get reduced to about 50.

During what Mueller calls the “dream walk” through the studio, the clients see the displays of various products and examples of wall art finishes, such as acrylic, metal, and canvas. There are also different sizes of frames to choose from, the largest being 40x60 inches. “The way we’re guiding our clients, both with the poses and the photography, but also the decision-making process afterwards, it becomes fairly effortless on their part to know what feels right for them,” he says. “You’ll see with how we guide our clients in the actual sales presentation, how we walk them through our studio … how we have them make bite-size chunks of decisions so that they’re not making all the decisions at one point.”

Mueller says the “dream walk” allows them to imagine “the dream scenario of what they would want displayed in their home. They’re not making actual decisions at this point. They’re just giving preferences: ‘In a perfect world, I would love this in my living room. I’d like this in my family room or down the hallway, wherever it’s being displayed in these finishes, in these sizes.’”

The studio prices out everything the client has identified and works with the clients to adjust. “They’re either going to stay at that [price] point or we’re going to give them easy ways to change finishes, reduce sizes, take something off to get them to a point where they’re like, ‘I feel good about that,’” he says.

Fresh on the Mind

How does Mueller work quickly enough for same-day in-person sales? In short, he does no editing. “Some people will say, ‘Well, I always edit all my images before I show them.’ If that’s the case, you can always edit one image and let a client know,” he explains. “But say, ‘Everything I’m showing you today because I’m doing same-day presentations, they’re not edited, but this is how it will be edited.’ That’s enough for them. They would rather have the experience on the same day than waiting a month for you to edit every image you’re going to show them.” 

Mueller uses Adobe Lightroom to go through and select images he shows the clients. Since the photo session is fresh on his mind, it doesn’t take long to select winning photos. “Exporting those, that’s obviously the bulk of the work. But maybe it takes 10 minutes for me to go through 300, 400, 500 images, quickly select those images, export them, and then it just takes another minute or two to import those into ProSelect,” he says.

In the years since Mueller Photography implemented this process, sales have increased year over year, according to Mueller. But he prefers to focus on client experience rather than numbers, he adds, because that is how to build business. “It is really much more that experience. I want that client to go home and when their friend asks, ‘Who do you use for photography?’ I want them to be able to say, ‘Here’s who we use. They’re amazing. They do this same-day presentation. They’re great with kids. They’re great with our high school senior.’”

To create that streamlined best client experience, Mueller advises taking time to perfect what he calls “back-end stuff” like studio processes and culling images, and consider how everything will look and feel. “You’re designing an experience that will look great in the client’s eyes as long as it doesn’t look like you’re fumbling through it,” he says. “It just takes a lot of preparation and planning, but once you start doing it, it becomes second nature.”

Melanie Lasoff Levs is director of publications.