Decision paralysis is very real for many potential art buyers. There are three main issues why these potential buyers can’t pull the trigger:

1. They can’t find THE piece that feels right.

2. They don’t understand value and struggle to justify pricing.

3. They lack confidence in their long term interest, fearing that a piece will eventually feel stale.

We work with clients every single day to not just overcome these hurdles, but make acquisition decisions that excited them in the long term. Here are our strategies:

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We usually have two presentations weekly, and each is tailored to individual client needs. Currently, we’re working on projects in New York City, Washington DC, Arizona, and Martha’s Vineyard to name a few. The requirements of each project are completely different, so art sourcing happens regularly in our office. (And this could not happen regularly without our team. Here’s a look inside our business, for those who are curious.)

Below are three things we do before every client presentation to ensure its success. And, for these purposes, we define success as a presentation that prompts productive conversation around art recommendations and educates and excites our clients about art. (The education relates to the art and the market, and here’s a popular one we did all about discounts.)

1) We place the art recommendations in our Google Slides presentation in a specific order. Typically, we arrange the art recommendations for walls visible as you walk through a home. For example, recommendations proceed from the entry wall, then the adjacent living room, and finally upstairs. Before a presentation, we consider the flow of the entire presentation and the client’s experience learning about each artist. We always start with a piece that completely aligns with the client’s taste and budget. Following that, we include some recommendations that may stretch outside the client’s comfort zone, peppered with others that are “safer”. We also never include pieces similar in composition or palette next to each other to help the client consider each piece individually rather than in batches. Thinking about it like a tasting menu is a helpful analogy, complete with palette cleansers and diversity of texture, scale, and media.

2) We edit out options and create our “reject pile” after the conclusionary slide. We support having fewer quality recommendations over numerous half-decent ones, and we’ve shared this in our Art Sourcing Mistakes to Avoid Part II here. (Part II is here.) We are not deleting these slides entirely because having a record of our thinking in the art sourcing process is helpful; seeing what we considered and removed makes sourcing more efficient. Additionally, we may use those recommendations later for the same or a different client, depending on feedback. Importantly, we embrace the performance = knowledge + belief formula for art recommendations; we need to know about an artist and believe it’s a good match for a client to share the recommendation with conviction. Any ideas that don’t meet this standard are relegated to the “reject pile”.

3) Finally, we embrace a positive collegial mindset. There’s a story about an elderly lady who held the top sales record for telemarketers. When asked how she does it, she said that before picking up the phone, she thinks: “The person on the other side of the phone is going to like me.” This creates a positive energy before the call even starts. Similarly, before the presentation, we consider how the client will embrace the process, enjoy learning, and find the time to be valuable. There are also certain phrases we avoid saying, and ways we help build art appreciation.

1. Eight ways to build a sales pipeline

2. Converting those leads into clients

3. Simple, actionable steps to grow your art business

Here’s a snippet from the deck:

Goal: To support your effort in servicing more clients and growing your business.

Specifics:

1. Using the right messaging for outreach

2. Identifying key referral sources

3. Effective outreach strategies

4. Fostering word of mouth referrals

This webinar, along with our three others, is available to Founding Members for $150/year, and with that, you get access to our entire Substack archive, 2 weekly posts. Full details HERE.

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There are many sale strategies that inspire art sales, and many that actively discourage them. Importantly, inspiring art sales is not solely for the benefit of your confidence or business. Rather, it enables your clients to achieve their goal of acquiring art that feels personally meaningful to them. Beyond that, it supports artists, culture, and word of mouth referrals that connect you with more clients, and the cycle continues.

Here are our lists 1 and 2 of what not to do. To build on this, we’re sharing 3 more mistakes to avoid that focus on sale psychology, as well as helpful resources to build your sales muscle (and how they relate to art):

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Last year was a dynamic one for the art world. A ton of galleries closed, and we know that galleries with historically strong numbers had sales that were down 30, 40, and 50%. Meanwhile, our revenue grew by 50%. We’re not sharing this to brag; rather, we’re sharing this to illuminate what seems to be working in this industry that’s at a major pivot point. Here are some takeaways:

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Our clients recently did some art price checking on ChatGPT and learned that the price of artworks they liked were 2x what they should be. They sent the AI explanation our way to prompt a conversation. Here are the points we shared that restored their confidence in pricing for the art of interest and the art market in general:

1. First: exploring pricing, doing diligence, and asking questions is a key part of this process. ChatGPT can provide useful information and it’s important that we not dismiss any resource a client is using to build their understanding of this market but rather provide some education around it.

2. Relatedly, we educate clients on industry resources because it arms them to enjoy and collect art, adding value to their experience of working together. It is important to understand how to determine if a gallery is reputable, what websites provide useful insight, and what data AI draws on, in this case.

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Mistakes 1-3 are here, and let’s continue building the list. This should be helpful for professionals aiming to source art for clients, and clients wanting to successfully acquire art.

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To elaborate on question 1: “Has a client of yours ever bought art that you really didn’t like?”

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For years, we’ve enjoyed leading a Business of Home LAUNCH class on art sourcing for designers. It’s a 2-hour class that’s chock full of lessons learned from our experience, Q&A, and more.

The highlight of the class is a showcase of the top 9 mistakes people make with trying to source art for clients. Here are three. Like this post if you find it to be helpful, and we’ll share a Part II and III with the other major mistakes.

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1. Art Advisory 101

2. Instagram Strategies for Art & Design Pros

3. Artist Business Tips

4. Building a Sales Pipeline

A summary of each is below. All three are available to Founding Substack Subscribers for $150/year. Alternatively, each is available here for $100 per webinar. Becoming a Founding Subscriber provides greater value, especially given the associated perks, and since more webinars, such as Building a Sales Pipeline, will be available to Founding Members (exclusively!) in March 2026 for no additional cost.

Here’s a testimonial:

I watched the webinar for artists yesterday evening, knowing that I already know so much, though looking for ways I could improve. It was very reassuring for me to know I’m doing so much right—and since I’ve been running my own practice for 10 years I would expect that of myself. The area where I did learn more was in how to better expand my reach. The 5x5 tip is something I could clearly benefit from and I’ll schedule that into my week, but I want to do that by email - would you advise I phone? I really don’t want to get on the phone to designers as they are very busy.

It was a fantastic webinar that every artist would benefit from.

And here are the summaries:

Art Advisory 101

In this niche market with no rules, we share concrete ways to enter and thrive in the art advisory business. Topics addressed include how to source clients, structure pitches, and more.

Instagram Strategy

Our IG voice stands out, reaching over 8x our following (85k+ accounts), monthly, and yielding exciting results. This webinar outlines simple, sustainable ways for art/design professionals to reach their ideal client on the platform and fuel every part of their business.

Artist Business Tips

This webinar is based on questions received directly from artists about topics such as effective outreach, how advisors, galleries and artists work, best practices for making meaningful connections, and more.

Building a Sales Pipeline

Building a sales pipeline is a crucial component to running a successful business, but it can be incredibly daunting to start. This webinar breaks down the eight key steps to building a successful sales pipeline for your business.

After first seeing a video of a piece, our clients quickly passed on the recommendation. Here’s what we did next that shifted their perspective, resulting in a great acquisition these clients will love long term. We’ll also share the piece they bought and one mistake we made during this process.

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Second, when these requests come in (infrequently, with designers who aren’t yet sure how we work) we respectfully share that we don’t research and provide art options to people with whom we’re not in direct contact. The reasons are:

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Our clients are excited about the potential of acquiring a piece that’s in the $100k range. It’s a piece by a “List Artist”, so at this point, we’ve logged our interest and we wait for the gallery to decide who is awarded the opportunity to buy the piece. (We’ll know later this week.)

Before confirming the interest, this client needed to understand more about the price tag, which can seem arbitrary to new collectors. Adding to the confusion is the limitation of public art sale records for many artists. This simply means there is not a robust public secondary market for a particular artist; the sample size of those that did go to auction is too small to be informative, and pieces by that artist are likely resold privately through the galleries that represent that artist.

Below is a snapshot of what information we provide to build client understanding around and comfort level for a sale like this:

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1. Document art we see and like at the fair. This means taking 1 photo of the art, and another of the info card, and then saving both photos to one central folder. This last step is key. Without it, the photos are 1) not shared with others on your current or future team, and 2) lost in the mix of personal and professional photos, which does not allow for easy future reference. (Here’s a summary of our Miami favorites, ICYMI).

2. Ask galleries to send professional images of works of interest, and then archive those images and artwork details. The #1 reason we have business cards is to facilitate this exchange. The artworks of interest can include those you saw at the fair, and those offsite. Next, go through those emails after the fair, then save the images and details in one central location. We use SmugMug for our internal database. We do have a staff member who maintains this, but if you don’t, save all these emails and dedicate 1 hour/month to archiving the information. Yes, that is quality time, but it also leverages the efforts spent onsite so you can save time in the future by easily referencing and using the information to better service clients.

3. Matchmake art & clients. We look through images of art seen at the fairs and consider what would work for the various active clients. Yes, a lot of art is sold at the fair, but it’s a myth that all of it is sold. And, fair discovery goes well beyond what was shown in the booth — often times we see art in the booth and get availability listings of other works by that artist (per #2 above), that are offsite and less likely to sell during the fair. These are the works we can put into our client presentations in the days, weeks and months following the fair.

4. Follow up with galleries. Relationship building is a huge part of the process. It makes working in this industry fulfilling, gives you access to works in the future, and ensure that are building a support system with things don’t go as planned —- bought artwork gets lost in customs, pieces arrive damaged, etc. etc. Here’s a snippet of the art world schmoozing we did that could not have been more valuable.

   Spending the time today investing in all of this for the future is time well spent, and it is time that ultimately enables you to run a more streamlined, effective business that services clients successfully. Plus, in January, we’ll share a post on what stuck with us from Miami, one month later — always a strong sign of impactful art.