Okay, I was up bright and early at 6am this morning, ready to crawl into the shower, throw on some clothes (after getting dry), and haul myself up the stairs to the computer, to start a day of writing on my forthcoming Facebook book.
Then something happened that temporarily derailed all those good intentions, and it wasn’t the fact that I’d run out of coffee (although I would definitely plead that as a mitigating factor).
What happened when I turned on my computer was that I came across a video shared by one of my Facebook friends. I watched the video and immediately caught the virus, so had to pass it on. However, I was so captivated by the idea presented that I felt compelled to also put together something for the blog.
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marketing, photography business, professional photography, the fun theory
It started with a simple question on the telephone from me to my prospect during a conversation about wedding photography: “How is your search for a wedding photographer going and how do you feel about what you’ve seen or heard so far?”
The purpose of the question, which I ask every prospect that calls me, is to get them to open up about their expectations and perhaps to tell me, without my having to ask them directly, whether they are a price shopper or serious about their choice of photographer.
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Somebody somewhere, I forget who or where, was recently bemoaning the state of the professional photography industry and complaining that almost every photographer they know is struggling to survive, or is on the verge of going out of business.
How Can This Be In Today’s Modern Age?
For some reason, on my way to the studio on this lovely early winter morning, I was pondering this question, and also on how much simpler life seemed back in my younger days. I really don’t consider myself to be old (not even 50 yet), but the world today feels a lot different to what it was when I was in my early 20’s.
A Little Nostalgia
I was born in 1962 and I remember Neil Armstrong landing on the moon on our tiny black & white TV. The day I first saw my favorite TV show of the time (Thunderbirds) in color was an epiphany; rotary phones that stayed plugged into the wall were how we thought phones would always be, and the Internet hadn’t even made it into the realms of mainstream science-fiction. Computers were something big companies and the likes of NASA used; we certainly couldn’t imagine them sitting on everyone’s desk, or watching the kids fight over who gets to use it at home to get on Facebook…
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How To Be A Professional Photographer
business success, professional photography, professionalism
Do you guarantee your work as a professional photographer? This question comes up quite frequently, and can generate some interesting and polarized opinions on the subject of offering refunds to dissatisfied clients.
Who Dares To Bear The Risk?
Cruise around the web and take a look at all the photographer web sites out there, and keep a count of all those who offer a written 100% money-back guarantee. I think you’ll find the list is quite short.
Why is this? After all, we expect everything else we buy to come with some kind of guarantee. Not just products like TVs, but services as well. If my lawn care company kills my lawn off through some fault of theirs or the chemicals they use, and they can’t put it right, I think I would be entitled to at least a refund, don’t you?
So why should photographers be any different? Why is it that so many of us don’t offer our clients a strong guarantee?
Who amongst us will dare to bear the weight of the risk on behalf of the client?
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Photography Business Ideas
client satisfaction, dissatisfied client, guarantee, professional photography
I need to set the scene a little for this particular post, which I hope will leave you thinking a little differently. You are taking part in a social or networking gathering and you meet someone new for the first time.
Because they don’t know what else to say, they ask you a very simple question; one that you’ve probably heard many times over the course of your life:
“What do you do for a living?”
Take a moment to think about how you might answer this seemingly innocent question.
I’m willing to bet that the most popular answer from professional photographers would be (not surprisingly), “I am a photographer…”
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How To Be A Professional Photographer
charles lewis, professional photography
Do you struggle with formulating your price lists? Are you having difficulty coming up with prices for your products and services that you are confident with? Are you constantly changing your prices because your prospects aren’t booking or your clients won’t buy?
If you answered “yes” to any of the above questions then you’re in good company! I suspect that pricing is close to the top of the list of issues that photographers struggle with on a daily basis, and I’ll bet it’s one of the greatest sources of frustration in the business today. I know that I’ve personally burned many hours of midnight oil on this very problem with varying degrees of failure!
This is the first in a planned seven-part series on pricing photography, aimed at helping photographers price their products better and give them more confidence in the prices they charge for their services, myself included…
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Photography Business Ideas
photography business, pricing photography, professional photography
How often do you talk to prospects on the telephone only to not hear from them again, or be unable to at least convince them to meet with you for a face-to-face consultation? Probably more than you’d like to, in which case you might be a victim of these eight major phone call assassins…
Your marketing has succeeded in making your phone ring with a prospect, but now what do you do? It’s probably cost you a certain amount of marketing dollars to connect this person with you, so you want to make the most of the opportunity to talk with her and hopefully convince her to become a client, right? Well, here are some tips on how you can do that.
Keep The Assassins At Bay
Before you even answer the telephone, the odds are already stacked against you. The prospect has called you, but she’s probably bracing herself for the onslaught of a sales pitch, so her resistance is already primed in defense mode. As if that wasn’t enough, the phone call assassins are waiting quietly in the wings, ready to sabotage your efforts and ruin your chances of success…
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Photography Business Ideas
professional photography, telephone sales, telephone technique
Last week, I published a post called “Do Consumer Labs Cheapen Professional Photography?”, a subject which has generated some interesting discussion here and in other dark corners of the web.
One excellent rebuttal to my original post indicated that it’s possible to obtain prints from consumer labs that are equal to or sometimes better than what we can get from some pro labs through the use of custom color profiles.
My personal experience doesn’t bear out that conclusion, but I wouldn’t presume to argue that it isn’t true in at least some instances, because I haven’t done any scientific tests to either confirm or deny it.
Everything Else Being Equal, What’s The Difference?
Even if the print quality were identical in both cases, I still have difficulty with using a consumer lab for clients’ prints, because the only motivation to do so would then be the price of the print. We, as professional photographers, complain all the time that our prospects make their purchasing decisions based on price alone, turning our photographic art into little more than a commodity. I believe we owe it to our clients to treat our own work, especially behind closed doors, with the same respect that we expect from our clients.
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Photography Business Ideas
client perception, photographic quality, print labs, professional photography
Last week, I came across a version of this question posed by a real professional photographer in an online discussion group, and it’s been bugging me ever since. Finally, I thought I would try to exorcise this demon from my mind by writing down my thoughts about it.
The original question was along the lines of:
I get my clients’ prints made at Sam’s or Walmart, but I don’t want them to know because it might take the pro out of what I do… what if they see me in line waiting to pick up their prints?
I can barely begin to say how upsetting I found this! It wasn’t so much that a professional photographer was using a consumer budget print shop to have their client’s prints made that upset me (although I feel that’s bad enough just on its own), it’s more that they had to ask the question, as if they felt there might be some justification for it out there from other professionals.
Perhaps they were expecting others to say, “oh sure, we use consumer labs all the time, and our clients can’t tell the difference. It saves us a bunch of money. Keep up the great work.”
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Photography Business Ideas
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To lead into this post, let me ask you a quick question. Do you, as a photographer, have a system in place to really find out from your clients how satisfied or thrilled they were with the experience of working with you?
If the answer is “no” then you could be missing out on a vital piece of the “success puzzle” for your photography business.
A necessary component of most complex systems is a feedback mechanism to either keep the system in check or to make a process more efficient over time. Without feedback, we can’t learn and it makes improvement harder.
For example, if a child touches something hot, the feedback of pain provides the necessary information for her to learn not to do that again.
It’s the same with our business – we need feedback from our clients to understand how well we’re doing. By feedback, I don’t mean a passing comment when you hand over the prints (“I love these”, “these are awesome”) and basic things like that. I mean a systemized approach to information gathering that can really tell us over time how we’re doing, but that also allows the client to say what they really feel without worrying about upsetting us or hurting our feelings…
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How To Be A Professional Photographer
client experience survey, client feedback, client relationship, professional photography
I’m sure you’ve noticed that the photography profession is not in the best of shape right now; in fact, it’s been ailing and sick for quite some time. The end of the so-called Great Recession notwithstanding, business still appears to be slow or non-existent for many photographers, and recovery is taking a very long time to materialize. Many of you possibly doubt that a full recovery is even likely or possible.
Personally, I feel that recovery is certainly possible and that every professional photographer can enjoy success, if only they would treat their business with the seriousness and attention it deserves.
We have an industry with few, if any, barriers to entry, no real code of ethics, pricing is anything but simple or organized, quality standards are all over the place, fly-by-nights come and go, and seasoned veterans are left scratching their heads in puzzlement at the sad state of things.
Maybe there are parallels elsewhere, but right now I can’t think of another profession where such anarchy and chaos prevails…
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Photography Business Ideas
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Sometimes I’m not the most organized person in the world (well, okay, more than sometimes), and I actually ran out of business cards a few weeks ago. Since we recently moved the studio from our home to a retail space late last year, I needed to redesign the business card anyway, and have been trying to get around to it.
So, this week, I sat down at the computer and produced a new design that I was fairly happy with (it looks pretty, has all the right information on it, no spelling mistakes etc.), fully intending to send it off to the lab to be printed.
Then, this morning, I opened up the files for one last check, but a single thought stopped me in my tracks:
“Is the business card, as we’ve all come to know and love it, dead or dying?”
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