Tag Archive for: business

Made You Look

 

If you are a client of mine you are probably hiring me to get the attention of your clients. That is what imagery does; it captures the attention of viewers faster and hopefully, more powerfully, than the written word.

 

With the addition of the internet as a strong marketing tool all, marketing has changed. Your clients paging through a magazine, online or in print, make choices in nanoseconds. Images, text, and all marketing, needs to capture their attention in a maximum of 7 seconds. Online advertising is getting bolder with pop-ups and flashing ads that tend to annoy more than they attract. All this does is make potential clients more and more jaded, in turn making it harder and harder to get your message to them.
So what can you do?  Do you take the risk of putting up an ad that may annoy your client?  Do you reserve web browser real estate for an advertising toolbar? For print, do you resort to loud colors and bold text to get a subtle message across to the client?  What does actually work?

 

In my case creativity, originality and old fashioned style works.

See?  You looked at the entire ad, not just the model’s face. You probably looked at her, then glanced at the text, then back to her and after deciding if you liked her image, then you looked at my logo. After you did all of that you started reading this paragraph; you did all of that in about 6 or 7 seconds.

 

So how do you capture your client’s attention?  Give me a call or click here and let’s figure it out together.

Cheese With Your Whine?

 

You may as well have some cheese with your whine because it may be all you get. The days of whining are over. My clients don’t need whining, they need results.

 

Recently I was contracted to shoot portraits of some award winners at the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce. As is the norm for a larger city, not all the winners could be at the shoot at the same time. One winner, Taylor Fernley of Fernley & Fernley could not attend, yet the chamber still needed a portrait. I offered to go to his office at Mr. Fernley’s convenience and get the shot needed. Although my client said that would be going above and beyond I did anyway; for no extra charge.

 

My contact at the chamber said the day of the shoot that I didn’t need to go to their office for the shot and that they would just make due. ‘Make due’ usually means they will have an intern go over with a point and shoot and take a snapshot of the subject. That snapshot would be included with all the other winners, problem solved. Wrong.
I want the client to have consistent quality. I want my name to be known as the photographer that will go above and beyond; the one that will do whatever it takes to get the job done and done right. So I spoke to Mr. Fernley’s representative and told them to call me when he was available and I would be there. Last week I got the call.

 

What this did was give my client, and subsequently their client, the confidence that they would consistently have quality photography for the publication and they didn’t have to do anything, not even ask.

 

For me there was no whining or complaining to be done. It was about just doing what was needed to get the shots needed, no matter how convenient or inconvenient.  I did my job and I did it with a smile. My client was happy, Fernley & Fernley was happy and I was proud of the work I delivered before the deadline for the printer.

 

No whine, no cheese. Just results.

Lead, Follow Or Get The ‘F’ Out Of The Way

 

Recently my business coach (View article here) created a video article for photographers that is a tough love type of video that asked photographers if they needed to get out of the photography business or if they were willing to do what it takes to make it work. I have to admit that I loved it.

 

I agree with her and many others that some photographers have gotten very negative about the business and about their clients, not to mention other photographers. For me, this is not the way to win the confidence of my clients. Sure it has gotten harder to make a living in the photography business. But it has gotten harder to make a living in any business! Business in general has changed all across the board.

 

Times are difficult. Just yesterday my 72 year old mother was laid off from a job she had for over 20 years. Her entire Human Resource department was outsourced. She is lucky, she has been contemplating retirement. Others she worked with are now in the market for work. They have to be prepared for change and so do companies looking to grow their business.
My clients are looking for photography services that are faster, cheaper and of higher quality. An example is one of my top clients. This past Sunday I had a shoot of a 15 bedroom, 34 acre estate where the images were needed by Tuesday for layout of a publication. Due to a short budget I had to shoot the estate alone. Normally I would have at least an assistant and hopefully a second photographer. In this case that was just not an option. Editing the images alone was going to take 25+ hours. The shoot took almost 8 hours in itself.

So what did do to solve it? The client agreed to receive un-retouched images in a low resolution just so they could use them as place holders. They understood that of the filtered images only about half of what they saw on Tuesday would be delivered as final images. However they were able to do their layout and have something to work with. I made sure to deliver as many images as possible (65% of those un-retouched images) in the highest quality as possible and by Wednesday end of business.

 

Together my client and I worked out a solution that just a few years ago would not have been an option. Why? Because so many photographers would not be willing to give anything but the final images. Sure I did what I didn’t want to do, let my client see my work only half done, but we came to an agreement, wrote it up in a contract and met halfway to assure that they got the product they needed in a way that worked for both of us. The client is happy. Their client is happy (or will be) with the publication and I got the work that keeps me working.

Together we took the lead to create a mutually beneficial solution. If you can’t lead your client to a creative win/win solution, or if you aren’t willing to follow those that do, then why are you in business?  Either get positive and get creative or get the ‘F’ out of the way of those that are.

Keeping Pace

 

In today’s digital world everyone expects things to be either instantaneous or at least fast. Your clients expect results almost as soon as they express their desires. You in turn need your suppliers to anticipate your needs so you can meet those of your customers. Yet it still takes time to provide services and products.  So how do you keep up with the pace?

Often executives tell you to “anticipate the customer’s needs,” and use your sales skills and tell the client what they need based on what you have available. Anticipating your customer’s needs is the goal of every business in the world. The whole idea to starting a business is seeing a need and filling that need. To grow that same business you have to start to anticipate.

 

So how do you foresee the future? How can you know that your plan is the one that will grow your business and keep you successful in the years to come? By learning your customer’s business.

 

I have taken the time to learn business and not just in the sense of supplies in and products out. I have spent over 20 years in the corporate and business world before I established my company. I understand the pressures and the needs of my clients. But even that isn’t enough.

 

My business is a service business that delivers a product which makes it unique in many ways. I need to perform the photography services that I offer in a professional and timely manner. At the same time I have to deliver the end product faster than ever before and with higher quality. With the photography industry changing almost hourly and my clients’ needs changing almost as fast, how can I keep delivering the highest quality of service and the best possible product?

 

Not only have I learned business, but I spend time keeping up with my clients business. I take the time to learn the struggles they have on a daily basis. I don’t work beside them 8 hours a day because then I couldn’t run my business. I do however ask them about what are their biggest issues. I talk to them about new ideas and new technologies that are available to them and why to, or not to, take advantage of them.

 

In that sense, you may even think that business is moving back in time. Back to a time when relationships are what mattered. That seems to be the big buzz word in business, social media, marketing and everywhere else now. “Marketing is about relationships.” “Networking is about building relationships not marketing.” “To get the work you have to have a relationship with [insert any name here].”

 

I am all about relationships and I always have been. Although I use contracts and estimates and all the modern paperwork that we all use today, it’s not about the legalese for me. All that paperwork boils down to my word and a handshake. If I say I am there for you, I am, and I will be there as fast as our modern world allows me to be.

How can $100 save you $10,000?

 

Spending money to make money is an old truth of business. We all want to cut costs and to trim excess spending. So when is spending a good thing? When spending is investing.

 

Investing in your business is a wise thing to do. When you invest you expect a Return On Investment or an ROI of some kind. When you spend money you are giving money to someone to cover a cost or expense. However, when you invest, you are building value. So when do you invest rather than spend. If you are getting the minimum work done to benefit your business, just enough to get by, you probably aren’t investing.

 

Let’s take look at a couple of examples.

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