5 WAYS TO CREATE A WIN FOR YOUR CLIENTS

Let’s be honest - sometimes this job would be great if we didn’t have to ever deal with people.  Don’t kid yourself, you know that you find yourself dreaming about never having to deal with another bridezilla, or a overbearing mother of the groom.  This ‘photography business’ thing would be pure bliss if you didn’t have to deal with the Uncle Bob’s, and the guy who follows you around the reception, wanting to talk all night long about your gear, or the clients with crazy expectations and demands.  

Yes, that sounds pretty wonderful sometimes.  Of course, let’s not forget that those very same “people,” are our clients - and they are the one’s who pay us to do this thing that we love to do. Let’s not forget that.  Let’s not forget that there are people out there, who are willing to part with their own hard-earned money, to have us be a part of some of the most valuable moments of their lives.  They place value on what we create for them, and they’re willing to pay us.  Sure, sometimes we wish they valued it a little more, or were willing to pay a little more, but let’s not forget that without them, we’re all finding day jobs. 

It doesn’t require a huge leap to realize that the happier, and more satisfied our clients are, the more likely our business is to be profitable and sustainable.  Yet, so often, I read photographers who seem to dread every interaction with their clients.  So many times, the relationship between you and your clients get to the point where you’re simply trying to “survive,” never mind thrive.  If that’s you, you’re not alone -  we’ve all been there. 

But that certainly doesn’t have to be the sum of our client relationships.  Instead, how might your business be different, if each time you interacted with a client, you asked yourself, "what can I do today to create a win for this client?”  “What can I do to give this client an experience that adds value to their life, in a meaningful way?”  I think it’s possible, and it’s actually not that difficult.  In fact, here are 5 things you can probably start doing right now, to create a win for your clients.

1. Give Them Clear Expectations

Most of the failure in client relationships come from a failure to create meaningful expectations.  I’ve written about this many times, and I think it’s one of the most important aspects of the client relationship.  I also think it’s one of the easiest ways to create a win.  By helping your client understand exactly what they should expect, you eliminate the anxiety, and uncertainty that they experience when they don’t have a context from which to understand what you’re going to do for them.  Your primary customer relationship task is to give your client peace of mind by walking them through what it means to do business with you.  

When you fail to create expectations, clients create them on their own - whether they are reasonable or not.  The problem is, even if they’re unreasonable, when you fail to meet them, you’ve failed.  Instead, create a win by educating your client with clear, informative expectations.

2. Make It Easy For Them

I have 3 rules.  Make it easy for clients to contact you.  Make it easy for them to get information they need, and make it easy for them to give you money.  Do those three things, and you’ll make it super easy to create a win.  Sometimes we get caught up over complicating things like forcing people to sit down with you at a meeting before we’re willing to share even basic pricing information.  Or we force them into contacting us through an online form with questions and check boxes that have nothing to do with their question.  Instead, focus on how you make it easy for the client.  

Sometimes this might make it a little more work for you - but you are, after all, the one getting paid.  Instead of hiding your phone number, or email address, and requiring everyone to contact you through a form, make it easy for the client to contact you the way they prefer.  I hate talking on the phone.  I HATE IT.  That doesn’t mean I won’t share my phone number with a client, or potential client.  I still have the choice of not answering if it’s not convenient for me, but I’m not so rich that I’m willing to write off the entire population of people as clients, who want to use the telephone to reach me.  Which leads me to...

3. Solve Their Problem First

So many times we get focused on our side of the relationship.  It’s easy to get frustrated when clients seem to keep asking for more, and more, and more.  It’s easy for us to get defensive, and find ourselves more and more entrenched in our own perspective.  Instead, focus on understanding, and solving the clients problem first.  This doesn’t mean giving in to unreasonable demands.  It means, understand what the clients real problem is, and figuring out how to solve that.  

Most often, when a client wins, they return the favor.  It’s not a zero sum game - when you figure out a clients REAL problem, you can solve that.  When you do that, more often than not, it results in a win for you as well.  But even if it doesn’t, it’s still your job to solve their problem.  You got paid - that sometimes has to be enough of a win for you. The key is to remind yourself that this is business (not personal), and you were hired to solve a problem.  Do that, and you create a huge win.

4. Do The Unexpected

As important as it is to do what you say you’re going to do, the reality is, you don’t actually get any points for that.  Of course, it’s your job, and kind of your human obligation, to keep your word, no one really gets excited when they buy a plane ticket from point A to point B, and the airline simply manages to get them from point A to point B.  Sure, it’s good that the plane didn’t crash, or the flight didn’t get cancelled, but it’s not all that remarkable.  They just did what they promised. 

On the other hand, people notice when you DON’T do what you say you’re going to do.  That’s not good.  Twitter, Facebook, and about 70% of the internet as a whole, is filled with people talking about the experiences they’ve had with a person, company, product or brand, that didn’t do what it promised.

Instead, do more.  Do something that you didn’t promise.  Create a WOW experience for your client because you did something beyond what they expected.  There’s probably a million ways you can incorporate this into your client relationships.  I know a photographer that creates a small album for every client as a gift.  Totally unexpected, and the clients LOVE it.  I know other photographers that send gifts for various occasions (holidays, birthdays, anniversary) for each of their clients.  They make it a part of their workflow, but it’s totally an extra, unexpected, part of the experience for the client.  

Whatever it might look like for you, find something a little extra you can do to create a win for each client.  Maybe it’s as simple as sending a handwritten thank you note to each client - which brings us to maybe the most important win...

5. Be Genuinely Thankful

Remember where we started.  Your clients are the lifeblood of your business.  Without them, you’re just a guy or gal with a camera and a dream (and a lot of bills to pay).  Express your thankfulness often.  I’m a big fan of the handwritten thank you note.  It’s such a simple act, but it communicates so much to the recipient.  Everyone loves getting REAL mail (not junk mail, or email, or whatever), but a letter, hand-addressed, with a stamp and everything.  Everyone loves opening the envelope to find a note inside, that was written with a pen, on real paper, by a real person.  

You’d be amazed how far such a simple gesture can go to creating a huge win with your clients.  You’d be surprised how much value you can add to someone’s life by being genuinely grateful for them.  They’ve added value to your life, and then returning the favor is as simple as a thank you note, this might be the easiest win of all.  By the way, it’s such a big win because, as easy as it is, almost no one really does this one well.  You create a win because you bothered to show up at all. 

What about you - how are you creating a win for your clients?  Leave a comment below with your best practices and ideas for creating a win.

5 THINGS YOUR CLIENTS WILL NEVER TELL YOU

If you run a photography business (or any creative business for that matter), you live inside a box.  It's more a of a cage really - in that it can be VERY difficult to remember what the world is like outside of our little box.  Inside this box are conversations about photography, and cameras, and weddings, and portrait sessions.  This is where we live.  Because we live here, we forget that pretty much everyone else in the world, lives on the outside of the box. ​

Especially our clients.​

It's easy to forget that our clients don't live in our world. Not only that, but they have a world, and a job, and family, and a life - completely independent of our world, and our box.  Sometimes I think it might be helpful to know what it's like outside of our little box, so here are FIVE THINGS YOUR CLIENTS WILL NEVER TELL YOU, BUT YOU SHOULD KNOW ANYWAY:

1. I don't care what you tell me about copyright, or usage, or licenses. These images are of me and my family, and my kids, and as far as I'm concerned, they are mine.  I hired you to take photographs for me.  I don't care about ​your ownership, or your rights, or your copyright.  

What I care about, is that these pictures are of me and my kids, and my family, and my wife/husband/parents/whatever..... If you try to tell me I'm going to prison because I cropped out your ugly-ass logo and put it on facebook, who do you think is really going to come out ahead in the long run?  If you make this about you - I'm not going to care - which I promise will hurt you far more in the long run. Which leads to.....

​2. I don't care about marketing your business.  I'm your client, and I hired you to do me a service.  I don't exist to spread the word about how amazing you are.  At the same time, if you TRULY are amazing, and make it easy for me to WANT to talk about you, I just might send you people who trust me.

By the way, making it easy doesn't mean put your logo on everything, or give me things with your name on them to hand out.  It means make me fall in love with YOU, and the EXPERIENCE you provide.  

3. ​I don't care that you think you have a good reason for charging what you do.  I only care whether or not it seems I'm getting more value added to my life, than the cost of your service.  By the way, "value" doesn't mean I care that you use the highest quality goods.  It doesn't mean that I care how much money you spent on gear.  

Most likely, the value you provide to me will have little to do with any of those things.  If you can exceed my expectations (see 4), and create an experience that adds value to my life, you will be well worth it, and I will pay you accordingly.  ​In fact, I'll pay you a premium, far beyond the tangible "value" for the experience of making my life more enjoyable as we create and capture these memories.

4. I don't care what your policies or procedures are, they are all meaningless to me unless you tell me what you want me to do.  Chances are good, that if I know what to expect, and you deliver on (or, even better, exceed)​ those expectations, I'll be thrilled with you.  

If, on the other hand, you leave me to figure out what to expect on my own - I will.  In that case, I can pretty much promise you the experience will suck for both of us, because my expectations will have almost nothing to do with reality.  By the way, that's your fault - because you never bothered to tell me in the first place.

5. I don't really know why i'm hiring you.  If I'm getting married, it's probably because I think I need photographs of my wedding.  I think I need photos of my dress, and my shoes, and my flowers, and the rings, and the bridesmaids, and the groomsmen, and the little kids with the flowers, and my family, and his family, and our family together, and a shot of each of us with each member of our family, and then a shot with the uncle who stumbles in late, and then photos of every person who attended, while they are sitting at their table eating their dinner.  

I've never done this before, and I've never experienced what you do.  If you want to create a HUGE win, you can help me do something more - which is to help me tell a story I never want to forget.​  You can help me forever remember the way I feel on my wedding day.  The thing is, I don't even know that's what I'm really looking for unless you tell me.

Now you know.​

​What do you think?  Leave a comment below.

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ARE YOU PRICED FOR YOUR MARKET?

This is easily the most important time of the year for many photographers.  "Booking Season."  This is the time of year when 80-90% of couples are getting engaged, and looking for photographers. For a lot of photographers, this time of year brings with it a roller coaster of both success and frustration.  The phone rings, and and the emails start coming in.  You work on booking consultations and getting signed contracts, and somewhere along the way the doubt starts to set in.

It only takes one of two "you're too expensive," responses to begin to wonder if anyone will ever pay you what you think you're worth.  Then, you start questioning whether you're really worth anything at all.  "All of these inquiries keep telling me that I'm out of their price range... what's wrong with me?!" 

One of the most common struggles that photographers face, is knowing whether or not they are charging the right price for their market.  This happens frequently at the beginning of the year, as so many photographers have just raised their prices, and aren't experiencing the same "results" as they had previously.  

There is a level of panic associated with the question "am I charging too much?!"  In our minds, we play out a scenario where, if we keep our current pricing, we'll never book another job!

It's natural as our businesses grow, that our prices will change based on our increased experience, quality of work, and overall experience we provide our clients.  I think that the "crisis" occurs when we fail to step up our game plan, when we step up our pricing.

This isn't going to be a post based on how you should price (contrary to what the title might have suggested).  My core belief is that you should be charging what you're worth.  You should be charging based on the value you add to your clients.  YOU have to figure that out.  

The truth is - you can charge almost anything you want, IF you're able to align yourself - and your value - with the right market (or demand).  But as we increase our value - and our price as a result - we often fail to re-align ourselves with the appropriate market.

Here's what I mean.  If you were charging $1500 to photograph a wedding last year - and your work was good - you probably attracted a lot of brides.  You probably were able to generate business through bridal shows, online advertising - even craigslist.  You were able to align yourself to that market pretty easily - because it's a LARGE market of consumers.

But let's say you now want to charge $2750 because you realized that you're worth much more than you were charging - AND you'd like to actually make money.  What are the chances that you'll continue to attract a new type of client (one that will see value in spending $2750 on you to photograph their wedding) if you don't change the market you're aligned with.  It's not likely that you'll attract the right clients without changing your approach to the market.

And what if you next year want to charge $4500.  Chances are, the strategy - and market - that worked for you at $1500, and then $2750, will be a failure as you try to elevate your value.  You have to ask yourself "where do couple's that spend this amount on wedding photography, find their photographer?"  

You have to find the right market - and then go after that.  For me, as we've grown, an increasing part of our business comes from our past clients, venues, and event designers (planners).  

As you increase your value - and what you charge clients - the reality is, you're going to need to find a new source of clients.  The things that worked at lower prices are no longer going to work.  We often spend a lot of time trying to find the right price for our market.  Who says that has to be your market?  If you want to charge higher prices - you have to find the right market for your price.