Helping amateur photographers make the transition to paid professionals.

Response time and turnaround – how to beat the competition for free

April 23, 2011This is Business

There are plenty of ways to spend money to try and get a leg up on your competition.

But there are equal opportunities to spend nothing and pull ahead.

One of the easiest ways to offer added value for your part time photography clients without touching your business checking account is to improve your response and turnaround times.

In case you hadn't noticed, today's society is deeply in love with immediate satisfaction, and consumers are willing to pay top dollar for convenience and speed – sometimes even at the sacrifice of quality.

Let's look at the two biggest opportunities you have to serve your clients in a way the competition may be unwilling – or unable – to match.

Response Time

“You've reached James at Outlaw Photography – please leave a message after the beep and I will get back to you as soon as possible.”

That's what you'll hear if you call my cell phone, assuming I don't answer because I'm already with a client or (entirely likely) asleep at some random part of the day.

The clock starts ticking from the moment a potential client sends you an e-mail or leaves a voicemail message searching for a return call. It's easy to gloss over these “call me back” messages and save them for batch processing later in the day...or week... But I don't think I have to harp on the fact that procrastination will do nothing to ingratiate you to customers.

If someone has taken the time to e-mail or call, they're as qualified a lead as you can get – they are interested in what you have to offer and are proactively trying to give you money.

If you want to pull ahead of the competition – don't make a buying client wait.

A lot of newbie professional photographers have, like any human being, a notable fear of the unknown. Confidence takes preparation and time to build, and in the interim, picking up the phone to call back a potential client can sometimes be curiously challenging. Sometimes you feel like you barely know what you're talking about, and you fear coming off as a sham.

Like breaking through the first 15 minutes of a good run or gym workout, you've got to muscle through the discomfort so you can get In The Zone.

Some obvious, but valuable and often ignored, protips:

• If the phone rings, answer it – preferably with a big smile and introduction. If I'm calling to spend my money with you, the two worst things you can do are to sound bored or answer with a frustrating, “Hello?”
• If you can't answer the phone – for reasons of proper or illicit nature – have a nice, professional voicemail greeting recorded. Then get back to callers as quickly as you can – within minutes is best. As soon as possible should mean just that. The sooner you call back, the less time your client has to lose interest, or worse, shop the competition.
• Same goes for e-mails – keep an eye on your Inbox and get back to people as quickly as possible. If they leave a phone number, try calling first, unless it's after dinner hours. Just as it's easy for you to ignore an e-mail, it's easy for clients to ignore or simply fail to respond to yours. If you can get them on the phone, you show a real interest in their business and they're more likely to book on the spot.
• Even if you can't answer a caller's question immediately, such as if they want to talk about dates and you're cruising on the Interstate, answer the phone or call back anyway. They will appreciate just getting to consult with you about the shoot, get their questions answered, and you can ask to call them later in the day when you're in front of your calendar. They'll already be sold that “you're the one” and will wait for your contact instead of shopping around.

An example of this practice in action: I was working late at the office last week and got an e-mail from a woman shopping around for wedding photographers, the typical “I'm interested in wedding photography, please send me your prices and packages,” message. So I took two minutes to shoot off a quick response. We e-mailed back and forth a few times over the next 15 minutes, and set up a consultation at the coffeehouse here in Bandera.

When we sat down and visited, by the end of the conversation, my new client told me the number one reason she met with me was because I responded so quickly to her e-mail. She said she e-mailed a dozen photographers - half took days to get back to her, and the other half she hadn't even heard from a week after.

Unbelievable.

Actually, it isn't unbelievable – because it happens all the time. And this is yet another of the big, hairy, audacious opportunities that your competition is leaving open for you to take advantage of. Certainly not just for wedding photography, this applies to any client need – the faster you can turn around a response or request or order, the more impressed and loyal your clients will be.

I don't buy the manipulative grognard horsesh*t of not responding “too quickly” because you want to look busy, and not desperate. Buyers are shoppers – if I'm hungry, the restaurant that's open now is the one that gets my money. I can't tell you how many times I've eaten at Church's Chicken just because it's walking distance from my office.

Much as we photographers, we artists, like to pretend otherwise, most clients are not anxiously waiting by the phone for our return call, desperately wanting to shoot with us and only us – especially at the start-up end of the market.

My new wedding client drove over an hour to visit with me out in Bandera, coming out of the metroplex of San Antonio - over a million strong in population and overflowing with photographers. And she volunteered the reason was primarily because of my response time. That's knowledge you can take to the bank.

Turnaround Time

I can talk a blue streak just about responding to client inquiries as fast as you can.

Your second opportunity to use speed to stay ahead of your competition is in turnaround time, how long you take to turn around client requests and orders.

This is especially crucial near your local high schools' graduation ceremonies. Parents love to have great, up-to-date photos of their seniors to send out with graduation invitations. But like most folks, they procrastinate until the month or so before graduation.

I used to tell people it would take about a week to turn around proofs. I mean, that's what everyone else does, right? Don't want to look too desperate – and we want to make it appear that we spent a lot of time being artistic in preparing these precious proofs!

Well, that was all BS.

The real reason was that I was lazy, and I justified that laziness with the idea of trying to mindfreak my clients into thinking I was busy being an in-demand artist.

That's disingenuous and the kind of manipulation I abhor – as a consumer and as a businessman. As with an honest mechanic, if something takes 15 minutes, it takes 15 minutes; if it takes three hours, it takes three hours, not three days or three weeks.

I've refined my workflow to dedicate about an hour to post-process a shoot for proofing and sales. Barring dinner or other engagements, guess how long it takes for me to turn around proofs for my clients? That's right – one hour.

Unless another photographer moves into Bandera County and starts shooting and selling portraits like a good rodeo or event photographer (two-person team, one shooting and handing cards to a second person who processes and has proofs ready as the shoot is ongoing), nobody could beat my turnaround times even if they wanted to.

And this is the point I don't want you to lose in this sea of advice:

You won't start out with the best art, the most business savvy, the best marketing – but you can start giving your clients an exceptional experience right away.

Ignore what the grognards do and say, or “how everyone does it,” and ask yourself how you can do better by your clients right now – ask yourself how you'd prefer to be treated.

Stepping up to a faster turnaround is a no-cost opportunity to add value to your professional photography services. You're just shifting processing time from later in the week to immediately after your shoot. It takes some energy, some stamina to give your all on a shoot then get on your computer and start processing, but the good word of mouth will fatten your bank account much faster than procrastination.

Next Steps

• How fast can you turn around proofs on your next shoot? Race yourself, just for fun – apply the 80/20 rule and see what 20 percent of processing you're doing that's giving you 80 percent of your artistic results. Try to get your post-processing time below one-hour on a one-hour shoot – this includes all post-processing, including offloading the camera, backing up the shoot, culling, processing proofs, black and white conversions on your favorite shots, and walking away from the computer ready to show and sell. No room for self-indulgent perfectionism here. Keep practicing – it does get easier and faster with time.
• Brainstorm session: Take an evaluative look at your competition, any other photographers or studios marketing to your potential clients. Look at every detail a client might consider: artistic style, uniqueness of art, personality, session fees or minimum orders, print pricing, availability and pricing on files, forced package buys, friendliness of policies and treatment, speed to turn around proofs or orders, simplicity or complexity of their marketing message and policies, social proof (are they using testimonials well?), social media, permission marketing (e-mail newsletter), keyphrase-richness and personality of blog posts, professionalism and warmth on phone calls, informative content of web site, transparency and speed of e-mail responses, speed in returning voicemails, who their coop marketing partners are, so on and so on. Some of the best marketing education you can get is in shopping your competition. Which of their strengths can you match or better? How can you maximize on their weaknesses? Where's the gaping hole of opportunity? File this in your Brainstorms folder.
• My writing at PartTimePhoto.com exists to serve your needs as an amateur photographer making the transition to paid professional. I appreciate and welcome your readership, and invite you to subscribe to my e-mail newsletter at the top of any page of this site.
• What's your competition doing wrong? What can you do to capitalize on it? Leave a comment below, e-mail me, or call or text me at 830-688-1564.

by Outlaw Photographer James Michael Taylor

What the super-rich can teach us as entrepreneurs

January 25, 2011This is Business

I love Esquire Magazine - I dare say it's my favorite read out of the many, many magazines I subscribe to. The wit, confidence, and personality makes reading it like having a couple drinks with a buddy whose bravado is such that his mere presence makes you feel like a more capable human being.

In their April 7, 2010, slideshow, "What I've Learned: Secrets of the Super-Rich," you pick up some tight one- and two-liners from some of the richest men of our time. Donald Trump, Rupert Murdoch, and the like.

Here's my take on their advice, and how it applies to what we do as part time professional photographers:

"You have to pretend you're 100 percent sure. You have to take action; you can't hesitate or hedge your bets. Anything less will condemn your efforts to failure."
- Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel

As I've written before, preparation is what gives you the confidence you need to get the most out of every customer conversation and photo shoot that you do.

You have to give yourself permission as a new-to-the-fold professional photographer to not know everything. Nobody knows everything about this business, and even what's highly successful for one photographer in one market may be a complete dud for someone else, somewhere else.

Once you relax and admit to yourself that you're not going to know it all from the start, you can focus on real preparation and applying your best at your business. If you're even striving to improve and do a little better each day, practicing the Japanese philosophy of kaizen, then you are far surpassing the efforts of grognard photographers who have long become lazy, stagnant, and bored with their own work.

Wherever you are, whatever gear you have, whatever amount of experience or talent you have or have not, book that first shoot - or your second, or your third. Keep moving forward, maintain momentum, and with every shoot, step up to your client with the confidence that you're going to do the best work you know how, and that you'll only get better every time. You don't have to be perfect, and you don't want to be; questing for perfection is the absolute best way to kill your momentum.

As always, talent takes time, but creating a great experience for your clients is something anyone can do at any time.

"Work honestly and build, build, build. That's all I can tell you."
- J.R. Simplot, potato magnate

This is the core idea of just about everything I try to share here on PartTimePhoto.com. Be transparent, be honest, keep things simple for your clients, make it easy for them to book and shoot and spend their money with you.

And with each client, maintain a fluid circuit of learning, practicing, marketing, shooting, selling, and serving.

The greatest fact of being a green part time professional photographer is that you have nowhere to go but up. From the day you make the decision to do what you love and make honest money doing it, you will only get better: you will only learn new skills, grow as an artist, mature as a businessperson, earn more income, invest in better gear, expand your client base, build an ever-growing foundation of adoring repeat clients and super fans, and grow both your bank account and social circle.

Part time photography is a wonderful choice of profession, and like any other, it takes work to make progress. But it's the kind of work you can love doing while building a successful business that benefits your community as much as you and your family.

"Love the janitor."
- Jack Welch, former CEO, GE

While it's always most effective to focus your marketing efforts on your target audience, never forget that everybody is somebody's brother, son, daughter, mother, friend, etc. Your best marketing isn't intended necessarily to draw an immediate response from the first person it touches, but to make your services 'top of mind' for an ever-growing audience of influencers They'll remember your name when a friend or family member needs what you can provide.

And the 'janitor' mantra is no joke - I did some gratis boudoir photography for an old high school friend last year, and though their shoot was for fun, they have since referred several clients my way - boudoir photos, family photos, and even a wedding.

When the opportunity presents itself to be awesome to someone who probably doesn't see a lot of "awesome" in their lives, take it and be both blessed and a blessing.

"If you haven't got a hernia yet, you ain't pulling your share."
- George Steinbrenner, owner, New York Yankees

Notice a theme here?

If you want to succeed, do the work. Learn, practice, act, get paid, get better. Sow, reap.

This is as applicable to you and I as to the most successful business magnates of our time.

"It's fair for people to question how much a CEO is making. But they should question the companies that fail. In the companies that have a great management team, they should understand that it's important to compensate great executives."
- Sumner Redstone, former CEO, Viacom

Don't let this advice slip by you: you are an executive in your own business, the CEO, even if you're a business of one. And one of the fastest ways to burn out as a part time photographer is to not pay yourself well.

With a business you love, it is far too easy to reinvest and reinvest all of your photography income back into the business, while never keeping any for yourself, or worse, not realizing that you're also spending money out of pocket to grow the business.

Not that this is necessarily a problem. If a purchase you make as a business owner gives you as much personal satisfaction and enjoyment as though you had bought it for personal use, then the value is the same. Even though I may suggest that you keep your salary separate from the rest of your business expenses and investments, I'll always advise that it's your business and your money - if you want to do something, don't let anyone tell you you can't.

It may be hard to believe in these early stages when passion and motivation run high, but you may one day want to move on to another adventure other than professional photography. Don't invest so much of your personal and business income that you have no nest egg to fund your next big adventure.

Pay yourself first.

"I was walking down Fifth Avenue with Marla Maples in 1991. This was at the peak of the bad market. Across the street I saw a man in front of Tiffany with a tin cup. I looked at Marla and said, 'You know, right now that man is worth $900 million more than I am.'"
- Donald Trump, CEO, Trump Organization

Donald Trump knows how to make a buck or two - and he knows how to lose'em just as fast. But Trump also knows that the ups and downs of life and business make for hella good stories, and stories are worth far more in social capital than money.

Two takeaways here:

When you look with envious eyes at other, 'more' successful, 'more' popular, 'more' wealthy, 'more' talented professional photographers, what you assume may not be the reality those photographers live with. There are plenty of photographers who look like big shots but barely make $10 an hour - if that. All revenue and no profit. You don't know their expenses, their overhead, their challenges, or their bottom line. They may have a big retail studio and beautiful marketing pieces, but if they're in debt up to their eyeballs and are only working each day to pay off credit card bills, they're nowhere near as well off professionally or personally as you are with your point and shoot camera and VistaPrint business cards. Stay frugal, stay debt-free, earn your upgrades.

Also, the best part of failure - disappointing a client, not landing a customer you worked hard to get in the door, getting zero return from a marketing investment - is the lesson you learn, and the story you now have to tell. Lick your wounds, but explore what went wrong, and adjust your decision making in the future so history doesn't repeat itself. What you learn is worth far more in the long run than what you lose in the here and now.

"When you're eighty years old and looking back on your life, you want to have minimized the number of regrets you have. That's what should drive people. Not how much money they have."
- Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO, Amazon.com

My senior year of high school, as the 'nice guy' in class, I was assigned to be both buddy and guide to the new German foreign exchange student. Over the course of the school year, he and I became best friends, and to this day he's still the European brother I never had.

At one particular basketball game, he was scoping out the most fly cheerleader on the varsity squad, and dying to go talk to her. About five-eleven, lithe, blonde, one of those Hicks girls with the big doe eyes that made all the varsity football players swoon.

In that moment, I coined the best piece of advice I have ever given in my life, something that has since changed both our lives for the better:

"Make memories, not excuses."
- James Taylor, owner/author, PartTimePhoto.com

(Or as Tim Riggins on Friday Night Lights would simplify, "No regrets.")

Now I don't pretend to place myself among the magnates and gurus quoted throughout this article, but this mantra has informed every decision I've made since the words passed my lips those many years ago. I hope it can bring you as much fulfillment in your life as it has in mine.

(Aside: My brother Andreas did talk to that cheerleader, and although they never dated, they became great friends. She went on to become a Seventeen Magazine model and they still keep in touch. Not shabby company to keep, and all it took was the decision to swing - hit or miss.)

Next Steps

• Pay a visit to the Esquire slideshow mentioned above and take in both the wisdom in the words and character in the faces of the business barons quoted above. There's plenty more wisdom to glean from these good ol' boys. Also visit their What I've Learned archives for more wisdom from the rich and famous.
• Pick a magazine - any magazine on any industry, but I'm partial to Fast Company, Inc., Entrepreneur, and Esquire - get a subscription, and take the time each month to flip through its pages. For the dollar a month or less these publications cost, you'll get far more than your money's worth in new ideas. If you study the advertising pages alone for ideas how to market your own business, you'll walk away from each issue with at least one great idea to apply to your own business. Don't discount the value of print publications just because of the variety and breadth of online sites like this one - it's good to stretch your legs, and your horizons.
• For bonus points, hit the local coffee shop with your magazine, a notepad, and your camera. Spread them out on the table and start idea hunting and taking notes. Be on the lookout for interesting folks to strike up conversations with, but if nothing else, F8 and Be There. Just being seen out in your community with your camera can make a difference in building your brand.
• Brainstorm session: Think back to kindergarten and all the simple, obvious, but so often overlooked things you learned there. What are the simplest but most important things you learned? How can you apply these nuggets of life wisdom to your business practices? How can you make your business as simple and easy for your clients as kindergarten rules? Not condescending, but concise, and clear. File this in your Brainstorms folder.
• My writing at PartTimePhoto.com exists to serve your needs as an amateur photographer making the transition to paid professional. I appreciate and welcome your readership, and invite you to click the free “Subscribe” link at the top of any page of this site.
• What's the best advice you've been given - or biggest lesson you've learned - in your adventure as a professional photographer? Leave a comment below, e-mail me, or call or text me at 830-688-1564.

by Outlaw Photographer James Michael Taylor