The business side of photography
If a photographer wants to properly complete a job, they first have to properly start the job with a well-written estimate.
(This post is for new photographers.)
A potential customer asks you for a price to photograph something. What do you do?
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There are plenty of clients who don’t actually want the cheapest choice. They want the best one, and a powerful estimate is the clue they use to choose.
– Seth Godin, author and marketing strategist
An estimate doesn’t have to be just a page of numbers. You can use an estimate as an additional marketing tool to help persuade a potential customer. Customers need more than numbers to understand you and your business. If you can sell yourself as being more knowledgeable, more reliable, and less risk, then price becomes secondary.
Differentiate yourself from other photographers not by having a lower price or even a similar price, but by being exactly what they’re looking for. And this is done with words, not numbers, on an estimate. Sell yourself and not the numbers.
Seth Godin’s full blog post about estimates.
A few months ago, I was asked to quote for a three-hour business event. So I quoted for a three-hour event.
Two days before the event, the event organizer said they needed me onsite 45 minutes sooner to do some early photos. They also wanted me to stay after the event so I could edit “one or two pictures” right away for their social media.
On event day, I arrived one hour before the start and, as requested, I was ready to go 45 minutes before the start. But the event was 45 minutes late getting started. It also ran 1-1/2 hours longer than planned. After the event they wanted some group photos. Then the “one or two pictures” that they needed right away became 16 images. What was originally supposed to be three hours onsite turned out to be more than 6-1/2 hours.
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Someone this week asked for a quote to photograph “a one day corporate business event” they were hosting on a specific date “at a downtown Toronto location.” No further information was provided.
The person used a Gmail address with a rather silly username instead of a business email address. Surely an organization big enough to host a “corporate business event” would have its own company address.
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Why didn’t the customer accept your quote? Was it too expensive for them? Did they find a better photographer? What did you forget to do? What did you not foresee?
• In February this year, a municipality requested a photo quote for an upcoming economic report. I sent a quote and heard nothing for a few days. Was my price too high? What didn’t they like?
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Why not give a customer a price over the phone?
If a photographer simply tells a potential customer, “The price for your photography project will be $4,000,” then the customer may be left wondering about things like:
Does that include expenses and sales tax?
Does that price include post-processing?
When and how do we have to pay?
Exactly what are we getting for our money?
After we pay, we own the pictures, right?
There’s a ninety-nine percent chance that the next potential customer who phones will ask, “How much?”
So how are you going to respond? Just hem and haw? Mumble something like, “It depends”?
Ideally a price should not be given over the phone. It’s always better to use e-mail. When you give a price over the phone, the customer will remember only the price and nothing else you said.
A customer asks “how much” usually because they don’t know what else to ask. While price may be important to them, the true reason they call is that they’re trying to figure out if you’re the right photographer for them. Do you understand their needs? Can you do the work properly? Do they feel reassured by you?
When that inevitable question is asked, you have to be ready without missing a beat. The way to do this is to have a prepared script or checklist which includes a number of questions for the customer, for example:
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