7 Common Time Management Mistakes

Do You Make These 10 Mistakes When You Sell Your Photography?

Are you a natural at selling?

Don’t worry. Very few of us are.

Selling isn’t something you have to fear, or even avoid. It’s a natural part of owning and operating your business.

While focusing on what you should do has its benefits; sometimes it’s easier to learn what to avoid, and simply incorporate those tips into your sales presentation. It can help you see what you are potentially doing wrong, and how its impacting you, your business and your potential clients. If you see yourself in any of these mistakes, use them as a strategy for improving your sales presentations.

Think your client knows more than they do

You live with photography every day. You are entrenched in the culture, and have a true love for everything camera related. While your customers may have an appreciation for great art, they probably don’t have the same passion you do for the photographic industry. Never assume anything – always tell them why you are doing everything.

For example, they probably won’t care that you are using a Canon DSLR EOS 5D Mark II, with a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens. But they will care that you are using professional equipment, and you have multiple bodies and lens options to capture every moment, and be available at all times, even if one of your bodies or lenses fail. That also arms them with knowledge, and they can take that to the next photographer they interview. “Do you carry multiple bodies and lenses?” You would be surprised at the number of photographers that don’t. And it also puts you in a better light with the potential client. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Sales Tagged With: mistakes, sale, sales, sell your photography, selling, strategies

3 Mistakes Photographers Make When Selling Wedding Albums

by Virtual Photography 8 Comments

If you photograph weddings, you probably have a package or two in which you offer an album. And in many cases, your package probably looks something like this:

Up to 5 hours of photography
Over 200 images on copyright-free CD
20 page bridal album
11×14 Portrait Print
Online gallery of your wedding photos to share with friends and family worldwide

The bride knows she will receive a CD full of images, and be able to view the images online, and share them with her family and friends from around the world.

She also knows she can take weeks or even months to select a few of her favorites, and have them put into a bridal album.

But it doesn’t matter what photos she selects, how they fit together, or how the will look side by side. She simply selects her favorites, and you as the photographer will force them into some type of order, and create an album from the final selection.

I’ve seen books like this.

An image of the bride walking down the aisle is set next to a formal of the bride outside at the reception. The first dance is placed along side of the couple kissing by the limo.

In other words, there is no rhyme or reason to the way the album is put together; it’s simply a hodgepodge of images thrown together to form a book of pictures.

Wedding albums aren’t meant to be a book of pictures. They are meant to be the story of the wedding day.

First Mistake: The Photographer Lets The Bride Make The Selection

If you allow a bride to choose her favorite images, she thinks from an individual level, not from a cumulative factor. She can’t see an album because it hasn’t happened yet. She doesn’t imagine how they will look together side by side; she simply chooses based on her best expressions, and her favorite moments.

When she receives the album, it will simply go on the shelf because it’s a book of pictures. It has no meaning – its just 20+ large images from her event.

As a photographer, you should be photographing a wedding to tell the story of the day. With wedding photography, photos work together in order to bring you back to the memories of the event itself. A formal out in the gardens is great, but it’s “just” a photo of the bride and groom. But when you have a series of images of the bride and groom walking through the gardens, talking with their flower girl, sneaking kisses along the way, it becomes a story – and a memory.

As a photographer, you need to think in story format. You need to take one photograph, and then another, and another – all to work together and provide an intimate look into the event itself. Its up to you to tell the story, and present the images in such a way that the bride and groom relive the wedding again and again. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Wedding Photography Tagged With: mistakes, photographers, sales, selling, wedding albums, Wedding Photography, weddings

7 Common Time Management Mistakes

by Virtual Photography 2 Comments

So you work out of your home, and you’re wondering why the business isn’t as strong as it should be. Is your business really your top priority?

While I love working out of my home and wouldn’t trade it for anything, you have to be disciplined to make sure everything works.

Perhaps you feel overloaded, that there is so much to do you’ll never catch up. Or maybe you live for the crisis to appear, dreading it all the way. This is the first sign of failure. If you let this feeling of overwhelm seep in, you’ll quickly be on a downward spiral instead of building for the future.

Take charge now. If any of these pitfalls are affecting you now, its time to make a change.

Mistake #1 Failing To Keep A To Do List

Have you ever had that nagging feeling that you are missing something? If so, you probably don’t use a to do list in order to keep things prioritized. Many people think to do lists are a sign of weakness, or a sign of a bad memory. Not true at all. Instead, a to do list keeps you balanced and focused. And helps you prioritize what you will do during the day, and what should take precedence over everything else.

Dig Deeper: How To Create a To Do List You Actually Stick With And Do

Mistake #2: Not Setting Personal Goals

It’s easy to establish business goals. In fact you probably have a list of them in your office. Even if it’s a short list, business goals come easy as we are focusing in on our businesses. But what about your personal goals? What are your business dreams going to do to help you achieve all you want out of life?

Business goals help you establish the type of lifestyle you’ve dreamed about. But once you have the funding within the business, your personal goals are what give your life meaning. Do you want a one month family vacation every summer? Or to be able to buy your dream house? Or maybe send your kids to the colleges of their choice?

Create both sides of your dream, and use it to define what you do every day. The bigger and more concrete your dreams are, the better chance you have of achieving them.

Mistake #3: Not Prioritizing

Everyone has things they love to do, and things they hate. When your to do list is filled with both, you’ll quickly move the things you love to the top of your list – unless you prioritize.

I once worked with a business owner who hated phone calling. In fact she would do whatever she could to avoid picking up the phone. She admitted it up front to me, so we knew that was her weakness. While I never advise anyone to take up cold calling, there are times when it’s important to call “strangers” and make a connection.

If this business owner has a task of “calling” on her list, it will always be at the bottom. Even if she has to choose between “taking out the trash” and “calling the potential customer”, she would prefer the trash.

When you realize this, you have to change what you do. You have to prioritize your to do list, and start doing the things you hate if they should be at the top of your list. It’s the only way you’ll grow. [Read more...]