Here’s One Of The All-Time Keys To My Photography Success
Trying to create meaningful, high quality photographs of someone without meeting them ahead of time and find out what they want, is like trying to drive your car without ever putting gas or oil in it. It’s just not going to work very well, or for very long!
If you will simply take the extra time to meet with your clients ahead of time, on a day that is NOT the day of the photography, you will find they will like you more, trust you, plus the photography will be much better, and your sales will…
dramatically improve! It is SO worth the small additional time investment!
Here’s 5 key reasons why it’s well worth your time to meet with your clients ahead of time – on a separate day from the photography day:
1. It builds rapport & trust.
When you meet her in person, it allows her to get to know you and begin trusting you. There is way more of a relationship when you meet her in advance and just ask her some questions, and give her a chance to see that you care about creating something she will really love.
2. You can honestly find out what she wants.
As you’re asking her questions, you’re finding out exactly what she wants. This way, you don’t do what I call “Pot Luck Photography” – which is do a bunch of everything, hoping she likes something. Instead, you find out exactly what she wants, and then you know what type of photography, settings, backgrounds, locations, etc. to create for her.
3. You can educate her about your policies.
Yes, you could do this over the telephone, but it’s not anywhere near as effective as in person. You get to let her know about how you do business – and do it in a very positive way – so she sees what you’re all about, and if there is some problem with anything, she can talk with you about it now – (so there’s not a huge problem later, after you’ve already created the images for her.)
4. You collect the pre-paid creation fee.
One of your policies (which I’ll talk about in my next article) is that you have a pre-paid Creation Fee that covers the time involved in planning & creating the images. This fee does NOT go toward the finished images. This meeting with her allows you to collect this fee from her that day.
5. You carefully guide her regarding clothing, make-up etc.
Once she has officially hired you, and paid your pre-paid creation fee, you can then carefully guide her on what to wear. And you can do this very accurately, as you are speaking with her IN PERSON – so you know her height, weight, hair color, eye color, etc. This really will help her be much more pleased with the finished images!
Hopefully, you can see how much this meeting will help your photography and your sales to be much better than they would have been if you had not had this meeting. All I can say is that this has had a HUGE effect on the success of my photography business for many years. I’ve tested this and proven it to be amazingly effective.
All the best,
Charles J. Lewis, M. Photog., Cr.
