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Getting Clients Q&A

Is it kind of clicking for you? Like, I just want to make sure that you think about, like, these things, this this industry it's, it's, it's, an industry that I am determined to exist in I'm running a marathon, I'm running a business that's going to be here a decade from now, okay, it's never about who did it first it's on ly about who did it right doesn't matter otherwise. So if you go out and you're spending all your time marketing and you're spending all your time trying to get new clients because the old ones hate you, you're going to run out of a market. And so there's, just the these twelve things, these twelve steps make sure you're doing these and just and and really, to be honest with you, a lot of it's common sense and be a human being treat them like people and it'll work. And when you get to that point in your business, where these people love you so much that they can't envision going anywhere else, like the grant family that's been coming to our studio since nineteen eigh...

ty six I was four way treat them well and and we are resource to them and were guide and we on dh, they get wonderful service the moment they walk in the door. And we hook them up with with a special deal every once in a while and we might invite them in on days that we aren't open for other clients but that's okay, because these are the people that maintain my business these are the ones that are going to be I guess we're calling my poses the ones that are one and dunn's we don't want those there's a bad use of that word, but we don't want those those clients you're going tohave him not every client's could come to you every year, but you can hit on these things and make sure the ones that are going to ones that do click the people that you can't help but smile when you see them come in the door, take those twelve steps do those things so that the hang on any feedback on the lifelong clients or shade move onto the next stuff people love it, I think before you move onto the next stuff though something that had been coming up throughout the workshop actually and I promised people that we would talk about it so a lot of people do senior rep or ambassador program something like that where they have folks in the high schools who kind of represent their business and sort of advertised for them do you have a senior rep program? And if so, what you think about it? If not why we do not do a senior rep program for the simple reason that we don't need you. Our marketing is strong enough, we're doing the numbers we want to dio that it would be maybe it be worth it? I just I've never gone down the road, I've never tried it. I can't even say that it doesn't work. I can't speak intelligently about that, because I simply don't know my friend alicia does an amazing senior rec program, other people in my markets, jen, that was just on has one that does all right? Uh, no senior rep programs, it can be a good system, but remember what I told you, guys, like we do, the direct mailing, we we market in a completely different way, and ah, lot of the people that are doing this in europe program it so much it's, a much more focused form of marketing. The one thing I will say, if you're going to do a senior rep program that vet out your kids, make sure that you're getting ones that are going to represent your brand. Well, you know, even just on our sports stuff, and we weren't even talking senior raps on our sports stuff, I got a call from the school asking us to replace a collage because one of the kids that we had featured in I'm from a football thing got a d w I that's not a kid I want wrapping my brand I don't need a sixteen year old kid he's gotta dw ay wrapping my brand so do your work, talk to the kids, interview them beyond that. If you're starting to look for reps, I would recommend if you have any relationships with teachers at the school like talk to the teachers and say who would be a good kid for this and it's going to sound like a little bit vain? But you're going to need popular kids because you're trying to market wallflowers or not you're just hired target, you're going to want popular kids that are outgoing that got their stuff together. You want good students not because you care if they're smarter, you want good students because good students got their stuff together they're kids that are doing well and that's a measure of excellence that you khun see that's very riel in the high school market so it's a good system, they you hear good things about it, you hear bad things about it. A lot of times I hear that if you don't have the good kids, if you don't vet him right that you're going to give these kids business cards and they're gonna walk around and they're gonna just throw in their backpack and never had him out and a photographer from my local market who might be watching anne marie she was just talking about how she did a senior rep program and the kid in the kid walked around the school and said, where you going for your senior pictures? And if they said anne marie, then he was like, well, I got you this kid, so he was just asking and if they already we're going there, so then she had incentives and money going out to this kid and he did no work him pushing you represent her, he wasn't good, he wasn't a good ambassador, so the senior rep program can be done. Well, if you need to do it, if it's a way you want to do your business is nothing wrong with it. It's not something we d'oh just because we're doing the hundreds of kids we are we're doing the eight hundred ninety five sessions last year without it that I haven't had no need for it yet so that's a perfectly valid response and maybe one more topic really quick just before we get into the final thoughts again, people were asking you mentioned earlier that you were able to get a list from a school of the senior or the juniors that we're going to be seniors and all that so the question is how do you approach a school? There was some question of is it legal to get students information like is that actually legal for schools to give out and where do you or are you like that admitting the crimes and how do you approach them like you just call up and say, hey, I'm a photographer I want names okay, what you do you dressed all in black and you go to sky net middle of the night ski mask hacksaw blade uh, no, I pick up the phone and I called the district and the big thing about that is schools are publicly owned, its public records it's public knowledge. You can call a school right now in your market let's. Just say your thing. Everyone should do this just for fun. Call a school right now in your market and say I'm curious what your contract is for your high school senior photography I want to know what your contract is that you have set up with whoever comes in and does your underclass photos. Do you know what by law they have to give you that it's a contract held between a publicly owned organization and a business that's public records you can find out anything any time you want put in the phone call. Do you mean like the numbers that they are paying them is public information? You can find out if there's a commission from the from the provider. So like and that's not that's, not that uncommon. So let's say that I don't do underclass voters, but let's say I go when I do an underclass photos for a school and there's a thousand kids there. I a lot of times they'll put up a commission like we'll pay two, three, four, five the kids. So you know that that that that providers paying the school five thousand dollars, right? You confined that's about you have the right to that knowledge because it's public knowledge that might just be fun. I think everyone calm post the numbers in the group. So I'm curious what it is nation will hide. They have to share now. How some schools may get around it is in one of our local school district. What they've done is you have to technically opt. You have to opt out of the list sewing kids started the school district. The mom and dad are going to get a form that says, like, do you want to be in our district information and you can have a privacy act and opt out. There is one school district in our community where you have to opt in your assumed out and you have to opt in and so that's rare in our area. There are national companies that you can try to get your data from like to get list from I have not used any of them, so I can't really speak about them, but I do know that I would ask a lot of photographers that have used them to see what their results were because and and that's a good it's also good to have an awesome printer that does your work. Our print lab is for our brochures and our mailers, its maximum graphics inch aska call molly brooks everyone call her right now? No, she does all of our stuff there and maximum graphics huge print lab they actually print, like if you do an apple ibook or whatever they do, the album printing for them like eighty percent nationwide it's, a huge company, and it's like fifteen minutes away from my house for fifteen minutes away from my studio. They do our brochure printing, and what they do is they're able to run my list that I send to them. They run the current address information, and if it doesn't match up to throw it out so I don't pay the postage, I don't pay the brochure, they verify my list so that's something that you can ask for your printer, maybe you get a nationalist and it's from the uses the census bureau information, which may be incredibly outdated or full of holes, you might get a bunch, but it's going to be more of a buckshot approach, you're going to be kind of spraying and praying a little bit more as opposed to knowing. But you can maybe toss out a bunch of those names by working with a good print. A good printer was gonna do that for you. And maybe just the final thing than like karen says the market on the eastern even california is very different because the school uses a contract photographer and the yearbook likes the kids all be the same. So do you have any thoughts on maybe breaking into that or just business in those sorts of areas breaking into being the yearbook photographer? Either maybe that or are you just approach is that you can take one? You do have a market that it is like that? Yeah, the big thing is is like, we have a school that's in our market that I still shoot a lot of kids out of. And they have to go to aa subsidiary of the biggest photography company in the world. That's good. A subsidiary of them. If they want me in the yearbook, doesn't matter, we still market to it. We still send all the kids are brochures because the parents come in laughing, you're gonna get parents, they're just kind of ticked off that they have to go there like I don't want to go to that place we want to pick our photographer if we were in the next school district, we could pick whoever we wanted, but we're stuck with these guys so we still market to them because if the parents and the kids still like your photography that's what there's going by just because it's a, uh, school contract for the yearbook photo, it doesn't mean that that's what they're going to put a sixteen my twenty campus on their wall of and those guys can't do the work that you're doing when you're doing an entire high school like if you're doing a class of three thousands, if you're doing three thousand kids school, you can't do my half hour session, which I fly through, you don't have time to do that for nine hundred kids can do what they don't have the time to give these kids a personalized experience where it's fun that is absolutely walk in, sit down, smile, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, go in the lobby and pick your picture that's what it iss and so it's selling like market to them don't be afraid to market to them because I don't even charge from the yearbook photos anyway, so doesn't like. If they come to me, they get a free yearbook photos, so it doesn't hurt my sales. And don't be afraid to stand out in your photography. Make sure that when we go back to the sixteen things on day one, embrace your strengths, show them that you're doing stuff, that the other guys can't give them a product and experience that they cannot find at that place. So even though they're goingto have to go to that place for their yearbook, they don't have to buy it. And, quite frankly, they weren't gonna have. They're gonna have the wall. They are going to do it. They're gonna have the experience of one of the great images.