So, I had a consultation in the studio the other day, and I heard a story told from my guest. I’ve heard it before. Basically it was the horror story of the client never getting their wedding album, or what ever product they had ordered from their photographer.
They are of course telling me this story so I can educate them as to how I will prevent that from happening. The first way to prevent that from happening is to understand why it happens in the first place.
When a person claims that they are now a professional photographer, they have transformed themselves from technician into business owner overnight, and they have bills to pay just as fast!
So, they find a way, and somehow they book their first wedding! When a photographer is booked to photograph a wedding, it is standard procedure to collect a retainer to hold the date. This way the customer knows the photographer is committed to the customers date in the future, and the photographer knows the customer is committed as well. Everyone knows what they can expect from each other, and that’s a good thing.
Now that the photographer has received their retainer, they need to pay some bills, and if they’re not careful, all of the money is spent. However, soon they find that another wedding has been booked, and again the bills need to be paid. And again the retainer is used to pay the bills.
Because the photographer is just starting out, and their schedule is not booked full of weddings, they consistently find that they need to use their retainers to survive. All is well.
Now, when a client books a photographer, they pay a retainer, leaving a balance due some time in the future which is agreed upon in a written contract. If that beginning photographer does not book a wedding for the month that the client’s final payment is due, then they will need to use the final payment to pay their bills as well, leaving no money to produce the product that was actually promised in the agreement in the first place! Yikes!
If possible, the photographer will then use some if not all of the retainer from the next wedding that is booked to pay for the product that needs to be produced from the previous wedding that just finished.
This can very quickly turn into a vicious cycle for the beginner or uneducated business owner. They realize that they have priced their packages correctly to cover their bills, but they just don’t have the volume of customers they need to make the equation work!
So, nine times out of ten, this is what the photographer does to alleviate the problem. They lower their price thinking it will cause more people to book, thus increasing their volume.
Lets say they lower their price by 10 or 20% to make everything very attractive. Do they book more weddings because of this? You bet. But slowly.
Now, four to six months later, with more weddings on the books, they find that they now have more product to produce, only with 10 –20% less money to produce it with! They have only compounded their problem!!!
If the business owner is not careful, they may put themselves in such a deep hole that they will be forced to close their business, with no money to pay back the customers that have not received their product.
It doesn’t take long for the photographer to actually hate photography! They can’t even answer their phones because they are in fear that on the other end is an angry client.
There are many solutions to this problem, but it is not the purpose of this blog entry to discuss those solutions. I only wanted to point out what I think the root cause is for the horror story of people never receiving their wedding albums.
