Pricing

A Quick note on Friday

Today is a travel day as we leave Vegas and get ready for the Virginia Professional Photographers convention this weekend.  So we’re in transit but still checking email, comments and Twitter.  As a quick note if you’ve been thinking about attending a future SEXY BUSINESS workshop you might want to check out Spencer Boerup’s review of this past week that was just posted this morning – SEXY BUSINESS REVIEW

The DC workshop (July 23-25) only has 1 slot left so if you are interested get in quick.  Due to the increased demand we’re considering offering another DC workshop date so if you are interested in securing a slot in the add-on workshop please send me an email ASAP – [email protected]

We may be traveling like crazy but tune in for another episode of the …a Man to Fish… podcast dropping on Monday.

- trr

 

UPDATE – The DC workshop is now SOLD OUT.  We are tentatively considering adding another if we get 3 committed bookings in the next two weeks.  Check out the WORKSHOPS page for more information.  Remember that our Denver and Atlanta workshops still have space available!!!

By |February 23rd, 2012|Branding, Business, Pricing|1 Comment
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Your best meat

OK, last night we were celebrating SEXY BUSINESS attendee (and all-around fantastic photographer/human being) Spencer Boerup’s birthday at Fogo de Chao in Vegas.  It was an amazing exercise in pricing strategy.  They had one price to thrill you.  You paid one price and they literally ran at you with the most amazing food you’d ever seen/smelled/eaten.  The servers circle you with giant skewers of meat and offer you as much as you can handle of type after type of option.  It was enormously entertaining and felt very indulgent and decadent.

Make no mistake – the food was amazing.  But the experience and treatment was what made the night one of the best I can remember in a long time.  They only let us have the best that they could do.

Creative pros get so caught up in their starting price.  What’s your amazing price?  What’s your utterly thrilling decadent price?  What is your totally amazeballs option?  What will make me go bananas?  Have you even thought about your top while fixating on the bottom?  Figure out what the best is you can do then give me an argument as to why you ought to be offering the world any else besides that.

I need you to figure out how to run at me with your best meat.

 

- trr

(happy birthday Spencer. And yes, this blog title was a dare, and yes I WILL post it shamelessly)

By |February 22nd, 2012|Branding, Business, Pricing|6 Comments
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Should you grow your business?

Like a bunch of artsy-fartsies we spent Super Bowl Sunday (hallowed be thy name) sitting around a table with a bunch of photographers talking business.  I think I saw someone raise the trophy at the end of the night and I didn’t see a single commercial.  What I did hear was something that really made me think.

We were talking with a pretty kick-ass studio about where they go from here.  They book a ton of weddings, have their workflow down so they actually have a great life outside of the business, and generally seem happier with their lives and business than any other full-timers I know (really pissed me off!).  So I really had to think about it when they pondered whether or not to raise their prices and go for more.

I’m a potential guy.  I hate to see anyone limit themselves and I truly believe that you never know what you can accomplish until you put it out there and analyze the results and make adjustments.  That’s the business-guy in me talking.  The other part of me stops short – these people are HAPPY.  Their lives work well.  They’re killing it and booking the dates easily.  So at some point you have to wonder whether the constant push is really worth it?

In our industry there is this ever-present advice to continue raising prices and pushing the bar.  I get that life inflates and we have to manage.  But I have started to wonder whether this advice makes much sense as a driving theme?  If we look at other industries they don’t all start mass-market and move inexorably towards luxury.  Most of them find a sweet spot and dominate it until they decide to test the waters in carefully managed ways.  Why do we all have to push upward?  Is that what we’re all suited for?  Is what value we have to offer always defined by “more?”

This studio is thrilled to shoot 40 weddings a year.  They should stay in the zone and keep killing it until a personal choice makes them change their minds.  At some point 40 may be too many and they may want to shoot 30, or 20, then the business can flex accordingly.

Because every upward move you make is hard.  The difficulty curve gets steep as well.  So if you find a happy place and it covers what you need to make and you find an efficient way to live and work let yourself enjoy it until you find a personal frustration that makes you want to change things up.  Sure, there are some caveats and things to consider (check out my “Netflix” post on why you do have to plan for and build the future today) but by and large I would advise those of you who have found the lifestyle, money and happiness to enjoy it for a while before you start messing around with success.

 

- trr

By |February 6th, 2012|Branding, Business, Pricing, Purpose|0 Comments
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Is there a pricing formula?

Everyone knows Seth Godin brings the good-time-knowledge.  Check out yesterday’s post, “The Pricing Forumla (S&S)”

It is a great article on how price affects a client’s choice in buying a product or a service.  As I’ve said in the past, photographers and other creative entrepreneurs are entirely too terrified of their prices.  They do whatever they can to hide and obscure the total cost (or how much they actually want to make) and they fixate on the lowest possible price and wonder why clients end up doing the same.  Here is the particular part of Seth’s post that I think is massively relevant:

The other half of the pricing formula is the story the price itself tells. A Prius at $40,000 or a Prius at $10,000 is the same car, but the price becomes a dominant part of the story. You can tell a story of value/cheapness/affordability, or a story of luxury. If you price your product or service near the median, you’re telling no story at all with the price, giving you the chance to tell a story about some other element of what you sell. – SG

I’ve always advised photographers to stop hiding their price and make it work for them.  as Seth points out – when you price yourself in the middle you’ve lost the opportunity to say something.  As with any other effort that puts you firmly in the middle of everything that is achingly …n…o..r……m….a…..llll……

Do you want to entrench yourself alongside everyone else?  Look, pricing is just like everything else – no one thing is going to work for everyone.  Fine.  But I hope that you’ll think a bit about what story you want your price to tell on your behalf. How much should someone value what you do?  Your price gives some indication.  Who should own your work?  Your price gives the market an idea.  How many different things/approaches/ideas/demographics/etc is your business designed to accomodate?  The range of prices that you offer lets people know.  I keep hearing photographers complain about the fact that clients want them to do things they don’t want to do – is your price indicating that you are flexible and accomodating?

Stories get people interested in you.  They make you worthwhile.  Tell some.  Tell better ones.  Let your price do some of the heavy lifting.

- trr

 

While we’re here check out a few of Seth’s Books that I think are of particular relevance to you  and I:

By |January 24th, 2012|Business, Pricing|1 Comment
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What is your portfolio worth?

So this week we’ve been asking deeper questions about what we do and why we do it that way.  Beyond budgets and perceived wealth it seems like the portfolio value of a given job is a relevant factor in determining the price.  It strikes me as a worthwhile question to ask whether or not the value of having that job in your portfolio is worth affecting how you price it.

So how much should it cost you to build your portfolio?  I’m talking time, money, and most importantly lost wages if you compromised to get the work?   And truthfully how much is your portfolio worth once you’ve built it?  Is there some magical formula of images containing the right clients, locations, decor, whatever wherein everything else falls into place?

How many images need to be in your portfolio to accomplish your goals?

Because my experience and my research has proven to me that the portfolio is only a small part of the overall motivation behind the photographer getting the job.  Sure, it matters, but it isn’t the deciding factor and if the other stuff isn’t rocking the portfolio won’t push you over the edge.  People hire values and ideals, not portfolios.

Look, this isn’t a blog about me – its a blog about you and how you can do the best that you can.  But honestly we booked the first 5 weddings of our business without ever having shot one.  Whether that’s cool with you or not, that’s the reality.  Then again, I’m not selling photography (primarily). Photography is the vehicle by which I sell the value that I do provide.  Every time we branched into a new segment of the market (destination weddings, Cinematography, Jewish weddings, etc) we did so without any portfolio to support it.  Because the point is selling the value that your product represents, not just your product.

I think that portfolios are obstacles.  The client needs to wade through them and hopefully they get the point that you were trying to make.  I suppose my argument would be to make the point as to why you should be hired and show just enough portfolio to prove that you can execute and then show them the next steps and get out of the way.  I think portfolios are obstacles to photographers because they represent a barrier to entry – so many people think that without the portfolio you can’t do the work which is the worst kind of chicken/egg obstacle.

What I’m asking at the end of all this is what is your portfolio adding to your overall value proposition and what do you need to do to get it?  Are you putting obstacles in the way of going after what your want because of a perceived deficiency in your portfolio?  Are you making sacrifices to build your portfolio and are those sacrifices worth it?   Have you really thought about the value that that extra image or body of work will cost and weighed the real value of getting it?

I get it – you got into this for the work.  I want you to get more of the right work.  I just don’t want you wasting time and running in the wrong direction to get it.  It seems to me that if you are a real value to people you can generate your portfolio on the job.  Your portfolio is what you do, not limited by what you have done.  I guess that’s the real point (summed up far quicker and more succinctly that I’m apparently able to upon first consideration) -

Is your value what you do or what you have done?

If your value is what you have done you need to prove that you’ve done the thing before and execute on the same things.  If your value is what you do you need to live it, not copy or repeat it.  Small difference in perspective, big difference in execution.

What are your thoughts on your portfolio and its relationship to the rest of your business?  Is your portfolio what you want it to be?  Is your portfolio what it needs to be to get the work you want?  What does your portfolio need to do for you?  What are you/have you sacrificed to build it?  When will it be “built?”

 

- trr

By |December 1st, 2011|Branding, Business, Pricing|3 Comments
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