Business day Thursday: Add A Little Spice To Your Life And Your Photographs

Good Morning Everybody,
We wrapped our last day of this leg of the tour last night to a cheering SLC crowd - I think it was the door prizes that caused the cheering, but cheering nonetheless. Today we repack the bags for our flight home tomorrow. I have to say, we are looking forward to getting back to familiar Terra Firma - as they say, there is no place like home. But, we did see some very cool places on this trip and met some truly wonderful people along the way.

Anyway, why don't we kick it off with another episode of Business Day Thursday, so here we go...

Add A Little Spice To Your Life And Your Photographs
You know you can learn so much from how other business do business. For instance, when dining at a restaurant recently, I ordered the salad with a blue cheese dressing. The waiter asked me if I would like Maytag Blue crumbles as well. It seems Maytag Blue Cheese is about the best blue cheese you can buy - additional cost $2.00 - heck, for the best, why not?

Here is the lesson learned - What can we do to enhance the products we offer to our clients? Sure we can offer frames, matting, and more but these can substantially add to the cost for the client. Don't get me wrong - we always offer our clients framing, matting, and mounting services. What can we offer that only incrementally increases the cost by only a few dollars but still enhances the final product for our client?

In our digital age, the possibilities are endless. Here is one possibility that I think works pretty well. Why not enhance the image with a special digital mat. Let's say our client selects a favorite image of her baby and would like a 5x7 of that image. Most of us would simply take the order for the 5x7 image. But, why stop there - how about we recall the "Maytag Blue Cheese" offer the waiter made to me. For only a few dollars more the image can be enhanced with a very nice digital mat.

After the client selects the image and size, I might say, "Mrs. Smith, can I show you a very nice option for this image?" When she answers in the affirmative, I show her an image with a digital mat added and say, "Look how this treatment really adds to the overall presentation of the image. See how we've even picked up the colors of the little girl's outfit. Why don't we do something like that for your daughter's portrait. It only adds a few dollars to the cost but is a very nice way to showcase and enhance the image. What do you think?" She loves it and we quote a small additional cost - $5-$10-$25, based on your market and clientele, to deliver the image with the new digital mat.

The easiest way to make this kind of presentation work smoothly is to have a series of mats already created around a variety of portrait styles you offer - sort of like a mat catalogue that you can present to your client and she can easily make a quick choice. Think of it as picking out a digital frame for the photograph before we actually select a real frame for the image. And as far as the real frame is concerned, now we get to offer our client an 8x10 frame instead of a 5x7 frame.

What I like about our digital mats is that we can coordinate the mat with the colors of the child's outfit, the colors of the nursery, the colors of wherever the photograph will be displayed. It's one more way to customise the product for the client. This then becomes one more difference our studio offers over the studio around the corner, one more way to sizzle our product, one way to provide a unique one-of-a-kind product and one more way to add value to our photography.

Hey gang, that's it for me today. We've got the day off in Salt Lake City today and are going pack our bags and take in a few sites before heading home tomorrow. Have a good one and I'll see you tomorrow for Soap Box Friday: Are You Inspired? See ya' then, -David