Windsor Collective

Most of our brides have already prioritized photography within their budgets when they decide to book us. This usually means they’ve had to convince their fiancés and/or parents to spend more money on US than on other vendors. This being the case, how WE perform is not only a reflection on ourselves, but on our brides as well.

Since our clients have a lot of pride riding on our performance, we want to make sure everything we do confirms to our clients that they’ve made the right decision. No “buyer’s remorse” here! A few tips:

• Strong vendor referrals: If a bride’s makeup artist voices her love for working with Alyse, that kind of affirmation can go a long way. We try to refer vendors we like to work with and hope vendors who like to work with US do the same.

• Complimentary blog posts: With every wedding blog post, Alyse is sure to write some genuine, nice things about the couple while showcasing a very carefully selected group of images that will best represent our brand. This creates a strong first impression, and gives our clients’ friends a place to compliment their wedding photos – another confirmation to our brides that they made the right decision.

• Not being “that guy”: All the complaints we hear about photographers taking six months to deliver pictures, having bad attitudes, or showing up to weddings unprepared are opportunities for us to do the exact opposite. We turnaround pictures as quick as we can, stay professional, and have a timeline prepared before the wedding day. These things help show our brides that we’re worth it.

Do you have any tips to add?

It’s always important to pinpoint when our businesses are at their busiest. And after nearly two years in Houston, we feel we finally have a good grasp on when our wedding season heats up. And when it cools down.

Here are some of our thoughts on seasonality:

• Every geographic location is different: In Houston, spring and fall are VERY busy for us, with a few weddings that trail off over the hottest summer months. Our slowest months are December, January and February. (AFP shoots an average of five weddings during this winter season, when ordinarily we’d shoot about double that number.) This differs from NY immensely, as mild summers make for peak wedding season and winter offers close to no weddings at all.

• Holidays can be popular: Easter and Thanksgiving weekends, New Years, and even the all-too-coveted 11/11/11 are always popular. If we want to book more, then we plan to keep these weekends free of personal plans.

• Plan for slow times: This year Alyse took some time management classes, planned her blog redesign and started to implement ShootQ during our slow season.

• Build in breaks: During Houston’s longest busy season, Alyse could literally shoot weddings for 20 straight weekends.  Alyse instead schedules one weekend off each month so she can ensure a quality product for her clients. Plus? It’s just good for sanity.

What does your location’s wedding seasonality look like? How is it unique?

I’ve read a few articles lately about the importance of tracking leads and following up on them. This is something we personally don’t do. And I think it’s important to understand why…

If you haven’t heard of the “ideal customer” concept before, here’s a brief explanation: Attracting clients that really fit a brand make for happier customers who give your word-of-mouth advertising a big boost.

Our ideal customers not only REALLY like us, but are DYING to book us. I think you could consider this a fairly universal description of an “ideal customer.” Yet it conflicts with the message out there which encourages an aggressive search for new clients by cold-contacting them, or following up with a phone call or email when a potential client has made absolutely NO indication that they’d like to actually book us..

That being said, here’s what our initial sales process usually looks like:

Potential client submits inquiry via the contact form found on our website. Alyse answers email with availability, prices,etc. If client is interested, a meeting is setup. During said meeting, Alyse asks how the couple met, what the wedding day will look like (etc.), and answers any questions they might have. It’s usually pretty easy to gauge the interest and enthusiasm of a bride/groom during a meeting. But Alyse asks them to take a few days to think it over, and then email her with a decision. A “yes” results in a contract. A “no” results in suggestions for other photographers they might be interested in. But, in the event that Alyse never hears back from the couple, we do nothing. Because it means they aren’t DYING to book us, and therefore, are not our ideal client anyway.

What does your sales process look like? How would you describe your ideal client?

There are a few business models out there that work something like this: Shoot for a reduced rate and then make up for that price by up-selling with prints albums etc. In this model it is really important to keep control of the picture so that clients don’t go out and simply get prints and albums made somewhere else.

Our business model is a little different. Our final product is the disc of 600-700 images and that is where we make our money. Any other print sales are nice to have, but aren’t making or breaking us. This allows us to encourage our clients to share their pictures on the web. We rely on our clients to love our work and tell their friends and what better way than to show it off?

Beyond allowing our customers to share our work we are making efforts to help them share our work since we think that’s what people want to do these days. Soon our blog will have its very own pin-it button and of course our pictures are all over Facebook, most of which we have put there ourselves.  We think that copyrights are great for protecting us, but pictures our clients share are like free targeted ads.

Do you encourage your clients to share your pictures?