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Creating With Light - The Power of Two - part 2 of 1 2 3

by Dave Montizambert Published 01/02/2017

D: Having someone else represent you has a lot more strength than doing it yourself; they can talk you up without it sounding like bragging.

S: There were lots of other little things that really needed tightening up, so right at the start I did a little 'house cleaning' which scared the boys to no end, (and I don’t mean sweeping and dusting, that I confess I am happily terrible at). Things like accounts receivable, (they had receivables going back 120 days, ridiculous for a 'small' business, this was not a multi-million dollar corporation), carrying receivables of thousands of dollars for 120 days had to stop! We were not a bank! Dave and Mark’s fear, as most photographers would agree, is that I would anger the art director or designer or ad executive thus tainting the air for future work. A valid concern so I instead had careful conversations with the various accountants at the ad agencies (our primary clients), and this is a most important point, instead of changing the existing remuneration structure with the people Dave and Mark had a relationship with, I instead contacted the accountants for these firms and negotiated with them.

Much to Dave and Mark’s surprise, I was able to get better terms and I did it without 'pissing off' the people Dave and Mark had built working relationships with! If I angered an accountant, no designer, art director or account executive would care, besides it wasn’t Dave or Mark stirring things up. So you see, having someone else to be the heavy allows the other to keep the relationship happy-good cop, bad cop is done for a reason in policing.

D: Another smart change we made was that nothing got shot without an estimate so that there would be no surprises to the client. Notice estimate not quote. A quote is more likely to be considered as written-instone, whereas an estimate is more flexible. To streamline the process, the estimate doubled as a contract. Once all the details were clearly written out with variables and time-lines, the agency/client signed the estimate/contract and handed over a Purchase Order (for the bigger clients) or a 50% deposit (for other smaller clients). We made a pact to never start a project with either of these missing; this avoids 99 per cent of misunderstandings, and misunderstanding leads to disgruntled clients who will most likely shop elsewhere for their photographic needs.

S: Looking for new markets for the lads, I joined the Board of Trade, the Chamber of Commerce, Business International Network www.bin.com, and various related associations. This meant I was networking most days from 6 am until 9 pm; our studio was well established with the ad agencies, not much more growth could occur there, and so I targeted direct clients through these associations who would need images of products, interiors, exteriors, or head-shots for advertising and/or press releases. The problem with dealing with direct clients is that they were not as sophisticated as agencies, they didn’t really get the whole estimate bidding process, they just wanted to know 'how much does a picture cost?' Kind of like buying a hamburger, only we were used to, 'Will that be on a focaccia bun or a kaiser? Grass-fed or chemical? And so on. Montizambert Photography was used to everything being more high-end and custom. So, we set out to answer that in the clearest way possible, we created clearly defined photographic products called, QuikShotz, BigShotz, Full Monti (see image 01), and Absolute Monti (view these in the real cyber world at www.montizambert.com). These were bread and butter jobs and proved to be very lucrative and easy to sell. They were a smashing success with direct clients and surprisingly with agencies too. Our main marketing for these photo products, other than networking, was monthly mailings of a comical postcard. We only designed and produced four cards, one for each product, and we rotated them out each month. Our mailing list was only 300 clients which was constantly culled and added to keep a steady good 300.

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1st Published 01/02/2017
last update 09/12/2022 14:53:03

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