Guardian Life insurance recently produced a report on small businesses (2-99 employees) and their results showed that the most important personal trait of a successful small business owner was the ability to collaborate.

Business owners who build strong relationships with their employees, vendors and others are more likely to click with customers.

If you think about it, this makes sense. From the moment you sold your first photograph, you discovered that the relationship between you and the customer - and your lab - was as important as the image itself.

As I read this report I realized something else: this is true for both your business and ours.

That’s why at JD we are proud of our customer service department. Heidi, Dana and Julie have a combined total of decades of experience working with professional photographers. We know many of you by first name. We’ve talked on the phone (no robots answer our phones), been to your studios, met you over the counter, in training classes and at trade shows. Building relationships with you and other professional photographers has been just as important as providing high-quality products in the growth of our lab.

When you talk, we listen. Float wraps, accordion mini books, and high-end trader cards are just a few of the many new products we constantly introduce because you told us you wanted them.

Bottom line: if you ever need anything from JD, give us a call at 888-858-8084. Our success depends on yours.

JD Photo Imaging has partnered with Kirk Russell, President of 3 Lenses Marketing & Design, to provide a new level of business and marketing support for our customers.

Over the next weeks and months, JD customers will be able to take advantage of several exclusive services from 3 Lenses including:

• Free and low-cost webinars focused on marketing and selling weddings, seniors, portraits and events.
• Professional evaluation of your studios products and prices, as well as specific recommendations to reach new sales goals.
• Private discussion threads where photographers can get answers to questions on business and marketing topics,
• Tips, tricks and techniques like phone scripts proven to increase sales up to 50%!
• Articles designed to inspire pro photographers to take their business to the next sales level.

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Kirk Russell, 3Lenses.com

The photographic industry is in the midst of a serious growth crisis. Even before the housing crisis, recession, and market crash, studios were booking fewer appointments, and clients seemed to be more price-sensitive.

Old-school solutions such as advertising more promotions or new flavor-of-the-month fads such as displaying images on boutique, graphic-enhanced web site and brochures, or using pretty delivery boxes won’t attract people who find most of today’s portrait studios outdated, unresponsive, and over-priced.

There is a parallel between today’s photo industry and the current housing market and auto industry. Luckily, we can learn from them and consequently avoid a similar fate.

Here’s the comparisons:

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A decade ago, getting your name and phone number in front of customers was simple. You put one ad in the yellow pages and one in the local newspaper.

Those days are over.

Today, over 80% of your customers will look for you online before they call. In order to make sure they can find you, below is a checklist of places your business needs to be registered so customers can find you online.

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Chase Jarvis is a professional photographer focusing on commercial print and video assignments. Recently, he took the time to create a video that describes step-by-step his process for storing and archiving images. It’s worth the 10 minutes to watch.

Three important points Chase makes are:

• Keep a clean copy of your original images. The moment you’re finished shooting, create a backup. These are your original RAW or JPG images. Never change them.

• Make redundant backups. The time to make your first backup is while you’re copying images off the cards. Depending on a single hard drive at any point in your workflow is a recipe for disaster. Hard drives will fail (trust me, it eventually happens to everyone).

• Keep your backups separate. A backup drive next to a PC is only slightly better than no backup at all. You should have 2 duplicate backup drives, with one stored away from your studio.

While most of us cannot afford to duplicate Chase’s collection of top-of-the-line servers and hard drives, any backup and storage solution should cover all the major points he makes. A quick glance over at Amazon shows top-rated 2 terabyte external drives going for $129, so you cannot afford NOT to make backups.

Update

Here’s a collection of videos from several world-famous photographers showing their workflows.

With business picking up again (albeit slowly), you may be thinking about hiring a new employee. Having hired many folks over the years, I’ve learned that some skills cannot be taught. I’m not the only one who thinks this way:

• An article in the papers recently stated that Walmart was actively seeking out military officers returning from Iraq to join their management training program. Their logic was simple - if someone has already proven themselves to be a leader, WallMart can teach them retail.
• I have a friend who is a florist, and she carries business cards with her all the time. Whenever she gets exceptional service - for example, a waitress in a restaurant - she gives them a card and offers them a job. Her logic is also simple - you can teach retail, but you cannot teach customer service.

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I was walking through the lab this morning and something caught my eye: a 16×20″ metal print of a high-contrast senior portrait. Tom Kaza from Hicks Studio in Flint created the image, and the finished print was awesome. Which made me think of two things:

1. Until this is in ROES (working on it right now) no one is going to know we offer it.
2. Even after it is in ROES, most folks still won’t know we offer it.

I’m just like you - and your customers. I can look at an advertisement for a product a dozen times, but it won’t catch my attention until I’m ready to order. Every day, someone calls the lab and says, “I didn’t know JD made that.”

So here’s my challenge to you.

The next time you’re sitting in the studio thinking,

• “I wonder if JD can make a…”
• “This image would look great as a…”
• “I wonder if there is software to make a…”

give us a call. 888-858-8084. I don’t care how wild it is. At JD, we love a challenge.

Michelle Bogre, a photographer, college professor and lawyer, has started an excellent website called TheCopyrightCorner.org. In it she plainly and simply spells out the rules of copyright for professional photographers. My favorite page on the site answers the question “I am a photographer, so if I own copyright in my photograph, can I do anything with my photograph?”

You should check out the answer. Interesting reading.

Other topics she covers:

• Basics - what copyright is
• Getting Started - get it, keep it
• Register Your Stuff - Reasons and Rationale
• Fair Use - the guidelines

It will take you about 15 minutes to read them all, but you will be much more educated about copyright issues in the end.

I was reading an article entitled the Top 10 Trends for Weddings in 2010, and the item about videographers caught my eye:

Professional grade still photo cameras like the Canon 5D Mark II DSLR are being released with HD video capabilities included. It is recommended to have both a videographer and a photographer at your wedding to capture every moment of the big day. Tech-savvy brides looking for a new experience, may like to experiment with a visual professional (videographer or photographer) who has this technology. In the future, you will begin to see an emergence of two-in-one companies. Companies like Engaging Films and Video Keepsakes of Beverly Hills in Los Angeles will shoot video and take stills, but use only one piece of technology.

For years, many pro photographers have “given away” the videography business. Brides wanted albums first, and videos second. But with the new generation of cameras, this no longer has to apply. With a push of a button, you can be both a photographer and a videographer - or as the article describes - a visual professional.

If you aren’t taking advantage of this technology, someone else in your market will soon be. Look for visual professionals who promise to take care of every aspect of recording an event: from portraits to albums to videos combined with still photography.

You can shoot your own video or hire a videographer. But if you choose to ignore this trend, I believe you’re going to see it effect your wedding photography sales.

Are you already shooting video or working with a videographer? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts on the subject.

Sending an email has become as common as a making a phone call. If you are like most business owners, you send and receive a dozen emails a day. At JDPI we have a simple list of “rules of email etiquette” that we encourage our staff to follow in order to make it easier for you to communicate with us. You might want to share this list with your staff - it will make your business look more professional to your customers, and it will make your life a little easier too.

1. Use the subject line. Use 3-5 words to describe the email. Something as simple as “Your proofs are ready” or “Sitting confirmed Aug. 1st” is fine. Emails that have no subject, or emails with lots of exclamation points (BIG SALE!!!!) will be rejected by most spam filters.

2. Use upper and lower case letters. TYPING ALL CAPITAL LETTERS is called shouting, and is considered unprofessional.

3. Use the spell checker. Set it to automatically check your spelling before you send an email. Again, this will make your email look more professional to your clients.

4. Quote the previous email. As a courtesy to the recipient, when you send a “reply” don’t make them search through old emails to figure out what your reply (”Yes. Thanks!”) refers to. Enable the “quote previous email” option in your email reader program settings.

5. Don’t send large attachments. Many email readers will reject an email that is larger than 1Mb. If you are sending images, you should re-size them first, or upload them to the web (use one of these free services), then send a link in the email. When sending images to JD, always use ROES, LabPrints or our FTP service.

6. Include a signature file. It makes it easy for the recipient to contact you, and it will increase traffic to your website. A signature can be fancy with your studio logo, or it can be as simple as your name, studio, email address, phone number and website URL. Create a signature in your mail reader, and it will automatically be added to every email you send - saves typing.