One more FusionExtreme.com article before I am pulled away by the Bodyscapes and Fashion Nudes workshop we are having this weekend.

Hope ya enjoy!
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Finding and acquiring clients is a difficult task. Keeping them can be equally difficult. Simply put, you can’t please all of the people all of the time, but there are considerations that can greatly increase your chances to keep a clients happy.

First and foremost understand that when you shoot for a client all that truly matters is what they want. They are hiring you for your talent, but they want you to achieve a certain goal; THEIR goal. Your creative vision falls secondary to their needs and desires. If you can embrace the simple truth that ego and personal feelings fall second to achieving the client’s goal you will be going a long way toward success in their eyes.

Critical to keeping a client happy is communication. There is a very specific skill set that supersedes your photographic talent. You are selling a feeling more than images. Communication is critical to this process.

The most important part of your communications skills is your ability to say nothing. Listen to your client. Get THEM to do the talking. You must understand the difference between “hearing” and “listening.” Many people are active talkers. They are fully invested in what they have to say, but when it is time for the client to speak they are not as fully invested in hearing anything more than words. Listen beyond the words to the ideas and message that a client is trying to convey. Remember that they aren’t photographers. They may be saying one thing, but you must learn to understand what they truly mean. A client may be telling you that the pictures look too dark. You may check the histogram and you may know that the exposure is correct. The images are perfectly exposed and lit. The client may actually be referring to the mood of the shot being dark. The more the client speaks and the less that you do helps you truly understand what they are trying to convey. What people convey and what they actually say don’t always align. A great photographer learns to hear what the client is trying to convey.

Just about every client has an expiration date for one reason or another. Either they just want to work with a new crew to create a fresh feel or something completely out of your control happens. I once shot an entire catalog for a client in Jamaica. A few days after the shoot the client put the disc of images into their computer and I received a hysterical phone call. She was in tears. None of the images were useful. They were all way under exposed. She was literally sobbing. A knowledgeable person came over to her office and looked at the images and verified that nothing was useable. The entire shoot was a waste. All of her money was down the drain. She was panicking, angry, disappointed and scared. I was confused because I had looked at the images and they were fine. I told her to check and see if her monitor’s brightness level was too low and she reiterated how she had someone knowledgable check out the images on her computer and they told her that all of the images were horribly under exposed. As nicely as I could I expressed to her that her shoot was fine and I woud send her another disc. This was to alleviate her thoughts that it might be her copy of the images even though that could not have been the problem.

After a few days I heard nothing from her and she stopped returning my calls. The last I heard she was taking these horribly under exposed images to a lab to have them printed to prove to me that they were horribly shot. After she left for the lab I didn’t hear a peep out of her for quite some time. The next communication came when I was sent a beautiful catalog made from these images by a third party. It was obvious that she was too embarrassed to call me after her hysterical ranting only to find out that her monitor and “expert advice” were both lacking and that the images were fine all along. I lost the client not based on my actions, but rather based on theirs. That is why you should be very careful when relying too heavily on one great account. If you lose that account you are in big trouble. This is the same as diversifying your investments in case one goes bad, or shooting on multiple smaller sized memory cards in case one goes bad.

Pleasing clients is as much about psychology as it is about photography. If you have a fantastic idea for a client it is not always best to make a suggestion directly. Many times you should lead the client in the direction with questions or ideas but allow them to come up with the same idea you had. Allow it to be THEIR idea. Tell them what a great concept that they just came up with and they will feel great. Remember you are selling a feeling. So what if it really was your idea? You can’t cash an idea, but you can cash a check.

Understanding that when you are getting paid the shoot is no longer your shoot and adding a great set of people skills will help you tremendously. Managing relationships is a necessary skill set if you truly want to please clients as much as possible. Understand that it is your clients business that you must help to succeed. You aren’t shooting for your book. The images you get may end up there, but this is all about the client not you. Learn to truly listen to a client. The key to your success lies within them at least as much as you. Don’t lose sight of that. It’s your job.