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Even though curling up with a good book and enjoying some R&R during the winter months is a tempting (and even productive!) way to recharge, there are some other key things that you can do now that will help prepare you for a great year. Here are four things you can start now (and work on through the winter) so that by the time the busy season rolls around, you will be ready for your best season yet!

Re-evaluate Your Product Offerings

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The off-season is a perfect opportunity to reflect on your business and dream up new ideas. Whether it’s a fresh perspective on your marketing plan, more efficient workflows, or inspiration to try some new ideas during your next shoot, these quiet months are a chance to recuperate and improve.

So, how can you plan for a productive off-season (before it’s too late)? Try following this four-step roadmap that will help you rest, reflect, practice and plan for a great 2014 busy season.

• • Rest and Recharge
• • Reflect on 2013 and Set Goals for 2014
• • Improve Your Craft
• • Plan

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“Do what you do best. Delegate the rest.” That phrase is often heard around businesses, big and small. It sounds so simple, but it’s a driving force behind the concept of core competencies. And big businesses aren’t the only ones that benefit from identifying their core competencies. Professional photographers can create more sustainable businesses if they identify and leverage their own core competencies.

So, what’s a “core competency?”

A unique ability a company has that can’t be easily imitated. Core competencies give a company one or more competitive advantages, in creating and delivering value to their customers. Remember, a core competency is not a product or service.

The term was originally coined by Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad and published in their book, Competing for the Future. They challenged business leaders to view their organizations as a “portfolio of competencies,” as well as a portfolio of products and services. That portfolio of competencies actually provides a competitive edge for truly innovative businesses.

How can professional photographers apply this principle to their businesses? First off, you’ve got to identify your own core competencies. Then, you’ve got to fearlessly follow their lead, and delegate the tasks that don’t fall into the category of your “core competencies.”

Let’s look at two real world examples. Apple’s core competency is design. That core competency is the underlying strength of their hardware and software. For Netflix, it’s all about providing the best content delivery. They work hard to deliver content to their customers quickly, in a highly-personalized way.

Put on your business hat for a few minutes, and dive into these questions:

• • What specific skills set you and your business apart from other photographers?

• • What unique knowledge, or experience, do you bring to the table that makes you stand out from the crowd? (This is the stuff that your competitors can’t imitate!)

• • What assets do you bring to your business that enable you to add perceived value to your clients’ experience?

Now, see if you answer “yes” to these questions:

• • Is this competency unique to you and your business?

• • Does it help you improve your client’s experience, and also pay off in dollars and cents?

• • Can it contribute to some new services and products that you could offer?

The best part of identifying your core competencies is that they are almost always things you LOVE doing. That’s because they often grow out of your unique skill set and life experience. Since core competencies become one of the hallmarks of your business, they can be the driving forces of your competitive strategy – and that puts you on a path to long term success!

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Sales is both an art and a skill. In fact, many of the world’s best salespeople take an artistic approach to their customer’s buying process. They intuitively understand how to put themselves in their customer’s shoes, and anticipate their pain points. Sales guru Zig Ziglar wisely observed, “people don’t buy for logical reasons. They buy for emotional reasons.” So, you don’t have to dread doing sales pitches. Instead, think of sales as an opportunity to be creative, by providing a solution to a problem. And entrepreneurs love solving problems, especially since solving problems is essential to building a profitable business!

Why is sales simplification important?

It’s important to simplify your product sales for one big reason: confusion stalls sales. If your client doesn’t know what to order, when to order, how to order, or just gets confused, you might lose the sale or undersell to someone who wanted to purchase more. If you want your clients to buy products, you have to make it easy and fast for them! Make your sales communication – emails, phone calls, and in-person consultations – simple and succinct so clients can quickly find everything they want to order.

Not sure how to keep it simple when it comes to your product sales? Here are three important tips.

Tip #1: Integrate the sales conversation throughout the experience with each client.

Since sales is equal parts artful psychology and tactical skill, you should plant sales seeds in your earliest communications with clients. Think of it as educating your client throughout their entire experience with you. Then, sales becomes about helping your client solve a problem. Give examples of which products will work best for the type of photographs you’re shooting and—especially if you’ve gotten to know your clients well—what will work best for their taste and style.

Tip #2: Be Prepared! Do the sales work upfront.

A surefire way to cause confusion when educating clients on the products you sell is to be unprepared. Before you start explaining your products to clients, make sure you too have a clear understanding of your pricing, turnaround times, product details and–most importantly–benefits for your clients!

If you don’t know these details, you’ll come across as erratic or unprepared, ultimately causing confusion and slowing your sales.

Tip #3: Try easy-to-use product sales tools.

If you don’t enjoy the sales side of your business, gain confidence by leaning on easy-to-use product sales tools. There are a lot of great sales tools out there for professional photographers, but that doesn’t mean you have to use them all. Keep your sales process simple, by choosing one or two tools that work for you.

We recently partnered with ShootProof, a tool that offers an easy and efficient way to proof and sell your photos online. Plus, you can now send your images straight from ShootDotEdit’s photography editing services into your ShootProof account, instantly making your product sales process more efficient. For more information on how ShootDotEdit can help your business and introduce you to other helpful partners, download our free guide.

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A large part of being a successful photographer lies in understanding the difference between profit-generating and profit-leeching activities. Minimizing activities that aren’t adding to your profit will allow you to spend more time on activities that are helping your bottom line. Sounds like a simple equation, right? It is. But in the day-to-day busy-ness of running your business, it’s easy to get sidetracked by tasks that not only drain your energy, but also drain your bottom line.

Set up your business so that you have time for profit-generating activities

Shooting, building relationships and managing your business from a high level perspective to keep on track with your goals are all profit-generators. (Plus, shooting is why you got into business in the first place!) Ideally, you want to set up your business systems so that you can devote the majority of your time to these areas.

Activities that are necessary but aren’t helping your bottom line include editing, bookkeeping, album design, studio management and slogging through emails. Although these tasks are all necessary, they’re not directly generating profit for you. Recognizing the tasks that aren’t directly profitable is important so that you can find ways to manage these profit-leeching activities as efficiently as possible. That way, you can get back to making money and stay focused on reaching your business goals.

Tip: Look at the ratio of how your time is spent—are profit-leeching activities taking up a majority of your work hours?

Measure the opportunity cost of doing profit-leeching activities yourself

If you’re considering partnering with a specialist, you should measure the opportunity cost of doing everything yourself versus outsourcing.

Whether it’s marketing for print orders and image fulfillment, album design, or editing, there are numerous areas you should consider the opportunity cost of doing yourself. For instance, the photo editing services that ShootDotEdit provides photographers includes the UNLIMITED PLAN that costs $299 per month. The cost for a year of the UNLIMITED PLAN is less than or equal to the profit of a single wedding shoot for many photographers. Editing eats up hours of your precious time over the course of an entire year. By investing in the UNLIMITED PLAN each month, you can do additional shoots in all the hours that are freed up. These profit-generating activities will easily cover $299 per month (and likely allow you generate much more in profit than this monthly cost). In this instance, the opportunity cost for you to do all of your own editing is far greater than the cost of the monthly plan.

Manage your profit-leechers with partner solutions

So, what’s the most efficient way to manage the areas of your business that aren’t adding to your bottom line? Partner with someone who can do these tasks more efficiently than you can. By allocating business funds toward partner solutions, you’ll free up your time to shoot more and earn more!

Partner solutions for accounting, album design, post production and print fulfillment can be key to growing your business. Use systems that fit naturally with how you already operate your business. Finding specialists for areas of your business that aren’t efficient will allow you to focus on what you do best—shooting and relationships. Specialists are experts in their respective areas and because of that, they can do that task fast AND do a great job. Learn more about how to implement Specialists into your business in our Free Guide on How to Grow Your Wedding Photography Business.

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It’s October, which means beautiful Fall scenery, pumpkin-flavored everything, and (maybe) an-upcoming lull in your shooting schedule. You’ve made it through the majority of your crazy schedule of wedding shoots, but a lot of those photos still need to be edited. With holiday deadlines looming, not only do you need to finish up the rest of your shoots, but you’ve also got to find a way to get get those images turned around even faster!

The deadlines are creeping up, and you’re feeling the pressure. But before you go into total panic mode, remind yourself that it is possible to get through this season. All you need to do is follow this three-step plan to keep things under control and keep your sanity in tact.

1. Assess your Workload and Deadline Status

How behind are you? If you’re starting to panic, remember Robert Frost’s simple advice, “the best way out is always through.” Assessing your current status will help you get a handle on deadlines and devise a plan to get back on track. To understand exactly how behind you are, make a list of the jobs where deadlines have been missed (and are still outstanding) and deadlines that are approaching and are not humanly possible to meet.

What deadlines are coming up? Part of catching up is making sure you don’t fall behind on any upcoming deadlines that will set you back even further. Create a list of jobs that have deadlines coming up that require immediate action in order to stay on track.

What tasks do you need to complete? Now that you understand the situation you’re in, you can devise your plan to get out! Using the list of jobs you created, identify the specific tasks that need to be completed to check that job off the list. Prioritize your crucial deadlines and put those deadlines that can wait on the back burner while you resume control over your workload.

2. Keep Communicating with Clients

Let clients know what to expect. If you’ve fallen behind, the worst thing you can do is NOT keep your clients up to date. Letting clients know what to expect—even if it’s a revised turnaround time—goes a long way toward keeping your positive relationship intact. Your clients are excited to see their images, so letting them know what to expect will help ensure that their frustration doesn’t overshadow their excitement. Be realistic. Make sure that any revised timetable you give your clients is accurate so that you can deliver. Revising your turnaround time a second time because you were unrealistic will likely result in irritated clients. And nobody wants that!

Communicate ordering deadlines. When talking to clients about their images, make sure they fully understand deadlines for placing orders they want to receive in time for the holidays. Printouts, blog posts and emails outlining ordering deadline details for clients are all great communication tools.

Say thanks. If your turnaround times are later than your clients expected, find ways to give them an extra “thank you” for being patient. Try a gift credit for prints, extra album pages for free, or a favorite print that you frame and send them. Help keep the experience positive, even if the process takes a little longer than usual!

3. Get Help Where you Need it Most

Find a partner to help. Post-production and album design are common areas that create bottlenecks in your business. But they can easily be addressed – and fixed for faster turnaround times with the help of a specialist! Teaming up with an editing partner to help get you caught up on your shoots quickly is paramount. Then, you can easily get images to clients in time for the holidays, rather than continuing to fall behind.

Don’t wait! Whether it’s hiring someone to help you with album design or teaming up with a post-production partner, don’t put off getting help when you find yourself behind. It’s tempting to think that you can dig yourself out when you’re buried in deadlines and put off finding a partner to help once you’re less busy. But the sooner that you can start working with partners to get back on track, the better. Don’t wait to ask for help until “things slow down.” That time may never come!

Learn from this season’s rush. Effective systems are always a process. So, after the rush ends and you’re closer to getting caught up, it’s important to reflect on what systems you can permanently set up going forward that will help ensure you don’t fall behind in the future. Learn lessons from this season’s rush. After all, you don’t want to fall behind again. Getting a plan in place for post-production and other areas of your business NOW will keep your business running smoothly as you breathe a sigh of relief at the end of this busy season. Plus, you’ll head into the New Year with new energy and a sense of control!

Download our Guide: How to Grow Your Wedding Photography Business

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