Jeff Smith's Guide to Head and Shoulders Portrait Photography

I

n this chapter, we are going to briefly discuss the many factors that affect

the relationship between you and your clients (or potential clients). What

most photographers don’t understand is that ineverybusiness you have a rela-

tionship with your clients. Neither person is doing the other a favor, nor can

they exist without the other. If you’re smart, and intend to stay in business,

you’ll learn how to make this relationship the best it can be.

Donkeys and Lapdogs.

From what I have seen, when photographers struggle and have problems re-

lating to their clients, they fall into two general categories—we’ll call them don-

keys and lapdogs.

The donkeys make up a good portion of the struggling-photographer de-

mographic. They are mostly disgruntled artists who seem to think they are

doing their clients a favor by blessing them with their immense talent. This

group feels that they are so talented they should be hugely successful—and are

quite peeved because their Honda Civic is a poor excuse for the Mercedes they

should be driving. As you can imagine, with all this hostility inside of them,

they are not the most warm-and-fuzzy bunch. As a result, they tend to be the

source of all the problems they have in their sessions (as well as in their lives),

even though they blame the troubles on their terrible clients. While this group

does provide clients with direction, it’s often with a tone of frustration.

Conversely, you have the lapdogs, a minority group of photographers who

are so happy to be in the profession they would do it for free—which is often

exactly what happens! The lapdogs count their blessings every time the door-

bell rings, because that blessed client who is gracing their studio is putting them

one step closer to paying the rent. They are so excited to have a client, and so

worried about saying or doing anything that might make them walk away, that

they fail to properly educate their clients. “If I tell the client what I charge, they

CUSTOMER SERVICE 107

8. Customer Service.

Learn how to make

this relationship

the best it can be.