Best Business Practices for Photographers [145]
12. "Develop relationships, not conquests."
This is absolutely true in the photographic community and is a great follow-up to my comments from the previous rule. The community of people who contract with photographers is very small, and as you evolve your business, ensuring you've not burnt bridges or taken advantage of a client's circumstances will ensure your own longevity and respect among prospective clients and peers.
Creative Solutions in the Negotiation Process
There are numerous ways to get to 10: one plus nine, two plus eight, three plus seven, four plus six, and so on. All achieve the number 10. Similarly, there are numerous ways to achieve an agreement to make pictures on behalf of someone. For me, WMFH is the equivalent of pi. Given the infinite nature of pi, no matter how hard I try, I can't get to 10. If I turn a blind eye or compromise pi to 3.14, then of course I can get to 10, but that's including a fudge factor. Absent my pi—my deal breaker—I can usually get to 10. You'll need to define your parameters to achieve an agreement and then operate within those parameters, yet be open to suggestions that a client might offer, as they should be open to yours.
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NOTE
For the curious, in September of 2002, a professor at the University of Tokyo calculated pi to 1.2411 trillion digits, a world record. For more fun facts on pi, visit www.joyofpi.com.
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Suppose your client is a small design house, and they have to print something for a client that is 8.6"×" and the press they need to be on runs 12"- and 24"-wide paper. Because the client has been presented with the added costs to go from 12" to 13" and approved it for their own reasons, they'll need to be on 24" paper stock, leaving roughly 11" of waste all along the job. In lieu of the additional $1,000 you wanted for the job, you could propose to the client to gang up a promotional piece 10" wide that you are looking to have done alongside the client's job, making that waste beneficial to the client and to you. If you don't, chances are the client will print some of their own promotional material in the waste area, so this is not an unusual request.
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NOTE
The truly critical photographer might find this ganging-up of print jobs objectionable because the client's piece will be what they are watching the color on, and your promo piece might come out slightly different than you wanted. Print houses frequently gang print press jobs and know how to maximize the quality of both jobs—but yes, yours might suffer.
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You might find that a magazine may not be able to pay you an extra $300 for a cover assignment, but you might be able to negotiate that they send you 100 copies of the magazine where your photo is featured attractively on the cover. In turn, you can send these copies out to other prospective clients, which might garner you future work for other publications. Because the newsstand price of that magazine is $3.95, you're ahead—or, if the magazine is $2.95, you've at least broken even.
One creative "solution" often suggested by a client is "do this one for me, and I'll make it up to you next time." The problem is, in 16-plus years of photography, I have never heard of any client making good on this offer. The experience becomes one in which the PE shops around to all the photographers, never making it up to anyone, and when they do have an assignment that pays well, they go to the photographer they've always wanted to use but could never afford…until now. That person should be you. Further, the client won't respect you