Best Business Practices for Photographers [149]
Last is the extended rights package. If the client is asking for one-time use, but you feel they'll want to use the images for other projects, offering that to them up front can generate additional assignment revenue and increase the benefit and usefulness of your images to the client in the long run.
There are many ways to increase your revenue on any given assignment. This increase is, of course, beneficial to you; however, in the end, the client truly sees the value in what you're offering, or they wouldn't choose to make the added expense. It just doesn't hurt to ask!
A Triumph of Hope over Experience
Remember when the client said, "I don't have much money, but if you'll do this one at this price, I will make it up to you with the next one?"
When hearing this, I am reminded of one of England's great literary figures, Oscar Wilde, who said that "while a first marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence, second marriages are the triumph of hope over experience." (This is sometimes also attributed to a Wilde predecessor, also a literary figure, Dr. Samuel Johnson.)
Bringing up a more timely analogy, as J. Wellington Wimpy said to Popeye, "I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today."
In more than 20 years, I have never experienced this as a promise kept, and I have long since abandoned any hope.
What I have done is said, "Let me send you an estimate at the rates I can do this assignment for and then let's have a conversation." My estimate goes out, and I'd say that 80 percent of the time I complete the assignment at my rates, and moreover, those clients return time and time again.
Defining Your Policies
Policies work both ways. Your policy is to charge more on any given day than it costs you to be in business for that day. Period. Herb Cohen, author of You Can Negotiate Anything, illustrates the points of policies, which can manifest themselves as a part of the "power of legitimacy" discussed earlier in the chapter, with an example of the Holiday Inn.
The Holiday Inn has a sign stating their checkout time, which is 11:00 a.m. The sign appears not only at the registration desk, but also on the inside of the door next to the fire route map and often on your registration paperwork. When Cohen was asked how many people actually check out by that time, he thought about it and answered, "Forty percent." Later, he learned from Holiday Inn themselves that "roughly between ninety and ninety-five percent" check out by that time. I often ask for, and almost always receive, an extension on my checkout time for no additional charge. Although it is necessary to have policies about how your business will function, it is necessary to know when there needs to be an exception to a policy.
Almost everyone I know has run up against an adamant customer service person who says (imagine a nasally voice here), "I'm sorry, sir. Our policy is that...and we just can't do that. Is there anything else I can help you with today?" We're frustrated and hoping that something can be done—an exception made, a rule bent. However, we accept the notion that our request is a special one, not to be expected. Even credit card companies can be convinced to waive a month's interest charges and penalties if your payment's a day late and you have a history of paying off your card every month. (Really, they do! I've been successful at that request.) However, they keep notes on every call you make to them and all requests made (even when declined), so don't try it too often. The point is, once you establish your policies, make sure you know where exceptions can be made and, more importantly, where they cannot.
Don't make exceptions on your ethical, moral, or legal policies. I subscribe to a point made by Norman R. Augustine, Chairman Emeritus of Lockheed Martin and Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University. When speaking