Best Business Practices for Photographers [42]
During your review of the rep, confirm what his or her percentage would be and ask about other potential charges. More importantly, ask your prospective rep to see bids he or she has produced and submitted on behalf of other clients. Understanding how the rep works is critical to a good working relationship. A few reps, over the years, have been blacklisted for shady practices in dealing with agencies and firms, and you want to steer clear of reps with a bad reputation.
On the other hand, a marketing consultant will help you prepare your marketing efforts. From advice on the look and feel of your website, to the realities of whatever market you want to go into (fashion, food, industrial, and so on), as well as how to plan a promotional campaign, a marketing consultant can be a great solution to the quagmire of "how do I market myself" that you find yourself stuck in. Plan on between $250 and $350 an hour, and don't think you can get it all done in two hours. Realize that it will take at least an hour for the marketing consultant to listen to you talk and ask you pointed questions. At the end of that first meeting, you will likely get some homework, such as "pick your top 20 dream clients" or "you say you want to do food photography, but you only have three different food shoots on your website, so go out and shoot six self-assignments on food and then let's talk further." You might also be told that your website needs a total redesign. Sometimes, you will get asked, as consultant Selina Maitreya puts it, to "create a swipe file" of several images that are so amazing that you wished you'd thought up the photo and had the commissioning client as your client. Whatever you get told, listen carefully. When I worked with highly regarded rep Elyse Weissberg a number of years ago, before she passed away, she always encouraged me to record our meetings, which I did. Then, on the trip home, I would listen again to the conversation, and I would learn even more that second time through. So, ask whomever you're meeting with on this topic if you can record the conversation so you can go back and review what was said.
Another consultant is one that handles just the bid. Once the prospective client has reviewed your portfolio and wants to get a price from you, the bidding consultant is called in. When the client says, "Can you send me a bid?" just say, "Sure thing. I'll have Jane Doe, who handles that for me, put something together and send it along." Your bidding consultant might charge you $250 to put together a complicated bid, plus a percentage of your photographer/creative fees if you win the assignment. If you feel like you are getting more and more of these types of high-dollar or production-heavy assignments, a bidding consultant might be willing to take on your first bid together with a reduced fee and/or do it on a contingency, but remember, this is (hopefully) going to be an ongoing relationship, so don't start it out on the wrong (in other words, cheap) foot!
Some bidding consultants will be that Jane Doe and handle the calls and the back and forth, and frankly, that's the best way to do it. However, it may be better for them to work for you privately. In this type of scenario, you will go over the details of the assignment and the rights package, and they will give you advice on how to prepare the estimate, items to include (and avoid), as well as how to handle the calls yourself. They will also prepare you for the curveballs you might get thrown during the negotiations.
Who Must Be an Employee?
The Internal Revenue Service has listed 20 factors in Revenue Ruling 87-41 that it