Daily Photo: Trial Fights

Daily Photo: Trial Fights

The Estimate Doctor: Reeling In a Novice Client

http://www.pdnonline.com/pdn/content_display/features/pdn-online/e3ibadf593c28401ee84d64b34e4dfba061

The Estimate Doctor: Reeling In a Novice Client

This is the first of a series of estimating case studies provided by John Harrington, author of the newly released second edition of Best Business Practices for Photographers.

It can be challenging enough to get your asking price from an experienced client, let alone a novice client subject to sticker shock. That weighed on photographer Mark Finkenstaedt’s mind when he got a call from Granny Roddy’s, a small two-year-old company in Annandale, Virginia that makes Irish soda bread mixes. The owner, operating out of her kitchen, had realized her product packaging needed a more professional look if her business was to grow. 

 “My first thought was, she is never going to pay what I want,” Finkenstaedt says. “She’s going from her husband’s point-and-shoot photography to me, and she has no idea.” 

 To his surprise, Finkenstaedt got his price--$4,000 including creative fee, expenses, and usage. He did it by juggling the numbers, and going out of his way to make the client feel more comfortable than she might with other photographers. “I didn’t know who else she was talking to, but I knew $4,000 would be really easy to beat,” he says.

The client’s inexperience was obvious from the start. She had found Finkenstaedt by Googling Virginia photographers. She liked the food photography she saw on his Web site, although he had shot it primarily for editorial clients, not commercial ones. He asked about her budget, but she didn’t have one, “and didn’t have a clue how much it would cost,” he says. 

 But as he quickly sized up her business, Finkenstaedt learned that Granny Roddy’s had distribution through several Whole Foods supermarkets in the Washington, DC area. So he took the inquiry seriously, asking the client why she wanted the photography and how she envisioned it. He found out that beyond her packaging, she wanted to use the images on her Web site and in trade show materials. 

Initially, Finkenstaedt was under the impression that she wanted product shots on white seamless. But then she mentioned the packaging of a competitor’s product that she liked. Finkenstaedt looked at the competitor’s Web site, and saw that their packaging was “more pictorial” with still life shots of the bread on a table, juxtaposed with key ingredients.

“I thought it was a $1,500 job, but when she mentioned [the competitor’s] packaging, I realized there was a lot more too it,” Finkenstaedt says.

At that point, he momentarily set aside his concern that he was going to be out of her price range. She had complimented his work several times, so Finkenstaedt decided to try to “set the hook” with a sales pitch. He simply put himself in her place, imagined what her anxieties must be, and addressed them.

 “Because she was just being a beginner, I didn’t want her to feel that she had no control,” he says. He suggested doing the shoot at her house, and mentioned that he would shoot it tethered so she could see the images as he was creating them. “I made her feel that she would basically be art directing. I was trying to give her a good feeling by describing how we would nurture her. I figured she wouldn’t get that from my competitors. So if everyone came in under my price, she would remember that I was going to take care of her.”

When he got off the phone, Finkenstaedt called John Harrington for some pricing advice. Finkenstaedt used to freelance steadily for the Washington Post at a fixed rate of $175 per day. 

When he started doing other freelance work, it was Harrington who “brought him up to snuff” on pricing jobs, he says. “I credit him with teaching me how to be successful and win jobs.” 

His discussion with Harrington revolved mostly around the creative fee, the usage fee, and what the client might be willing to pay for the entire job. 

“There are natural break points for any consumer making a [buying] decision,” Harrington explains. “That’s why you see prices like $.99 or $99. I’m always asking myself, what is the client’s ceiling likely to be?”

For smaller clients, natural break points occur at $1000, $2,000, $4,000, $5,000, $7,500 and $10,000, he says. Based on the size of Granny Roddy’s business, its location (Google Maps showed that it was in a residential neighborhood; she wasn't a big commercial operation), and the client’s experience, Harrington and Finkenstaedt guessed that her limit was $4,000. Even that number might shock and dissuade an inexperienced client, they thought. But they couldn’t select a lower ceiling because Finkenstaedt decided that his creative fee alone had to be between $1850 and $2250, based upon his experience and his market. “That’s the number I want on average for this type of work,” he says. “I’m past those times when I would go out for any price.”

Harrington arrived at $2250 for the creative fee, figuring a product shoot in the market is generally worth $1,800, but this job merited a 25 percent premium because of the creative input required. After all, the client wasn’t asking for two shots on white seamless or handing the photographer comps. 

Finkenstaedt calculated expenses on his own, allotting $200 for an assistant, $375 for capture and post production, $55 for output to DVD, and $25 for delivery, for a total of $655. 

Harrington had asked if he needed a digital tech as well as an assistant. Finkenstaedt said no, because he had to keep expenses to a minimum. With the $4,000 ceiling in mind, Finkenstaedt also decided to recommend the client hire a food stylist separately, to keep a $500 line item off his estimate but still get the best results for the client that he could. 

From that point, the usage fee was a matter of reverse engineering. Finkenstaedt had asked the client how the images would be used, but forgot to ask how long she wanted to use them. So he and Harrington assumed a license for the life of the product. They also assumed it would remain regional. Prompted by a price range suggested by fotoQuote software for those usage parameters, they valued the usage at around $1,500. But the creative fee and expenses already added to nearly $3,000. So Finkenstaedt decided to charge $1,050 to keep the total cost just under $4,000. 

The reason for avoiding a round figure such as $1,000 is psychological, Harrington explains. “I’d make it $950 or $1,050. I learned that from Cradoc Bagshaw, who developed fotoQuote. He never has an even number. That way, if I say $560, you think it’s $560. If I say $600, you think you can negotiate.”

When Finkenstaedt submitted his estimate, he combined the usage fee and creative fee as one line item for $3300 for simplicity’s sake. He explains, “[The client] was looking at the bottom line, and separate line items would just confuse her, I imagined.” With expenses, the grand total came to $3,955. 

Granny Roddy’s hired Finkenstaedt within a week of receiving the estimate. The client didn’t try to negotiate the fee. Finkenstaedt is convinced his sales pitch made all the difference. “She wanted to work with me because she felt like she was going to get the service,” he says. She also took Finkenstaedt’s recommendation to hire a food stylist, and a good thing, too: the stylist noticed that a sheaf of wheat the client provided as a prop wasn’t wheat after all. “Had [the client] blundered along with just me, she would have had a sheaf of weeds in the picture,” Finkenstaedt says.

Asked if there’s anything he would have done differently in the way he estimated the job, Finkenstaedt says no, but cringes at one careless error. In his enthusiasm to provide the stylist’s contact information, he sent her Web address to the client. Then he realized the stylist’s Web site features images “by five other great photographers who shoot food all day long.” But by then, apparently, Granny Roddy had eyes only for Finkenstaedt, and the job was his. 

Daily Photo: Trial Fights

Daily Photo: Trial Fights

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Daily Photo: Des Moines First Fridays October

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