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If you are in business for yourself as a photographer, you probably realize that there is no single area in your business that could benefit as much from your attention as the area of business relations, or to be more specific, the area of client relationships. A successful meeting with a new client is not only a new source of income for the moment; a new client means also a new way by which to reach out to all the people in the client's circle by the quality of your work for more business. If you happen to not be quite in your groove for a meeting one morning, the impression you fail to make with your clients could cost you not just the business at hand at the moment, it could cost you all the word-of-mouth referrals that might have come your way had the meeting gone better. Let us look at the top three mistakes that owners of budding photography businesses make that can cost them in lost business.

While artists such as photographers often tend to not want to conform to societal dress codes of any kind, most business meetings with potential clients would go that much better if the photographer involved happened to have a conservative attitude to dressing. You need to realize that each meeting with a client is not any different from sitting in for a job interview. Unless your skills in photography are required by a New Age rocker of some kind, you would do well to dress conservatively in a way that excudes professionalism.

As you would expect any anxious first-time businessman to be, a photographer who runs his own business is usually deeply concerned about spending his time wisely. If you have a photography session all mapped out, a careless photographer's model who is unprepared or who shows up 20 minutes late, takes valuable time away from you that you coul use for the betterment of your business. Try to make sure that you treat the time that belongs to your clients as carefully as you would like to treat your own time.

You can never go into a meeting with a client with no forewarning of the kind of work you might end up discussing. You certainly do need to plan for a meeting with some measure of preparation: learning about the client and his business, asking your professional photography contacts about their experiences with this particular business, and so on. If you can, try to gather a little personal knowledge of the person you will be meeting with; in a business meeting, there is nothing to break the ice quite like a little knowledge offered up on the other party's hometown, or a little knowledge of their pet subjects. This whole idea of a business meeting is to find a way to stop being formal and to start treating each other like people.

The country has been going through a particularly nasty economic downturn; new businesses with only modest reserves for a rainy day have it harder than anyone else. Advertising budgets are being cut, photography jobs are being handed to in-house photographers, and even private citizens are cutting back in things like wedding photography. Most businesses consider any client who comes their way a special gift from heaven. To even get a serious inquiry from a potential customer is to be considered a stroke of luck. You need to be imaginative going the extra mile in the ways discussed here to retain every client who walks in the door

Learn more about this author, Maggi Thomas.
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