Happy New Year! With the new year come many new business opportunities that can generate growth. Those opportunities can be photographing new events or organizations, or it can be by making changes that improve results from existing business you may have done for years.
It is my belief that we are all in control of the success of our businesses. Many years in this business have made it clear to me that one’s results are determined mostly by how an event is executed. New technology brings new capabilities. Changes in the marketplace change customers’ expectations. We should take advantage of what is possible to better meet our customers’ needs. We know that our customers today want more good choices and they want things to happen faster. I have a good example of that to share.
CCS acquired a nearby Greek composite business that had been operated very competently for many years. The composites were for 18 large fraternities and sororities that totaled 2,668 Greek participants in 2018. I am sharing this example not because I am urging you to get in the composite business. Instead, I want to illustrate how changing one’s approach to a market can make a significant increase sales and profits. This is also not about working harder, rather it’s about working differently. We know it is hard to change from a method/procedure that you may have used for years successfully, but often it is very worthwhile.
We are constantly looking for ways to improve sales and profit for CCP and for our CCS Customers. It was our desire to implement some significant changes in operational strategy for composites that we believed would generate higher sales and profit based on things we’ve done in other market segments. Changes made for a 3,000-person group belonging to exactly the same 18 organizations makes for a meaningful “test”.
The composite business involves taking a portrait of each member that goes on a board with the other members. The names of each member are underneath their pictures. The organization typically pays the photographer from $12 to $20 per member as a sitting fee to produce and deliver a large, framed board (from 30”x 40” to 48”x 60”). Large sororities can have 300+ members on a board which can generate close to $4,000 for the photographer to produce the board. Sitting fee income is often the main driver for a photographer to shoot and produce boards. Getting more members to participate is a big opportunity to increase sales.
Part 1 of our plan was to get more members to participate by obtaining a roster of members so we could communicate directly with the members. In the past communication with individual members was left more up to the organization. We believed that better communication could drive better participation which could improve both composite sitting fee income and the opportunity to sell more portraits. We often see the same communication issues effect results with schools and sports leagues.
The other big opportunity is to sell more portraits of the members to them, or their parents. We see many composite photographers focus on getting the pictures taken quickly for the board, rather than taking additional steps to maximize the portrait sales. We believed that making changes in the photography to increase the portrait sales would be an opportunity for the composite business we bought.
Up until this fall all the images for this composite business were taken indoors. It is easier to get uniform lighting for the composite boards if they are taken indoors and composed similarly. The appearance of the pictures used on the board do need to be very uniform. A downside to that is that the indoor shots tend to be similar year to year and that hurts portrait sales.
Part 2 of our plan was to take more and varied images – including providing a second photographer who would take several outdoor poses immediately after the indoor ones were taken. The outdoor poses were taken purely to sell portraits, so we had a good deal of freedom in posing, lighting, etc. By using the second photographer, we did not slow the process and we were still able to photograph up to 75 members per day as in the past.
In 2018 each member was photographed on green screen in 2 or 3 poses and backgrounds
In 2019 we photographed the members on green screen as in the past, but added some outside poses
Last year images were nicely edited before sending emails to the members and their parents. However, it was taking a week or more to get the images of several thousand subjects edited and emailed, and the order deadline was set for about 30 days. We have found that time spent editing does not add value. We believe than more effort should be taken getting images taken as needed, and then quickly make them available for sale.
Part 3 of our plan was to make everything happen much more quickly. We made the images available for ordering immediately and had short deadlines. We trained the photographers carefully and monitored their work daily. We did no editing. The cost previously spent on editing was used by us for a second photographer. We used PhotoMatch for this project and that allowed for the emails and texts to be sent out immediately. There was no data entry to do after the event. We began receiving orders on the day of the shoots. We continued to email and text our offers to them throughout the fall and orders flowed in through Christmas.
The best way to determine whether changes one makes are positive is to compare results from the same organization year to year. Comparing results from different groups can be problematic as some groups simply have better buying power than others. For these composites we are comparing exactly the same organizations.
Our results:
We had significantly more participants in the fall of 2019. We had 872 more photographed for a 33% increase. The extra 872 participants at $12 each, generated an additional $10,464 in sitting fees. Since we averaged $13.70 in portrait sales per person, the extra 872 participants generated an additional $11,946 in portrait sales. So, the better participation generated $22,410 more in total sitting fees and portrait sales.
We raised the sales per person photographed in 2019. It went from $7.24 from $13.70 – an 89% increase.
The powerful combination of higher sales per person and more people being photographed generated much higher portrait sales. They increased by $28,906 – a 152% increase.
The outdoor portrait sessions generated $25,612 or 60% of the portrait sales without shipping. We feel it was a huge success, but occasionally bad weather and darkness simply prevented it from being done.
The percent buying went from 14% to 24%. The combination of making photos and products available for sale immediately, and the outdoor poses being taken were the big factors in our buy rate going up 71%.
Our good results occurred because changed plan for execution went well:
- We arranged for rosters and communicated with members more directly
- We added outdoor portrait choices that were good and were also different from the past
- We did not delay selling in order to edit images – we went immediately to customer via PhotoMatch
- We had a good email/text campaign and offer with shorter deadlines
- Importantly, Steve Foisy, Kelsey Parker, Tiffany Thomas, and Mike Reiff all did a great job!
Let’s all be open to the changing technologies and consumer needs and take advantage of them in 2020!
Sincerely,
Jack Counts
