The Business of Photography

From a post on a local photography forum, I saw this piece of advice: “Tap your “network” Mom, Dad, cousin, classmates etc. We live in a country that’s it’s who you know and not what you know anyway. *sigh*”

I beg to disagree with the above statement, because I believe that sales leads can come from “cold knocking.”

Before graduating from college, I sold encyclopedias. We were told NOT to call on relatives or friends but to do “cold knocking” which meant going door to door, knocking on the doors of people we did not know. Because it can be very discouraging walking the streets, knocking and being turned away, (some people can be very cold-hearted toward salespeople), we were always reminded by our managers to pick ourselves up after each rejection and to continue knocking.

When my husband, John, and I started our little photography business, we did not know anybody. Although he’s Chinese, he was not connected with the Chinese community. Because I went to U.P. and did not join any sororities, I did not have a “network” of college friends. So I did what I had learned before – I did some “cold knocking.” I picked up the Yellow Pages and started calling ad agencies. I told them that we were interested to do advertising photography and may I present our portfolio to them?

I knocked on many, many doors. Some were receptive and some were not. One agency took seven years to return my call, but they are one of our best clients now. I always trusted in the advice I received at my first sales job to work hard to improve the ratio – to bring down the number of rejections, but to accept that rejections were part of the game – that every rejection brought us closer to the sale. I also learned this from Tom Hopkins (Official Guide to Success) who welcomed every rejection because they brought him closer to his success. 1, 2, 3, …96, 97, 98, 99.. hurray! here comes the 100th. Finally, a sale!

Thirty four years later, our business has grown, we have our regular clientele but we still do cold knocking. I believe that there are many prospective clients who need to hear about us, but if we don’t initiate the call, how would we ever meet? We have to seek them out, walk the street, so to speak. We continue to pick up the phone book, buy trade directories, join online fora, print business cards and give them away.

Zig Ziglar (author of various books on selling) said he would give himself a quota of 20 cards a day to give away. At the end of one particular day, he was about to go home. He loaded gas and saw two cards still in his wallet. So he handed them to the gasoline attendant and requested him to give his cards to two customers of the gasoline station who look like they needed new cars. The following week, he got a call from someone who said he received Ziglar’s card from the gas boy. He made a sale.

Once I tried doing that. I was at the Enterprise and saw one food stall that looked like they could use better photos. I bought my lunch there and offered my card to the cashier, and said, “if you need good photos of your food, please ask the owner to give us a call.” She said, “Mam, si boss po ang nagshoot nito.” (”Mam, my boss did the photos.”) When I was no longer within hearing distance, I gave out a sigh, and told myself, “you can’t win them all” and counted “no. 99.”

Could a new client be waiting for me? Could he be just one cold call away? There is only one way to find out. Knock, knock…