The X Factor

I was passing the time during a shoot doing my morning reading. After reading about the repeated screw-ups with Bloomberg over the inaccurate reporting of Steve Jobs' death, and the false reporting of the bankruptcy of United Airlines, I was making my way through my own blog roll, which includes Chase Jarvis' blog. Chase' piece for today is "What You Can't See Matters", and it's worth a read.

To that end

(Continued after the Jump)

I want to echo what Chase has written. I can't tell you the number of times that I got the job because I was easy-going, friendly, I deliver all the time on time, or some other matter totally unrelated to my creative vision, talent, technical expertise, and so forth. In other words, all those things that we worry about - "prime lens, or zoom"; "iso100 or 400 to get a smidge more depth of field"; "3200k or 2900k"?

The shoot I am on now, is a prime example. We have a client that needs (and is happy to pay the surcharge for) same day rush delivery of images. Someone prior to me lost them as a client because they failed to deliver when they said they would.

Previously, we wrote "Wise Words for your Client Dialog - When there's a problem or Question" about the importance of client communication and customer service, Awkward Moments, which continues the point about how to be more effective in your communications with clients.

On top of that, there's the client who came to you and then left for someone else, only to return. I call them the "Prodigal Client", and wrote about them here, and they're coming back for ease of interaction, oftentimes.

We also wrote - Collaborate or Suffer The Consequences - in response to Rob Haggart's A Photo Editor blog -

"just because you are a phenominal photographer, with a great style, doesn't mean clients will want to work with you. And, if you make it worse, you make it so that you can't take direction. This is a recipe for a lot of one-off clients, with little repeat business."

I also wrote - "If I said to you, after you botched a job, or just were laxadasical about your service/followup component of an assignment, that you would loose well over $10k, would you handle things differently?" in this article - Lost Income - Over the long term. And that is a cautionary tale about just how much losing a client will cost you over the life of your business.

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