Weddings are great photo opportunities. It’s a day that everyone wants to remember and happy couples often need a reliable, professional service to capture their wedding perfectly for them to remember for the rest of their lives. Investing in relationships with wedding planners is a great way to gain access to this profitable business. The wedding planner will refer you to couples who will be more likely to hire you based on the wedding planner’s advice.First, if you have no wedding portfolio, offer your service to a bride in return for a testimonial. Be sure you keep the copyright on your pictures so you can use them to create a portfolio. You might locate a receptive bride within your circle of friends and family or through other networking activities. With at least one wedding under your belt and with a nice testimonial and portfolio, start looking for other weddings to photograph. Word of mouth is always ideal, but you might also check the wedding announcements in your local newspaper.To build up a portfolio, offer your services in return for testimonials. Make sure you have the copyright for your photographs so that you can use these in your portfolio. Often your first client will be from your social circle, so get the word out about your service. Word of mouth is the best recommendation, but with your new portfolio and testimonial, you are prepared to search for wedding announcements in your local newspaper.Contact the bride and offer your service. You can either send promotional material by mail or try phoning her. You can offer to take pictures of the bride’s house and the preparation for the wedding which can produce some great photos. This service is rarely offered by studio photographers, so this extra effort will make you stand out.Here’s one more suggestion for a unique digital photography package for weddings. Pair up with a scrapartist and offer a unique product – a wedding scrapbook or memory album. Scrapartists use photographs, mementos, decorative paper, journaling and various embellishments to create gorgeous, one-of-a-kind albums that are truly works of art.Being inventive and creative in the way you approach business goes along way in wedding photography. For example try working with a local artist to produce scrapbooks for your customers. You will offer a completely unique work of art to hold your clients happy memories. As a final tip, make sure to please the bride. Make her happy, and your job will be a lot more enjoyable.
Digital Printing – Expert Printers Offer Many Benefits to Local Artists
When you see digital printing Denver artists work, you are sure to recognize the real life effects that go into the production. This could range from the mountainous snow-capped landscapes, beautiful neighborhoods to some of the more modern art movements underway. There are many benefits to digital printing, other than just the quality. Digital printing is a process where laser and inkjet printers produce high quality prints from electronic files.This new generation method of printing out images has became increasingly popular locally in Denver due to the many benefits it offers the artist. The set up time is reduced dramatically and the ability to create short runs or small print orders is much easier. The method is much more cost effective and produces much less waste. The environment is benefiting as well as fewer hazardous chemicals are being used to create these quality prints. And this is very important for people in Denver who recognize that the city is ahead of the game in many areas with respect to taking care of the environment and want to keep it that way.The use of digital prints offers the artist an unlimited creativity outlet. The ability to create paper thin images or huge panoramas creates a sophisticated technique that most artists appreciate. Printing Denver specialists agree that the new technology has benefited all artists, photographers, architects and painters included.The printing industry has accepted the use of digital prints as their new way to do business. The method is used by all types of artists and even draftsman and designers are using it to create cost effective and high quality work. The electronic files are easy to create and can be transmitted to any printer in the world with a simple click of the mouse. This benefit is huge for those who want to send examples, portfolios or finished projects to another location without the worry of prints being destroyed in the delivery. And with the ever growing size of Denver, including all the surrounding cities like Aurora, Arvada, Littleton, Golden, etc., being able to send electronic files is a huge time saver as opposed to past methods of a local artist showing their work.The many digital printing Denver specialists offer a new avenue for artists. The printing process is used around Denver for signage, textiles, portraits, photographic images, brochures, envelopes, letterheads, flyers, business documents, pop art, paintings, annual reports, and even the reproduction of old prints and restoration of art pieces. Digital printing is even used for transparent films.Printing Denver specialists and craftsmen can help you create the perfect image, with careful editing and use of colors to contrast the image. The image seen on the monitor will be the printed final, so it is important to work with a local printer that you know and trust to get the creative edge of your images and not lose the quality of your work.The paper selection is extremely important to your quality of work also. Choosing a paper that is the correct weight with the right absorbency, opacity, grain, and color will have a huge impact on the outcome of your work. Many digital printing Denver specialists can assist you in finding the right font and paper as well as creating the correct layout, color background, margins, spaces, and other important aspects to create the cleanest and highest quality design. Again, getting this right really is a reflection of finding the best local printer for your needs. In fact, working with a few different local printers to get a feel for their work is strongly suggested.Obviously, the turnaround time for the printing job is one of the largest benefits to using digital printing, but the many other benefits such as high quality, ease of creativity and the benefit to the environment are all strong reasons why most artists are turning to the digital world to create their work. And believe it or not, our choices here play a factor in helping keep the Rocky Mountains just as beautiful as ever.
Financial Services Professionals: The Business of Busy-ness, is it Destroying Your Sales?
Did you know that the word “business” actually comes from the word “busy”?Financial services sales offers us several ways of keeping busy. In fact, three types of activities fill everyone’s days – those which are income GENERATING … income CONSERVING … and income CONSUMING.The challenge is staying focused on the right activities and in the financial services industry you are probably responsible for ALL three!Income generating activities are the lifeblood of your business. They are where ALL the money comes from. Your sales are the result of this step well done.In this category you will find all sorts of activities – prospecting … customer acquisition … marketing … research and development and that’s just a glimpse.Income Conserving activities protect your hard earned money. Here is where you preserve your sales.In this category you’ll find activities relating to being efficient, as well as anything that impacts good will and customer loyalty.Income Consuming activities are a normal part of every business.While many income consuming activities are necessary … unavoidable …important… perhaps mission-critical, most are simply a blatant waste of time and resources and eat away at your hard-earned profits.Income consuming can be tough to evaluate , because on the surface they seem to be income generating or conserving. Whether it’s being dragged to and through another pointless meeting or policies and procedures that do nothing but complicate the simplest of tasks … or (fill in the blank with whatever drive you CRAZY), the average day is filled with things that are of little or no value to your business.Nevertheless, activities that ARE of PARAMOUNT importance to your business can STILL be incoming consuming.For example: let’s say a prospect wants your service and your friend refers them to you. You make an appointment, give them a presentation and they hire you. You then go back to the office to finish up paperwork and begin being of service.While anyone in sales would probably argue the point, when they do the needs analysis and the paperwork, that is NOT income generating … it’s income CONSUMING. That does not mean it wasn’t important – it was CRITICAL in fact! But the income was actually generated by the salespersons marketing efforts. Everything that occurred AFTER the presentation became an expense in order to fulfill the agreement.The salesperson can certainly help CONSERVE income by being professional and frugal with time. He even has the potential for GENERATING additional income by suggesting another product to the client – or by making such a positive impression that the client would eagerly recommend him to others – but the pure activity of providing the service is income CONSUMING.If you would like to keep your busy-ness as profitable as possible, here are three ways to do it:First, detach yourself emotionally from the assessment process so you can be objective and clear.Second, examine your business and decide what percentage of time should be focussed on each category.Third, decide what would be the ideal activity ratio at each level – and 100% income generating isn’t a realistic expectation!Finally, instill in your team or yourself if you are the team, a fundamental respect for income – its generation, conservation and consumption. Every moment of every day should be governed by a simple question: “How is doing this going to affect my income?” The answer will dictate it’s priority.Priority #1 – EVERY team member should take full advantage of every opportunity to perform something income generating.Priority #2 – When not busy generating income, team members should seek out ways to conserve what has been gained.Priority #3 – If an activity neither generates nor conserves income, it must be carefully evaluated for its income gobbling potential. If the activity is necessary, team members should strive to be as
efficient as possible. If it is simply a waste of resources, it should be avoided altogether.Now, get out there and Do something with this information to increase your efficiency and sales – you’d hate for the time you’ve spent reading this to be income CONSUMING because you did nothing useful with it!