Keeping a Watchful Eye
by: Chris & Katie Humphreys



“Everything that is watched improves.”

When I first read this quote by John D. Rockefeller (the founder of Standard Oil), I was amazed by the simplicity of the statement, but even more amazed by the implications it had for our business. As photographers and artists, it’s easy to let aspects of the so-called “business side” of our business fall outside of our awareness simply because we often don’t take the time to really “watch” these areas. Rockefeller’s idea led us to realize that awareness and “watchfulness” are the important first steps in improvement, and it prompted my husband and business partner, Chris, and I to implement tools and systems in our business that could track this information. Sure enough, after we began setting up systems to track and watch various aspects of our business, we started discovering the powerful ways we could analyze and use that information to make positive changes.

When we think about tracking and watching our business, it’s easy to think only of the financial aspects – after all, most of us know the importance of tracking our business’ financial health. However, Chris and I discovered how important it is to track another area - our relationships. Sounds a little odd, but just like anything else, one of the first steps in improving your network and connectedness is taking the time “watch” it. We have discovered the enormous impact that actually keeping track of our relationships has had on our business.

We “watch” and keep track of these relationships by categorizing them into two main areas: clients (potential and actual) and other wedding photographers and vendors. This first area, inquiries and actual clients, has given us so much information about our relationships. Here’s just a few things you could learn by tracking your inquiries:

• Are certain vendors constantly referring weddings to you?
• Are the places that you advertise in giving you enough solid leads and bookings to make your investment worthwhile?
• Are other photographers constantly referring weddings to you when they’re booked?
• Are particular past clients telling all of their friends about you?
• Are there consistent factors that are causing some potential clients not to book you?

We have learned all of this simply from tracking our potential client and client relationships and analyzing the results. Because we’ve watched this area, we’ve made significant improvements that have helped us know how to better target our ideal clients. By using this information to see precisely where our bookings are coming from, we’ve also realized which specific relationships are particularly important to maintain and continue to nurture. It’s easy to let others know that you appreciate their referrals and then do small things that go a little out of your way to continue cultivating that relationship.

Aside from our inquiries, we’ve also set up a database of our vendor relationships and our relationships with other photographers. This system helps us keep in touch with our network and I set aside time in my schedule most weeks to connect with these various people in our network. I plan this as part of my weekly schedule because I know how important these relationships are in our continued business growth. Rather than relying only on memory and hoping that I’ll bump into these different people from time to time, I make sure that I intentionally stay connected and, as a result, continue to genuinely build relationships with people in my network.

This concept has yielded bigger results than we could have ever expected in our business. For instance, we’ve booked several weddings on the other side of the country simply because we took the time to nurture a relationship with one particular wedding coordinator. We worked with her for one wedding, and afterwards periodically sent her an email to see how she was doing, sent her cookies at Christmas, and just let her know we genuinely enjoyed keeping in touch with her. It was simple, but in the last year, we’ve booked two of our biggest weddings directly because of her, gained access to another major contact on the east coast, and have gotten some great word of mouth – all because we had a system in place to help us keep track of all the relationships, casual or not, that we have. You just can’t underestimate the power of staying connected.

As important as all of this is, we need to be reminded that keeping track of relationships is not about building superficial friendships with a selfish end in mind. “Networking” seems to be commonly misunderstood as seeking out relationships with others purely because they can do something for you. As much as this article discusses organizing and systematically tracking relationships, those relationships have to grow organically out of a genuine desire to help and invest in other people. The relationships that have most benefited us on a business level have been those relationships where a true friendship and interest in the other person was formed.

In the end, our goal may not be to create the next Standard Oil, but by practicing the same fundamental principles that Rockefeller did - in all aspects of our business - we’ll have the ability to grow our business in whichever way we choose. Ultimately, “watching” is much more than simply that -- it’s control. And that’s something we’d all like more of in our both our lives and our businesses.

DISCLAIMER : The views expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent the views of photographik or any member of the photographik organization.