I wrote about my diving into Customer Relationship Management via SalesForce.com yesterday. Today I have been working on customizing this program to fit my needs. One of the tasks I have accomplished is to tie in my website with CRM. If a potential client writes me an email via my contact form, his comments and information are send to my CRM, entered into the database and I am notified via email that I have a new request from my website.

In the past I have been just getting emails with the form data, which I then had to transcribe into my address book, calendar, … (I did see the requests via email). Today it is integrated into my CRM.

Pretty cool.

It’s hard enough to find clients that are looking for a photographer. Once you’ve identified a potential customer you want to be persistent and reliable in your follow-up communication, but not obnoxious or forgetful.

That’s not so hard when you have a few jobs that you are working on at once, but what happens if it’s a dozen? Or more? I do believe this is a great problem to have, but you don’t want to harass your clients.

Being a small company that’s were CRM comes in, i.E. Customer Relationship Management. We all do it, but between your email program, your phone calls, letters, promo pieces and meetings, how do you keep track of who did what when?

I just signed up with SalesForce.com. This is a web based CRM system, in which you can track your leads, accounts, contacts, opportunities, jobs, … online. I have begun importing my current clients and leads and can see where this will streamline my customer service.

Startup nation is a well known website for small businesses that are just starting up their operations. These are companies that are in the very beginning stages of understanding what photography can do for their business. Often you have to educate them about the process of shoot what can and can not be done  - especially on the budget side. On the other hand many of these clients have been interested in discussing creative solutions to their issues and let me have a lot more freedom with my photography, than old established bigger companies that need to match their ‘look’ – don’t get me wrong I do this as well, I worked for a national american brand for over 7 years as their full time photographer – but I enjoy the variety a small business brings to my work.

Aneta shot this morning at my house.

I shot Aneta this morning – early! We began shooting this morning before sunrise on the beach and finished shooting at my house. Awesome make up by Jane Pittman (look at her site by clicking here).

The sun is just coming up on a beautiful morning on Miami Beach. Aneta did great on her first photo shoot! Way to go girl.

Shot this job in Orlando for an old friend. I was doing behind the scenes photography for the video production company to use for print work. They were creating a show called ‘Give a living rose’, which takes people, that want to say thank you to someone who has influenced their lives. In this case it was Scott Hamilton (Gold Medal winner of the Winter Olympics in 1984 in Figure Skating), who wanted to thank his coach Don Laws for all that he had done for Scott.

Scott had flown into Orlando to honor Don with a dinner – unbeknown to his former coach – that was going to be the event that the show focuses around. Here is my favorite shot of the whole night, when Scott toasts to Mr. Laws, thanking him for being such a big part of his life.

Also present at the table is Patrick Chan, Don Laws current trainee and his mom. 

Scott Hamilton thanks his coach Don Laws.