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The Video Production Business – A Formula For Operational Success
It’s easy to get overwhelmed with all the responsibilities we have as video business entrepreneurs. In order to have projects to work on, you have to spend time selling your services.
To have prospects to sell to, you have to spend time marketing your video business. To have the money to make sure you, your employees and all your business bills get paid, you have to spend time in collections making sure that your clients are paying on time.
To have profit to share with yourself and business partners, you have to make sure that everything above is working together in a harmonious fashion and if they aren’t, you must adjust accordingly. Then, just like when you finish cutting hundreds of acres of grass with a push mower, it’s time to start all over again because the demand for your attention never stops.
Yes, my very first job was cutting grass at my dad’s navy base in Okinawa, Japan. His reasoning was that once I experienced what it was like to work hardcore manual labor, I’d appreciate the importance of good grades and college. The rest is history.
Nonetheless, here’s my strategy for approaching the many responsibilities that go along with running a successful video production business. My approach is pretty basic yet I’ve found it to be very effective.
Here’s my business list of priorities:
1. Sales
2. Production
3. Marketing
4. Accounting
5. Everything else
SALES – In order to keep the doors open, I must generate sales. This is why sales is the first part of the business that gets my attention in the morning and is the last thing I think about at the end of the day.
Without sales, we have no projects to work on, which means we have no money, which results in a failing business. So, on the days or in the weeks where I have a lot of sales activity, nothing else gets a lot of attention. If I have a project that is due the same week as heavy sales activity, I know it’s going to be a week of extremely long days without a lot of sleep because I’ll have to handle project responsibilities after hours.
The down side is that I’m exhausted at the end of several weeks/months of pulling double shifts. The upside is that if I’m extremely busy in sales and equally busy in production, that means that my business is making a lot of money.
If I’m busy in sales but have no projects to work on, then it means I’m on the tail end of a slump and everything should bounce back soon. If I’m not busy in sales and there are no projects to work on, it means that I’m in trouble because money is running out and there isn’t going to be cash flowing back into my business anytime soon.
This is definitely NOT where I like to be.
PRODUCTION – After the sales activities are taken care of, I focus 100% of my energy on the next priority…production. If there is no sales activity and a lot of project work to get done, this is when I wear jeans to work every day and don’t shave for a week.
My focus is only on clearing the shelf as fast as I can so that there’s room for the next round of sales activity. I have found that an empty shelf will replenish itself faster and with higher paying work than a shelf that is always half full.
Plus, a video project that has had 100% of your attention for a week will ALWAYS be higher quality than a video project that you have given 25% of your attention for 4 weeks. (Better quality = Happier clients = More sales!)
MARKETING – If there aren’t any sales opportunities and zero projects to work on, it’s time to allocate time and energy to marketing. This is my least favorite activity because it usually means that business is slow and I have to spend time rubbing elbows with people I have nothing in common with at meetings I don’t want to attend.
Marketing is absolutely necessary to have a growing, successful video production business so I fight through all the “I don’t want to do this” thoughts in my head and execute the marketing strategy anyway.
Yes, I have a pretty dynamic marketing strategy that works well for my business. But, I try to never spend ANY time marketing my business when sales activity is high and/or equally matched by production activity. The best marketing you can do is to give each client the best product and experience you can so put all your energy and effort into the production process and the client relationship when it’s “go” time.
Think of your sales as an ocean’s tide. It comes and it goes except that your business doesn’t have the universal forces of gravity and the moon to push and pull your tide (sales) automatically. The market takes care of this for you.
So, marketing is important when the tide (sales) are out because you have to convince the market that you are a worthy player in the video industry so that they will push sales opportunities back to you. Just be sure that when the tide is in, you work your tail off writing proposals, closing the deals and producing the work to your best abilities.
Then, when the tide is out, work your marketing plan with the same aggressive nature that you spend in the sales and production process. It will help to keep everything balanced in your business over time. At some point, if you can afford to, you should consider outsourcing your marketing tasks so you can keep that effort going full time. However, in the meantime, the above plan works well for a one-person video production company. 2
ACCOUNTING – This is the easiest category for me because I don’t do it. Yep, that’s what I said. I DON’T HANDLE ACCOUNTING for my video production business. I hate it, suck at it hope to never have to balance another business checking account again. 2
My wife Christy (who is also our CFO) handles all of this for us and does a fantastic job. My specialty is to make the money (sales, production, marketing). Her specialty is to keep the money (accounting, financial projections, cash flow management, etc.)
Together we make a great team because our strengths play to the other’s weaknesses. Our video production business is strong because of this partnership. Now, just because I don’t handle accounting doesn’t mean I’m not involved in the normal financial decisions associated with operating our business. For more information visit , Videographer South Africa
Christy provides me with accurate financial data for all areas of our business once per week and we discuss them over a glass of wine in our kitchen at home. By the time the wine bottle is put back in the fridge, this very important aspect of running our business is taken care of. For more information visit Videographer Johannesburg
She makes it easy for me because she is very talented in this area of business, which helps me spend more time either convincing people to spend their money with us, producing the work that earns the money or telling people why they need to use video to help them save or make money.
EVERYTHING ELSE – In my opinion, the “everything else” category gets smaller and smaller the longer you run a video production business. This is mainly because you eventually figure out the formula of success that works for your business and you stick to it.
In the early years of my video production business, I tried anything/everything that I felt could improve my success. Eventually, I learned what works, what doesn’t and to simply not waste any time performing tasks that don’t directly contribute to the formula.
This category includes taking time to think about expansion into new markets or researching the latest camera configuration for the hood of your car that you might use in a video production 2 years from now.
Simply put, the “everything else” category of tasks, for me, has turned into the “what I’m going to hire someone else to do” category. I’m happier because I eliminate time wasting tasks that don’t directly impact the revenue generating activities for the business and I get to spend more time with my wife and children.
Plus, it helps the economy because I put money in other people’s pockets to do many of these tasks for me.
Article done by Kris Simmons Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kris_Simmons
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