Are you the highlight of your client's day, the very BEST part of it? 

In order to stand apart from the competition, you must be awesomely delightful and move beyond the transaction mentality. 

This is the challenge for the boutique studio.

Clients will stick with you, spend more money, tell more of their friends and give you the benefit of the doubt if you make a mistake when you are a "delightful" place to do business!

And I love this quote, "It is our professional responsibility to be absolutely delightful!" 

We are in a business where people and our relationship with them are critical; we don't sit in a cubicle in a huge office building entering data into a computer...no, we meet and greet the public daily and we must win them over and form strong bonds immediately.

Here are five ways we delight our clients:

     1. Handwrite a note, whether for a specific occasion or what I call a "Just Because" note. I designed several different studio cards so I can send a note on the spur of the moment. 

     2. From time to time, we send gifts to our clients, such as tea from Kentucky tea maestro, Bruce Richardson. He even has a Bourbon tea:-) YUMMMM. Be sure to check him out.

     3. Overdeliver. Go the extra mile. Underpromise and overdeliver. Shock them with delight. Wow them with over-the-top service.

    4. Get to know your clients. Learn your customers’ names and some brief personal information. People LOVE it when you remember their names along with the names of their children.

     5. Provide extra services such as delivering their order to their home or doing a portrait installation. We also offer to go to their home before the portrait to photograph their walls for later use in ProSelectwhere we can add appropriate frames and show them the proper size for their spaces. 

So...what are you doing to be delightful? What more can you do in this area? How are you surprising your clients? 

There are so many ideas to pamper and delight your client. Use your imagination and you will be rewarded by clients who will come back again and again.