Videographers - Let's talk Pricing! EP #325 - Den Lennie

Let's talk about pricing and how do you get to your prices for your clients on your video projects? We actually use a pricing calculator inside the vba and this is a spreadsheet that you can put in all of the different variables that you want to charge for. You can add margin, you can add production fees. And what this will do is give you a really good ballpark to go to a client with and then start negotiations. So in this clip we're actually discussing the pricing calculator on a coaching call. So check it out. I hope you find it useful. Be sure to like and subscribe if you enjoy this content. And here's the clip.

So I think that the pricing calculator.

Is a good tool to use to.

Come up with your price. Even if you don't share it with the client. It starts to help you to line itemize the different roles that are required in a production. Now you might find yourself coming up with a much bigger price than the market's willing to pay. But you could just adjust it and say, well, instead of a producer, director, cinematographer, you've got a self shooting director and you price that accordingly. I think what I like about the pricing calculator is it gets you to start thinking in terms of pre production, production post and expenses because oftentimes we just don't charge for a lot of the work we do and we feel this kind of. I certainly feel like when I was, you know, starting out in the video production corporate world, you know, I'd been in broadcast for years and was really kind of quite well regarded and had lots of contacts. But in the corporate world there was nothing. I had to start from scratch. And I realized that in the broadcast world rates are set and are fairly typical across the board. In the corporate world, depends on who you're dealing with. Dentists wouldn't care, maybe education, don't know or care. But if you can understand and explain to them there's a process of. In manufacturing, I would say look, if you're talking to manufacturer.

You'Ve got R and D, you've got an R and D lab to come up with ideas and prototype. Well that's kind of like pre production. We're kind of prototyping the shoot and that's going to take some time and some resources. So you kind of articulate that in the language of the client and then you're like, and then we get to production which is like where we actually produce the material. So if you're in manufacturing, that's you've Done your prototyping, you've set up your tooling and now you're going to produce the product. You've got sales and marketing to think about, you've got other HR issues to think about. The. Then you've got the actual distribution. And distribution is kind of like post production, but we're actually editing it together, packaging it, and putting it out to the world.

So whatever industry you're talking to, if you can somehow articulate to them.

The process, they can then understand that process takes time and involves people and resources. And therefore there's a cost attached to every hour of resource and personnel in every stage of the process. It kind of just helps them understand that. So one of the challenges I think we have as videographers is that everyone's got a phone and everyone's uncle's an enthusiastic photographer and takes great. His camera takes great pictures. And so people are used to their phone producing great stuff. And so they go, well, why would I suddenly pay all this money for something that I can do myself? And that the iPhone does really well? So I think in order to do that well, you've got to articulate the process and help someone understand the value of having expertise every stage of that process.

So if you're working with another production company, Ryan, like, again, whatever deal you have with them is separate to the deal you would put in front of a client, which would be to. And even if you do a deal to the client, right. So I was thinking about the restaurant you were going to do some work with. They just didn't have the budget. They said they had 1500 bucks, and that was it. Now you put a quote together for that in the coding calculator. I'll come out at four or five grand, maybe even six or seven grand. But what you can do is still go through that process and say to the client, look, this is actually what this would cost with all the different steps. Now, I appreciate you may not have the budget for this, but I need to show you what this actually costs so we can have a conversation about what is fair and equitable for us to do this for you. And I'm happy to work with you because we want to build up the portfolio. But a great example would be you put the quote together and say it's like six and a half thousand dollars, but you discount it by 70% and say, I'm giving you a 70% discount on this. So you're getting all of the value of the $6000 project. But I want to do it for two and a half or 1800 because I actually want to engage with you on a testimonial and maybe some referrals. But I think showing people what goes into it really helps to anchor the value away from Uncle Bob's got a DSLR and his camera takes great pictures.

So I hope you found that helpful. Now if you'd like to get involved and maybe come and be part of this free community, you can do so by clicking the link below. It's completely free to join or if you want to, you can watch our free training.

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Sam.