Business development and sales benchmarking for brand image photography studios

Business Development and Sales Benchmarking for "Brand Image" photographic studio

The aim of this project is to develop a framework of analysis for the business development of a photo studio that will include a sales benchmarking that will allow us to track the performance of the studio against that of other competitors in the industry, as well as against general market averages.

The project will include two different parts: (1) the business development of the photo studio part, where the project will aim at identifying and covering the main consumer groups and targeted segments, the overall evaluation of the industry in which the studio will be operating, including potential consumers, brief PEST and Porter analysis; and (2) the sales benchmarking part, which will most likely become a feedback and control instrument, aimed at monitoring the performances of the studio against other competitors and market averages and at improving these according to the results obtained in the evaluation process.

The photographic studio will be including in a market that has both photographic artists, individual ones or belonging to larger studios, developing capacities etc. Besides this, the area of coverage in terms of customers is vast, ranging from ordinary families to models. The role of the project will also be at determining which of these niches the photographic studios can successfully tackle, which are likely to increase the company's revenues at the lowest costs and make the studio competitive on the market.

The rationale behind this project proposal is closely related to the vastness and diversity of the proposed subject itself, as well as to the numerous implications of the subject, given the particularities of the photographic market, the way this can determine some of the figures and constraints in the business development plan etc. With such a project, we can track, investigate and monitor both variables before and during the initial business development process (including the initial market research, identifying relevant competitors and segments of consumers etc.), as well as during the later phases of the business development process, with a significant emphasis on the sales monitoring.

This will include the use of sales benchmarking, tracking the sales of the studio both against other competitors and against relevant market figures and market standards. These approaches will tend to cover a complete monitoring and analytical process over a wider spectrum of the company's existence. At the same time, it will allow a differentiated approach to the use of different monitoring instruments, as well as research tools.

Both of the two mentioned phases will require the availability of data from the market and the consumers in order to be able to process it and draw the relevant conclusions from it. The initial business development phase will require both a theoretical and practical approach. First of all, from a theoretical perspective, we will need to have a relevant theoretical background of how the market works, of the different implications of the players in the market, of the rules of the photography market, both in terms of sales and distribution, as well as in terms of approaching new clients and building the appropriate network of contacts.

From a practical perspective, the project will require and will include data from the industry, ranging from the competitors' most important figures (revenues and costs mainly, which will help us understand some of the dynamics on the market, as well as the types of business figures we are likely to expect. This is also important in trying to determine whether the studio will be able to sustain the initial costs until revenues will balance them) to external data such as market share, the total size of the market, the size of the competitors, external forces impacting the market, etc.

Some of this data can be drawn from theoretical research, with much of the data being public and available for anybody. Business directories, including Google's, will be a good place to start the research for the competitors, while the research on the market can include direct contact with professional organizations, which might be specialized on the matter and may have more information on the way the market is organized. Direct contact with one or more of the potential future competitors can also be a good approach to start developing a network with some of the entities involved in the industry.

The sales benchmarking phase will basically allow us to monitor the performance of the studio against relevant third parties (different other companies operating in the market etc.) and market averages in terms of sales etc. Direct research methodologies will be used here, including sales and revenues data obtained from other companies, from business directories etc. For the studio, we will simply track the main accounting instruments (cash flow statement, balance sheet, income statement) in order to identify the evolution of sales figures.

An important and interesting part of this project will be the actual future projection of the current sales benchmarking mechanism. The aim of this part will be to identify potential consumer trends and determine how these are likely to evolve in the future. This will create the appropriate premises for the early identification of all potential problems that may hamper sales figures in the future, determining the way the business can react to these new challenges, decide on measures to be taken at that point etc.