In the industry I’m in, a lot of performance groups utilize what I have begun to call “smash and grab” strategies. They sell their event, do very little promotion, assure that their crowd will “turn out,” negotiate a hefty guranteed rate, perform for 15 people and leave, never to be heard of again. This is a way to make a quick buck. It’s actually pretty easy to pull of, so I’ve felt the temptation. However, this is a horrible long term strategy. Eventually, it may not be today and it may not be tomorrow, but you WILL run out of places willing to take you. And don’t think people don’t talk about poor experiences. This rings true in the rest of the sales realm. If you do a poor job just to get a quick paycheck, people WILL talk about it. It’s the opposite of sustainable. So, instead, we’ve adopted a different strategy. It takes more work, but we’ve found it to be well worth it. Instead of just focusing on us making money, we push hard for win-win scenarios. What does this look like? It’s essentially going above and beyond the rest of the pack. Firstly, it’s quick and reliable response in booking (what our surveys call “ease of booking”). Next, we provide a free marketing package with graphics and photos to assist in marketing on their end. We also push to our online audience. Finally, we’ve even gone as far as converting our team into an ad hoc sales force, calling local homeschool groups and PTA or bible study groups to sell group ticket packages for a discount to help fill seats. Does it take more work? Yes. Is it unique? Absolutly. Has it been effective? 1000%. This leads firstly to repeat bookings. If you convince a venue that you will work WITH them, they’re more willing to book you again, and more willing to pay you better. It also builds a reputation with other venues. Now people reach out to me. Having a solid referral stream is truly wonderful as a salesperson. So, moral of the story is to go above and beyond. Even if it’s hard now, it pays dividends long into the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the industry I’m in, a lot of performance groups utilize what I have begun to call “smash and grab” strategies. They sell their event, do very little promotion, assure that their crowd will “turn out,” negotiate a hefty guranteed rate, perform for 15 people and leave, never to be heard of again. This is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3115,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3115"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10383"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10384,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10383\/revisions\/10384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gccwebsites.com\/startupsales\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}