Where in the world am I today?: Guangzhou in the morning, Beijing in the evening.

As a follow up to the post that I wrote on Monday where I talked about the importance of building strong relationship with clients, I thought I’d throw out another idea for how to keep really good clients happy.

Sometimes it’s a very good idea to not over saturate your show with a given client. The longevity of the relationship will benefit as a result because by spacing out your performances a bit you’ll have more time between shows to work on new material or for the client that’s hired you in the past enjoy seeing some of the same material again.

In the interim between when you perform for the client and when you do a repeat performance, why not offer your services as a consultant on who your client might be able to bring in to mix things up a bit. If you are able to locate talent for them who will deliver a great show then you’re value as an asset to that client will increase. Now how you choose to operate in your roll as consultant can take various forms some more profitable than others.

Charge a consultant’s fee. This puts and money involved in an up front billing scenario. This is the nature of the relationship I’ve had with the Pacific National Exhibition and the Street Stars Program for the last five years or so. I’m brought in by the creative director of the fair who considers me an expert in the sphere of world class street performers. Over the years I’ve grown my files on various acts from around the world so that depending on what sort of acts will help realize a particular year’s vision for the event I’ve usually got a few different acts to suggest. I’m brought in, provide a service and also act as the liaison between the fair and the performers from the time I go in for the first meetings until the day the Fair opens. Now the PNE is a large enough event that the idea of paying a consultant fee for this service makes sense.

Act as the talent booker or agent. In this scenario you act as the representative for another performer and charge a commission for the service you provide. In this scenario the fee comes off the back end. The client pays a flat fee then you take your commission/finders fee out of that fee before the balance is delivered to the performer who actually does the show.

I set up a company years ago that acted as a tour organizer for performers and charge them a commission on the work that they did. I did it in part because people were coming to me saying things like –

“Dave, we see that you’ve got a great tour booked always seem to be working. Would you be able to set up a similar tour for me?”

I set up tours for people for a couple of years, but I always felt a bit weird taking money from my friends. Sure I was providing a service, but the idea of being an ‘agent’ who makes his living off of the hard word of artists seemed a bit off somehow. There’s a difference between being an ‘agent’ and being a ‘manager’ and I think I’d prefer the idea of helping guide someone’s career as a manager, but in the end I think I was happy enough just managing my own career with out having to babysit the careers of my friends.

But back to the concept of developing great long term relationships with clients… I’ve been lucky enough to do the corporate Christmas Parties for a few clients a number of times. Even if I love how the show went down and the client wants me back the following year I’ll often suggest that they hire someone else for the following year just to mix things up a bit. In this scenario I just provide a list of local acts who I’m confident will provide a great show and offer this information up as a free service.

This does two things. It makes life easy for that client which is great and it gives work to my friends. I’ll often send this list out as an email and then BCC all of the performers on the list just so that they know where the lead came from. My hope being that by being nice to them, they’ll turn around a be nice back and suggest me in a similar fashion. Perhaps this is a bit naive on my part, but it’s how I choose to do things.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 at 12:01 am and is filed under Job Opportunities. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.