Where in the world am I today?: North Vancouver, BC, Canada
About five years ago when I first started getting Cruise Ship work through the Don Casino Agency in Miami I was asked to submit my availability on a weekly basis. Every Friday I send them an update on what dates are available and periodically they send me offers from various cruise lines based on the dates that I’ve said are available.
Just recently I decided to dress up the look/feel of my weekly availability reports to Don Casino by turning it into a PDF with a bit more of a ‘branded’ look. My thinking was that if all of their acts are sending in their availability, I wanted mine to stand out a bit from the rest of the crowd. It seemed to me to a perfect opportunity to raise the bar in terms of using this as a marketing vehicle.
Then I got to thinking that sending out regular availability updates is something I should probably be doing for other clients/agents as well. Sending out weekly, bi-monthly or monthly updates to certain clients I work for on a regular basis or agents who frequently get me work severs a dual purpose. First it gets my availability information into their hands, but beyond that it keeps me in the client’s mind by showing an ongoing enthusiasm towards getting more work and delivering great shows!
The theory of this makes perfect sense, but the reality of putting this system into action is eluding me a bit at the moment. After getting back from India on Sunday, this ‘Monday blog post’ has been delayed in being posted as I scrambled to get my body and mind ready to start shows as part of the Celebrations on Robson Square that are going on during the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. I’ve had a very very full week and am just now (Friday) getting around to writing this post which has been bouncing around my head waiting to get out… I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to get the rest of the week’s posts out of my head today as well and get caught up…
But I digress… Back to the original topic. Sending out a regular-ish message to past and potential clients letting them know that I’d love to work with them just makes good business sense. There is a fine line between being persistent and being annoying though, and everyone has a slightly different threshold when it comes to this, so taking the time to check and see if this sort of regular update is appreciated or just considered annoying is likely a good idea before you start bombarding people’s inboxes with daily updates. If you can get approval for this sort of steady communication it can only increase your opportunities to land more gigs and keep you working!
