Career Advice

My friend Blaine Parker isn’t just a brilliant voice actor (listen to his demos and you’ll see what I mean), but he’s also a superb writer. He publishes a weekly email missive called Hot Points and reading it is one of the highlights of each Monday for me. Below is the text of Blaine’s release today.
—————————————————————————-
HOT POINTS for The Week for March 3, 2008

WE SOLVE CUSTOMER PROBLEMS, NOT CREATE THEM

The number of times we hear it is staggering.

“We ask everyone who calls how they heard about us.” Makes me want to stamp my feet and scream like a little girl whilst yanking out my hair.

Well, maybe not.

But close.

Our problem: how to attract customers to our clients’ businesses. Our clients’ problem: how to service those customers. It is not our clients’ customers’ problem to provide lead sourcing. To expect customers to do so is rude and intrusive. It’s also a fabulous way for an advertiser to destroy effective marketing.

CUSTOMERS KNOW ONLY ONE THING.

They know what they want. They have a problem to be solved. They want the advertiser to solve it. They do not know, most of the time, how they heard about the advertiser’s business.
Guaranteed.

They might know they heard a radio commercial. They probably don’t know where they heard it. But if the advertiser has any presence in the marketplace, the customer has probably heard the radio commercial.

Many times.

Seen the billboard.

Many times.

Seen the newspaper ad.

Many times.

Seen the company’s trucks.

Many times.

Any business worth its salt has a media mix, with advertising all over town. They’ve been invading the customer’s conscience routinely, possibly for years. If the advertiser has been advertising with any persistence, the customer shouldn’t know how he heard about the business. The customer should simply know in his heart that this business is the one for him.

MOREOVER, THE ADVERTISER SHOULD KNOW IN HIS HEART WHEN THE ADVERTISING IS WORKING.

You can just tell. If new advertising is running, and the phone starts ringing or customers start coming in, guess what. The advertising works. It doesn’t matter what the customers say. I’ve had 50% of customers generated by one of my ads claim they heard it on a station where it never ran. I’ve had advertisers claim they were experiencing zero lead conversion—which we knew was untrue, because one of our own people was a customer, and was meeting other customers generated by our advertising.

As an website customer, I’ve repeatedly been asked to source the lead. And as an ad guy, I want to be helpful. But most of the time, the websites (a) don’t have all the sourcing options available, or (b) don’t let me tell them ALL the places I heard about them.

I’ve had client businesses where the salespeople simply make up their own answers to the lead sourcing questions.

How do we know this?

Because the leads were geographically impossible. You simply can’t be getting 75% of your leads from KXYZ when every one of those callers lives in an area code 100 miles south of KXYZ’s listening area.

“THAT’S CRAZY. I NEVER ASK MY CLIENTS IF THE RADIO COMMERCIALS ARE WORKING.”

I actually had a new radio account rep say this to me last Friday.

We were talking about whether one of his client’s was having success. He had a vague idea that everything was going well. I said to him, “You’re not asking them how the commercials are doing, are you?”

That’s when he told me that was a crazy question.

“I’ll hear from them if it’s NOT working. And they’ll buy more time if it IS working. But I never ask them if our commercials are doing the job.”
I thanked him profusely.

Just like a business will know if their advertising is effective, an account rep can tell if his client is happy—all without sticking a needle in him that says, “Hey, how are WE doing for you?”

All that does is plant a seed of doubt in the client’s mind.

And once the seed of doubt is planted, it gets to germinate and sprout a big, leafy tree full of questions.

OURS IS A BUSINESS OF FAITH.

We have to have faith in our media and our creative product. Our clients have to have share our faith. And we don’t do anything to reinforce their faith by letting them endlessly question us and their customers.

Yes, inquiry has its place.

But the questions need to be smart.

And so does the evaluation process.

And the only way that shows up is in the numbers.

Are the ads running? Is business up?

The ads are working. Pure and simple. But under those exact circumstances, guess what happens when an advertiser has no faith and starts interrogating customers?

The advertising fails.

Because the answers will never be the ones an insecure advertiser wants to hear.

As always,
Blaine Parker
Your Short, Fat Creative Director in
Los Angeles
——————————————————————-
If you’d like to start getting Blaine’s Hot Points each Monday, click through to his website, send him and email and ask him to add you to his distribution list. And thank you, Blaine for permission to publish this tasty treat today.

My friend Tom Dheere is featured in an article on networking in Backstage Magazine that’s now available online. There’s a bunch of good information in this article. Here are a couple of my favorites…

…networking can be learned and practiced. It doesn’t require a special gene; you don’t even have to be especially outgoing. You just have to be sincere, proactive, and prepared. And a little creativity and a positive attitude can’t hurt.

And, my very favorite…

The simplest thing is just to be nice

It’s more than a little amazing what kind of benefits you can gain through simply being nice to people. Tom is among the many nice people I’ve met through the VO-BB in the last couple of years.

My friend Mary McKitrick is often a source of inspiration to me. Why? Because while I’ve been a professional voice talent since 1983, she’s been doing this work for a much shorter amount of time, yet she demonstrates mature insights that far outstrip her experience.

Her recent post about networking is a perfect example. I especially enjoyed her gardening metaphors near the end of the post. Here is just a sample…

…any networking you do as a voice actor and business person is like creating a garden from bare soil – you don’t plant only one kind of plant, such that your garden will look great for a week when all the flowers are blooming, and then there’s nothing going on at all. You’re planting for the present and for the future – a variety of annuals with different blooming times, a variety of perennials and shrubs and even some trees. Aim for great diversity, so that there is always something going on in your garden. Although I can’t point to concrete ways that my business has benefited from all of my networking activities, I never know when some little seed I’ve planted at a party might take root and grow into something wonderful.

But, please, read the whole thing. It’s very much worth the few minutes of your time that it will take.

In his latest article, Tom Asacker provides some thoughtful guidance on how to stay on track with your marketing as you navigate the rapidly shifting winds of our current business culture.

And while you’re at Tom’s site, check out the post from yesterday. For a number of years now, I’ve heard the expression “a brand is a promise.” Tom has a somewhat different point of view, that is well worth a few minutes of your time and more than a few minutes of reflection and thought after you read.