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 | | | | Oct31Written by:Tatiana Nu
Tuesday, October 31, 2000 6:00 PM  Over the years that my husband and I have worked together in show business (my writing and performing music, he creating and performing magic) I have learned what I have found to be some potent principles of business dealings. Just as his is a line of work that requires a high skill level and fluency of craft while interacting with people, creating music for someone else's project requires rising to the occasion creatively, efficiently and appropriately within the client relationship. To even get to this point, however, you need to get the gig.
If you are already a busy working professional, you have undoubtedly developed a method that works for you. If you are at all green in the ways of dealing with new clients, some of what I have picked up might prove useful.
The Opener
On the face of it, it seems that if you have a good product, in this case a service, you should be able to simply show representative work, give a price and let the chips fall where they may. However, there can be much more subtlety to information flow; when and how which portion of that information is conveyed can make all the difference in whether a relationship is going to be developed, much less a gig landed. A somewhat analogous concept in psychology is called presentation management.
In essence, to land the job, you must present your case in the context of the request, combining your experience with your art and craft with your intuitions of people and what they tend to want.
Listen
The most crucial thing I have learned is that, first and foremost, a client wants to feel taken care of. They want their vision heard, they want someone to rise to the occasion of helping to realize this vision, and they want all this done pleasantly and efficiently.
Let us begin with hearing the client; this part is not easy. When talking about music, people can get pretty abstract and insecure about their abstraction. It is important to understand why the person wants music and what their vision for the role of that music is. Where you might be able to creatively expand on that idea is not the issue until you have firmly established what the client wants or what they think they want. Experience may tell you that what they think they want is not what they really want, but save that sort of revelation for later.
Talk: Establish a way of communicating about music. If the client has a type of music in mind, ask him or her to bring that music to you and listen to small cuts of it together. Ask the client what aspect of the music he or she likes or is looking for. This will most likely mean doing a little sleuthing to get at the crux of what they like about a particular piece- for example they may say its the beat, in which case you need to figure out what they mean- the tempo? Texture? Actual sounds used? (I've hear it used to mean these things and much more). Be patient and show interest in helping them by the nature of your questions. Encourage them to speak freely and to feel comfortable talking about something they most often know next to nothing about.
Offering Music
Keep an up to date audio portfolio that represents your current work. There is nothing more annoying than being caught unprepared to meet with a potential client and having to use old promo. After finishing any project, archive your most successful pieces, or portions of them, in a manner that is quickly accessible.
*Don't paralyze your client with non-options.* Focus on what you can do and have done, not on what you cannot or have not. No one wants to hear a lengthy explanation about what they can't have. If you are not in the position to provide anything they could possibly want, say in style or format, you must show what you *can* provide and, especially, what you excel at providing. If you can show the client that you can bring something unique to the project, then you are will have distinguished yourself in the his/her mind.
Check the Ego at the Door
We hear this all the time, but it is so much easier said than done. I like to think of myself as fairly un-egotistical, but the real test for that theory came in working closely with my husband, always under considerable deadline pressures. I found, much to our mutual dismay, that my patience was easily taxed by (what I considered to be) unclear and ambiguous feedback, and that it was very easy to take things personally as a result.
Luckily over the years of our working experience we both have been afforded ample opportunity to reflect on where either person was unnecessarily sensitized, and figure out strategies for leading the dialogue in a positive direction that yielded results. This meant above all establishing a way to talk about music. If feelings get in the way, there can easily be a complete communication breakdown. This applies to any working relationship, and all the lessons I have learned from these experiences have been invaluable when it came to working with other people in general.
Finalizing the Concept
Once you feel you have a concept, and if the client is still interested and appears to be leaning in your favor, come up with some samples of what the client could expect to get. You don't need to spend huge amounts of time; just make the samples very short. but representative of the concept. If the deal falls through, you have some more samples for your demo. In any case, it will help firm up for both of you what it actually is that will happen.
One way to not get frustrated is to remember that no effort is ever wasted. There is no need to feel upset if an idea that you really like is rejected. Simply save all your work, all the rejects, and so on. Today's discarded blurb is tomorrows hot idea. I was pleased as could be when I found a folder of rejects from one project that became the seed for a new piece that I had to create under a truly ridiculous deadline - a stunning example of following my own advice.
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