Selling....and Music

Selling and Music

Mike's Musings #30

Quotes

I have kept a journal for many years, and have collected quotes that I think have a message of some sort. I have also included some of my own musings about life and music. I hope you enjoy them and find them helpful

I also urge you to keep a journal, as it always inspires me to add something new, or use the journal to keep my own thinking positive.

Well, once again I have borrowed some quotes that will help you understand how music and the sale of music is important. Also my article this month with have to do with how the art of sales helps you stay in the music business or any business for that matter. The quotes I borrowed are from Daniel Jacobs, who in addition to being a good writer is an excellent trumpet player. Both of his books, "The Natural Laws of Selling" and the "Natural Laws of Closing" are available by entering the title name into the Amazon.Com search bar. Unless you see a credit under a quote assume it came from Dan Jacobs. The parentheses are my additions.

We are what we repeatedly do.

Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.

.......Aristotle

Professionalism is developed with consistent practice, correction,

and refinement of the application of your tools.

..........Albert Grey

Some of Dan's Rules

Show up and be physically and mentally ready to participate.

(Be plenty early and don't warm up loudly)

Selling is an action verb (Music is about action too).

People always buy a personal benefit.

Selling is always about the people

(In music as in sales it is always about the buyer)

You may think you are in the sales (or music) business but you are really in the people business.

The most effective way to get people to trust you is to trust yourself.

Two key factors in selling (yourself) are making a friend before you make a sale,

and by adding value to their lives.

Getting someone interested in you,

starts with you being sincerely interested in them

Selling is a process of finding commonality, building trust and agreement,

enhancing understanding and fulfilling a need or satisfying a want.

What a customer is buying is always more important than what you are selling.

Forcing or bullying a prospect will always generate resistance.

Before you can turn a prospect into a customer,

they must see a personal benefit in what you are selling.

The core competency, or stock in trade,

of a professional salesperson is helpful solutions.

All things being equal, people always prefer to do business with their friends.

READ THAT AGAIN

All things being equal, people always prefer to do business with their friends.

Don't overthink your practice and performance. Just show up and repeat the lessons you have learned. Very seldom can we re-invent the wheel. Don't worry, you will always sound original.

All of these gems are from the first three chapters of Daniel's first book. So as these broadcasts continue you will see more quotes from Dan.

In music we sell ourselves, our recordings, our tours and our concerts,

to contractors, conductors, administrators, music educators, an audience, and to producers, just to name a few. Selling is part of music and life.

........M.V.

And from my book of quotes:

Don't Hope..........Do

.....anon

There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don't care who gets the credit.

.........Ronald Reagan

Your degree is just a piece of paper.

Your education is seen in your behavior.

.......Ron Soderwall

You will continue to suffer if you have an emotional reaction to everything that is said to you.

True power is sitting back and observing things with logic.

True power is restraint.

if words control you, that means that everyone else can control you.

Breathe and allow things to pass.

........Warren Buffet

Success is largely a matter of tactful and harmonious negotiation with other people.

........Jim Rohn

The Chamber Music of John Scott........ and other delightful morse

I have a new CD. It is now released and for sale. This is the first classical CD I have come out within a while, as I have been recording in the Jazz and Pop idioms as of late. I think you will enjoy this CD quite a lot. It features the original Chamber Music of John Scott, with a Clarinet Quintet and a Saxophone Quartet, and the music of Damon Zick with his Jazz/Classical oriented Sax Quartet. The CD is finished off with the unaccompanied A Minor Sonata of Bach (Mvt1) for flute, and also the unaccompanied Du Style by Theo Charlier, which was originally written for Trumpet, and performed on Clarinet.

Visit https://www/mikevaccaro.com/adcrecordings.html

While you are at the web site, check out the other CD's that are available and give them a listen, as you are bound to find a style you like, Please take a moment to peruse the rest of the website too.

Other articles in this series can be found at https://MikeVaccaro.Com/articles.html

Selling and Music

So you may ask yourself what do selling and music have in common? Perhaps more than you think.

We call it the music business, so it seems like we are either selling ourselves, our store, recording studio services or something like a CD or DVD, or an instrument/accessory. Do you learn how to play music and then do all the business yourself? Or do you have the money to hire someone who knows sales and promotion. Either way once you get good at what you specialize in, you or someone else has to sell your product, idea, or your musicianship.

Do you have a business plan like all other businesses? As a musician it is a practice schedule, or perhaps a plan on how to distribute your CD's or how to procure students. As a music store, it is an advertising plan along with a plan to contact schools. Your repair department might be part of your plan to get traffic, as would be instrument rentals, at your brick and mortar store. And always having a good stock of useful items in your store is advertising in itself, as it may inhibit a buyer from using one of the huge online music stores.

I don't know how it is in school these days but the idea of money, how to use your money wisely, how to create a business model, how to sell and promote, and any other kind of business model, was not offered to me in high school or college through the music department.

As a musician you have to sell yourself. Perhaps you need representation if you are a soloist, featured act or featured vocalist. Compare that with a side person who just belongs to a group of people they work with on a regular basis. And if people like to work with friends, before inviting a stranger, it is good to cultivate friends throughout your school years. You will be surprised how long these friends stay with you after school.

You have to sell your playing when you do an audition. If you record you have to sell your recordings, electronic tracks, a CD, or a DVD, or all of the above. If you are a composer you may have to sell yourself to a director or music supervisor. Think about how many instances where you are in a situation where presentation (another synonym for selling) is paramount in getting a job or keeping a job.

Did you spend many years kind of heartlessly practicing, without committing to being the best you could be? Then when you became serious about being in the music world in some capacity, you had to sell yourself on committing to be all you could be. You had to sell yourself on, and to, yourself. You had to be the one responsible for your actions.

Through all the years of practicing, and for the rest of your life in music, sales, promotion your mannerisms, and presentation to the rest of the world, become part of your selling ability. That is, your ability to have a single person or a large group of people see or hear something your way. In addition, those that represent you become part of your team and your persona so it is important that their commitment is similar to yours.

At some level, everyone else is likely to be a salesperson too.

You must understand that there are salespeople, whose only purpose in life is to make a sale. They don't care what they are selling and they don't care what the effect of the sale will have on you. They will say anything to make a sale and they are usually tricky about getting you to buy what they are selling, especially if you don't know exactly what you want to buy. That is the difference between a honest sale, where each person comes out with something that makes them happy, and a "con job."

I would gander, that at some point in our lives, all of us have been "conned" in one manner or another.

I have personally found that listening to people talk about their needs and desires is one of the best sales techniques to find out what a person wants to buy. A good sales person will do their best to fulfill their needs or point them to someone that can. Pointing them to someone more qualified to fulfill their needs is actually a wonderful sales technique that can give you many sales in the future. The buyer will appreciate your honesty. However this is only after you have done everything in your own power to satisfy their needs The buyer may be inclined to stay with the person you recommended and forget your benevolence..

We have all seen the person that talks too fast and puts out a barrage of information on why we should believe something. As Dan has reminded us, "Forcing or bullying a prospect will always generate resistance."

I think you understand the idea that much of what we say is selling, whether it be an idea, or a widget, I think you also understand that honesty with oneself and others is paramount in selling or presenting.

Most of us have fragile egos, so when selling to someone that has a different opinion than you, consider how you can make your point without bruising their ego. In some cases you may realize you can't change someone's idea. That's acceptable too. You don't have to win every discussion or sell every widget in your bag.

What about selling a product to others. As far as selling product I once again suggest you purchase both of Daniel Jacobs books. I could never cover the subject in this format as well as he does in his books plus he knows a whole bunch more about it than me.

As far as selling yourself, your products and what you do for others, some of the things I find make a difference are: your appearance, your truth, your history, your speech, your experience, your plan, your intent, your presentation, and your follow up.

What I want everyone that reads this to know is it's all about you, and the things that an observant person can tell by being with you. We can only be who we are, but by the same token we can always work on improving ourselves through the lessons we learn in life.

Some wisdom does comes with age, if we pay attention, and work on not repeating our mistakes .Much of what we believe is often not the truth .Becoming more truthful with ourselves, and others when possible, is the basis of wisdom. Along with this is knowing when not to speak and to just listen.

The bottom line for me is that I must sell myself honestly to be happy. For me personally that means accepting that I can't be great at everything and to realize what I am good at and what I can improve. That means taking charge of my practice time, and in my case recordings and a little music contracting, as well as my teaching. What is your bottom line?

Perhaps someday we will discuss selling an instrument or that spare mouthpiece, or should I say your box of mouthpieces or whatever piece of musical equipment you are not using. I will say one thing about that now. The better quality of instrument you buy, the easier it is to sell. I can tell you the market for $100 flutes that don't play well, is not very good.

There are some people that will only buy the most expensive thing, others that will only by something on sale, and yet others that will always buy the best product for the money. And there are people that purchase a product by name only. It is a philosophy they have learned from their life. Quality counts to me whenever I can afford it. And quality is usually cheaper in the long run.

Until next time......

AND REMEMBER:

Always be happy with where you are, while you are trying to get to where you want to be.