EINTKABILFR: 5 Sales Rules for Introverts

*EINTKABILFR: Everything I Need To Know About Business, I Learned From Rock

Sales is one of the hardest aspects of business for a lot of people to learn, because the methodologies and strategies are rarely cut and dried. Instead, the prevailing way to view sales is that it is the province of “naturals” and con-men; that simply being a fast talker can make or break you as a salesperson. This leads to both fear of the actual process, and contempt for people who are truly good at it among those who aren’t.

Managing a band requires a lot of sales skills, and they can be tough to learn and practice. For one thing, if you’re in the band, your ego is at stake; you’re not just selling life insurance or something else that originates from somebody else, you’re selling your art! Here are the lessons I’ve learned from the experience:

1. Avoid discounting; either give something for free or charge your rate. The first time a band ever plays, and many times after that (particularly for “big” opportunities), they’re grateful just for the opportunity to perform. Add to that the fact that most clubs and other purchasers of music are, well, kind of poor, and it sounds like discounting would be a great idea. It’s not. The problem is that it changes the perceived value of what you’re selling. Not only will you get paid less than you’re worth, but you’ll have to deal with sub-par performance on the buyer side everywhere. Back in my college days, we played frat parties for $100 and beer, and others for $1000. The difference? At the $100 gigs, we’d have to scrounge up a PA, play without a stage, load our own gear in and out, and fight out way through the lines for the aforementioned beer. By any reasonable measure of time and effort, we were operating at a loss, and it wasn’t helping our public image or marketability at all. At the $1000 gigs, we’d have a pro soundman there to make us sound great, a stage, and a horde of fraternity brothers to move our stuff and bring us drinks. We were treated like rock stars because they were paying for rock stars. Their parties were also much bigger, since they wanted to get their money’s worth out of us. They just cared more. We probably could have gotten that caring out of the $100 gigs if we had just said, “look, our rate is $1000, but we like you guys. Just provide the PA and we’ll play and make sure everybody’s having a good time.” Either way, you’re a $1000 band; it’s just a question of whether a particular night would pay.
2. Promise and deliver big. It’s often said that you should “under-promise and over-deliver”. This may be true if you are well-known, or operating in a very protected or stable market; but most of us aren’t. In the music business – and most others – getting people’s attention is a critical first step to proper selling. And to do that, you have to make some big promises. You don’t necessarily have to be “better” than the alternatives, but you do have to be exceptional in some (positive) way.
3. Be willing to negotiate the extras. For most business relationships, it’s only the first interaction that “feels like” you’re selling. Once your band has played at a certain club, you know the people there. Assuming that neither you nor the club’s management are impossible to deal with, and the first gig was at least a moderate success, you will be able to play there in the future. (This coming from a guy whose band was banned from several clubs in the mid-Atlantic for various reasons…) So that first time, recognize that – while you shouldn’t discount (see #1 above) – you should at least be flexible on the non-essential parts of the relationship. It’s really not THAT big of a deal if a club insists that you use the drugged-out house soundman the first time you play. With any luck, you’ll build trust in the future and be able to make other requests in the name of making your shows there successful.
4. Have faith in what you’re selling. This one may or may not be within your control, but… it’s a lot easier to sell something that you know is worth what you’re asking. A lot of people get nervous when asked to sell because, at heart, they know it just isn’t that great of a product or service. This is doubly-complicated in a “knowledge-worker” kind of job, like music or consulting, since the value of the service is so subjective. At the risk of sounding preachy: If you don’t believe the product is good enough, then work harder on it or find another product to sell. There aren’t a lot of shortcuts around this.
5. Be nice. The bottom line, as hinted in the earlier tips, is that just being a pleasant, easy-to-deal-with person is half the battle; maybe more than that. The reason is simple – as soon as you cross the threshold from “person trying to get the business” to “person who can reliably deliver what they promise or better without being a prima donna or other variety of pain in the ass”, you can build on that and your need to do “sales”, per se, goes down to just a bare minimum.

EINTKABILFR: 5 Ways to Accidentally Become Better at Public Speaking

This blog is mainly about freeing the creative impulse from the confines of those fields we typically think of as “creative” – the performing and visual arts, for instance – and understanding how it can create better results in other domains. But just as the world of business has its creative aspects, the world of performance has its business aspects as well. Every so often I’ll put up a EINTKABILFR post about that relationship. Today: public speaking.

I was thrust into the lead singing role in my first band as a matter of necessity. We were in high school, had been “booked” for our first big performance – playing a school dance – and were rehearsing desperately when we got the news that our singer Craig, a popular and handsome guy who also happened to be the student body president, had mono. Craving the attention that the gig would bring us (and, let’s be honest, it was mainly about attention and girls), we vowed that the show must go on. But none of us could sing. I gamely stepped forward and offered to do it. I was a distant Plan B from Craig on almost every dimension, but more than anywhere else in the charisma department. I had a deep-seated, paralyzing fear of public speaking.

By the time I was 22, I was standing on stage bantering with audiences with the best of them, 10 or 20 times a month. I had discovered a few techniques, some well-known and some unorthodox, that made my lack of charisma less damaging – and maybe even a strength. Years later, after being told by a corporate executive coach that I was “a good speaker for a short person,” I realized that performing had taught me those secrets and turned a liability into a strength. Here they are:

1. Content is king. It is kind of depressing that this is not always obvious, but if you don’t have a good message that is relevant to your audience, it doesn’t really matter how it’s presented. And if a band has terrible songs that aren’t memorable, it really won’t matter how well it plays them. (This assumes that you are neither a virtuoso guitarist like Joe Satriani nor a brilliant showman like Robin Williams; at the extremes, somebody can be so good technically that audiences are astounded and their content isn’t important, but it’s very rare and has little lasting impact.)
2. Practice until it’s automatic. If you are singing a song and you don’t know all the words, you will waste valuable mental cycles trying to remember them. Like pretty much any multitasking, this will result in both activities (singing and remembering) being distracted and half-hearted. If you are speaking about a subject, there is no substitute for knowing the content cold. If there is some element of the subject that has you a little confused or turned around, take the time in advance to understand it and be able to explain it without notes. If you don’t know the topic that well, maybe you shouldn’t be speaking about it in public.
3. Don’t fake anything. Maybe you’re an actor and can be completely convincing as a boisterous, Tom Peters-style showman, but you’re really a shy geeky type on the inside. But most likely, assuming a fake personality will just give you one more thing to think about other than communicating with your audience. It’s not worth it. When I first started singing, I thought I had to be rock-star cool, and act like the guys I saw on MTV. David Lee Roth would be doing cartwheels and backflips… the least I could do was a little “Hello, Cleveland!”, right? Wrong. Acting like you’re playing a stadium when you’re really at a frat party is disingenuous and off-putting. Lose the attitude and be who you are.
4. Stay in the pocket. The thrill of live performance, either at a concert or an important presentation, is enough to make your heart race. But your material has a natural pace and tempo of its own, and you ignore it at your own peril. People go too fast for a variety of reasons – sometimes involuntarily, or other times to give the illusion of power or forcefulness. Either way, playing or talking at the right speed will work better than going too fast.
5. They don’t want you to suck (or, it’s not you, it’s them). You might think that because you’re at the front of the room and have a microphone, you’re the most important part of the experience. Not true. People are basically self-centered – they are the most important part of the experience for themselves. If you’re a little insecure or nervous, this is actually a wonderful thing. They don’t need to hear the most brilliant song or sales pitch to have a good time; they just need it to be good enough that it doesn’t distract them from their own internal cues. A guy who goes to see a concert with a beautiful woman he’s in love with is going to have a better time than one who just got dumped, unless the band is so egregiously awful that it intrudes upon his inner monologue. A potential client will be excited about your sales pitch to the extent that your analysis of her problem and potential solution agrees with her own. You need to know as much about the audience’s situation as possible so you can connect your message with their needs.

If you have good content that you know inside and out, you approach it honestly, you keep a sensible pace for the material at hand, and you know what the audience would think a successful presentation would feel like – usually, by the way, it will feel brief – then it’s pretty hard to give a bad presentation. Even if you’re short.