Voice Over Artists Are Their Own Talent Agents, for their Business
I am surprised that many talented Voice Over Artists I have met are knowledgeable in basic techniques of sales, but lack in understanding strategies to be successful in a competitive business market. The analogy I think of is teaching a soldier all the parts of a rifle but then leaving out the part about marksmanship.
The first concept we need to know, and accept, is that we are all salespeople. Everyone in one form or another is a salesperson, what differentiates each of us is the degree of training, knowledge, and abilities we have in the art of selling. We sell services, products, and in most cases within our own personal lives, we sell opinions, ideas, and views to others. Many times, consciously or not, we use a subjective principal called “The WIIFM Effect” or “What’s in It For Me”, which I will discuss later in another Blog. Simply put, it guides us, as salespeople, in a subjective slant on a story, idea, viewpoint or tale in Narratives, E-Learning, and Explainer videos to sell ideas, opinions, or thoughts.
Value Added to Project Challeneges by Enthusiasm, Confidence, and Integrity of the Voice Over Artist
As Voice Over Artists or Actors we have a difficult task as sales professionals. A challenge we have is that we lack any tangible product for the client or audience to physically see or feel. Our voice must become the primary selling point, and we must use it to deliver a compelling message to potential consumers. With the right skills, we as professional Voice Actors can successfully grab our listeners’ attention, and communicate the merits of any product.
Another challenge we face in Voice Over work is sometimes having little context or familiarity with the products or services we are trying to sell. This can be especially true in the market of medical/pharmaceutical or scientific projects, where both the terminology and content are often completely foreign. However, verbal delivery with no knowledge of the topic is often not enough in the more technical or niche markets in our line of work. Having at least a rudimentary knowledge of what we are communicating to an audience can be essential to conveying enthusiasm, intensity, and believability.
This is why I have chosen to specialize in offering my voice over services for the healthcare, scientific, and corporate marketplaces. I chose to serve these communities because of both my formal educations in both pharmacy and business, and because I have extensive clinical and management experience in these areas.
In work, business, organizational development and our own personal lives sales is a constant stream that runs 24/7 regardless of other influences. As a trainer of sales professionals, I have always encouraged my students to follow their positive aspirations and goals, and to follow their better angels in understanding the hurdles they might experience in building their successful business.
In comes Pareto’s Principal or the 80:20 Rule
Effective Resource Management in Your Voice Over Business and Projects
One of the simplest and quickest principles or rules to employ when trying to understand and solve a complex leadership problem, a fiscal crisis, or a personal issue is Pareto’s Principal
First, a brief background on Vilfredo Pareto. He was an economist-sociologist and held a position as professor in Political Economy at Lausanne, Switzerland, and was the first to discover and describe the 80:20 rule.
We all have issues regarding limited resources, time, and money, those being three of the most common resources we often struggle to use properly. But what if there was a way to dramatically be more effective and efficient in clarifying these complex resource problems’ and allocating and utilizing the proper tool is to utilize those resources? There in lies Pareto’s Principal.
Strategies in Your Voice Over Business, Voice Over Leadership Roles, and in Your Client/Market Management.
Pharmaceutical sales may be one of the most competitive sales markets that exist. When I instructed and trained pharmaceutical sales representatives, I always made the statement that, “You be smart, or not so smart” the choice is yours, and here’s how: Identify in your list of clients, the top 20% performers and concentrate on them and them alone, and they will generate the 80% of gross sales Once you have identified, captured, and maintained their business, you can go after the low hanging fruit.
So how does this work for a Voice Over Artist? First identify the right market to go after, then out of that market, identify the 20% of the most lucrative of the potential clients you need to approach. Now, please understand, that you may not correctly identify each client in that 20% the first time around and that this is part of the task. Once you do identify what seems to be the correct 20% you have a starting place on the road to success.
As a Project Director for a large advertisement firm, time was my limited resource. Always under deadlines, time was both money and a key driver to getting more projects from the same Clients Voice Over Artists face the same issues, and determining the importance and difficulty of tasks for a voice over project or multiple projects should be governed by Pareto’s Principal in the management and successful completion of the project(s) before the deadline.
For an Industrial Designer or a Producer of technical explainer or narrations videos having a Voice Over Artist with in-depth knowledge or familiarity with the subject and content not only saves time, and money, but has an added value benefit by possibly being a resource in the organizational content of the project. The Voice Over Artist that understands the material will provide that true intensity, enthusiasm, and believability in the read making it that much more valuable to the listener.