So, you have been around for quite a few years now and have developed a decent client base and network to promote talent when you see it, but is it the best you can do? Is there scope for improvement that you are just not aware of yet? Well, only you can answer that, but since you are already reading this, chances are that you do at times feel that there’s more you can do for your clients and for yourself. After all, the more success your clients see, the better it is for your own reputation and business, so it is not just natural, but actually intelligent to seek new methods and avenues through which you can improve your performance as a talent manager.
Even if you are fairly successful, we highly recommend going through the following few traits common in the most successful of celebrity talent managers, and see if there isn’t something that you can do to make significant progress from where you are at right now.
Do You Know Everything About How to Sell?
Recognize the talent management business as it is; which primarily involves selling the talent of your clientele to the right people and selling your own skills to your potential clients.
Now, if you are in the business already, then you probably know this fact all too well, but are you selling well enough? Are you successfully pitching to the kind of people whom you want to sell to? If you are not as successful as you would like to be in pitching yourself as a talent manager or pitching the abilities of your clients to record companies, producers, etc. then there is definitely something missing here and you need to learn how to pitch, market, promote and sell better.
Consider getting sales training to improve your skills as an agent remarkably, that is if you don’t have any sales training already. Most of the big agents in the business usually come from some sort of sales background, so they do have the sales training in common, be it via formal training, or professional experience.
Visit a site like findcourses.com to go through a wide range of sales training programs and find one that is most relevant to your job. These courses are designed with the modern, digital world in mind, so you can rest assured that by the time you have completed a program, you will learn about methods in pitching, marketing and sales that you never knew could be applied in the talent management business as well.
Pitch on How Your Potential Clients Deserve More Attention
Big agencies that have a large pool of talent to manage usually assign an agent to each of their celebrity clients, but multiple of the smaller musicians, actors and other talented individuals are managed by one or two agents. However, the difference between the success of a talented artist and his/her disappearance into oblivion is often the relationship that person shares with the agent.
Being a lesser known name in the business, you can use that to your advantage by pitching yourself as a more dedicated talent manager who has all the time in the world for his/her clients. As this is based on truth, and the success of your client is directly related to the success of your business, it could be a great pitch if you can deliver it well enough.
Fresh and potential talented artists, as well as slightly out of focus celebrities should be your target audience in this scenario, because they can use the extra dedication and attention more than others. There is little point in wasting time with people at the top of their game because they neither need a new manager, nor will they have any reason to break a relationship that is working so well for them. Keep in mind that it can happen and has happened in the past, but that is not where you should be focusing until an opportunity presents itself to justify such a move.
Are You Getting to Know Your Clients Personally?
The role of the talent manager is such that the job description actually supersedes the cardinal rule of business about keeping professional and personal relationships away from one another. After all, a good number of celebrities ended up marrying their agents, so one can imagine how close the relationship can get at times!
We are not suggesting that you should propose to your clientele mind you! But it is very important to realize that while it is the talent that you are trying to sell, there is an actual human being in whom the talent resides. Unless the manager is able to understand that person properly and connect to him/her on an emotional level, it would be hard to succeed as a team.
Behind all the professionalism, there is a lot of emotion in show business and as a talent manager, your job is to see your clients as not only entertainers or celebrities like the rest of the world, but actual human beings who need motivation and encouragement just like everyone else.
A good manager knows what will lift the mood of his most successful singer and what could possibly make him/her go down like a sack of potatoes emotionally, because the agent was actually listening when they were sharing their life with them. Artists are often emotional and temperamental human beings, so knowing the little details about them will help you to bring the best out of them, exactly when it’s required the most.
Are You Injecting Positivity in Your Clients?
Show business is not for the fainthearted, and that is a fact which is easy to forget in the glamor of it all. If you have any doubt about how tough the business can be on even the biggest of celebrity minds, just check on how many of them committed suicide in the last fifty odd years.
Being a talent manager, part of your job is to constantly inject positivity into your clientele, even when there is apparently no reason to be positive. Creative talent needs nurturing and positive energy is essential to that. The world will continue to provide struggling talents enough reason to be negative about their lives and professions, so you should be the one to keep them positive in any way that you can, so that they can see past the dark present and focus on the coming light ahead.
There is a bit of a luck factor involved in this business also, because chance does play a role in determining whether a celebrity of the future will come knocking on your door, before any of the big agencies snatches him/her up. Nevertheless, you do not necessarily need one big star to skyrocket into talent when you have a good number of smaller clients who trust and rely on you for continuing business. As long as you develop or learn the skills necessary to pitch, sell and convert properly through specific training, keeping the faith of your clientele should not be as hard as most of the agents in the business find it to be.
