When reaching out to a customer, the honest entertainer doesn’t want to sell them a thing they don’t want. Many of us were raised with this swindling PT Barnum idea of businesses vs. consumers. That’s not how I want to live – trying to keep up with lies; having customers a little dissatisfied.
We’re not trying to con. We’re not even trying to convince. We know what our value is, and we’re trying to communicate that value clearly.
When we present our value, we use positive wording, but we don’t need to make it flowery or make things look better than they are.
- What does our customer want?
- Do we give them that thing better than anyone available to them?
- How will they know?
A comedy club booker wants guaranteed entertainment success
A comedy club booker generally either wants a comedian that will sell more tickets or will satisfy the existing customers. This is the want. Comedians often confuse this with thinking the booker wants the funniest mofos, or the most kiss-uppiest mofos. Sometimes these qualities coincide, but think of how many other ways there are to satisfy the wants of the booker.
The booker often has access to lots of performers. Lots and lots – so many that they are more likely to lose track of who’s available to them than to have trouble finding someone good. A gatekeeper like this with lots of access to resources looks at multiple qualities in a performer and weighs a collection of factors in deciding who’s better.
The booker is on alert for red flags and green flags to help determine the better booking. While emotion is a part of every decision, the facts of message the comic puts forward will position comic.
A comedian who thinks a booker wants a funny mofo, might send a video of riffs that are genius, crowd work, heckler responses, pictures with celebrities laughing. A comedian who thinks a booker wants success would have a consistent, solid set recorded in front of a packed audience in a popular club, with dependable laughs throughout.
We don’t deliver half-way
When communicating our value to our customer, we deliver 100% objective truth (or as close as we can get with our puny human brains). Five stars on yelp says a lot more than “A wonderful restaurant with yummy food.”
We also don’t show customers the product or the raw service and leave it up to them to decide whether it’s best. That would not be helpful.
If I’m a house painter and I show a person picture of a green house I painted, it’s on them to decide what’s up…
- “Do I think this painter will listen to me?”
- “Will this painter be clean and organized?”
- “Will this painter be a good price for the value?”
- “Will I be satisfied with the end result?”
- “Will my neighbors think I’m cool?”
… And it turns on an intellectual part of the brain that can muddy the waters even more…
- “What qualities make a good painter?”
- “What are the best colors for a home?”
- “Do I like green?”
- “What kinds of paint are best to use?”
- “Will I be able to ask this painter for advice?”
This confusion is not fun or fulfilling and it doesn’t lead to connection or satisfaction. If the homeowner doesn’t like green, I might have lost a gig based on something dumb.
Okay
So, we don’t make a thing and show it to someone expecting them to think it’s cool or flashy or pretty or funny or whatever. We show them how the thing gives them what they want better than anything else.