A new selling/busy season will be upon most creative businesses sooner than we think. So a few thoughts about how you might approach things when these clients hit your door.
Why does it matter where someone heard about you, your art or your creative business? How will that shape a conversation? Who do you perceive your potential clients to be when they show up at your door? Of course, you have to really listen and be present to your clients, potential and actual, but with what ears? The one that will be a chameleon ready to adapt to whoever is in front of you, regardless of the fit or the one with a story ready to share. The one that says I see you through my eyes and we share a vision.
Bill Baker is a fantastic teacher of strategic storytelling; using the power of story to empathize, sympathize, listen. His latest post talks about having a story at the ready for when the situation comes where you can use the story to relate in a deeper, more personal, ahem, human way than any typical dialogue of question and answer ever could. Do you have your story ready? Why would we care?
For creative business, can you tell the story about why you are obsessed with what you do. Today’s world, for good or bad (though I believe for mostly good) is driven by obsessed people obsessing over other artist’s obsessions. Being passionate is nice but irrelevant to the mission. You are paid to stare into the proverbial creative abyss for a living and that means you have to be obsessed with the endeavor. There are a ton of amazing sushi chefs but only one Jiro (still alive and cooking at 93 btw).
I am, of course, not saying that you need to be Jiro to be successful, what I am saying is that telling a client that you love what you do is not a story that matters. The story is the moment that gives us all goosebumps, when we know you get lost in the effort.
I have heard chefs talk about butchering a pig with such enthusiasm that you would have thought they were talking about almost anything else. Designers of any sort in it with the thrill of their creation.
With your story at the ready, are you willing to go first? Are you willing to truly say to a client that you are not the regular kind [HT to Seth Godin]? My exercise for you is, for the next 21 days, ignore who you think is in front of you and instead start with two ideas. The first is that you are the smartest person in the room and the second is that your story is the only one that matters.
I can hear all of the harpies now. The client comes first, you are there to serve them. Lose the ego, you are there to make the sale after all. You first is not how sales work, let alone business.
To which I say, you see a world your clients cannot see and you have to own that for yourself, your art and your creative business if you are to go anywhere. If clients could see what you see they would not need you or your creative business. That makes you the smartest person in the room when it comes to why everyone is there. However, being the smartest person in the room also means that it is YOUR job to communicate how things are going to go in a way that will serve everyone best. And you better make it thrilling if anyone is going to sign on.
This is where your story comes in. Your story has to be thrilling and to be thrilling/compelling/infectious, you have to be vulnerable, willing to reveal the compulsion you have to create as you do. Your story needs to tell me how your art, your creative business brings you joy — the kind of deep fulfillment we all seek from our lives. Of course, you may not get there (or even stay there very long if you do), but it is the proverbial brass ring you are ever reaching for. I do not know of a visual designer (interior, event, graphic) that does not love the look on a client’s face when they see the work as intended for the very first time. It never gets old to them no matter how long they have been practicing. It begins with being vulnerable, going first, sharing why you care so deeply about your art and your creative business.
After all, if you are not obsessed, cannot express why and what you care so intensely about, why should anyone else? And if you do choose to be vulnerable, to truly own your story and you get a “meh”, why exactly would you want this client? Great work comes from caring as only you can. Go first.
