The 2 Biggest Voice Over Marketing FEARS & Why They're BULL
Voice actors are petrified of marketing their services.
Today, we’re going to get into what those fears are, why they exist, and why they’re complete and utter B.S.
We’ll talk about some of the misconceptions around sales and marketing your voice over business, and what sales and marketing really are at their core.
First, Story Time…
I talked to one particular voice actor last week and for reasons that will become obvious I am keeping this person anonymous for their own good.
This is a chat I have regularly with voice actors called a Strategy Call and my goal is to get to know them and their voiceover journey and more importantly where they want to take it, so see whether or not I can help them.
So, back to this voice actor. This is someone who has been doing voiceover for the better part of 30 years. They live in a small city. They have always been, in their own words, a medium sized fish in a small pond.
They fell into, again their words, a couple of relationships with the recording studios in that city, and just became the go-to person.
They built their entire career on work that was fed to them by these couple of studios. I have always said that unless you’re in New York or LA or London, your home market is not enough to support you, well this person is a clear exception to the rule, and quite frankly the only one I’ve ever spoken with.
Good work if you can get it.
So, you may be wondering, as I was, why this person reached out to me for help finding more business.
They opened the call by saying, “I’m desperate to save my business.”
Apparently, the gravy train that they had been on for decades had dried up. For whatever reason, the steady stream of work that had been handed to them over the years had slowed to a drip.
They went onto explain that they saw themselves as very good at doing the job, keeping clients very happy, and building loyalty with them. But they weren’t very good at introductions. At reaching out to clients.
So I asked. “How often do you reach out to or have you reached out to clients to talk about your services?”
“Never.”
“Email?”
“Nope.”
Point Number 1: It’s really hard (read: impossible) to be any good at something if you never do it.
So, I dug. “Why is that?”
“Well, I’ve thought about it, but if that means picking up the phone and talking to complete strangers, then that’s just not me.”
First, I don’t recommend picking up the phone, but more importantly, listen to what this person said:
“That’s just not me.” In other words, that’s not who I am.
They didn’t say:
“That’s not what I want to do.”
“I feel uncomfortable doing that.”
“It’s hard or challenging for me.”
“It’s something I’d prefer not to do.”
“That’s something I struggle with.”
No. They identified a particular behavior that they found so uncomfortable that they pinned their very identity to their unwillingness to do it. “That’s just not me.”
Ok, so before I get going, I want to stress that I am not picking on introverts here. I understand that it is more of a challenge for more introverted people to talk to strangers, and that introverts don’t tend to change into extroverts.
But I also understand there are plenty of introverts who challenge themselves and do what they have to do to be successful.
Introversion is not this person’s main issue.
In the space of a few minutes, they went from, “I’m desperate to save my business” to drawing a line in the sand that said no matter what, I will not reach out to strangers to improve my lot in life and save my business.
Many of you watching right now I’m sure feel sad for this person.
Not me. I’m angry.
I’m angry that this person, clearly quite talented in doing the work, clearly adept at maintaining relationships with clients for years, has dug in their heels like a petulant child having a tantrum and flat out refuses to even entertain the thought of doing the thing that will so clearly solve the problem that they claim to be so desperate to solve.
I’m angry because this person’s business will fail, not because they’re introverted, but because they refuse to get uncomfortable. To challenge themselves even a little. To even take the first step to growing one scintilla.
I’m angry because of the people in this person’s life who potentially suffer from this failing business. I’m angry because of all the people this person could have helped because they are clearly so good at what they do.
Most of all, I’m angry at this mindset. It is a fixed mindset on steroids and to me it is a mental illness. This fixed mindset says, “I don’t give a damn HOW desperate things get, I’m not going to change, challenge myself, or grow.”
And the in stupid part is…
Welcome to this part of the episode entitled, “The Stupid Bits,” where we delve headlong into the insanely stupid bits of this fucked up logic. I’m your host, Paul Schmidt. And now, on with the Stupid Bits…
The stupid part is that this person clearly approached a stranger – me! They’ve literally proven that they have it within them to challenge themselves and succeed in approaching a stranger. If you can do that once, then you can do it again.
Stupid Part Number Two is we’ll never know how crazy successful this person could have been for decades if they had just challenged themselves to be their own best advocate. How many business relationships, clients, friendships could they have developed over 40 years and none of that happened because they were too afraid? How many hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars never got made, how many family vacations were never taken, how joy never came to be because they were too afraid?
Stupid Part Number Three – This person is so clearly good at the craft, then why, dear god why are they telling themselves some bullshit story about how they’re not good enough to reach out to other people to help them?
Make it make sense!
This has been “The Stupid Bits.” Join us next time for more limiting beliefs, batshit-crazy thought processes, and mind-boggling mindsets.
So now that we have a horrifying example of this fixed mindset in action, let’s address the common fears around reaching out to strangers to market your business.
1. I’m afraid I’ll annoy people.
This is by far the most common fear I hear when I talk to voice actors. I’m sure it’s also a common fear among graphic designers, coders, social media managers, freelance video producers, and anyone who needs to build a freelance business.
I think it’s especially prominent among voice actors because we are used to being so passive historically. Most people think, “Oh, voice actors get an agent and that’s how they get work.”
Not today, Satan, not Today!
Today, you have to hustle. If that’s not you, that’s fine. But accept now that you’re never gonna make it as a professional voice actor.
And by hustle, I mean you have to start conversations with a lot of people. Like 100 a day. If you do this every day, yes, you will annoy someone at some point.
Who cares.
A. If you generally reach out to the right people, you will minimize the chances of annoying the wrong people.
B. If you do happen to annoy someone, they’ll be too polite to say so and you’ll never know.
C. If they do get annoyed, that’s on them. It’s a perfectly reasonable thing to ask to start a conversation around someone’s problem and how you might collaborate to solve it. At the core, you’ve done nothing wrong, unless how you approach them is bad.
D. At one point a couple of years ago, I did the math and I received 1 rude, annoyed reply from every 4,000 people I reached out to. People are generally not rude. In fact, the vast majority are helpful and kind. Who knew?
2. I’m afraid to been seen as salesy, sleazy, or manipulative.
This is a common fear I think because when we think of selling, we think of the finger-gun-popping used car salesman who’s just looking to move metal. We have this cultural stigma which began after the second world war of the intrusive, fast-talking, agenda-having, inauthentic, deceptive snake oil salesman.
I talked to a voice actor this week who said, “I‘ve gotten a lot of bad cold calls and I don’t want to be that guy.”
I get it. There are plenty of sleazy, deceptive, inauthentic people out there, but sales and marketing doesn’t necessarily make you one of them.
It makes me crazy when salespeople are looked down upon because here’s the reality – nothing happens until someone sells something. Look at any business no matter how large or small – everyone in that business owes their cushy regular biweekly paychecks and their livelihoods to the people that bring the business in the door.
It’s hard work. It’s full of rejection (or perceived rejection), and when done well, it provides stability and growth to businesses who employ the entire world.
Sales and marketing are the most vital functions, the heart and lungs of any business because without that, there is nothing. There’s no product, there’s no service, there’s no accounting, HR, compliance, legal, delivery, customer service, technical support, quality control, or C-suite.
When done correctly, sales and marketing are at their core a practice of service to others. They’re about starting conversations around someone’s needs and pain points, earning a conversation around how you might collaborate with them to solve their problem, and making their jobs and lives better by solving that problem that they cannot solve for themselves.
It is perfectly reasonable to reach out to complete strangers to see if they have a need and a problem you can help them solve. You don’t have to be inauthentic, sleazy, or manipulative. You just have to be grounded in your ability to solve a certain problem and willing to start a collaborative conversation. That’s all.
Instead of thinking, “What if I annoy someone,” think, “What if I delight someone.”
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We’ll see ya again here soon. Thanks for watching, reading, and/or listening..