To be a successful business, you have to have great clients. What are great clients? They are ones that understand the value you provide, pay you well, and send you a lot of recurring work. We’re not talking about getting one-off jobs here. Any trained monkey can do that.

That means strong relationships with great partners. Obvious, right?

But not so obvious is HOW to get great clients, HOW to build strong relationships with great partners.

Today, I’m going to give you my Top 6 Ways to Get Great Clients and Keep Them.

Let’s roll.

6. Start more conversations.

You can have great clients without…clients. The biggest mistake voice actors, creatives, freelancers make in marketing their businesses, other than not doing that, is not starting enough conversations, i.e. not reaching out to enough people, often enough.

It all starts with more conversations.

There was an insurance company in Chicago that called in a consultant to analyze why their profits were declining. The company was averaging only two and half sales per agent per month. So, the consultant came in and immediately put his finger on the problem.

He told them, “Your only problem is that you are not calling on enough people.”

This solution was way too simple for the top executives at the company.

So, the consultant said, “I'll prove it to you!” He took a group of their salespeople, a cross-section of the sales force from best to worst, and told them, “Effective today, you're going to start selling policies door to door in neighborhoods where you don't know a soul. There will be no leads provided. There will be no qualifying of prospects. And, when the person opens the door, you must start the sales call with the following words: 'You don't want to buy any life insurance, do you?’”

Their mission was simply to see how many people they could repeat that message to every day. That was it.

Needless to say, the salespeople were a bit skeptical.

The approach failed. Fifty-nine out of every sixty people they approached declined.

But one out of every sixty said, “As a matter of fact, I do need insurance. Come on in and sign me up!"

If you said one out of sixty isn't a very good closing ratio, you'd be right… if it took a month to see sixty prospects.

But with the consultant's approach, the average salesperson found that it only took about eight hours to approach sixty people.

As a result, they immediately began averaging about one sale a day (22/month). Up from two and half sales a month.

That’s an almost 10x increase.

The more people you reach out to, the more conversations you start, the more website visits you will generate, the more demo listens you will dive, the more talent rosters you will get on, the more, auditions you will get, the more work you will offered outright, the more work you will win, the more customers you will acquire, and the more of those that have the potential to be great partners you will have the chance to develop.

The more clients you have, the more great clients you will have.

5. Walk the walk. Look, sound, and act like a pro.

Having strong relationships with great partners absolutely requires you to be able to deliver the goods. That means providing a professional product – the performance and audio quality, with an easy, fun, and smooth experience for the client.

Look, sound, and act like a pro – let’s break that down.

Look. Look the part. If you’re going to seek work from professional businesses, you have to look like a professional business. Your website has to look good and be easy to use. It can’t look like your 9-year-old slapped it together over the weekend. It’s can’t take 5 seconds to load. Your demos can’t be buried halfway down the page, or worse yet, on an interior page.

We get what we attract. Shitty websites attract shitty customers.

Sound. Your demos have to be professional. Scripts ripped from the internet delivered with average performance, in an environment that sounds like you recorded in a rest stop bathroom on Poughkipsee are not going to attract professional clients. DIY demos, unless you’re a trained demo producer, suck.

Your auditions have to be great. This is where the rubber hits the read. If you’re not properly trained, it will show in your auditions. Professional clients will hear it. It’s one thing to be competent on a demo. It’s another thing entirely to be able to audition well consistently left literally to your own devices. A great producer isn’t going to bail you out. It’s you, the copy, the room, and the gear.

And lastly, your final product has to be great.

And finally, act like a pro. That means providing an easy, fun and joyful experience for the client.

It means communicating clearly, setting proper expectations, negotiating professionally and with integrity, doing great work and meeting or exceeding expectations so that from that great client experience, you build a loyal clientele that will come back for their next project.

It means doing what you say you’re going to do, when you’re going to do it and how you said you would do it. And it means standing behind your work so that when you blow it, you make it right.

4. Make it easy for them to start working with you.

Want to make it hard to start working with you? Give new prospects a 10-question Contact form. Wanna make it easy? 3 questions – name, email address, comments. Done. The contact form on your website doesn’t need to capture every detail imaginable. It just needs to get the conversation started. Simplify your contact form.

Then, make the process of quoting and moving forward as streamlined and simple as possible. In an ideal world, every job has a contract. But a 4-page contract with every $500 explainer video is a drag. Can you have the client sign a Master Services Agreement once up front, then handle the scope of work by email for each little job?

Ask them how they like to work. By email? Phone calls? A combination? Should you copy anyone on emails? Who should receive invoices?

Asking smart questions up front pays dividends on future jobs.

3. Charge what pros charge.

Let’s remember what makes a great client - ones that understand the value you provide, pay you well, and send you a lot of recurring work.

If you don’t understand your value and stand up for that value, you can’t expect anyone to pay you what you’re worth.

Remember, we get what we attract. Cheap seeks out cheap. Pros seek out pros. Pros understand the value that pros provide and they pay pro rates to get that value.

Conversely, lowball clients don’t understand your value and as a result, they will demand way more from you than is reasonable and will suck the joy and profit right out of your business. Lowball clients are exponentially higher maintenance and that’s true in every single business, not just voice over.

Clients who don’t understand your value and are primarily price-driven are also WAY less likely to be loyal. When the next project comes up, they’ll move on to the lowest bidder.

These are not good partners. These are the client you fire first as you become more successful. And they are the ones you avoid like syphilis when you are successful.

2. Surprise and delight.

I have a client that I do voice of God announcements for their quarterly C-Suite meetings. They are a Fortune 10 business. We work together 4 times a year and they have been very loyal.

Once or twice a year, I throw in a little something extra. It might be free revisions. It might be no-charge file splits.

And I always deliver well before the deadlines.

Is it because they are hard pressed for cash? I don’t think a $270 billion company is worried about how to pay the voice actor. I do it because it lets the individual people I work with know that I value our relationship, and it helps them look good to their bosses when things are done ahead of time and on or under budget.

You always have the opportunity to surprise and delight your clients. To go over and above. This is often even more effective once you’ve established a track record of delivering on time and on budget. Occasionally going over and above has an even bigger impact because it’s out of the norm. Think about it. If you constantly go over and above, it becomes expected and under-appreciated.

Surprise and delight your good clients occasionally, and they may become great clients.

And #1. Show gratitude.

After every job, let the people you work with know how much you enjoyed it, how easy they made your job, and how much you value them. You don’t have to lavish them with gifts. A simple, genuine expression of gratitude is all you need.

Great clients, great contacts at those clients, will often fight for you to get the work or retain the work. They may defend you if a question ever arises. They may recommend you to others. They may reward you with more work.

We owe our careers to the people who trust us with their messages, and they deserve to feel our authentic thanks. Make sure they know how grateful you are without going overboard.

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Thanks for the conversations we have here on the blog, in the VO Pro community and the VO community at large. The more we talk, the more we listen, the more we exchange ideas and information, the better, stronger voiceover industry we can have.

We’ll see ya again here soon. Thanks for reading.