There’s an old saying in Washington politics, “Trust is the coin of the realm.”
Here are two examples of demonstrating trust in your voice talent and, well, less trust. Less trust first!
Last week I had a directed, remote recording session for one of my wonderful, long-standing clients. The end-client (this client has many end-clients) who was in-studio, while a very nice fellow, gave me and my fellow voice talents a line-reading for almost every line we uttered. The recording session was six hours long. Six. Hours. Long.
What’s worse is that most of the line-readings’ inflections were counter-intuitive. Needless to say, it was a bit frustrating. I had another project to do later that day and it felt like when the MLB All-Stars in the Home Run Derby get their swings all screwed up for the rest of the baseball season because of the unnatural repetition. I had to, almost literally, get the bad taste out of my mouth before I could do the next project.
Also last week, I had a self-directed, at-home recording session for another one of my wonderful, long-standing clients. I always proof the scripts from this client since English isn’t the first language of the copywriters. This batch had many more grammatical errors than usual. This particular client pays by the word and I needed to add as well as delete many words. I’d never given this client an updated word-count since past updates were so minor. Before I started recording, I let them know the word-count may change by quite a bit and asked if that would be okay. The client wrote back, “Do what you need to do. I trust you.”
TIP OF THE WEEK
All relationships are based on communication and trust. If you can’t communicate effectively and you don’t trust the person or people in the relationship, it won’t go well. As a voice talent, it is your job to establish solid lines of communication and demonstrate that you can be trusted to convey the message of the project. If your client doesn’t trust you no matter what you do, you have two choices: suck it up or break off the relationship.
NEWS AND NOTES
November 1st to December 15th: ACA Enrollment is here! You still have plenty of time to sign up, but don’t dawdle!
Tuesday, November 14th: my next Edge Studio “Marketing 201” webinar topic will be ‘Thriving In a Smaller Market City’. Click here to sign up.
Tuesday, November 21st: my next Edge Studio “Business and Money 201” webinar topic will be ‘Managing Your Money’. Click here to sign up.
HAPPY HAPPYS
Happy Pickle Day and Take a Hike Day!
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Life can be like a tire iron – sometimes cold and hard; and it feels real good when you stop beating yourself over the head with it. Unknown
From my village to yours; this is Tom Dheere, The H is Silent, but I’m Not.
Tom Dheere is a 20-year veteran of the voice over industry who has narrated thousands of projects for clients in over a dozen countries. He is also a coach at Edge Studio, voiceover business consultant known as the Voice Over Strategist, and is currently producing the comic book “Agent 1.22”.
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