Marketing, especially marketing yourself, is challenging. Even if you are a talented, ambitious, even a great singer, it can still be hard to market yourself. Fortunately, you have the tools you need; all you have to do is learn to re-appropriate them. You can be your own manager, but if you don’t use your skills to your advantage, you are making a huge career mistake.
Think of it as using the same skills a salesperson would use. Consider the basic sales tools—an initial benefit statement, probing effectively, asking good questions, handling objections, closing techniques, and effective listening—and contemplate how you can use these techniques to your advantage as a singer. It sounds easy, but studies show that most singers simply don’t do it.
1. Define Your Image
How you are perceived in an audition or rehearsal is as important to your career as the work you do. Your image is based on how you dress, groom and your personal style. We shouldn’t be paid based on our looks, right? That’s absolutely right, but regardless of how fair it is, we are judged on our professional persona.
One of the best ways to improve your image is with clothing. Women can’t wear extremely provocative or dowdy clothing. Men who aren’t comfortable choosing their clothing should go to a department store like Nordstrom’s and get some professional help.
If you are on a tight budget, mix and match to get optimum use out of your clothing. Investing in good, professional casual wear also is important or you will ruin the image you have worked so hard to create.
Get an updated hairstyle and if you are a woman, make sure your makeup is also very modern and chic. Hairstylists are always happy to make suggestions and often you can get free makeup lessons at department store makeup counters. (Less is always best.)
2. Learn to Manage Your Manager
To be successful in your career, you must make your manager successful, if you have one. Your manager is successful when you get a lot of jobs.
To get started, sit down and have a meeting with him about how he likes to work with the singers on his roster, what his goals are for you and how he intends to get there. Keep in mind that even in music, politics abound in management firms. When you get a job and someone else in your Fach doesn’t (or vice-versa), politics may be involved. Make sure your manager is working for you, not against you. It happens!
You have to prove your value to your manager if you want him to keep working for you. And if you find he is working against you, it’s time to leave.
3. Singers Aren’t Allowed to Have a Bad Day, Professionally
Successful people are professionals all the time. They don’t get in bad moods or alienate their colleagues and support team. Illness is one ill-tempered mood that can’t be ignored, but when you are in singer-mode it is a good rule to leave all your other problems at the door.
If a problem with someone must be dealt with, make sure you do it in private. If personal problems are overwhelming you, get professional help! Reach out to friends as well. But don’t let your professional support team know about personal problems, unless they begin to impact your work. You want to be seen as “trouble-free” as much as possible, professionally speaking.
When it comes to being hired, 90 percent of companies ask a variety of people what you are like to get along with. [Editor’s note: The opera world is very small. See the interview with Orlando Opera in this issue.] They want to know how you will be under pressure when things aren’t working out. So, the nicer you are on the way up, the higher you will go. The day of the raging diva is gone.
4. Support The Companies You Work For
Young professionals who want great careers communicate regularly with those who hired them. The best singers will stop by the general director’s office occasionally and say, “Hey, I just wanted to let you know that I think this is a great company. Is there anything I can do to make the show work better?” It shows initiative and a great team attitude.
5. Take an Interest
If you want the general director to notice you, work your way through the company and develop a reputation as someone with a great work ethic and interest in the company. Offer to sing for his board meeting. Meet with people in various departments in the company and honor the time and information you receive from them. Your reputation will spread throughout the company. Service people are thrilled when a singer meets with them and then humbles himself by asking about their jobs. And when you build the opera company, you will be invited back…assuming you sang well.
To shine as a singer, you must have good communication skills, project a trustworthy attitude, and be sincere. Reach out and make connections everywhere you go. Don’t be afraid to meet with the general director to see how you can help with his goals and responsibilities. Times are hard for opera companies, and the singer who can help make his job easier will be invited back. If you are lucky and he likes you, he might invite you to a golf outing. [Who knew singers needed to know how to play golf!] When you get this far, employ all of the above skills to project a polished, professional image.
If you are a consummate professional, start using your skills to your advantage and you will meet with incredible success. You already know what to do. With just a slight change in direction, everyone else will know it, too.
