Thank you. I really appreciate you dropping by and spending some of your busy day with my article. I hope you enjoy it.
Doesn’t it feel nice to be thanked? And it feels just as great to do the thanking yourself. Saying thank you goes a long way to spread good will, which tends to make good things happen.
And it’s not just me talking. Having a sense of gratitude has been shown to improve friendships, reduce stress, make people happier, and even energize businesses. Large nonprofits have entire “stewardship” departments, which are essentially tasked with creating meaningful ways to thank their donors. Businesses run more efficiently when their employees feel they are appreciated. Countless studies have shown that customers spend more and are more loyal when they feel appreciated.
As singers, we also have customers. Anyone who can buy our product (that is, hire us) or recommend us to be hired is a customer. You can even go so far as to think of your career goal as building a loyal and profitable customer base—companies and directors who will hire you over and over again. But you’re not going to get there just with endless sales pitches (auditions). It’s time to throw a customer appreciation day.
We’ve often been told to send thank you notes after auditions. It may seem like overkill—and weird, if you feel like you didn’t get the gig. But it makes you stand out and connects you with the company on a more personal level. In fact, a healthy attitude toward auditions is to think of them as the way that singers and opera companies have a dialogue with each other. It may take more than one conversation to seal the deal, so you might as well be polite about it along the way. If you send a thank you note and you actually got the gig, you can be sure you’re starting on the right foot. If not, your name will stand out the next time you sing for them.
What to say in a thank you note? Short and sweet, that’s the beauty of it! It doesn’t take much to get the meaning across. Try some variation of “thank you for the opportunity to sing for you,” “I admire the wonderful things going on at your company” or, if you don’t get cast, “thank you for considering me—I’ll keep you informed of my activities and I look forward to auditioning again for you.” A handwritten note mailed to the person you sang for is the first choice, as an e-mail might be easily overlooked. This is all part of the relationship you are trying to create with the people who can hire you. We often think of an opera company as an institution, but it consists entirely of the people and personalities who make the decisions.
Thank people even when they disappoint you. This is especially true when soliciting donations. If you ask someone to donate $100 and they don’t even respond, thank them for considering your project. What’s there to lose? Even if they didn’t consider you, the thank you is another opportunity to keep the dialogue going. If you asked for $100 and got $25, thank them anyway! That’s $25 you didn’t have before, and it might put you on a path to getting even more. By thanking them, they won’t feel guilty about not being able to help, and you don’t want to associate yourself with guilt or bad feelings.
Thanking people can also help you to maneuver tricky situations. Let’s say you made a mistake and someone is angry at you. Even if it’s a misunderstanding or the other person is simply being unreasonable, saying thank you is the first step in resolving the problem. It diffuses the situation. That person is expecting you to be on the defensive and will be surprised to be thanked. Starbucks developed a system for dealing with angry customers, with gratitude at its core. Appropriately enough, it uses the acronym LATTE:
• Listen
• Acknowledge the problem
• Take action
• Thank
• Explain what you’ve done
It’s a terrific plan for those of us in the customer service business. It works for customers being reasonable as well as customers who are irate. Even better, it puts the person listening to the complaint in control of the outcome.
To get the most out of an attitude of gratitude, here are some good ways to do it.
Be sincere. Anyone can tell if you’re just going through the motions, and a rote “thanks” at the end of your e-mail doesn’t count. Finding things to be thankful for means that you’re also finding things to be positive about, and hopefully that’s something you can be sincerely grateful for.
Be specific. “Thanks for doing such a good job” could be for anyone about anything. “Thanks for going the extra mile on this production; your help finding rehearsal space was invaluable!” says a lot more. Finding something specific will also make you more sincere about it.
For once, it’s not all about you. It’s easy to be a little self-obsessed in the singing biz. After all, we need to be our own number one fans before we can make others love us too. But it’s difficult to do nothing but sustain this message, and your customers might be weary of the endless sales pitches. Take a minute to sincerely thank someone and you’ll both feel good about it.
We’re all taught to say please and thank you, so much that it starts to feel perfunctory. But when you actively look for reasons to say thank you, you’ll find yourself less troubled by things that stress you out. After all, you can’t feel stressed out and grateful at the same time.
So the next time you can, drop a line to a colleague, bring your coach a cup of coffee, or tell your conductor how great it’s been to sing for him. They’ll appreciate it, you’ll feel good, and you may even thank me for it.
