How Voice Talents Should Treat Their Voiceover Clients
I have been enjoying the promotional posts by my friend and fellow voice talent Tracy Lindley, who is celebrating her 10th year as a professional voice talent.
She is also rightly celebrated on the voiceover podcast and convention circuit for her LinkedIn presentation.
In her 10 day series “10 Lessons from 10 Years in Voiceover”, Tracy offers reflections and advice on how her voiceover business practices may help others as well.
One of her posts that caught my eye was “Treat Others the Way They Want to be Treated”. Briefly, Tracy’s sales and marketing concept here is for business owners to be aware of and adapt to the likes, wants, needs and in some cases personalities of their clients.
The reason it caught my eye was that it reminded me about something I wrote all the way back in 2008 and that is still posted to the audio’connell Voiceover Talent.
It’s the audio’connell Voice Over Talent (and O’Connell Communications, LLC) Code of Conduct.
Why a such a formal sounding document for what is essentially a one-man band business?
My thinking is simple – tell clients the kind of business relationship they are entering into while also reminding myself how to behave and how I should also expect to be treated.
Do most clients even notice it? I don’t know as it really has never been discussed. Ultimately, if a client or vendor didn’t like how they were treated, someone would be fired or not renewed.
My feeling is, for those prospects or clients who DO care about such things, my company’s long established policy is posted for the world to see.
“Treat Others the Way They Want to be Treated” and “Do to others whatever you would have them do to you” are both worthwhile business strategies, whether you been a professional voice actor for 10 years (like Tracy) or 42 years (like me).
