Selling More CDs, T-Shirts and Other Items
Aside from making money through playing gigs, you have to be a good salesman to make money in the music industry. If people aren’t buying your CDs, t-shirts, and other products, you are missing out on a small fortune. You really don’t need a degree in rocket science to become a great salesman. You just have to understand the basic psychology behind helping your fans remove the money from their wallet and invest it in your music career by placing that money in your hand. What is funny is that musicians lose out on so much of that money, simply because they lack the necessary skills to close the deal. But, all it takes is one good salesman to turn a track record of poor returns into a lucrative operation where the band is making money hand over fist.
The first step to generating good sales starts long before you ever have your CDs and shirts manufactured. You have to ask yourself some honest questions. Would you buy your own t-shirts? Would you buy your own CDs? Or, would you feel gypped if you got home and realized the t-shirts are thin and frail and the sound quality on the CD just isn’t all that great? If you rub your fans the wrong way early on in your music career, it’s only going to be a hundred times harder down the road to convince these customers to buy from you again. The rule of thumb is to never sell a customer a product that you wouldn’t be happy with spending your hard-earned money on yourself. So, when you have your CDs and t-shirts manufactured, make certain that the products you are having manufactured are good quality products. You might be able to get by with selling poor quality products once to your loyal fans, but in a weak economy it’s really not such a great idea. That is to say, unless you just don’t care about the future of your music career or the reputation of your band.
Once your CDs and t-shirts come in, you should take a sample of your products home and enjoy them. If you are going to sell t-shirts and CDs, get to know these products intimately. It’s much easier to talk about products you yourself use than products you are unfamiliar with. Get to know the song order on your CD by heart and be able to intelligently talk about the artist that created your artwork, logo, and the picture on your t-shirt. When your fan can see that you take your product seriously, it motivates them to take you and your product seriously. If they get the sense that you don’t care about your product, they will not be motivated to care. People are more apt to buy your product, when they see that you care and you are enthusiastic about it. The idea is to help them to share in the vision of your band to the point that they not only want to buy your products, but they want to go tell their friends to buy your t-shirts and CDs also.
A lot of bands make a huge mistake in leaving some unknown person around the product table to sell items for the band. Your fans don’t come to your gigs to talk to people they don’t know. If you are standing by the CDs and t-shirts, you can have a profound effect on the number of sales you make as people make their way to where you are standing. When they get there, you pick up a shirt and/or a CD and start getting your products into their hands. The longer you can get a person to hold a product and relate to that product emotionally, the harder it is for a lot of people to let the product go–especially if there is the added emotional experience of getting to meet a band member.
You are always going to run across fans who are a tough sale. They have money in their pocket, but they just aren’t the type to part with money easily. Even though you are in business to make money, it is important to recognize when it is worth it to take a small loss on a product for a loyal fan. If a fan feels like you treated them fairly and made a small sacrifice to pump their enjoyment level through the roof, chances are they will be willing to attend more gigs and buy from you again later when you come out with your next CD. People often remember acts of kindness. And if it is someone like me, I’d take that CD home and go brag to all my friends how this cool band gave me this awesome deal on a CD last night. So, taking a small loss like that, just to make the sale, isn’t always such a bad idea. Another benefit to doing this is that when people see that others are buying your products, it sometimes motivates them to want to get in on the action too. Sometimes the mere perception that others value your products and are willing to pay real cash for them is enough to convince the onlooker to follow suit and pay full price. So, when you go to take a loss, precalculate how many CDs you will need to sell to insure overall that there will turn out to be a profit by the end of the night. Work all this out before you even get to your gig so that when it comes time to negotiate sales, you won’t hesitate or doubt yourself. Signs of hesitation and self doubt when negotiating a sale can often be a huge deal breaker. You want to come off selling with confidence, not looking weak and sheepish.
Another important thing to keep in mind is that running a deal is a good way to sell multiple products at once. For example, you might make it clear to your fans that the first 10 people who buy your CD get a t-shirt at half price. It’s just another way to invest in your fans in order to get them to invest in you in return. Again, you want to work the figures out ahead of time so as not to make it too difficult on yourself to pull a profit over all by the end of the night. With a little experience, you can pretty much gage how to run a good deal and move a lot of product at the same time.
Now, here is an added little bonus. When you see people buying t-shirts, pull them aside and have someone else there to take their cell phone and offer to take a picture with them in their new band t-shirt. It makes them feel good because you are willing to give them something to talk about at work the next day as they show off the picture they took with you to everyone else around the office. Again, just more free exposure for the band. And when other fans see that you are willing to do that, they will want to buy a t-shirt and get their picture taken with you too. It’s little things like that that leave your fans feeling good and wanting more of the experience your band has to offer as it increases your product sales in the process.
