Crossing the Axis - The Commercial Side of Film Production

Max talks to uber Producer Jennifer O'Brien about going after "low hanging fruit" to increase sales and even out your sales cycles.

Jennifer has over 10 years experience as Project Manager, Producer and Sales Manager for creative production companies. Clients included Microsoft, Amazon, AWS, Expedia, Starbucks and more.

Jennifer helped her last company grow from $1M to $2M in sales.

Content from the podcast includes:

• How to show your work to your clients, what to show, and when to show it. 
• Taking advantage of your "niche"
• What Customer Relationship Manager (CRM) software should you use?
• When is the right time to hire help with sales and business development?
• How to make the most of referrals?    
  • internal referrals “land and expand”

   
   

• How to ask for referrals?
• How to make the most of your current clients?     
  • Get more work from your existing clients by pitching to different departments
  • Get into technology, how-to, and talking heads videos as basics for your regular client's video hygiene

   
   

What do you think of when you think “Client Experience”?

What is the revenue value of creating a positive client experience?  The improvement in project quality with the client?

Sit back and enjoy my interview with Director of Video Production Alex Manning and company owner Steve Jolly of Elements Studio (https://www.elements-studio.net) as we talk about how you can use amazing client experiences to drive your success to new heights.

Here are some takeaways…

• Divide and conquer the relationship when you can. Have one person for creative, and one person for the deal. 
• Be sure to set down EVERYTHING on paper in your Statement of Work. This is especially true if the client is taking on something you should be doing but they can’t afford to pay for it. 
• Make the first 30 minutes on set completely awesome for the client.
• Make sure to roll straight from Production into Post without a break - don’t lose the momentum.
• Identify your Post milestones clearly in emails as you’re going back and forth on deliverables to reduce creep.
• Overall - OVER communicate with the client whenever you can. 
• And finally, how to use the WRAP stage to begin the whole process again and get that next project off the ground. 

This podcast brought to you from the good people at Pipeline Video Production Platform (https://www.videopipeline.io). Pipeline is your all-in-one solution to managing the chaos of video production projects from budgets, to schedules, to deliverables and everything in between.

In "Seasons of Sales" Max and Jake pontificate on some tricks and tips to help you get off of the "feast or famine" roller coaster of work and achieve a more sustainable workload.

Here are some of the things we touch on:

• Reach out to your best customers based on which seasons they are most likely to produce videos
• Build a calendar to help remind you when is the best time to reach out to your customers.
• Understand that hitting your customers at the right time is often as, or more important that hitting your customers with the right pitch.
• Utilize the "pre-emptive sales strike" to hit folks up when they've just started thinking of ideas.
• Understand that marketing departments and agencies LOVE IDEAS. They'll almost always be willing to meet with you to hear your ideas if the time is right.
• Understand that for some clients it's the time of year that is most important, and for others, it's when their fiscal year-end is.
• It only takes a few minutes each week, once you have your calendar in place, to touch base with potentials - even when you're super busy.

This podcast brought to you from the good people at Pipeline Video Production Platform (https://www.videopipeline.io). Pipeline is your all-in-one solution to managing the chaos of video production projects from budgets, to schedules, to deliverables and everything in between.

Max & Jake discuss what you should be looking for in hiring your first sales person for your video production company. First lesson - don't call them a "salesperson".

This podcast brought to you from the good people at Pipeline Video Production Platform (https://www.videopipeline.io). Pipeline is your all-in-one solution to managing the chaos of video production projects from budgets, to schedules, to deliverables and everything in between.