Your Existing Clients Are Important, Too!

One ongoing project we love working on here at Creative Media Recording is with an ad agency who regularly records audio interviews of successful business consultants and subject matter experts from a variety of fields. Then that interview audio is turned into audio CD’s and/or Podcasts for their client to share.

I always come away from an interview session with 1 or 2 great little business nuggets that I can put to use in my OWN business. Last week one expert shared this piece of advice:

“If you constantly focus on getting NEW clients and ignore OLD ones you’ll end up on the downside.”

That hit home for me! The past three years have been very busy for our little studio. Plus I was making time to hit some conferences and trade shows. I started working on some other important audio related projects that are taking me in a different direction. I may have let some deadlines slide here and there but we were busy, right?! — Wrong.

The downside for me was losing one good client last year – out of the blue – who was unhappy with the service they were getting (or weren’t getting in our case). That harsh reminder hit home for me as I sat there listening to this business consultant. Losing that other client had been a resonant reminder to make sure we were all focused on our existing client base – some of whom have been working with us for over 30 years.

We’re lucky to have some long, successful existing relationships with many of our clients. But it doesn’t take much to get off the track.

Yes, farming for new clients is important; doing lots of new auditions is good; working your social media (looking for business) can be good; going to conferences and learning new stuff is key. But be aware of the valuable time all of that might take away from doing work for your existing client roster.

Bottom line: Don’t forget to touch base with your existing clients once in a while, too. Try something you haven’t done before – make a phone call. Send a card or postcard instead of an email. Buy some small gift cards and start sending them out when you get a nice gig or a referral from someone. All of those little surprises do have an impact on clients/producers.

Photo montage by VO pro Mike Laponis @mikeraphone on Twitter

CMR Produces The Silent Garden Audiobook

The team at Creative Media Recording completed production on two unique audiobooks at the end of 2016 that became available on Audible.com in late Spring 2017. The Silent Garden / El Jardin Silencioso (in English & Spanish) by Paul W. Ogden and David H. Smith were developed for parents, educators and families to provide thorough guidance on the ins and outs of raising a deaf child. The authors are both noted university professors of Deaf Education who are deaf themselves.

In this edition of each book the two of them share their unique understanding of growing up and thriving in a hearing world. The Silent Garden help parents understand that all deaf children have the potential to lead rich, productive, and exciting lives.

The audio for the books was recorded in the CMR studios in Cypress over a several month period and they were narrated by professional Orange County voice talents Dave Sampson (English) and Paty Corcoran (Spanish).

With this launch, Creative Media is proud to have produced the very first audiobooks for the Gallaudet University Press, a publisher that specializes in providing an extensive knowledge base for and about deaf and hard of hearing people. It is affiliated with Gallaudet University. Here are links to the audiobooks with audio samples from each language:

ENGLISH version: https://www.audible.com/pd/Nonfiction/The-Silent-Garden-Audiobook/B07C8G39MV

SPANISH version: https://www.audible.com/pd/Nonfiction/El-Jardin-Silencioso-The-Silent-Garden-Audiobook/B07BM9LWVH