[TFA Career Day 2025] How to book successfully… be your own sale manager with Dominik Landolt

Dominik, it’s amazing to have you. And for the people who don’t know Dominik, I’ll do my own introduction a bit, um, because if you read Dominik’s bio, it’s really fascinating.

Um, he started off with the accordion playing. Yeah. Um, so that, but at some point he thought, “Okay, you know, I’d rather want to have an instrument which also has keys, but I can’t carry around.” So he went into, um, piano playing. But then also, he fell in love with the saxophone and played sax. What I loved about his musical career is that he was not, never stuck in one genre. He played classical piano, but he also ventured into pop and rock and perhaps even in some, um, folk music stuff. So he has a much broader view about music than most of us, um, here, which I admire.

But the secret of Dominik is that he then also started his own production company and did recordings, um, again. And he also has another job, um, where he actually, uh, is in sales. And you see him actually in his office here. What they make sure is that people like me get something to eat at lunchtime when they’re in the office. Unfortunately, our office is a bit too small, but in bigger offices, I’ve seen that. And, um, Dominik is doing the sales there.

So I don’t think there is anybody better equipped to speak about sales because he knows it from a musician’s perspective, from a producer perspective, but also from a very brutal, business background. That’s it. I’m happy to hand over to you, Dominik. Thanks so much for being with us here today.

Dominik: Thank you, Bernard. Thanks for having me.

Dominik: Normally, I start off with a short introduction, but basically today this will not happen because it would just take over the whole, um, hour, kind of. Why I think I was invited was just like said. Right now, I’m just going through the slides a little bit because I didn’t know that there is some kind of introduction when I wrote this.

What I’m actually doing right now, I’m in the office of a company, I’m Head of Sales and Account Management. Why is this important? Because, um, yes, that’s the people we work with, we negotiate with, and we close. So, um, as you can see, basically it’s also international, but also, um, very Austrian companies, but big companies like Wiener Dechen, Thoman Music, Yamaha Music. So we negotiated with them and close deals. And why am I saying that? To give you confidence that what we are doing today will work in the real world.

For everyone who speaks German, this also makes no sense because it’s very Austrian. This slide, it says “Sweden is,” which is like, you know, this, this Viennese kind of thing where people always like say negative things about everything. This is really, really typical Viennese. For example, if you ask someone, “How was your holiday?” the first thing they’re gonna tell you is that it rained the whole time and that the food was not as great as at home and everything is worse and we know it from home because that’s just how Viennese people work.

But I thought, um, with this energy, you could really achieve something. If you just try to find solutions for whatever annoys you, which is my go-to every time, um, something is off track or something is not working or something doesn’t make sense. I’m like, “Okay, this annoys me, but why does it annoy me and how can I change that?” It annoys me in a very like, creative way. So yeah, that we can, um, sell things faster, actually.

So just to give you an overview of how companies work, you basically know everything of it, but just to make sure that we’re at the same point when we start in the, in the lesson, there’s three departments basically who create, um, money. The first department is Marketing, the second is Sales, and the third is Account Management. So that’s how companies are structured.

So let’s say Marketing gets us new clients; they make people interested in what you sell. Sales has to sell your product, and Account Management has to keep the relationship ongoing, so it makes no sense to close someone one time and then never have business with them again. Because if you have people making business with, business with you, sorry, it’s way easier to sell stuff to them again, as if you have to reach out to someone completely new, um, who probably doesn’t know what you’re doing and stuff. So keeping relationships ongoing is really important. That’s why companies have a whole department for it.

Um, but today’s topic is how you reach out, um, how you do cold calls and cold mailings, and a little bit about negotiating. I’m speaking really fast because I know that everything is recorded and I want to give as much value as possible in the time I have. So if someone doesn’t comprehend, um, everything, just watch it again because I want you to have the most out of it. Okay?

So cold mailing and cold calling is contacting someone without them knowing that you will contact them. Yeah. Let’s say you write an email to Bernard because you want to, um, work with him. He never heard of you. So there is different ways of how to contact him and make sure that your message gets through.

First of all, you could think about how to reach Bernard. So you have to kind of understand where is this person, where, where, where can I contact him and where does he kind of, um, yes. Where does he, um, basically privately do his business? So if I know that Bernard is someone who likes emails, I’m trying to reach out with an email. If I know that he’s on Instagram, I’ll just try to contact him on Instagram. If I know that he hates social media, I’m just going to try to get a phone number to call him.

So make sure that you know what channel the person uses you want to contact, because there is nothing more annoying than contacting someone on a channel he or she doesn’t like. Me, for example, I hate voice messages because I’m in negotiations the whole day or in meetings the whole day or in rehearsals the whole day or playing concerts. So when I come home from a 12, 13, 14 hour stay or longer and I have like an hour of voice messages I have to go through, I’m like, “Come on, I’m not gonna listen to that. Just write me and then I’ll respond to you.” So reaching out to me via voicemail will be the worst decision you could ever do. If you know something like this about people, just don’t contact them in a way they don’t want to be contacted.

Um, what I did also is to have a little, um, calculation about, um, if things you’re doing make sense. So I built this, it’s in German, and really sorry for this, but I think it’ll be fine. The blue fields are fields you could like fill out yourself, and the purple fields calculated by themselves. So we will stay down here and I’ll tell you what it says. This is built for, um, kind of finding out if your goals and your actions fit.

So for example, let’s say you want to make $35,000 what of whatever currency money a year. Um, and you know, you have like $300$ euros gross revenue per concert. Sorry, I’m, I have to put this first. So you say you want to play 50 concerts and you already played 30 concerts now. So now it’s calculating the gap I’m having to my goal. Okay. So it says I already earned $9,000$ Euros based on my goal, um, and it tells me how much concerts I already played based on what I’m saying. And then I’m just telling the program or the calculation how many months I still have to reach my goal.

So now I have four months left, which would mean that my actual gap to my own goal is $26,000$ euros, which would mean that I would have to make $6,500$ euros per month with playing $21.6$ concerts so that I can reach my own goal I’m setting myself.

Why is it important to know something like this? Because then you can make sure if what you’re planning really is, um, somehow possible to reach. Let’s say you would’ve put $50,000$ here, then you would have to play $34.1$ concerts per month to reach your own goal, which would actually mean you have to play more concerts than there are days in a month, which might lead to you rethinking if your goal really makes sense.

So sometimes just try to figure out if what you’re doing really fits to, um, the realistic timeframe you’re trying to do it in, because yeah, it doesn’t help if, um, you’re setting goals too high and then you don’t reach them and then you get frustrated. It’s better to have like a long term plan how to reach it, and then really make sure that you’re reaching it every time, all the time.

So that said, we are now trying to contact people. So let’s say you find out, um, or you want to play in Konzerthaus Wien and you find out the booking email address of the Konzerthaus. You can try to make sure the people enter your emails by choosing good subjects. Let’s say if you choose a subject like “Newcomer of the Year,” you’re probably one of $7,000$ newcomers of the year in their subjects in the male, um, uh, male program of the concert house booker.

So how could you now creatively, um, make sure that they open your emails? Just some subjects I love to, to use is “Good to See You Soon,” because then if I would say that to you, Yuka, for example, you get an email with “Good to See You Soon,” you probably react like, “Oh my God, what did I miss? Who am I gonna see soon? Why do I get an email like this?” And you’re going to open it, which is the first touch point, because if you’re writing the most wonderful email, but no one even opens, it makes no sense, right?

So if this doesn’t work out, I sometimes escalate it saying something like “Open Demand,” and then I write a really sympathetic text about that. My open demand is that I would love to get an answer. So if you create urgency with subjects that people open your emails, um, yeah, it’s more easy that you get booked because then they know what you’re talking about.

So what do you put in the email text now? If you are talking to someone who’s always talking about themselves all the time and they don’t give value to the other person, and they don’t show any interest in really personally connecting with them, it’s like talking to someone who’s always just saying, “I, I, I, me, me, me. I did this, I did that. I’m so interesting.” And you don’t really want to listen to that, right?

So what you could do is, you could not write texts like this. I think some of us probably got emails like this. Some of us probably wrote emails like this. Something saying, “Hello, my name is, I’ve been making music since, and, um, I thought I could record one now. So I decided, I, I, I, me, me, me,” all the time and no one really cares because there is no value for no one, right?

So, um, just, it’s even going on. You can read through it if you want, um, by pressing the stop button when you watch the recording.

So emails like this say nothing. Um, it’s self-indulgent and yeah, the text says, “Hello, I’m arrogant, or at least self-centered,” and it’s endlessly long and there is no white spaces and nothing. So, yeah, come on, you can do that way better by, for example, saying something like this:

“Hi, on my way home today, I heard this song on your station. Fantastic choice. It’s great that you still play such quality music. I’ve just released a new single and would, I would just release truly a new single and would love if your music team could give it a listen. I would love some feedback of people with such a good taste.”

So what did I do here? I created a scenario why I think that this radio channel I want to be played on fits to me, but not telling them, “Hey, I’m so good I fit in your session,” but telling them, “Hey, I love your music a lot. Um, it’s great that you’re doing such a great job choosing music. I also recorded something.” I’m not asking for anything but your feedback because people always love to get, give feedback, right? So if someone asks, “Hey, could you give me feedback on this?” everyone loves to give their opinion.

So creating a text where people want to answer, leads to, um, a conversation. Creating a text where people just, um, think like, “Okay, there is like the next email in my mailbox, which has no value for me and I don’t know where the person contact me anyways,” will just lead to, um, not opening your second email.

Okay. Any questions so far?

Dominik: Okay, I’ll just pause here because one of the most often questions I get is, “How do I write a good pitch?” So I would just, I’d like to encourage everybody, think about the last person that you wanted to pitch. Did you send it, yes or no? If not, what stopped you?

Bernard: Now is the time to ask Dominik. Yes.

Yuka: How do I know what to say?

Joanne: Okay, Joanne’s asking, “What if there was no reply?” Yes? Does that come now or do you have a follow-up strategy coming later in your presentation?

Dominik: It’s coming. It’s coming. But, um, I’m just telling you, the only thing you could do is either look for other channels or just write again. So if I write emails for five times and I never get a response in music life, I try to add them on Instagram. In business life, I try to add them on LinkedIn. Why do I do that? Because if people see my face all the time on socials and I write them the next email, they’re like, “Oh, I know this guy from somewhere.” So probably I’m gonna read the email more likely than if I don’t know who’s contacting me, right?

So if you can’t reach out to person, maybe you just chose the wrong channel. It’s what we discussed in the first place. If you write a voice message to me, I will never answer you. So I don’t even know if it’s interesting for me what you have to present, because I will not listen to it. Just try to, to change channel, try to change the method, try to change the subject and see if it works. It’s the quickest fix.

And if this everything’s not working, escalate subjects. “Open Demand” is something everyone will open because they’re like, “Okay, do I have to pay something? Did I miss something? What’s going on?” So create an urgency by a good subject leads to funny conversations probably. Because then you have to explain, “Okay, yes, my open demand is that I want a mentor for you from you for the last six emails I wrote to you.”

For example, in the other company where we are selling food after six or seven emails, if I don’t get a response, I will just say something like, “Okay, you are not, if you don’t want to talk to me, just write ‘Pitch Compote’ and I will not contact you again.” So sometimes people really just answer with “Pitch Compote” and then finally I got my answer, which is no, I don’t want to be contacted. But next time I meet them somewhere on an event, it happened already that someone came up to me and said, “Well, we didn’t want your product because we don’t have the budget right now. But it was a really funny way to say no to something.” And I didn’t feel bad because I didn’t have to explain why it’s not fitting. I just had like my safe word and I could have just come out of this conversation without having to explain myself, which is also good because having a no still is better than having no answer because then you can just disqualify this client, potential client, and go on with your life. Because if you always have to try to get in contact again and again and again and again, and probably you could already tell them, “Okay, it’s just not working out because probably they just don’t like my music or it’s not fitting for this club or whatever.” You can just disqualify them and next,

Bernard: That’s a very helpful advice. We have another question in the chat. “What kind of feedback of value could you give for a concert venue so that they would open your email? Any ideas there?”

Dominik: Yes. Let’s see if I have it here already. Um. Okay. It’s already, it’s already, um, negotiating.

Giving value is about understanding what the other person likes or doesn’t like. So what I love to do, I have a reading tip for you, which is also a book on Spotify if you want to listen, um, to it, rather than reading. It’s called Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss.

Never Split the Difference is all about tactical empathy, which means let’s go there now. Um, empathy—the definition of empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. It’s not, “I’m feeling the same,” or “I have to be sad if you are sad,” or it’s just understanding why someone is doing something.

So what is whoever you’re contacting, what are they looking for? They’re probably looking for someone filling their calendar and booking their venues. So if you can provide the value of them, understanding that your concerts will create money or fill their empty calendars or bring audience, which would not be there if you’re not playing something like this, um, your chances of getting the concert are way higher as if you’re just telling them who you are and what you’re doing, but not telling them how they create. Um, let’s say it as it is, money with you.

Because what you have to understand, everyone behind the speaker does music because they love doing music. Everyone in front of the speaker goes to the concert because they want to have either a good time or book concerts because they want to make money. They want to have a business.

So if you cannot provide business value to someone who’s not, who doesn’t maybe not care a hundred percent only for the art, but also for the business side, then you’re just talking a different language. Because telling someone, “What I’m doing is really great because I thought of this and that when I wrote it,” is great for the storytelling, but then you have to tell them how this makes more profit for everyone if they book you. And if you can’t answer this question for yourself, the chances of someone booking you are closer to not getting booked than to getting booked.

Bernard: That was excellent. Thank you so much. And Gennadi, do you wanna jump in?

Gennadi: Yeah. I find it brilliant about the subject lines to get people to increase the higher rates. However, what would be stopping me, for example, is the feeling that I’m, in a way, uh, might trick the person and then they might get annoyed at the fact that, you know, it was about something and then was a pitch for me. How do you deal with, uh, with that? Um, yeah, resistance in a way and just send it anyway.

Dominik: Yeah. Um, in sales management, it’s your daily business, and that’s really the difference because artists are not used to doing this. But as I told you, every department has a sales department and they’re trained to do this, right? So I’m, what I do the whole Monday morning is training my sales department for reach outs.

Um, if you call some venue, which is bigger than just a coffee shop, they’re also a business. So the people picking up the phone are also used that other people call them to make business. So what you have to understand, I think, is that if you are booking a concert, you’re not talking to a musician, you’re talking to a manager, and managers don’t want to waste their time, want to know what their profit is, and they don’t want to bullshit around. So if you just somehow create a scene that they understand what you want, what’s the value, why it’s important that they talk to you, then you don’t have to be afraid to contact them.

Gennadi: Yeah, it’s absolutely valid. It was just about the, you know, the subject line about urgent matter or something.

Dominik: Mm-hmm. That they open. Yeah. Yeah. I’m trying to do it a lot, a little bit with humor because I’m also playing comedy shows. So for me, mm-hmm. It’s very natural to have a humoristic, um, approach to everything, but you have to feel comfortable with what you’re doing. So if you’re, for example, saying, “I don’t feel comfortable with the subject line,” it doesn’t matter. Just find a subject line which creates urgency and you feel comfortable with. You don’t have to do it the same way I’m doing it. You just have to make sure that it works.

So if you write 20 different emails with the same subject and you never get a response, try different subject line. Maybe it just, that is the reason. Um, there is programs, CRM tools, for example, HubSpot or Salesforce, which are a little expensive, I’m honest about that. But those programs even show you if people open your messages. Right. So if I, for example, write emails out of HubSpot, I can tell if someone open my email or not. So I can track which subjects work and which don’t. Mm-hmm. You can just only track it for free by if you get answers or not. And if you write 20 emails with this subject, 20 emails with that subject, and then after, um, you evaluate the numbers, you kind of have a feeling if it works or not.

Gennadi: Cool. Thanks.

Dominik: Because we just talked about calling, which is also really important. If you talk about calling, is you have also to understand that the first person in a company picking up a phone is hired to not put you through to whoever you want to talk to. So if you somehow want to, for example, let’s say contact Bernard Carras and he’s still CEO of Konzerthaus, and you want to contact him and, um, you are on the line with his secretary, um, and you’re like, “Hey, I am Dominik. I wanted to ask if I could play a concert here. Who’s responsible for it? Could you maybe, um, kind of connect me with someone who’s booking my concerts?” And they’re like, “Okay, um, no, I can’t. I don’t have time for you. I don’t know who you are. Just send an email.” “Okay. Can you maybe tell me the email address of, okay, it’s office@konzerthaus.com.” And every time someone tells you that the email address is office at something, you automatically are in the trash bin. Okay?

No one cares, no one is going through the office email addresses because this is the way of companies telling you, “I don’t care. Just send it there. We both act as you send something, but no one ever will respond.” Okay?

So actually having like two minutes looking into the team structure of Konzerthaus Wien, for example, makes a huge difference because if you just drop two or three names, it’s amazing how things change.

A little trick again, maybe, um, you will not like it again, I’m sorry if you don’t, but just try to get comfortable with that is, for example, I’m writing Julia from Konzerthaus 15 times and she’s not responding and she’s, um, Head of Booking. And then I Google who is the CEO and I find out Bernard is the boss. So, um, I try to reach out to him and he’s also not responding. Then I’m trying to call them because if I don’t get my answers via email, probably I have to change the channel.

So I’m calling Wiener Konzerthaus and someone picks up and says, “Hey, I am Martin, what can I do for you?” My answer would be, “Hey, I’m Dominik. Can you please put me through to Bernard?” So acting like he’s my best friend already. And they’re like, “Okay, um, does Bernard know that you’re going to contact him?” And I could say, “Yes, of course, because we’ve already exchanged emails. And Julia also was in the loop.” So then he’s like, “Okay, he also knows Julia and he knows Bernard, and now he wants me to put through.”

If this doesn’t work, I’m always like, “Okay, maybe I got the wrong number because I tried it with, um, the, I don’t know the word.” Maybe someone can help me out. You know, the, the word Bernard, the direct number,

Bernard: The direct number.

Dominik: At the end. So I always say, “I have the direct number 15. I don’t know why it’s not working. I always get to the secretary, but I know that this is Bernard’s number, or do I have the wrong number?” And then they are something like, “No, our numbers have three letters. It’s 127.” And then I’m like, “Oh my God, I’m so stupid. How could I kind of, um, screw up the numbers? Thank you for telling me.” So now I have his direct number, right?

So what I’m doing is trying to give the other person the feeling that it’s okay to put me through because we know each other anyways. Questions.

And then of course, if they put me through to Bernard, I’m not going to say, “Hey Bernard, we are best friends. Remember me,” because he doesn’t know you. Then you’re like, “Hey Mr. Carras, my name is Dominik Landal, really great to talk to you. I sent you some emails back a few weeks ago, probably you didn’t have time to go through them. Is it a good time to talk for you right now?”

Why do I ask the last question? Because if someone says, “No, it’s not a good time to talk right now,” you really don’t want to talk to them. And most of the time I phrase, um, the sentence in a way that the answer no is the one I want to hear. Because if someone calls you and you don’t expect someone calling you, your reaction if someone asks you if you have time automatically is, “No, I don’t have time.”

So instead of saying, “Now is, um, do you have time now?” and they’re saying no. I’m saying something like, “Is it a bad time to talk right now?” Because automatically someone calls you, you don’t want to talk to them, you want to say no. So, “Is it a bad time to talk to you right now?” You’re like, “No, actually I just had lunch. I just had a coffee break. It’s not a bad time to talk right now. Let’s talk.”

If anyone says, “Yes, actually right now is a really bad time because I have a meeting coming up in five minutes,” then you don’t want to talk to the person right now anyways. So what you could say next then is, “Okay, what is a good time to talk to you? Can we schedule a meeting?” Right?

So you see what I did here? I tried to contact them. I didn’t get to where I wanted to go. I changed the person. I still didn’t get an answer. I called the department I wanted to speak to and told them in a way that we had been in email contact. It was email contact. Just just from, from one side. But he didn’t ask, “Did you get a response?” He just asked, “Have you been in contact?” Yes, we’ve been in contact. I sent 15 emails. Just never got an answer. But you don’t have to tell them.

So then you’re talking to the person after you got the direct number by some other little trick, um, and now you have a meeting, and this is a complete different story than writing an email with texts only about yourself and then wondering why you never get responses.

Any questions?

Dominik: No. Okay. So if we still have a little time, I’d really like to say something about negotiating ’cause negotiating is the second thing where it always is kind of really hard for musicians to find the right price for your product, right?

So I said something about tactical empathy, and I also said that empathy is not same thing as sympathy, and it’s also not the same thing as projection. So what I mean is just because I would feel in a way, if someone tells me something, that’s not empathy, that’s projection. I really have to understand when I talk to, I don’t know, Kerstin, um, and I talk to her, I have to make sure that I know what she might think in this situation so that I can act in a way that I close the deal with her. Because otherwise I’m negotiating with myself. And this is never good. If you start negotiating with yourself, you will always decrease what you could have made because negotiating with yourself just brings you to questioning your own prices, and that’s something you should never do. Questions.

We are going through it deeper in a second. Just if there is any misunderstanding about the terms right now, just please ask because it’s important for the next things.

Unidentified Speaker: Yeah. Could you maybe repeat again? It’s about the difference between empathy and with calling the person.

Dominik: Yes. Um, empathy is understanding what the other person feels, sympathy is feeling for the other person. And projection is, “I would do it like this. So they will also probably do it like that,” but that’s just like random assumptions. It’s not based on anything.

Empathy is the easiest way for creating an empathetic, um, talk is asking questions. So if I would talk to you, for example, and we would book a concert, I’d not pitch. Just from the beginning I’d be like, “Okay, again. Um, so I understand that you have 25 free slots in March, 2026 in your, um, concert calendar.” And I was just asking, “What are you looking for if you book someone?” and then you would tell me what you’re looking for because if I just tell you that I’m the perfect fit, but I don’t have any idea what you’re looking for, how can I be sure that I’m the perfect fit? Right?

So after you told me what you’re looking for, I could say something like, “Okay. Um, it seems like,” it’s a good question because then I didn’t say it is. I just say like, “It seems like, um, musicians who play con at your concert venue don’t have to be really famous. Um, so there might be a chance for not so well-known artists to play at this concert, right?” So then there are something like, “Yes, you know, we have five main acts every year and they finance the whole project and then we have like 25 other slots where we really book newcomers. And actually on these 25 slots, it doesn’t make a big difference if they’re like a net negative for a positive profit because it’s more about building, um, a community for someone. So if it works out, we have, uh, revenue in the end.”

So what did you just discover right now? There’s 25 potential free slots for you in a year. You wouldn’t have known that if you wouldn’t have asked the questions. So now you know what you’re talking about. Because if you know there is 25 possibilities, we just have to make sure that you’re one of them.

If someone tells you, “Come on, um, maybe you didn’t really look through our program, we only have superstars and even some of them, um, have to wait for two years because we don’t have three slots,” then probably it’s not the venue you should target right now, or if you’re a superstar, go for it. Okay, so asking questions.

Asking questions is the, the best way to do, to start every business talk because it creates empathy because the other side thinks that you really care about what’s going on there and you get all the information you need to build your case.

Unidentified Speaker: And you wait a bit before you say your own name. Like, “Oh, maybe that’s me.” You wait a bit.

Dominik: Yes, of course. So you, yourself, and like Chris Voss for example, there is a lot of books about it. One is called Gap Selling, which is about identifying a gap from, it’s based on companies, a company, where are they right now and where do they want to be? And the gap in between is the money you can charge. So this is a little hard for musicians because if you’re not in the, I don’t know, playing restaurant sector where you can show them that playing music increases the restaurant sales 50%. This is a little hard to go.

But what you could learn from this technique, technique anyways is identifying something about the person you’re negotiating with so that you can make your pitch. Because even if you have the best pitch in the world, my opinion is you have to have a pitch for every client. Because a pitch saying 150 times a week makes no sense because you’re not talking to 150 times the same person. It’s always someone else. It’s always another business. It’s always another situation. It’s always probably another city. So probably they don’t even have the same issues culturally or with, um, government money they’re getting for, for, for whatever they’re doing.

So that could also be a question, for example, “Is there a possibility to have social, um, supported concerts by the government to have slots for something like that? Do you have any programs where you can support newcomers, um, as for, let’s say support X for someone else?” Something like this. Whatever you want to, to, to achieve. That’s why I said at the beginning, you have to make sure what your yearly goals are and if the timeline for reaching your goals fits to your goal, because otherwise you just get frustrated. Okay,

Dominik: Another thing which is really important probably is being a little more charismatic. Now some people say, “Okay, but there is just,” if we think about someone with, who’s really charismatic, everyone has someone in front of their inner eye, right? A lot of people say Steve Jobs charismatic. A lot of people say, I don’t know, whoever. Some superstars, they’re charismatic. They come in the room and they’re just like stopping because they’re amazing. But then there is normal people and you somehow have to achieve the same outcome even though the room doesn’t shine up just because you walk in. So probably it also shines up because the people walking in are famous, and if they would just be like some normal guy, it will also not shine up because then it wouldn’t be so amazing that this person is here. Yeah.

So being charismatic, um, is something you can try to achieve by two things. People think that someone has charisma if there is two. Um, key ingredients, kind of: warmth and competence.

So if someone is really warm and talk really friendly and is really nice and understanding, it’s not enough, because then you might be like, “Okay, yeah, it’s a nice guy, it’s a nice girl, but they don’t know what you’re talking about.” If you only talk in the competent way, if you’re only all about numbers and all about achievement and all about stuff like that, but there is no single friendly word, no single, uh, small talk, people might think that you’re arrogant. So having a balance between competence and warmth in talks is a way that people think that you’re more charismatic, which will lead to them talking more easy to you. Right?

So we had the question asking. Uh, we had the connection, uh, creating kind of, and yeah, let’s just, I have to change my, so that I can see, okay, that’s also really important, right? If I talk to someone and I have the feeling that they kind of don’t feel comfortable talking to me, I can just tell them, “Okay, see, we’re just having a talk. We don’t have to operate on someone dying in front of us. We’re just having a talk. So if something doesn’t make sense, just tell me. Just say no.”

So a real negotiation is a conversation where both parties all the time are allowed to say, “No, it’s not okay for me.” And then you can talk about what has to happen, that it’s okay for both of you, because it’s just, it’s like in the private life, it’s just trying to figure out how to achieve something with someone else. If you’re talking to someone who’s not you, you always have to kind of find out where is the line where we can still work together, and where is the line where it’s not working anymore, right?

So. Creating a scene where the other party is fine with saying, “No, come on, this is not really what we are looking for,” is great. Because then you could just say, “Okay, what are you looking for? Just tell me. Maybe we can figure it out.” There is nothing worse than someone telling you, “Yes, yes, yes, yes,” and then you never hear from this person again, because then you don’t know what you did wrong. Right?

So reaching a yes without a mutual action plan how to implement whatever you are selling doesn’t make any sense, right? So even if someone tells you, “Yes, your music is great, maybe at some point we can figure out that you play at our venue.” That’s not a yes, that’s a “please shut up.” I’m at an event that I don’t want to talk to you. Probably, probably not.

So asking for a mutual action plan, asking for follow-up meetings, dated follow-up meetings is the key to successfully sell whatever. So if Ben tells me, “Yes, of course you can play at my venue. Um, my just let’s talk next time.” I would be like, “Okay, um, can we just make a date right now? How about Friday next week at 12? I’ll buy you lunch.” So then we have a date. Then we have a mutual action plan that our next meeting discussing. What I want to discuss is on this day, on that time, just creating a yes is not hard because you get a yes, really easy just by people wanting you to shut up. Okay?

I’m sorry that I’m so honest, but that’s just what happens all the time. People telling you, “Yes, of course I’m gonna listen to it,” and then they never listen to it because, come on, they just had 30 other talks telling everyone else the same thing. Even if you at least, no, the more important the people are, the more often this happens because just imagine someone who’s really important in her or. Or his field is going to some, to some restaurant and there is 10 people knowing who this person is. And five have the guts to go up to them and ask them for something. They all ask the same thing. Okay. At least 50% don’t even have the guts to go and talk. But the other five are just talking about me, me, I, I, I want, when are we doing this? “Yes, of course. Just call my office and set the date.” And then guess who you’re talking to? The person who’s hired to not put you through. Okay. Questions.

Dominik: Okay. Already done with my slides, but we could just go through some other things if there is, um, anything you want to know, anything based on your experience. Probably some, I don’t know, um, situations you’re in right now, we can openly discuss everything you want. If you feel free to share it with us. Maybe I can even help.

Unidentified Speaker: Now I have a question. Mm-hmm. Um, I was in a situation where I was like, put up on the spot do to do a pitch for a booker of the theater. And I was very like, “Oh my God, this is happening now.” Um, what are for like a future similar situation, what would be best? ‘Cause they ask, “What is your program like?” And that you have to give your, your pitch. Um, but how could I also involve like, “What are you looking for or like what sort of place do you look for?” But you have a sort of a vast program.

Dominik: Um, for my sales team, I train them like this. There is a part of negotiations, which I call discovery, or which is called discovery. I’m not the only one doing this. This is finding out what people are looking for. So if you already are done with your, um, product and you can’t change it anymore, it’s a little too late for discovery because then probably doesn’t make so much sense anymore.

But anyways, you could find out what’s the budget for it. Um, what other reasons are there to book your show, right? So you could ask something like, “Is there some topics you really, um, want to talk about through your theater to your audience?” Which I can probably provide for you if you just tell me what you want to want me to write about, right?

The thing is, you have to be a little careful because out of a business perspective, um, consultants are always very fast on advising you to change something to make more money. Out of an artist perspective, I, I studied jazz piano in, um, Cologne with Bert Nues and in my first lesson he told me, “If you always do music you think your audience wants to listen to, you will always have an audience who doesn’t want to hear what you’re playing.” So changing the product should be the very last thing you’re doing after you tried everything else, because then, okay, maybe there is just no market for your product. But if you try to do something once and it doesn’t work out, that’s not, then that’s not a reason to change your product. It’s not a reason to why you should evaluate if what you’re doing makes sense or not. Yeah.

So in the discovery, you could find out what they’re looking for. You could find out the, um, business situation. You could find out the art situation. You can find out if they have free slots for newcomers, whatever. And this can be a separate meeting if you have time for it, if you found out everything and then build your case and then you are already at the pitch. Then you just have to deliver what they want to, what they want you to deliver, right? Because there’s nothing worse for people who don’t have time if you waste their time. Okay?

So if you’re already in the situation that you have to pitch right now and you’ve got five minutes and you start with asking questions for four and a half minutes, that’s not the time to ask questions. You miss the time to ask questions, sorry to say, but this was like two weeks ago. Now you have to present.

If it’s so short on time that you didn’t have the time to ask questions, you could either try to, research mode, like find out everything, you can find out what did they do the last 10 years, what are they looking for? Is there some articles about the owner of the place, what he or she thinks, their political, um, values, whatever. And then build your case around that. Or you could just go all in and say, “Okay, it is what it is. Maybe it works out or it doesn’t, but I’m just presenting the best way I can.”

Unidentified Speaker: And do you have some extra tips about the actual pitch in person?

Dominik: Okay. I’m now answering very shortly. Um, if you’re pitching something, we have to understand that what we learn in school and what the reality wants to us to do is complete different story. So be precise, be short, be fast, tell the most important things, and don’t like, no one wants to listen to something for an hour to understand what it’s about. Short sentences. Short message. Short pitch, as we say in German. Okay.

Unidentified Speaker: Thank you.

Unidentified Speaker: Thank you, Tik. I have a very technical, uh, question. Um, it, um, also concerns having your emails read. We already talked about subject texts, but I, um, had the experience also like a few days ago with a promoter, and I had a colleague with a similar experience with, um, like email domains with like, what is your, uh, the name of your email and if you have, um, if it’s really like a problem getting into spam filters if you don’t have like an @gmail.com or something, because I have a, um, it’s a bit T, like a T-online business web mail, but it has my name for a domain. And, um, I had a colleague who had a similar thing with a not very common, not European name, and he said he experienced it very often that, uh, his emails didn’t go through. Um, because like a lot of like spam filters would just like take out if it’s not a common domain. Um, is this really like a problem? Should you like opt for a, like a Google mail or something very, um, like basic or, um,

Dominik: Well, of course there could be some cybersecurity, um, criteria with the party you’re writing with, but that’s not in your power to knock that out, right? So you can, as I said before, do A/B tests, write the same email with another account. If your email goes through, then, um, it’s based on security issues. You couldn’t maybe talk to your email provider, um, about this because then probably they have a problem. And if you also don’t get the answers with the other email address, probably it’s because of your email. Sorry.

Bernard: There’s one thing on that. Um, you need to make sure that they, uh, have the anti-spoof and the DKIM, um, regulations in there. Some email providers don’t have that. And especially if you have your own domain, a lot of the musicians forget to do that kind of very technical stuff, which is not complicated, but you need to make sure you have that. T is brilliant in teaching you how to do that. And it’s also a lot of times in the FAQs actually how to set it up. But I’m not a technical person, so thank you, Natalie, for, um, jumping in.

Natalie: My pleasure. I always do.

Natalie: Yes. Hi. Um, thank you for all the information. I have, uh, something that I continuously struggle with, which is when I, uh, pitch to a venue, mm-hmm. Or a person that I don’t know well, that I find it difficult to determine the price point that they are interested in because if you’re too low, they will think you’re not serious. If you’re too high, they will think you’re not serious. And if you have any ideas on how to figure that out in a way that’s not, “What’s your budget?” because that’s way too, yeah. Too upfront.

Dominik: Yeah. Um, I think what we have to understand about money and pricing is that there is no rule how expensive some things should be. Mm-hmm. Because if you look at 20 different shoes, they have 20 different prices and there is no logical reason why it’s like this. It’s fantasy. The price someone pays is the explanation you give. If you give a good explanation on high price, you get it. If you give a bad explanation on low price, you don’t get it because the price is actually the value you’re offering.

So if you can make sure that you are doing your homework, that you’re good in discovery, that you figured out some pain points, um, your opponent might have some solutions for how to solve it, then, um, getting the money you’re asking for is way easier.

There is a mock trial, I’m sending it to Bernard, maybe he can send it out to you there, um, on YouTube, um, where they negotiate the price for video recording and the guy makes sure that, or he, he asks the person, “Okay, if I make a video for you and you use it for advertisement, um, how much revenue do you create with this video? What’s your goal on on revenue creation if you do that video?” So he says like, “Okay, we are expecting an increase of $25,000$ Euro sales because, um, of the video campaign.” And then he says, “Okay, and if you’re making $25,000$ euros out of this campaign, why is it?” And then he’s like, “Okay, will you stream it for more than one year?” “Yes, we’re doing it for three years.” “Is it expected that you will make $25,000$ euros every year based on this video?” “Yes, it is.” “So you’re making $75,000$ euros based on that video. So it’s not so much to ask for $3,000$ euros if you’re making $75,000$ euros your revenue.” Mm-hmm.

So this is a whole discussion. I’ll send the link to Bernard. He will send it to you. This is way easier if you’re, um, if you’re like, not doing art, but doing some kind of work. Yeah. Thing. If you’re doing art, it’s all about, um, yeah. Giving, giving explanations and value to what you’re doing. Mm-hmm. Um, and finding out if they have the budget. Actually, it’s not so hard.

Well, you have to ask the question. It’s like, “Okay, what are you looking for?” Okay. “Um, how do you think this could take place?” Then they will tell you. Then they’re like, “Okay, we can offer you $50$ euros each.” And then you could just ask them like something like, “Okay, how am I supposed to do that? I have to go there, I have to bring my band, I have to do this and this, this and that. How am I supposed to make this happen with the budget you’re giving me?” Yeah.

And what we shouldn’t do is negotiating with ourself, but what we should do is make them negotiate with themselves because then they might be, if they’re nice people, um, like, “Okay, yes, you’re right. Um, I didn’t think about that. Um, if you have to cover the travel and if you have to stay in a hotel, we could maybe afford paying you $150$ Euros,” and then you could go on and go on until you reach the point where you can kind of accept the offer.

Natalie: Yep. Thank you.

Dominik: Thank you so much, Dominik.

Bernard: Just as a last thing, any kind of call to action you want to push, um, give the yes all members of that audience, please.

Dominik: Just try it. Like, come on. There is a million musicians in the world. Yes. If someone writes an email and it was not a good enough email, no one will remember. The thing is, if people do something and it doesn’t work, no one remembers and no one actually finds out about it. We only find out about the people who succeed. So if you just keep on working, if you just keep on trying to get more information as you’re doing right now today, which is amazing, just keep participating.

Also talking to some people from other, um, posh from other fields so that they can give you input on stuff, um, will do. You will do you amazing if you, if you’re in your business, because if you want to build a business and you’re only talking to artists, it’s a little hard, right? If I want to, uh, do a company and I’m a lawyer and I only hire lawyers, no one’s gonna do the tax. So make sure that you are. Fit in every field, not just in your artistic field. And then, um, just try it. Just try it. There is no wrong emails. If you are polite, if you try to create value, the worst thing which could happen is that you don’t get an answer. Mm-hmm.

Bernard: Dominik, thank you so much. Wonderful having you. Um, I think that you also do some courses from time to time for musicians, right?

Dominik: Yeah. Yes. Well, I do one-on-ones. We can just have video calls like this, and this is only in German. For German speakers. I recorded 39 lessons on how to do sales and negotiations online in your own tempo. It’s like 90 euros. You can just, um, access lifetime or let’s say not lifetime, but lifetime of the platform it’s recorded on. Because if they delete the platform, then it’s not lifetime anymore. But as long as the platform exists, and I’m pretty positive that this will be long, you would’ve the access and could just work off the topics in your own tempo.

Bernard: Thank you, Dominik.