The Usable Clown

As most books on clowning will tell you, the first contact with a potential client is the most important call of the whole gig. Most of the time you have about 30 seconds to two minutes maximum to impress the client enough to get them to hire you. This doesn’t mean that you have to blow there mind, you just have to make them intrigued enough to keep talking to you.

The hardest call to make is the restaurant cold call. This is when you just show up at a restaurant, ask to see a manager and convince him that hiring you to make balloons for tips or otherwise is a benefit to his restaurant. It dosen’t matter how fabulous your balloons are. If he, or she, dosen’t see it as a benefit to his business he will not hire you.

So what do you do, I would suggest these three things: Dress to Impress, Show Value and Ask Questions. Those are the three things that I have done when approaching a restaurant and while I can’t guarantee that it will work for you, it has a better success rate then being a slob, not showing the value and bragging about how good you are.

1. Dress to Impress: A lot of children’s entertainers that I have met feel that since they are “goofy” that they can look goofy when interviewing for a gig. This is so far from the truth that its not funny. If you approach restaurant manager wearing jeans, a t-shirt and sneakers, his immediate thought is going to be that you are going to show up to entertain in that same outfit. The same goes for faded clothes, outdated clothes, tight or baggy clothes. You want to exude professionalism and the best way to do that is start with the dress and the rest will follow. You may have noticed that when you are dressed up you have a different attitude then when you are in sweat pants. That is the attitude that will carry you on towards success and not hold you back. The flip side of this is that you want to look comfortable. So if you hate ties, don’t wear a tie, if you hate skirts don’t wear a skirt. Just make sure that you look nice.
2. Show Value: Showing value in a restaurant situation can seem daunting if you have never entertained in a restaurant before. This is because you don’t have a job description, so you don’t know what your duties as an entertainer is. Well here is a description that should hopefully get you in the right mind set. Your primary job is to help the restaurant run smoother, not to entertain the guests. That’s right, entertaining the guests is secondary to getting people in, fed and back out quickly and efficiently. This means that you don not approach tables until their menus are gone and they have ordered. If asked, politely tell them that you will be back after they have ordered. This also means that you stay out of the servers way. If they come to a table to see how everything is, step back and let them talk to the table. Doing this will also prevent the servers, most of them anyway, from resenting you and thinking that you are stealing tips from them. With those two goals, helping the restaurant run smooth and allowing the servers to interact with their tables, you will be more successful and potentially get more tips.
3. Ask Questions: This means that when you are meeting with the manager(s) you actively find out what they envision or need from an entertainer. By asking them what they want or need you will be able to decide if this restaurant is for you as well as figuring out if they really want a balloon artist. While you are asking them questions you can find out if they have worked with entertainers before and what kind of experience they had with them. When you ask them questions you will be able to allay their fears and help them see you as the superstar entertainer that you are.

These three ideas are just part of your overall presentation. You need to know what you offer to the restaurant, other then adding value. There needs to be a good reason for them to hire you over another. That is something that you have to figure out for yourself since every entertainer does everything a little bit differently.

One of the hardest parts of being a professional entertainer is when the economy starts to decline and people start making the choice to pay bills instead of hiring an entertainer. If this hasn’t hit you yet I hope that it never does. There are a few ways to adjust your clown business model to compensate and adjust to still maintain a prosperous business. It is important to plan these things in advance so that you don’t end up scrambling for business and your over all quality suffers.

The first thing that you need to do is sit down and make a list of all your expenses and income for the past year. This will help you get an idea s to what you can expect for the coming year as well as help you make decisions as to what can be cut. When looking at your expenses really decide what you need and what is just a luxury. We all would like to get a new costume or a new electric balloon pump but it isn’t really a have to have item. What you need to order are balloons, face paints and any other perishable or give away items. When it comes to costumes, learn to sew. That way you can fix any problems that you might have and possibly learn to make you own costumes in the future. When it comes to ordering balloons try to work with your fellow balloon users and try to make your order together so you can get a better bulk price. Also most juggling props can be fixed if broken, plus they are meant to be dropped so they shouldn’t break.

Next you are going to want to change your target market. Most, or at least a lot, of us spend a majority of our time entertaining for families with children and those are the people that are going to be hit the hardest when money gets tighter. Businesses are also going to get hit, but they are going to be trying to instance people into spending money at their business. That is where you come in. Make them see you as an advertising asset. Make sure that they know that you will give 110% to there event and will do additional promotion on your website to make sure people know you are going to be there. This is a good time to get in the good graces of businesses by offering discounted rates on multiple dates, filling up your calendar while giving them a discount making them like you better

The third thing you need to do is increase the area that you are willing to travel. Even an increase of 10 miles broadens the impact of your brand and gives you a new area to work. When broadening your area try not to raise your prices any more then to cover the cost of your car and gas to get there. Increasing your brand awareness will not only help you now but in the future, allowing you business to stay big when the money is good again.

Remember that you want to keep agile in the slowing market. you don’t want to be caught stagnant and crumbling as the economy starts to grow again. Another thing to keep in mind is that good will shows will go a long way to help everyone get through these tough times. So volunteer, help out or just make people smile everyday.

Oh and we’re back to posting, thanks for waiting and enjoy.