The Art of Negotiation, Part III: How to Establish Criteria

All right ladies and gents, I’m assuming you’ve read the firsttwo installments on negotiations, so I want to go a little deeper into the aspect of establishing the criteria for booking that next gig. So what exactly is involved in examining the needs of both your band and the venue?

The first question to ask is what you want to get from the venue. What is the location of the venue and what kind of neighborhood is it in? I find this is usually a good place to start as you will not push your career forward playing in a crime ridden, downtown slum off the main road with no draw, bad food, poor lighting and a broken sign. The location of the club will also tell you a few things that you need to know such as the what kind of budget they have, and what kind of draw they get. After that you can ask  questions such as How much pay will they provide, what kind of stage setup do they have, do they have adequate lighting and power, is the date you want available and do they have a built in audience that will satisfy your needs?

Now you need to find out what it is the venue requires of you. Any place worth booking will want to entertain their regular patrons and chances are they have established criteria for performance quality. Can you deliver that quality? They will probably be looking for new customers as well and this means having a draw of your own that you can reasonably guarantee. Remember, their customers are your customers too and you need to satisfy their needs. Are they looking for your kind of music? 

I remember a time in my old band Moodshifter when we were set to play at the Vault in Redlands, which is typically an outdoor gig. We were a hard rock act and very loud and making matters worse was that fact that we were playing indoors (due to rain) at a venue not designed for an indoor hard rock act. We were young and indignant and would not turn down low enough, our drummer was very, very loud as well ( when someone invents a volume knob for drummers, let me know).

The people could barely hear us for the noise and half of the crowd left. Those who stayed later commented that we were good, but too loud. Needless to say, we were never hired back. We did not meet their criteria. We failed as a band to address the venues concerns and as a result we never worked there again. We should have turned down, way down. The drummer should have been able to play softer. Heck, it might have been a good idea to play acoustic that night but take a lesson from this: Adapt to their criteria or don’t play.

You will learn a lot about your band and the booking procedures required for attaining success and if you keep in mind that your goal is to satisfy both the needs of the venue and the needs of the band. The more you approach the table with this attitude, the happier you will make everyone and the likelihood of getting future gigs is increased and hat is definitely a win-win.

Part IV


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http://performingbiz.com
How To Be Your Own Agent-Jeri Goldstien