My recent Halloween post about sales may have been satire, but the message was no joke. Sales is the new arts marketing. If your organization isn’t serious about sales, it probably won’t survive.

If you’re not quite sure what sales is, here’s a definition:

Sales is about engaging with people in the marketplace, persuading them to buy your products, and making sure their transactions are completed.

In the arts we lump many things under the sales umbrella including box office, phone rooms, ticketing system management, websites, etc., but these are really just customer service. If the customer has already decided to buy and has contacted you to make the purchase, it’s not sales.

We also talk about group sales, but this is an archaic pigeonhole that needs to be eliminated.

Sales is a proactive, persuasive endeavor designed to identify potential customers, reach out to them personally, motivate them to buy, and manage their sales transactions to completion. It also involves the development of long-lasting, mutually beneficial community relationships. (Think of it as goal-oriented community engagement.)

I was encouraged to read recently about Seattle Symphony Orchestra’s successful sales initiative. They’ve hired a manager-level salesperson who identifies and then connects with key individuals in the business community who can deliver single ticket sales in bulk. From what I can tell, this is a good example of where most large to mid-size arts institutions should be starting.

If your organization is considering sales, there are several things that require careful consideration. I will be detailing these issues in subsequent posts, but here are a few highlights.

ARTS CULTURE vs. SALES CULTURE

Any arts organization that wants to embrace sales will have to be prepared for seismic changes in its organizational culture. Nonprofit arts organizations are, by nature, self-centered and inwardly focused. Sales culture, meanwhile, is consumer-centered and outwardly focused. Because arts and sales are so diametrically opposed in their fundamental orientations, most arts organizations will find it painful and perhaps even impossible to incorporate sales into their administrative systems.

B-to-C vs. B-to-B

The largest hurdle organizations will face with sales is being operationally capable of satisfying the demand. Nonprofit arts organizations sell tickets to consumers, which means they operate on a business-to-consumer (B-to-C) model. Sales will focus largely on selling tickets to businesses, however, which means that arts organizations will have to modify their operational systems to accommodate business-to-business (B-to-B) practices. Unfortunately, all of our ticketing and box office systems (and cultures) are designed around B-to-C demand and often can’t (or won’t) capitalize on B-to-B potential.

TRADITION vs. SURVIVAL

Arts leaders who have no particular expertise in professional marketing take great comfort in tradition because it gives them something to point to and say, “this is how it’s done.” But there will be no such tradition to fall back on with sales. No one can say, “that’s-the-way-we’ve-always-done-it” because it’s never been done this way. Embracing sales will mean doing something new – or at least new for the arts. Theme parks, major league sports teams and popular visitor attractions have been doing sales for decades. Theirs are the traditions that arts leaders will need to rely on.

PERSUASION vs. PROMOTION

Sales is a persuasive enterprise. Arts marketing is a promotional enterprise. The difference between persuasion and promotion is key to understanding why sales is necessary. As self-motivated audiences die off, promotion loses its power. And as under-motivated audiences become our only hope for survival, persuasion becomes paramount. Arts organizations that fail to sell (a.k.a. persuade people to buy) will die.

Sales is coming. Every arts organization will have to deal with it sooner or later. Those who deal with it sooner will stand a far greater chance of making it through this audience crisis.

If you’d like to find out how your organization can increase paid participation by selling tickets, join me for a series of posts focusing on sales – the new arts marketing.