4 Reasons You Need A Talent Booking App

Are You Ready to Use A Talent Booking App?

If you’re used to doing things the same way because it’s the way things have always been done, why not shake things up a bit? Forbes says companies that stay static don’t succeed and reference Blockbuster as a prime example. Resisting change is a surefire way to become irrelevant.

Thanks to COVID-19, we are living in strange times and we’ve had to embrace change overnight. Many venue owners are looking for ways to streamline venue management, get more organized, and do more with less. 

When you look at how you spend your day, where does all of your time go? Is it spent on high-value work that brings in new business and increases revenue or is it spent on repetitive tasks? Booking talent is one area that can suck a chunk of your time, especially if you’re going at it manually. The good news is you can automate many processes and tasks simply by using a talent booking app.

We know, there are apps for everything these days. But how do you know if a new app is worth the investment and the learning curve? Change is always a little scary and uncertain, but change also means you are evolving and growing. 

If you aren’t sure if you’re ready to embrace a talent booking app made for live music pros, see if any of the following sound familiar. These are four common pain points venue owners like you face every day. 

Your Spreadsheets Have Gotten Out of Control

First, answer the following questions:

• How many spreadsheets do you look at on a daily basis? 
• How large have those spreadsheets become?
• How much time do you spend trying to find the information you need?
• How reliable is the data on your spreadsheet – do you have confidence the information is 100% accurate?

Spreadsheets were a huge step forward from ledgers, but they aren’t exactly modern and there’s no way to know if everything on it is truly reliable. From small business owners to large enterprises, the spreadsheet is getting replaced with automated software – and for good reason.

Spreadsheets are quickly outdated, take a relatively massive amount of time to maintain, aren’t visual, and often contain errors. They rely on manual input and let’s face it, mistakes happen. But an innocent mistake on a spreadsheet can lead to all kinds of issues.

On the other hand, when you use a talent booking app, you see the information you need to make decisions, not just raw data. You have a visual, a comprehensive picture that’s already been drawn out for you so you don’t have to dig through the data and analyze it yourself.

You’re Ready to Consolidate Your Apps

You may think all of your apps are table stakes, but if you’re using a bunch of them to manage your business, you may be giving up a lot of your time when you really don’t have to. Plus, the more apps you use and the more disconnected those apps are, the greater the risk that your data could be wrong,

• How many apps do you use to book talent and manage your venue(s)?
• Do your apps “talk to each other,” sharing data in real-time so you know the data you are basing your decisions on is accurate and up to date?
• How much are you spending on each app and how much time/energy/maintenance costs are you devoting to manage them?
• Are you shifting from app to app to get the data you need or having to manually input data from one app to another to get things done?

One of the biggest time drains is repeating tasks. If you’re using multiple apps that aren’t integrated and sharing data, you are wasting more time than you think. One survey found that workers spend an average of 520 hours per year doing repetitive tasks that could be automated. 

Then there’s the jumping from app to app. For instance, do you have an online calendar you use and then a separate offer app where you build your offers? How about the app you use to estimate revenue, profit, and break-even to know which deals are ideal?

The more time you spend inputting data and trying to get a visual on the state of your business, the less time you can spend building your business and relationships with agents and promoters. This is a clear sign that you could use an integrated talent booking app that has everything you need to run your business in one place.

You’re Ready to Make More Money

The dirty little secret of the live music business is that slim margins mean venue owners can’t usually hire the people they really need. There are so many details, moving parts, and stakeholders to manage. The sad truth is, selling tickets doesn’t always mean you’re profitable.

• How much money do you make per show if you consider the number of people and hours it takes to put one on (from offer through settlement)?
• How many resources are you committing to each show?
• What are your current margins?
• Can you quickly estimate revenue, profit, and break-even in real-time and compare deals to see which ones are most advantageous?

You have to look at productivity tools like talent booking apps as a way to automate those repetitive tasks that consume you and your teams’ time. For instance, it may take 50 hours of time to book and manage a show, but if you could cut at least 10 of those hours using an automated talent booking app, you could save about $250k in terms of resources if you booked 400 shows per year. The more time you spend on tasks that could be automated, the less money you make.

You Want a Life Outside of Work

As a small business owner, you know how much work it takes to keep your venue running. It may be the American dream to own your own business, but it’s also the hardest job you may ever have. One survey found that small business owners work twice as much as regular employees, often 50 or 60 hours per week. For many venue owners, the days quickly turn into long nights and there isn’t much of a work-life balance.

How would you respond to these questions?

• How many hours a day do you spend on repetitive tasks?
• How much time do you have during the week to do things you love outside of work?
• Are you tied to your desk because most of your work has to be done on your computer?
• How easily can you do some of your tasks via a mobile device?

Your time is worth something and you deserve to have a little fun. When you use an automated booking app, you get time back in your day so you can do other things than run your venue. It’s also important to be able to work from anywhere, so finding software with full mobile capability is critical in boosting productivity.

Automate, Automate, Automate

Answering the above questions shines a light on what’s really going on with your operations. Until you assess your current processes and technology, you can’t get a good feel for where there are opportunities for improvement.

What most venue owners want is the end to the manually-intensive, disorganized processes riddled with repetitive tasks. The answer is to leverage a productivity tool that combines collaboration, calendar, and financials for a repeatable process to book talent at venues.

When each show has approximately 40 people involved, from artists to agents to their many teams, there are too many touchpoints. One mistake can get repeated and the snowball effect can be impossible to stop.

Even if you aren’t used to using software, it’s time to have a system to organize the talent booking process. Relying on ticketing companies to provide integrated software is a mistake. Historically, they fail to produce anything of much use and their “solution” doesn’t scale from small to large shows, multiple artists, etc.

Instead, look for integrated software built by live music industry veterans for live music professionals. This will ensure your solution isn’t just a generic piece of software that you have to configure for your own needs and deal with multiple integrations. It also means you aren’t paying for features you don’t need because it was purposely built for what music venue owners do every day.

Take the time to look at your options. Compare your current processes and tools with what would happen if you used an automated talent booking app. Be sure you are realistic in calculating how many hours you and your team members spend on repetitive tasks that have the risks for errors and missed items. How much more efficient, productive, and organized would you all be if you worked from a single talent booking app that used real-time data and was available on your mobile devices? A talent booking app doesn’t look so scary now, does it?