How to Sell Concert Management Software to a Skeptic

We get it. There’s one in every crowd. Maybe it’s your boss. Perhaps it’s your boss’s boss. (Is that grammatically correct? It looks weird.) Or maybe it’s your co-worker who thinks software still comes on floppy disks. Whoever it is, there’s a good chance that someone thinks your suggestion to invest in concert management software for your live music venue is a non-starter. “What do we need that for, we’re doing fine with spreadsheets and email,” they’ll say. Or perhaps you’ll hear, “Our margins are tight as it is, we can’t get fancy.” You know they’re wrong. We know they’re wrong, but what can you do?

Here’s how to make the case that concert management software should be everyone’s jam.

Step 1 – Appeal to Their Self Interest

We’ve spoken with hundreds of venue owners, concert promoters, musicians, and restaurateurs and not a single one has ever mentioned that they got into the business because they love dealing with spreadsheets, email, instant message apps, and disconnected calendaring tools. Nope, folks universally regard this part of the business as a pain in the ass.

The right concert management software makes all of this go away. Everyone on the team gets access to a single platform that is an end to end solution for organizing, promoting, and putting on live events. All of the endless emails and phone calls become easy to manage tasks and messages within one app. You can get what you need to get done right on your phone from wherever you happen to be. The goal is to effectively manage the business of music while spending more time focused on the things you love about it.

Step 2 – Show them the Money

According to Nielsen Music, 52% of the US population attends some sort of live music event each year. Live music attendees spend $247 on tickets each year, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Once they are in the door, 23% purchase artist merchandise on-site, and as Nielsen Music’s VP/head of brand partnerships, Matthew Yazge explained, “If their phone is in one hand, a drink is in the other.”

How many of them are going to spend that money with you?

Integrated concert management means that promoters spend more time promoting and less time messing around with the details. Every expense is captured and recovered. Artists are attracted to venues with streamlined management practices, and organized teams work faster. Faster means more shows. More shows mean more profit.

Step 3 – Go in for the Kill with the Gory Details

If your resident doubter isn’t on board yet, it’s time to get very specific about what concert management software can do for your team. The best solutions offer the following features that might just raise an eyebrow or two.

Calendar Management

Dates are the perishable fruit of the live music industry. Once one is in the past, you’ll never get the chance to book an event, sell it out, and maximize profits. That’s why the calendar is the heart of the concert management world. The best solutions allow users to administer holds for all of their rooms, shows, and markets all from a simple color-coded online interface. You can quickly generate availability reports to share with agents and promoters. Holds, confirms, and challenges can be adjusted right from your phone.

Offer Generation

You’ll definitely want to look for a concert management platform that lets you build any type of offer that you want. It should be easy to create a custom branded offer document that pulls in potential revenue and expenses from your event budget. You’ll save even more time by setting up templates for each deal type and room. Finally, you can estimate revenue, profit, and break-even to compare deal scenarios to optimize terms.

Revenue and Expense Tracking

For your cynics, revenue and expense tracking that is meticulous, yet easy should be welcome. Careful management of these bottom-line matters is the key to profitability, after all.  With concert management technology in place, you can create templates, itemize expenses, track costs, and reconcile ticket sales in one place. That’s right if you pick an integrated solution; data from your ticket sales platform is available in real-time. Your team can track expenses at the moment they occur, rather than waiting for settlement when expense items might get overlooked. (This type of tracking has the added benefit of taking the friction out of settlement.) When the show is over, you’ll get instant insight into the event ROI without breaking out a single Excel spreadsheet.

Settlement Management

Did I mention settlement? We’re consistently told that the settlement process is one of the most annoying and error prone parts of the process. It’s no wonder, if expense information, ticket sales, offer details, advance payment, tax information, and additional revenue are all in disconnected systems, how is settlement ever done right? Forget that. Concert management software brings it all together so that a settlement sheet can be created in one click. One click.

Collaboration, Task Management, and Workflow

Putting on the show is a team effort. IMs and emails are an inefficient way to track communications, manage tasks, and get shit done. A concert management solution gives your team one place to go to assign work, track progress, and share important details. You create a historical record of each event so that you can learn from what works best. Accountability is improved, and everyone has the opportunity to do their best work.

Reporting

How easy is it to make profit projections based on historical data? Can you generate summary reports such as sales tax owed and ROI across all events and locations with a click of a button? With concert management software, you can do this and gain even more insight into employee productivity, marketing spend, and more.

Hopefully, this ammunition will help you get everyone excited about at least looking further into concert management software. Taking this critical step will help take the friction out of the business and let everyone focus on delighting your audience and growing the bottom line.