What having and losing a day-job in sales taught me about my opera career

Most young artists will understand the struggle that is the quest for the ideal “day-job”. I actually hate the concept and the term. “Day-job”. It’s a job for the day, when “normal” “working” people are working, the connotation being that is is “real” or “legitimate”. By default, that must mean that the other job you have is just some dream you are chasing, and not a “real job”. From hence forth, the day job shall be referred to as the “supplemental job”. Your art is your career and the other job just supplements your income, perhaps making it a little easier to afford this delightful season of patronage to airlines and opera companies. The truth is that in today’s world, especially in the pricey Bay Area, having multiple jobs is the rule, not the exception, among young people. It’s really just a matter of finding the right jobs.

Flexibility is key: First and foremost, the supplemental job must not get in the way of your career. You must have flexibility to take time off for auditions and rehearsals, and even be able to leave for months at a time when you do get hired for career related gigs in other locations. Many people just quit the supplemental job when they get a gig, but due to the temporary nature of a freelance career, it’s always great when your SJ allows you to take time off and return after said freelance gig is concluded. Even better is a SJ that can be done remotely so you can do some work from the road and get double-paid.

It doesn’t take up too much mind-space or day-space: It’s not your career so you shouldn’t be spending your whole day there. You have other career related work to do! The supplemental job should be easy. Also, when you leave for the day, it should be over.

My story: While browsing the Craigslist job listings, (as you do), I spotted a couple of SJ prospects that seemed like they had the potential to fit the aforementioned criteria. I sent in my resume (Opera resume, I might add. I don’t have time to make a completely separate resume!) and was pretty shocked to get a response within 24 hours from one of the potential employers. The post I had responded to was for a Social Media Marketing position for a small, high-end, specialty health-food product manufacturer with headquarters very close to my house. I had written a very nice cover-letter explaining that as a freelance opera singer, I acted as my own social media marketer every single day (translation: spends way too much time on Facebook, tweets occasionally, has posted all of 2 photos to Instagram, pins crochet patterns and DIY projects on Pinterest, and infrequently writes blog posts). I proposed that I could easily apply what I had learned from promoting my own personal brand to promoting theirs. Puzzlingly, when I showed up for the interview, I learned that the president of the company really had no intention of hiring a social media marketing specialist and really only wanted to hire an additional wholesale sales representative. This was not the job I wanted and for some reason, the more I expressed that I really only wanted to apply for the social media job, the more the president of the company became convinced that I would be perfect for the job in sales. I have never argued against myself so unsuccessfully. He told me this was the perfect job for someone who wanted to cultivate a life-long career in the Organic Food industry. I told him that that was indeed not what my goals were, that I loved Organic food but I already had a career in another area and really just wanted a part time position. After explaining that I had no sales experience whatsoever and already had a career that could render me unable to work from an office for months at a time, I got the job. I would be covering the Midwest region, and since the grocery buyers who I would be selling to generally worked early hours (and were 2 hour ahead of us to begin with), I would begin the workday at 7:30am and end around noon. Since everything would be phone sales, I was promised that I could easily work remotely in the future when I needed to travel. He told me he had a good feeling about me and really liked my energy, proving that people will always believe what they want to believe, regardless of how hard you may try to prove to them otherwise. He did ask me if I had really been in Don Giovanni. Why yes I have Sir, it says so right here on my resume. 

Here’s a crash course on how grocery stores generally work: Most grocery stores do the majority of their ordering though a distributor (a large company that pre-approves manufacturers and their products and acts as a middleman to get those products to the buyer in one big shipment). Sometimes though, stores will order directly from small manufacturers who do their own distribution. The company I was working for was one of these manufacturers. These small manufacturers have their own sales people who sell directly to individual stores and then ship directly to each store from their own warehouse. It’s a lot of extra work for everyone involved. The grocery store buyers could just look at a big catalog of pre-approved products, pick the ones they want without having to deal with sales people, and have everything come in one big truck via the distributor, or they could take up lots of their valuable time talking to individual vendors (like myself) who are trying to pitch our more expensive products that will be more work for them to order and take more time for them to keep track of and unpack. I was covering a region where the product I was selling was not established, so I was doing a lot of targeted cold-calling and trying to build up a client base in the region, basically from scratch. Because our product was not local to the area, would cost a lot to ship, and wasn’t carried by any of the major distributors, I was at a definite disadvantage. The thing is, I didn’t find this too daunting. It really wasn’t unlike the challenges I face constantly as a young freelance opera singer. As I said to friends perhaps too loudly over coffee, “I mean, how different can it be? I’ve been selling myself every day for the past few years!”

The job and I recently parted ways due to “artistic differences” after a few months together. There were many things that I enjoyed about this job, particularly my co-workers, who were wonderful people, as well as the structure that comes from having a set place to go every morning and a regular paycheck. Through the crystal clear lens of retrospect, I am also able to see that this experience taught me a lot about my opera career. Here are my findings:

1. There are many reasons for rejection and most of them have nothing to do with you or your product. When I first started the job, one of the first things I was told was “don’t expect everyone you call to buy something from you. You get used to the rejection.” Please, I am a professional rejection-getter! And I don’t mean that as in I take rejection with professionalism, I mean if I were to give you my job description as an opera singer, it would read something like Opera singer: gets rejected, sings opera, avoids acidic foods. The thing about being rejected as an artist, is that even if we intellectually know that the rejection didn’t really have anything to do with us, it still hurts because our product is us and at the end of the day, it’s us being rejected. It’s too easy to make assumptions and interpret the situation as being reflective of who we are or something we did or didn’t do. Seeing rejection from an impersonal, non-singing side of things has given me a lot of insight into some very reasonable explanations for rejection.

Wholesale representative situation: The store is already carrying similar products and there is no need for them to add something that is basically the same as something they already carry. They may be open to adding new products if they ever restructure, OR you could get lucky and a salmonella recall could slow up your competition, giving you the opportunity to swoop in and save the day. Opera equivalent: the role has already been cast or they have decided to hire singers that they have used in the past. There is really no need for them to add someone new when they can just go with someone who they have had success with before, BUT if you cultivate a nice rapport and maintain the relationship, they could keep you in mind for a time when their usual singers aren’t available or they are specifically looking to use someone new.

Wholesale representative situation: Your product is too expensive. Opera Equivalent: Since we as singers are selling a service and not a tangible good, we are in a position to perhaps use a little more of our own discretion about what we will and will not accept in terms of payment. We are in a position to offer our services at a discount if it is a project that we feel absolutely compelled to do. However, as singers and entrepreneurs, we do still have overhead/costs of doing business, and our fees need to reflect that. At the end of the day, this is our job. I think that artists have to be strong and not settle for compensation that we feel is unfair. It ruins it for everyone when companies know that they can always find someone to accept the position for less money, and it ultimately drives artist fees lower for everyone. We also need to keep our standards high by only participating in projects that we feel are worth-while for us as artist as well as for the community. I think singers have to be unified and play the long game in this situation. If we stick together and adhere to high standards in terms of what we will accept and what we will lend our talents to, it will result in fair pay and positive artistic experiences for all artists, ourselves included. If we continue to lower our standards, we will all suffer the consequences over time. Something that I found to be true and illuminating while working in sales, was that by saying that the product was too expensive, the buyers were not implying that it was not a good product and was not worth the price, they were simply saying that with their sales history and what they knew to be true about their customers, they knew that it was too expensive for it to be profitable to them. It’s just business, not a personal attack on the quality or value of the product.

Wholesale representative situation: The buyer had a negative experience with the company in the past and does not want to do business with them again. (This was always a frustrating situation for me, because obviously, being new to to company, I was suffering for someone else’s mistakes.) Opera Equivalent: I can’t remember who said this, but it is something that has stuck with me from one of the many masterclasses I observed while at school. The key to success in this field is this: “Just don’t be a dick, ok?” You could take it a step further and really strive to be a caring and considerate person, but if you do nothing else, just try not to be a horrible, unpleasant, annoying, mean person, because then no one will want to work with you. Makes sense to me!

2. You can play the short game or the long game. A week after my first day, the president of the company called me in for a meeting and said “you know, the point of this job is to sell [product]. You have yet to make a sale. What have you been doing this whole week?” Where were all those good feelings about my “energy” now? The truth was, I felt really great about the progress I had made! I was talking to grocery buyers, I was figuring out what their buying patterns were, during what seasons they were busy, and during what seasons they had trouble moving products. I was getting to know their personalities, creating a database of information and a log of our interactions, and cultivating a rapport with them. Stores have cycles. They have a set amount of space on the shelf for each section until they either decide to replace a current product, or restructure the section to make more room. Yes, perhaps a better sales person than myself could have strong armed their way into an initial purchase, but for me, I felt it would be better to play the long game. Being incredibly pushy could result in an initial sale, but we all know that feeling of being pushed into buying something that we didn’t really want! It’s a horrible feeling and rarely results in future business! Success in the food industry and the opera industry both rely on building a network of people who will want to work with you again and refer you to others long after the initial order or first contract. It’s one thing to make a sale or get a gig, and it is another to create a long-term customer or colleague. So I played the long game. I asked them questions about what their seasons were like, and what products they were having success with. I respected their time when they said that they were too busy to talk, or that today was not a good day for them. When they said that they wouldn’t be considering new products for a while, I asked about their timeline and inquired as to whether I could follow up with them in a week/2 weeks/month. I was surprised that they seemed grateful for this and when I did follow up, were appreciative and candid about the likelihood of them being able to make an order in the foreseeable future. This approach yielded a few new customers during the months I was working there, and I’m very confident that given the time, it would have yielded more.

3. Just because someone doesn’t respond to your email, doesn’t mean they aren’t interested. Following up is helpful to everyone involved and there is a polite and respectful way to follow up without being pushy. As a currently self-managed singer, I send out a lot of emails. When those emails aren’t returned, or take a while to be returned, my default assumption is usually that the recipient of the email is just not interested in me or what I have to offer. Of course this may be true in some situations, but if sales has taught me nothing else, it has taught me that people are extremely busy and usually their lack of response has nothing to do with you at all. I can’t tell you how many times I followed up with a grocery buyer who expressed interest in the product, and still, after weeks of calling, could not find a time to look at the online wholesale catalog I had emailed over. They are busy people! Sometimes they never found the time, but sometimes my call was so perfectly timed that they said “I’ve been meaning to get to that but I’ve been so busy! I have a second now, so let me take a look. Ok, I’ll take a case of this, this, and that”. Most of the time, regardless of the outcome of the call, they were happy to get a follow up from me. Most buyers apologized for not getting back to me, and many of them thanked me for being so on top of the situation. Am I saying that we as singers should be calling General Managers on a weekly basis or bombarding people with emails? Absolutely not! I just mean that if someone doesn’t respond to your email and you think that you have something to offer them that could be beneficial to them as well as to you, there is no harm in sending a follow-up email after a reasonable amount of time has passed. Use common sense and discretion in all situations and ALWAYS be polite and respectful of their time and their decisions.

4. The relationships between manufacturer and grocery store and singer and opera company are symbiotic.  Grocery stores sell items to people and manufactures make those items. The grocery store needs something to sell, so as a manufacturer you are helping the store do it’s job by selling your items to that store. The store benefits the manufacturer by buying their items. It’s all very simple and obvious! The relationship between singers and opera companies is the same, but we as singers often have a hard time seeing it that way. We often feel like the opera company is doing us a service by hiring us, but forget that we are also doing them a service by working for them and fulfilling their need for talented, wonderful, professional, kind, and delightful performers! You could be exactly what that company needs in that place and time. As always, be smart and evaluate whether you truly feel that you would be a good fit for each role and company. Be respectful and considerate in all interactions and keep in mind that you have just as much to offer to them as they to you. It could be the start of a wonderful symbiotic relationship!

I’d love to hear everyone’s thoughts and experiences with supplemental jobs. Feel free to share in the comments section of this blog, or on Facebook.