🔁 RECAP: Should your client take the job?
Alex is the Managing Director of major UK talent agency InterTalent. He represents his clients alongside overseeing the agency's creative strategy, day-to-day operations & acquisitions.
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📄 The Dealmakers Deal Sheets
The question I get asked more than any other is: What should I be asking for in this deal?
Acting agents negotiating their first podcast deal. Creator agents doing their first TV contract. Performers representing themselves with no idea where to start.
When you’re faced with negotiating a project for the first time, it’s almost impossible to know what information you need to consider.
That’s exactly why I’ve launched the Dealmakers Deal Sheets 🚀.
Easy-to-use templates for agents, managers or anyone who self-represents, built by me. This is the checklist I wish I’d had next to me when I started.
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🔁 RECAP: Should your client take the job?
One of the hardest things an agent has to do is to get their client a job.
Whatever it is, whatever your client does (actor, presenter, creator, comedian, athlete etc), you’ve been put in play to create opportunities and add value. That’s not easy. Your client is putting their belief and trust that you will bring more to the table to enhance their career. People take for granted just how tough it is. Of course, for some of your clients, job offers will fly in left, right and centre, but for others, offers don’t come around often. If you have a career in talent management, you will experience both sides of this and everything in between. Some days it all lands in your lap, other days it feels like the next offer will never come.
In any case, whether your client is the most wanted person on the planet or just starting with nothing much to show for their creativity and your belief in them, when a job does get offered, it is then that you are tasked with the biggest conundrum of all.
🤔 Should they do it?
Now this might seem an easy question, but talk to any agent and they can list you multiple examples of when they gave the wrong advice: Either advising a client to turn down a gig that someone else ended up taking and it was very successful, or the opposite, moving forward with something that either bombed or set you back. Hindsight is wonderful, no one is perfect, and it will happen. More than once. How you react and respond to a setback like that is what truly matters, and I will talk about that another day. No career in the entertainment industry is a straight line.
💭 Just because you get your client an offer doesn’t mean it’s the right offer.
Your client is leaning on you for the right advice. It will come down to your experience, due diligence, relationships and knowledge. I often talk here about how you need to be extremely knowledgeable, and if you don’t know your world better than the next person, then it will severely limit your ability to be great at your job.
The last thing your client wants from you is indecisiveness, yet it’s so easy to be indecisive. Going through the pros and cons is standard. There are pros and cons to everything in life, but ultimately, sitting on the fence is not the sign of strength that your client is after. They pay you, in part, to give them confident and conclusive advice. Yes, your client is the team captain. It is their decision. 90% of the time, they will agree with your thoughts. Now and then, they won’t. You have to let them make the ultimate decision, but they still expect you to be clear and give them a direction of travel.
So, how can you make the right call?
➡️ My decision-making toolkit relies on three key factors.
This works for me from a macro level, and hopefully, it’ll work for you too.
(Let’s assume that the project is at least credible in some way to even consider it in the first place. It could be an interesting story, well-written, the chance to work for a strong platform/channel/brand or cool enough in some other way.)
First, let’s get back to basics.
No matter what the offer is or what kind of talent they are, I believe you do a job for 3 reasons:
✅ To have fun
It is meant to be fun, right? Enjoy the job. Working in the entertainment industry is a privilege and far too often people get jaded and moan 24/7. We are the lucky ones. We get to create entertainment.
✅ To earn good money
There is nothing wrong with wanting to make as much money as you can for the job that you do. No one needs to hide from that fact.
✅ To get you the next job
As I have said, getting a job isn’t easy… and you want to climb the career ladder. Part of doing a great job is to hopefully help you get the next job. You want the job your client is doing to make your life easier to get the next job and keep them rising through the ranks as part of your strategy for them.
Now, in an ideal world, you would love every offer to tick all 3. If it does, take it. It sounds like the perfect gig.
But the truth is, most offers never tick all 3.
So what do you do next?
My rule is that to advise your client to accept the offer, it has to tick AT LEAST 2 out of 3 criteria.
Here’s how that could look:
👉 A job could be really fun to do and pay you a lot of money, but it won’t particularly boost your career.
👉 A job could be really fun to do and boost your career, but the budget is low and won’t pay very well.
👉 A job could pay you a lot of money and boost your career but it might not be the most fun to do.
If a job ticks 2 out of the 3 boxes, then there’s enough to gain out of it. There’s clear upside. As an agent, you’re always looking for what you and your client can get out of a job and how you can use it to your advantage. You’re always looking for an angle. Does it give us enough to play with? All three criteria are equally important, so if an offer can bring 2 out of 3 to the table, then it’s a big positive. There’s a lot there to work with and will enable you to make a considered decision.
Not every job can tick every box, and it doesn’t need to be perfect for you to advise your client to accept it. There just needs to be enough in it to ensure you can get a lot out of it. Every project your client does acts as fresh and exciting ammunition for when you’re pitching to whoever you talk to next.
I recommend writing out these 3 criteria and putting them against every offer that comes in. Weigh up the pros and cons of each one and then decide if it’s a YES or a NO. It will help you make a clear-headed decision on what the decisive advice is to your client… and when they ask you why, you can give this as your clean reasoning.
3️⃣ If it hits all 3? Yes - obviously, it sounds perfect. ✅
2️⃣ 2 out of 3? Yes - there is enough in it to make it useful and get rewarded. ✅
1️⃣ If it only hits 1 out of the 3? Not convinced - in my opinion, it’s too risky, it lacks enough reasoning and gives very little to work with. ❎
Can you JUST do a job for the money? Sure. Can you JUST do a job for a laugh? Of course… but it might turn out to be a costly mistake in the long run. It doesn’t hold enough value. It’s too risky. Maybe it makes you unavailable for a better job that might come or it backfires later down the line. We all have examples of seeing talent doing something which derails their career or loses them credibility overnight.
The great thing about having a 3-point checklist is that it means you can never have a draw. It will always give you clarity of thought.
Not everything will always work out as per my rules. The beauty of our industry is that there is no such thing as a ‘sure bet’. Our industry is about timing, luck, creativity, culture, word of mouth and many other factors you can’t control. Success in this industry often comes from taking risks, but they should be smart ones. Every deal, every client, every decision is a gamble. Use this 3-point toolkit, and I think you’ll win way more than you lose.
📥 I would love to hear from you. Any ideas, thoughts and feedback via alex@intertalentgroup.com are always most welcome.
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See you next time.
Alex
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