In business, less is more

The not-so-new digital economy may have shrunk the globe we live on, speeded up the way business is conducted online and opened up bold, new frontiers…but it sometimes seems that all of this was done at the expense of business relationships.

Before I entered the hallowed halls of the music industry, I worked in the PR and advertising agencies. In those worlds, client relationships were Ace, King, Queen – and sometimes a joker. If you bungled a client account, the company lost the client. It was as simple as that. Whether it was a bread and butter client – or one that brought in millions – it hurt. If someone continued to lose their company clients they were sacked. The attitude these days is that clients are disposable. Especially in the music industry.

I’ve just finished doing an audit of our primary B2B partners. This includes digital aggregators, audio and video content licensing and music synchronisation partners. The audit followed a period at the beginning of the year where we discussed our various sales targets with our B2B partners…and means to achieve them. A few were surprised to say the least. I suppose target setting and involving B2B partners in that process isn’t as commonplace as I thought in the music industry.

Post-audit, results were weighed against the set targets – and matched against the activities our partners engaged in to promote our catalogue. Those partners whose work returned solid sales results were enthusiastically praised. Those who were pretty much on target were also congratulated. And further conversations with both of these groups have been had to further improve sales revenue.

Those who failed to meet the targets – and pretty much failed to do anything to promote our catalogue – were placed on notice. And this seems to have genuinely shocked them. I could see the deeply furrowed brows and quizzical looks at the other end of the phone or on the other side of emails. ‘You’re holding us accountable for our performance?’ Indeed!

I’m not one for excuses. I don’t make them and I really don’t want to hear them. I don’t want to hear a litany of excuses about bad sales performance. I want to hear ‘this is what went wrong and this is what we’re going to do about it. I’m on the case mate’. Then again, I am proper old school.

However, in and amongst the many conversations that have been had with those partners who performed badly against targets, there has been a distinct apathy amongst a notable handful. That apathy screams volumes: “We have loads of labels. Yours is just one of many. We don’t care. We don’t have to. There are loads more where you came from.”

Indeed. Apathy in business can work both ways. And if enough labels become apathetic with their digital content partners and go to other providers, I doubt very much if such aggregators’ apathy will lost for long.

We will be dealing with fewer aggregators in the future. For us, the old adage is true: less is more.