Our January 2016 Animation Company Update

I think now is a good time for our animation company update for this month.  I have been crazy busy, and it seems like we have had a lot happen since last month.

Bink
Work on Bink slowed down during the holidays, but we are now moving along nicely.  We are still testing fur on Bink, and trying to figure out how to solve all the technical difficulties involved in getting it to look right.  We are finishing up the surfacing on the lab environment, and moving quickly on the animation.  We are now at a point where we can record all final dialogue, and start working on sound design and the underscore.

I wanted to share with all of you the first 6 seconds of the short as a little animation teaser.  A little perk for reading my blog.  Everything is still in progress, so temp SFX, no surfacing or lighting, and animation is only blocking.  We are getting closer every day, and I can’t wait to share more with you.

 

Project-MMM
We started a project for a client at the end of last month, and we have been busy working on it.  I can’t share details about the project, so for now I will call it “Project-MMM”.  Jared White wrote the script for us which the client loved, so he is now working on storyboarding the first episode.  We have also been working on the character assets, and the first character is almost done in modeling, surfacing, and rigging.  Animation is already starting to do test poses with the character, and we hope to show storyboards and character model to the client on Tuesday.

Our crew includes:
Jared White – Writing/Storyboarding/Editing
Linda Kurgpold – Modeling/Surfacing
Nico Sanghrajka – Rigging
Jim Richardson – Layout/Animation
Benjamin Liska – Lighting/Compositing/Rendering

Project-HIWB
Another project I can’t talk about details is what I will call “Project-HIWB”.  It is a project I recently bid on which sounds like it would be a really fun and interesting project.   I sent my bid to them yesterday, so I’m waiting to hear if we will get to work on it or not. Please keep your fingers crossed for us!

Social Media Marketing Coordinator:
In a previous post I mentioned I was looking to bring on a Social Media Marketing Coordinator.  Well I was able to find someone who I’m very excited to have onboard, Brittany Potter.  You might have noticed more activity on my social media sites, and that is due to Brittany’s work.  She will be helping with growing my social media network, reaching out to potential clients through social media, writing weekly blog posts(on the company blog), and sending out quarterly Newsletters.  She only started with me last Friday, so she is just getting warmed up.  I have to admit it is a little odd to see posts from my company which I did not personally write.  Her first blog post will be coming out tomorrow, and it will be about her joining the company as the Social Media Marketing Coordinator.  To subscribe to the company blog head over to milleranimation.com and find the “Newsletter Signup” button at the bottom of the page.

Society Mixer
This last Tuesday we had our 7th monthly networking mixer, and this was one of the biggest ones so far.  We had around 25 people sign in, but I feel like there was a good number of people who never signed in.  We had a good mix of people who ranged from those who have been in the industry for many years to people who are still in school.  One of my favorite parts of this last mixer was seeing an animator who has over 20 years experience giving priceless feedback to a student who was sharing his work.

Keep an eye out for the mixers each month, and try and make it out if you are in the LA area.  Join our Facebook Group to be invited to the mixers each month.

Producers Guild Awards:
This Saturday my wife and I are going to the 27th Annual Producer Guild Awards.  I attended the award show last year by myself, so I’m excited to get all dressed up and go with my wife this year.  What is everyone’s predictions on who the winners will be?

 

Well, I believe that about covers everything I have going on.  It seems like things are getting busier every month.

 

If you have not already, please join me on my journey by subscribing to my blog.  Also, if you have any thoughts or advice I would love to hear what you have to say, so please feel free to leave me any comments below. Otherwise, be sure to stay connected with me on Twitter (@MillerAnimation). Only Time Will Tell.

My Sales Hat: Read what I learned about Animation Sales

I often talk about how you wear multiple hats when starting a company.  Well, today I wanted to talk about a hat I have been wearing a lot lately, and this is my Sales Hat.

Have you ever thought you knew a decent amount about a topic only to have an eye opening experience which completely blows your mind?  I kind of had this happen to me recently when it came to sales.  I have always thought I was pretty good with sales, and had a good understanding of it.  Even when I worked at Apple selling computers I was always one of the top in sales at the store.  It was often me and Max who would always be competing for the #1 sales person spot.

When I started my own company I saw sales as the task I did when someone called me about a project.  I relied very heavily on my marketing to bring those potential clients to me.  Unfortunately my marketing only consisted of my website, so I did not receive many calls.  Thinking about it I’m actually surprised I got as many calls as I did.  Many of them were people who wanted a 30 minute Pixar quality animated video, and their budget was $1,000.  While I got to meet and talk to a lot of really interesting people it was from a business point of view, a waste of time.

I kept focusing on my marketing thinking the sales part was not the problem.  The truth was both were not working as well as they could have been, but it took me awhile to figure this out(I’m still figuring it out).  I also had potential clients interested in my animation services emailing me, but after I responded I would forget about them until they emailed me back.  This worked fine as long as they responded, but when they did not I lost track of them.

By now any experienced sales person reading this could see many things wrong with my sales process.  I also realize there was something not working right, and I set out to find a better way.  I started searching for a way to keep track of these potential clients, and actually had a hard time finding anything.  I obviously had been searching with the wrong keywords, since I was not finding anything.  One day I stumbled across three letters which lead to my mind blowing experience, CRM.

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, and is a term which refers to practices, strategies, and technologies companies use to manage and analyze customer interactions and data.  This is what I was looking for, and it turns out I was not the first person to think of it.  Actually as it appeared I might have been the very last person to think about it.  CRM is nothing unique, and has been around for a while.  I felt a little silly because I have not heard of it earlier.  There are also many online software tools to help companies with their CRM.

I started playing around with 2 of them to see how they might be able to help me.  The ones I have been looking at are Salesforce and Zoho, and this is where the lights really turned on for me.  They setup the whole sales process as a pipeline with different steps along the way.  This pipeline concept is something I’m very familiar with, because 3D animation is all about the pipeline.  You have different tasks which need to be done, and having a pipeline helps you keep it organized and flowing in the right direction.  I never thought to look at sales in this way, and I’m surprised it did not occur to me earlier.  I’m still learning about sales strategy, but let me share with you what I have learned so far.

What is a lead?  I normally called a lead a potential clients which is about as far as I went with any type of structure.  In a CRM they look at Leads as the first step in the pipeline.  Leads can be people who contact you directly through your website,  referred to you, brought in by marketing, or were on a client list you purchased.  There is a whole process which you take the leads through which includes stages like discovery, nurturing, and converting.  You start off by trying to find out as much as you can about the lead and qualifying if they are a good lead or not.  Then you make first contact to find out about what their needs are, and how your services can help them.

Once you know what they are looking for you start to build a relationship with them.  I read a study which says on average it takes 7 times of reaching out to a client before making a deal.  Most people reach out to a potential customer 2-3 times before giving up.  My thought is 7 times would be annoying, but I heard this multiple times.  So when I hear it a 7th time I guess I will have to believe it.  The idea is people are more likely to do business with someone they are familiar with.  You want to build trust with your clients, so they are willing to take a chance with you.

After nurturing the relationship you continually move closer to close the deal, and turning this lead into a client.  In these programs they have leads, clients, accounts, competitors, and a much more organized way of looking at your client data. I found this all to be extremely interesting.  While I don’t plan to turn my company into a sales powerhouse, since I feel the whole process could easily start to feel robotic.  There is still a lot which I can take away from this.  I think a sign of a good sales person is someone who has a good structure, strategy, and process, but at the same time can be very personable and natural.  I would not want my clients to feel like they are just another number in the pipe.

Learning about this pointed out I not only need a better system closing deals with potential clients, but also I could do a better job at generating leads.  I can take a more proactive approach then sitting back waiting for people to visit my website and call me.  I have looked into brining on sales reps, but I have heard from other animation studios who have had mixed experiences.  It seems like the general consensus is doing it yourself is always best, but if you have to bring someone in then commission-only is the way to go.  Otherwise you risk spending money with little or no results, and the sales reps are more motivated when they only earning money if they are making sales.

I realize I still have a lot to learn about sales, but the more I wear this hat the better it fits.  I would love to hear from all of you about your sales secrets, and let me know if you have anything to add to what I mentioned.

 

If you have not already, please join me on my journey by subscribing to my blog.  Also, if you have any thoughts or advice I would love to hear what you have to say, so please feel free to leave me any comments below. Otherwise, be sure to stay connected with me on Twitter (@MillerAnimation). Only Time Will Tell.

Eric Miller Animation’s New Year’s Resolutions

Happy New Year! 2016 will be our second full year in business, and I wanted to share my New Year’s resolutions for the company.   I recently posted how we did with the goals I set at the beginning of last year, and I’m hoping we can accomplish more of our goals this time.  Last year I was a little zealous in what I thought we could accomplish in our first full year of business, so this year I wanted to set more realistic goals.

Animated Short:
We are getting really close to finishing our first 30 second episode for Bink, and I would love to be able to make at least 2 more this year.  So my goal is to have 3 episodes of Bink online by the end of this year.

New Clients:
Last year I had the goal of 3 new clients with large projects, but I realized the difficulties in attracting clients if I did not have an animation portfolio to show.  I ended up shifting my efforts away from finding clients to creating our own animated short which we could use to show potential clients the quality of work we can produce.  With us finishing the first episode of Bink early this year I hope it will help in brining in more clients.  I will also be increasing my marketing efforts, so with the combination of the two I feel we will be in much better shape to find more clients.  So the goal this year is again to get 3 new projects this year.  While it be nice if they are large accounts I will take any profitable projects.

Learn Something New:
This is a pretty easy goal to accomplish, since I feel I’m learning something every day.  The reason I put it down is because I feel it is extremely important to always be learning, and growing.

Grow Social Network:
There are two parts to this goal which are both important for my hybrid company.  The company is hybrid because it is both an animation studio, and an animation service company.  The goal is we do service work to bring in money, so we have the money to create our own projects.  The way I want to use social media is in two ways.  First to build our fan base, so when we post our own content it can reach more people. Second is to use social media to connect with potential clients by reaching out to them by commenting, liking, and sharing their posts.  Basically anything to get them to notice us, and build a relationship with them.  Social media is a great way for clients to learn about your brand, and be more open to work with you.  I will be hiring a Social Media Marketing coordinator this month, and hopefully they can help me accomplish this goal.  My goal is to increase our network by 100% on all our social media networks.

Increasing each network by 100% will be as follows.
Facebook: 4,427 –> 8,854
Twitter: 513 –> 1,026
LinkedIn: 146 –> 292
Google+: 11 –> 22
InstaGram: 235 –> 470
YouTube: 5 –> 10

Profitable 2016:
I always expect the first few years to be a loss.  I started the company in July of 2014, and surprised myself when the first 6 months were profitable.  Then last year I ended up spending more money then I brought in, but we were only slightly in the red.  If you look at the entire life of the business we are still profitable even with the loss last year.  I also have not been taking a salary myself, and have been keeping the money in the business.  This year my goal is to make enough where I can actually take a salary(even a small salary), and still have the business be profitable. I do enjoy growing the business, but making some money would be nice especially with our growing family.

 

I will keep my the list of my main goals pretty short.  I will always be setting other goals throughout the year, but these are the big ones I’m hoping to accomplish.

 

If you have not already, please join me on my journey by subscribing to my blog.  Also, if you have any thoughts or advice I would love to hear what you have to say, so please feel free to leave me any comments below. Otherwise, be sure to stay connected with me on Twitter (@MillerAnimation). Only Time Will Tell.