It’s Not Too Late to Make 2012 Your Best Year Ever

This post comes from Xanadu’s Director, Elaine Horejs, who is also business manager for John Horejs Studios.

I’m constantly reading and learning new materials that will be helpful for John’s professional art career as well as for the artists we represent at Xanadu. One of the most helpful secrets I’ve learned recently is to write a sales and marketing plan for the year.

Although we regularly set goals, I had never really thought about creating a written plan for the coming year that would define how we could improve our art business and find new collectors.

I finished our personal plan as well as the Xanadu plan a few days before New Year’s Eve. (In the “Insider Secrets workshop I’ll share more details about our New Years and goal setting traditions.)

Although we’re already about 1/6 of the way through 2012, it’s not too late for you to create your own plan if you haven’t already done so.

Creating a sales and marketing plan for your personal art career will help give you clarity and focus. Here are some ideas to get you started.

1.    Keep your Sales & Marketing Plan brief and simple. It should be no more than three pages. Our plans for this year are each a single page in length.

2.    Set aside some quiet time where you can think about what you want to have happen in the coming months of 2012.

3.    Look back over the events of the past year. What did you accomplish? What were your total receipts from the sale of your artwork? How many pieces did you create?

4.    Where did the bulk of your sales come from—Galleries? Shows? Commissions? Social media? Your website? Open studio tours? Advertising? The lion’s share of your activity should focus on expanding what’s already working for you.

5.    From your total sales, determine your current career phase. (We’ll discuss the three phases of art careers in my upcoming webinar.)

6.    Determine what it will take to get to the next phase of your art career, and list the actions that can get you there. Again, focus on increasing the activities that have proved most successful to you in the past.

7.    Write your plan.

For our plan for John’s personal art career, we started by asking:

What results do we want to create in our John Horejs Art business for 2012?

We then set a goal regarding the number of paintings we intend to sell and the average price per painting. Those numbers were divided by 12 to determine our monthly targets.

John also set a goal regarding the number of paintings he intends to create in 2012. Again, that figure was divided by 12 so that progress can be measured monthly.

The second section of our plan focuses on revenue producing activities.

John’s areas include inspiration, subject matter, style, production goals, studio improvements, and exploration of additional online venues to promote his paintings.

I am working on finding good galleries for his work in 5 or 6 new markets this year; servicing the existing and new galleries with new inventory, photos, and communications monthly; website improvements; inventory tracking (Xanadu’s ArtTracker program is excellent for this); and expanding marketing strategies.

For Xanadu, the plan is divided into the following sections:

•    Art sales objectives annually and monthly

•    Development of at least 10 active lead sources for the gallery (walk-ins; advertising; Art Catalogue; various art calendars; networking groups; speaking engagements; social media; referrals; internet; interior designers, architects, landscape architects)

•    Physical improvements and upgrades for the gallery

•    Improvement of sales scripts

•    Improvement of lead management & follow-up system

•    Improvement of collector feedback system

So, a little more than a month and a half has passed since we wrote our sales and marketing plans. How are we doing?

John is on track with his production goals, has completed one commission, and has since secured two additional projects. (Our goal is one commission completed per month.)

At Xanadu, my goal is to double our art sales this year over 2011 (a record year for the gallery.) By breaking the goal into monthly chunks, all we have to do is double each month’s totals from last year. We finished January a little more than double January of 2011, and are on target to double February’s sales over last year.

Take some quiet time before the end of February to contemplate where you’d like your art career to go this year. Write it down. Then, take the actions necessary to make it happen!

Elaine Horejs’ webinar, Insider Secrets to a Successful Art Career will be held live online Saturday, February 25th – for start time, click here