John was a Realtor. The past couple of years had been the toughest ever.

“John," he said. “Do you have any idea how many leads you lost in the past three months?”

 

“Well, maybe a few here and there," said John. “I don’t really keep track."

 

“What?” answered his boss angrily. “Are you telling me that you’ve spent hours researching homes and showing your clients house after house, and you have no clue how many sales opportunities you missed? Are you serious?

 

"How about the Taylors? They seemed ready to buy and they bailed out at the last moment. What went wrong?”

 

“Oh, I remember them,” said John. “They backed out because they said the escrow fee was too high.”

 

“That might be true,” said his boss, “but do you want to know what really happened?

 

"After you had put in all your time and found them the perfect house, they walked out of our office and contacted the sellers directly. Two days later, the property was sold.”

We have around 4,000 active Premium subscribers on the site and these are the stats we keep regarding hirings:

 

50% – book at least one a month

30% – book between one and five a month

20% – book more than five a month.

 

Since we don’t control who gets hired (or) why and when, we currently have no accurate way to account for this.

 

Although we do know most jobs are granted on the site, because we see talents are renewing constantly since our sales have been growing constantly through the months, and the only way talents have money to renew is if they get work.

Because we deal with large production companies and ad agencies for the most part, virtually all the auditions we do are for actual jobs.

 

It is rare that an ad agency would take the time, effort and money it takes to put together an ad campaign, hire a copywriter to write the script, get as far as voicing it, and then completely dump it.

 

If one of our talents gets the job, we are of course, thrilled. If the client books elsewhere, we do call and thank the client for the opportunity and ask who booked the job.

In answering your question, Paul, I would have to say that 100% - with a little margin for error - would be the number of auditions that actually become jobs.

This Escrow fee is kept by Voices.com to cover the charges that we incur from holding the deposit for a period of time in a secure third-party account.

You’ve noted that many people are concerned to see that some of the past jobs they’ve auditioned for months ago have not yet progressed to awarding a talent, leaving them to wonder if a client is merely window-shopping or kicking tires, possibly also wondering if auditioning online is a waste of time.

 

According to a snapshot of statistics from the last four months (April 2009 through July 2009), tracking the completion rate of jobs posted at Voices.com, we can confirm that at any given stage, half of the open jobs are still being reviewed by their client, and the other half are completed (that means a talent has been chosen), with over 2/3 of those completed jobs being verified and processed via SurePay.

 

Although this information is reassuring, we are aware that there is still room to improve and to grow.

1. Some clients, regardless of their deadlines for finding talent, may not have a pressing need to have their voice-over recorded instantly. In other words, they file away the auditions until they are ready to hire. Sometimes this could take many months, but eventually, someone gets the job.

 

2. Some clients use sites like Voices.com to find talent, and they prefer to work with them off-site, leaving their job in an “Open” status. This explains why there are fewer “completed” jobs than there truly are.

 

3. Some voice talents and/or voice seekers don’t want to use the SurePay system. If that’s the case, the job won’t be registered as completed.

Agencies will do a lot of casting for projects they “hope” will become a client. They will hold auditions ... actors will hold their breath - after creatives fawn all over them ... expect a hold or booking ... alas ... no call!

 

Of course it happens that another (voice actor) is booked. But it does also happen that no one is booked, as the agency did not get the account or the budget was cut.

 

It also happens that an audition is used as a demo in a pitch for the account. The performer never knows about it. Top brass may not even know this practice is going on at his or her agency.

 

The head of production is calling the shots without others in the chain of command knowing anything about you (performer) being screwed.

 

You may have been instrumental in getting an account. When the time came to cast for the account, you may have been forgotten for a more high-profile talent.

 

I protested this practice, to the shock of the production chief. It was an uphill battle to have any effect on this practice, but I did make some headway.

 

In short, we don’t have many options in regard to this practice. Many agencies or agents don’t participate in this practice. But it does happen.