Do you ever try and work out the best time of day, of the week, of the month - to be around the phone to pick up calls for bookings? Do you go through hours of no calls to be followed by one after another? Do you go through days of useless calls followed by loads of people wanting to book? I know some of you may re-direct calls to a mobile. We don't as we have enough work not to need to - and we don't like picking up the tab for those silly calls from advertising reps. etc. (in UK you pay for re-directed calls). Also do you know what day of the week your website is hit the most - ours is Thursdays.

If you want to get your phone to ring it's easy, paste a sheet of wallpaper, climb to the top of your step ladder, start to apply the paper to the wall, The phone will ring, it always does for me.

Most of my phone calls for kids birthday's come in between 11:00am & 1:00pm. Usually Mum calling from work on her lunch break. Most of my web site hits come around the same time of the day.
Tuesdays & Thursdays would tend to be the bussiest days with Mondays & Wednesdays not so busy & Fridays being a quite day. That is for 1st time callers anyway. People calling you back are more likely to be in evenings. This is why I try to do my school shows on Mondays Wednesdays or Fridays.
I only re-direct to my mobile if I am out of town performing school shows. You are right it is expensive, usually I am close enough to a phone to be able to call them back. I have a system where I am notified with a free text message on my mobile phone when a voice mail message is left in my system. That is good so I can promptly call them back when I am out.

I usually spend 1 month of every year overseas. The last two years I had a frined take my calls which was a mistake. I lost a lot of work. I will be in Malaysia for 3 weeks in July. I plan to let my voice mail system do all the work this time. I can check my voice mail messages over the internet and just return calls from Malaysia. I can get my free text messages in Malayisa as well.

Having a good web site also helps a lot. The more you can automate your sales process with a good persuasive web page, form and autoresponder the less work for you during the week. Last year while I was staying in Malaysia I booked in 2-3 parties per week totally over the web, no phone calls involved.

Hi Tony, I find the busiest time when the phone rings is at the start of the month. Or on Mondays. This week, my phone started to get busy yesterday, now that the kids are back at school, the mums are organising thier parties.

All the best, Billy

To come back to this thread. MONDAY, JAN. 20. Booked in 8 parties. Probably 4 of these being 'cold' Yellow Pages bookers. Now why Jan. 20? What made so many people call on this date? (Total calls including those we could not help were about 13/15). Apart from the obvious 'returns to school', and 'fine weather/dull weather' effects on people's psyche, just what causes this phenomena?

I have not experienced any such spike in calls. January here is a quite time for birthday parties. In New Zealand we have Christmas during summer and the summer school holidays are right after Christmas. Kids don't go back to school until February. The tradition here is the so many families will go and stay at a beach out of town for a week or so during January. Consequently there are not so many birthday parties going on and I think people also get a bit partied out after Christmas as well. I had 3 cancelled parties in the 2nd week of January because more then half the invited guests were out of town and could not make it. It is just starting to get back to normal now. I had 5 birthday shows last week, but only 2 of them were during the weekend.

I must have had 15 calls regarding the 22nd February and about 10 for the 23rd. These are the dates of the Blackpool Convention and are thus blocked out of my diary. Expensive weekend!

As an aside, for those of you who will be at the convention I've managed to get a place as a finalist in the UK Children's Entertainer of the Year Competition on the Saturday morning. Really pleased about that but not too pleased about the early night on the friday and planned lack of alcohol!

Billy Whizz and I are both going to Blackpool, hopefully we'll see you there.

I went last year and couldn't believe that one chap I forget his name did 3-4 tricks and a full punch and judy show all in the 15-20 minutes allowed. That's only just enough time for my intro and one good routine. It was as if he was under the impression that he who does the most stuff wins. Quantity not quality.

mslj, I'll be there to watch you in the comp. What name will you be working under, I don't expect it will be mslj!

All the best, Billy

hello Billy

The Great Si Moano is the stage name.

Emazdad - we get 15 minutes which isn't a great deal of time. The audience are the judges for the competiton with each audience member being given a voting sheet.

The voting criteria is for the most entertaining act taking into account showmanship, originality/skill, magical content and entertainment value. That's my act down the pan then - don't have any of those!

It'll be nice to see you, come and say hello after.

Regards

mslj

15 minutes would be one trick/routine, with a helper for me. I think the fact that the room is full of magicians as well as the kids effects everyones performance, The Kids entertainers in the audience judge you on how the kids react to what you do, Did the kids enjoy it, was it fun, did you capture their imaginations etc.

The other magicians judge you on your magic, and if they don't do kids the contestant that does the cleverest trick will get their vote over the one with the simpler but much more fun with the kids trick.

That's the impression I get anyway.

As a fellow Café member I'll be rooting for you, Good Luck.

We'll come and see you after your performance Simon. Good Luck, Billy

HI,
I will be there too, But I doubt if I will go to the kids comp. nothing against you MSLJ, I went to it the first few years and I found most of the acts embaracing/ not to my taste so I normaly go to the lectures. you do not have an avatar up. so I do not know what you look like.but if you see me say HI.
Phillip