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<\/a>Agents are specialized business partners who technically works for you to open as much doors as possible i.e getting you into auditions and helping you navigate your career. A good agent to have is someone who has established relations with those who can cast the projects you really want to work on, or the projects that can build your reputation as a voice over artist. You and your agent\u2019s personalities should ideally jive. Remember your agent is someone who represents you and swinging the bat for you – your agent\u2019s business style reflects on you and vice versa as a symbiotic relationship. This needs to be clear at the onset of your relationship with your agent – you and your agent should be heading for the same direction in shaping your career. Needless to say, you as a voice talent should be someone worth representing. A lot of the good agencies don\u2019t really want to work with an inexperienced talent so be armed with a good background in voice acting and with solid training foundations.<\/p>\nThe ratio of a talent to agent is not always one is to one. Be careful to choose an agent who represents enough number of talents and not one who has too much on his plate because then, when will he have time for you and your career? Voice actors new to the business think that an agent is the key to getting jobs. Not so. Again, there are plenty of opportunities out there if you only know where to look and market yourself. An agent would be someone you would need to up the ante of your career and who would facilitate opportunities for you which you, in turn, must take advantage of as quickly as you can. A good agency would be those who have good talent pool, too. Because that means as whole, you have a good reputation and advertising agencies come to the agency looking for talents which makes your agent\u2019s life easier and good for you too as that good reputation already includes you.<\/p>\n
So now it\u2019s beginning to look like a voice actor might not really even need an agent. You can do the seeking of opportunities yourself. You can take care of arranging your own schedules, negotiating payment for work even hunting down those who still owe you. You can also take care of strategizing your career since you also know plenty of people in the business. Why not? But sometimes, a person representing himself might already have blinders on. The idea of dealing with business with a different perspective is no longer there and that is when advertising agencies or casting directors begin to find the talent representing himself as cumbersome. It\u2019s like looking at a large company\u2019s organizational structure – you begin to understand the need for a supervisor on top of the representatives, managers on top of supervisors, senior managers on top of managers – it creates a structure and allows a flow of perspective and easier dissemination of information and instruction that helps improve the business. An advertising agency will not want to be talking to voice talents one by one, they\u2019d much rather talk to agents representing a number of voice talents since that is more efficient.<\/p>\n
Some agents don\u2019t get paid until they actually book a gig for you. So this is one of the pros of having an agent – their motivation is driven by the fact that they need to get paid and so they market you. I suppose the time it gets completely blown out of proportion is when they treat you like they would a commodity because everyone would like to have a piece of you because you have achieved fame. An agent would still be useful in these situation as they filter out those projects that you shouldn\u2019t be going for anymore since they aren\u2019t worth the time or the effort and won\u2019t do anything to further your career.<\/p>\n