I was reading through Kathy Burrows’ latest piece this morning about the future of the sports executive and one section really struck me as pretty apt: the part about augmented viewing and especially in the context of how sports executives often find themselves just following the path of least resistance when setting up and implementing their plans and ideas.
Or, as I like to call it: Falling into the “Me Too!” trap!
What do I mean by this “Me Too!” trap?
It is the kind of thinking that makes it totally acceptable to sell premium seating in much the same way that you would sell any other seats in the building, through a focus on features and amenities, lots of cold calling, and little emphasis on developing long term relationships.
It is the kind of thinking that puts teams in a position to constantly have to have their successful team members move on because they haven’t laid out a clearly defined roadmap for growth for their high potential employees.
It is the kind of thinking that let’s teams not fully utilize their most valuable assets, their brand, their content, and their experiences to their fullest potential because “people should care about the game.” Or, because no one wants to recognize that the modern fan has changed and wants different things.
The challenge when confronted with the “Me Too!” trap is change.
Isn’t that always the truth?
Yes, but change in this context can be quite painful because it often means having the awareness to recognize that so many of your long held maxims have been holding you back.
Do you recognize yourself in this description?
If you do, that’s great…knowing is half the battle.
The bigger half is actually taking action on changing your actions and your culture to reflect creativity and innovation and not falling into the “Me Too!” trap!
Let’s look at a place where the “Me Too!” trap is most common and how we can fix them.
The modern sports sales bullpen:
We are all pretty familiar with this scene or at least the idea of this scene from Glengarry Glen Ross where Alec Baldwin’s character advises his sales crew to “Always Be Closing” and that idea still is at play in many sports sales bullpens today.
Along with the idea of “Always Be Closing,” we have the maxim that you have to make 100 calls a day to be successful. That selling over the Internet isn’t really selling.
All of these kind of noxious ideas act as roadblocks to your sales team optimizing its performance and with the wealth of ideas and opportunities to adapt to the changing dynamics of modern selling.
So how can you root some of these ideas out so that you can focus on not just being best at what everyone else is doing, but to innovate in your sales floor.
First, you really have to look at your success metrics.
One of the things I like about Account Based Marketing for sales teams is that the primary success metric is revenue.
In too many sports sales bullpens, the success metrics of choice are all activity based. Things like calls made, talk time, or other meaningless activity metrics.
If you are going to expand the playing field of your sports sales bullpen, you are going to need to look at the numbers and goals you have from a different POV. You might find that activities aren’t the best predicator of success. You might need to break the activities down into something else, like meetings set, face to face meetings, or something else.
The key is that you need to figure out what are the things that lead directly to the revenue you need, and not just rely on measures that you use because that’s what you have always done.
Second, you need to be prepared and enable the use of multiple sales distribution platforms in a meaningful way.
One battle that gets fought, over and over, is the fight between the secondary market and the primary market.
I’m pretty much on record everywhere talking about the need for both sides to learn from each other.
In this instance, instead of having the knee jerk that brokers are bad…ask yourself, what if brokers weren’t bad and I could learn something from them? What would that be?
The primary market has a few really great things that they could learn from the secondary market and that would change the way their sales bullpens work:
Using digital channels to reach and sell tickets to their buyers in an efficient manner.
Building long term relationships with their buyers, especially on the premium side.
Pricing in a manner that is more flexible and reflects market demand.
What does this mean as an application to your sales team?
First, it means that you should investigate ways that you can better use digital channels to sell tickets.
How can you more effectively use email?
What about text?
What other forms of social media can you use to drive sales?
Second, focus on relationship building…which we will talk about below.
Third, be more reflexive in your pricing.
Are you taking a one size fits all approach to your pricing?
Have you considered value when you are pricing?
Finally, spend more time on building relationships!
I mentioned it above, but how much time is really spent on relationship building in sports.
I’m pretty sure that not nearly enough is actually being done to build relationships between your sales teams and your customers.
Why?
It starts with the idea that so many of your sales people have to move on to other organizations in 2-3 years.
How much does that destroy value in your organization?
How much time does it take to rebuild those relationships?
A lot and too long.
What would you do if you had the chance to create a career path for your sales people?
What would you do if you had the chance to not hand off your best clients every year or two to someone new?
These would be tremendous improvements.
So focus on relationships.
How does this apply in a practical way?
First, look at how you can deepen your relationship in a way in a meaningful manner that doesn’t include always asking for money.
Maybe you have networking and education opportunities.
Or, maybe you can offer referrals to your ticket holders?
The list goes on and on.
Second, find ways to add value to the people you work with and want to continue to work with.
Can you offer up an upgrade?
Can you share an article?
Can you put two people together that should know each other?
Does this all make sense?
Let me know below!s