Tickets

Selling Experiences Online: Announcing the BAV-S3 4V® Brand Index

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Selling Experiences Online: Announcing the BAV-S3 4V® Brand Index
by Kirk Wakefield – June 2016

Juniper Research classifies ticketing as one of the primary commerce applications driving eCommerce, estimating over one-fourth of ticket purchases will go mobile in the U.S. by 2020, and over half of ticket purchases outside of the US and Europe to be mobile-based by 2020. Teams like the Portland Trail Blazers renew season tickets via mobile devices and continue to see fans more comfortable in making both small and large transactions on mobile apps.

While we in the U.S. may think life moves at the speed of digital, we move at a snail’s pace compared to the growth in China, where the average consumer spends 45 hours online a week (10+ over global average). B2C e-commerce in China is expected to grow at a 30% clip from 2016-2020. As sports-related brands seek a global presence (like Barcelona and Real Madrid), teams and vendor partners must focus on engaging fans in the ways fans desire, rather than only what is expedient or profitable in the near term.

The quality of the consumer experience with the brand in online ticketing will determine the winners and losers as the world turns increasingly mobile. How do we know who’s winning? Who’s winning so far?

The BAV-S3 4V® Brand Index

The BrandAsset Valuator (BAV®) database is the largest and leading quantitative, empirical study of brands and consumers. Spanning 16 years, 51 countries, and over 680,000 respondents, BAV is the world’s largest database of brand perceptions; containing ratings on over 43,000 brands on 72 dimensions.

In collaboration with BAV, we developed the S3 4V ® Brand Index that evaluates online brands in terms of three positive dimensions of value, vision, and social vibe and one negative dimension of vanity. Customers favor online brands that demonstrate:

  1. Value: The leader, the best brand online characterized as (having)
    1. good value and worth more,
    2. trustworthy and reliable,
    3. simple and straightforward,
    4. high quality and high performance,
    5. original, authentic, down to earth and traditional
  2. Vision: The progressive, innovative, up-to-date, intelligent, visionary brand that is gaining in online popularity.
  3. Social Vibe: The brand that represents a fun, social, friendly, and charming online persona.

Customers discount or disfavor brands trying to score style-points without substance. Online visitors pick up on signs of Vanity, characterized as attempts to appeal to the upper class on the basis of glamour, style, prestige, sensuality, and trendiness. We find this has a negative effect on regular brand usage.

Together, these four dimensions explain over 50% of consumer usage of the brand. That amount of variance is another important V to consider as brand compete to win customers to their online real estate.

The Winners

The 4V Brand Index covers 278 brands that offer some form of online experience across a dozen sectors. Our index places weights on each of the four Vs in an equation that best predicts brand usage. Scores range from Amazon on the high end (29.02) to ISIS (-7.24) on the low end. Sectors include mobile phones, with iPhone and Samsung Galaxy outclassing all other comers by large margins. More interesting is competition among mobile payment vendors (Amazon Local Register vs. Apple Pay vs. Square), internet tools and services (Google Maps vs. MapQuest), or social media (how is Snapchat doing against Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn?).

But, since we’re all about sports first, that’s where we will begin. The table may be sorted based on the overall index score or each of the 4Vs.

[table id=4 /]

Ticket sellers

Although tickets are only a part of their businesses, eBay and Groupon lead the way in offering online experiences that customers perceive as offering value, vision, and vibe that outweigh attempts to appeal to the vanity of buyers. Given shopper motives for buying online, the strongest predictor of brand usage in our equation is value, followed by brand vision.

Between the two leaders in ticket sales online, eBay’s subsidiary, StubHub (8.56) performs better than Ticketmaster (7.13), primarily due to vision (13.29 vs. 10.52) and social vibe (12.61 vs. 10.54) customers get when they visit their websites or use their mobile apps.

In the future, we will add SeatGeek and VividSeats to the index, two ticket sellers with significant investments in online and mobile ticket distribution.

The Losers

Fan Duel and Draft Kings suffer from high vanity scores and low value scores. Being new and on the cutting edge (vision) helps attract customers, but a brand’s longevity is in question if it cannot deliver value.

On a broader scale, sports teams must be mindful of partnering with online brands with negative personas. The two lowest rated online brands (ISIS and Al Jazerra) clearly aren’t potential partners, but not far behind are Foursquare (4V = .13) and Tinder (4V = .18). Granted, these might target specific fan segments, but the signal sent to all customers may not bode well for the team and its other brand partners. Brands with relatively low 4V scores may be due to overall low market strength and penetration. Customers don’t necessarily hold negative perceptions, but may hold no perceptions at all about the brand.

Looking forward

In future analyses, we will take a closer look at ticket sellers to examine the specific features and drivers of customer online experiences.

Increase Season Ticket Renewals by Identifying At-Risk Accounts

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Increase Season Ticket Renewals by Identifying At-Risk Accounts
by Daniel Venegas – September 2015

Identifying At-Risk Accounts

Many factors go into the buying decision whenever customers receive renewal invoices.  Team performance, usage, cost, and value are just a few of the buzz words we hear every year.  The issue is knowing which accounts will bring these up and how to identify them beforehand.

Simplifying the renewal process has been one of our paramount objectives for the past three seasons. We focus on identifiers of at-risk accounts.  Team performance is important and measurable, but beyond our control. We chose two metrics to identify at-risk accounts early in the process:

  • Season Ticket Tenure
  • Attendance

Understanding these two elements and what they indicate allows us to influence accounts at the beginning of the season as opposed to waiting to hear objections.

Season Ticket Tenure

You can tell a good deal about customers by how long they have been with the organization.  Over the past two seasons alone we can tell that first year customers are 9% less likely to renew than second year customers and 17% less likely to renew than third year customers.  Obviously, new season ticket holders should be a major focus of your renewal campaign.  You know who they are from the very beginning so there is no excuse for not being proactive with these accounts.

Karlis Kezbers
Karlis Kezbers

“When it comes to first-year season ticket members, education can help drive success.  It’s important to educate the client on every possible aspect to utilize their tickets in the most efficient way.  Don’t assume a first-year account knows everything about their membership.” -Karlis Kezbers (@karliskezbers), Director, Retention and Ticket Operations, Oklahoma City Thunder

Season Ticket Attendance

Attendance at games is another great quantitative measure to identify at-risk accounts.  Customers with an attendance of 61-70% are 6% less likely to renew than those customers that attend 71-80% of games and 9% less likely to renew than customers that attend 81-90% of games.

Tracking attendance early on in a season can help you identify customers that may have issues utilizing their tickets. Be proactive with these accounts and to help them identify ways to better use their tickets.

“The responsibility for getting a ticket used is slowly but surely transferring away from the client and onto the team.”  -Karlis Kezbers (@karliskezbers)

Face to Face: The Throwback Solution

Now that you know the potentially risky accounts, what do you do with them?  You can’t change their tenure.  You may be able to influence their attendance, but probably not much.

Go meet them in person!

Take time out of your week to show customers how much you and the organization care about their business.  It is your job to consult with them on the product you sold.  Let them know 1st year STHs often aren’t aware of the best ways to utilize season ticket benefits compared to tenured accounts.  Walk through the benefits to see how you can help.  Tell customers when you notice they are not utilizing their tickets as frequently as most.  Offer solutions to manage missed games or to better utilize future games.  When you have done this:

Go see them again!

Sam Bays
Sam Bays

Sam Bays, Director of Business Development at the Arizona Coyotes, shares,

“Whether it’s at the arena, in their office, or over a lunch, nothing solidifies the relationship between an AE and a client like a face to face meeting. As a sales professional, the more you can make yourself the ‘face of the franchise’ in the client’s eyes, the more likely they are to renew.”

You may or may not be able to influence attendance or utilization of seats, but your actions influence renewal rates. Accounts that use 61-70% of their tickets renew at a rate 10% higher than average if their reps visit them more than once during the season.  You also can’t change the fact you are working with a first year account, but you can show them the real value they purchased.  First year accounts that have more than one face to face visit from their reps during the season renew at a rate 6% higher than the average rookie account.

Day one of your renewal should be the first day after your deadline.  These numbers are specific to my organization but the relative impact can be the same for you.

Cover photo courtesy of PresseBox.

 

Illustrated CRM: How CRM Process Helps the Sales Process

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Illustrated CRM: How CRM Process Helps the Sales Process
by Alex Karp – September 2015

Three things will make CRM a great tool for your organization:

  1. consistency,
  2. ease of use, and
  3. documentation of activity.

All of these are essential, particularly the last one, if management is going to be able to use CRM effectively. I wanted to share some best practices that I have gathered from my short time in the industry and how those best practices can contribute to the overall growth of your organization.

Focus on the learner: Keep training time short

Let’s consider the documentation of activity.  A wise previous boss of mine once said, “If it’s not saved in CRM, it didn’t happen.” Documenting every activity is the goal every CRM staff member and sales manager strives to meet. It’s not easy.

Whenever sitting down with a new group of sales reps, the first training session should focus on one thing: How to document/save a phone call. Reps do this task a hundred times a day or more. The process of saving a phone call is tied to many other reporting aspects of CRM.  Drill them on this until you know they are doing it right every time. The many other features of CRM (e.g., advanced finds) can be covered later. Making sure reps know how to save a phone call is the first step to helping them succeed.

Another way to focus on the learner is to have training sessions grouped by department. Group Sales and Season Ticket Sales use CRM differently. Training by departments provides relevant content and keeps everyone engaged. Otherwise, people tune out when the training isn’t relevant–and it’s hard to get them engaged again.

Fewer clicks leads to more calls

At Fan Interactive, I get to work on multiple client CRM redesign projects. A project goal is to make CRM a little more user friendly and reduce necessary clicks. As you can see in Panel A , reps have the ability to add an activity and notes directly from the opportunity. This is a bit different than the out of the box version of CRM, where more clicks are required to add an activity to an opportunity. Reps can enter information, save and close the opportunity and move onto the next one. This process also stores the last activity data and counts the activity as being completed, as in Panel B. Reps are then able to search using fields from this opportunity such as ‘last activity date’ and ‘number of activities’ within the opportunity.

Reporting

Now that the reps can easily and document a phone call in a consistent way, what’s next? A daily activity tracker (see Panel C) is a good start. This helps re-enforce the importance of saving a phone call to reps since they will see their results and know where they stand compared to the rest of the group.

With software such as Tableau, which combines the layout of Excel with the power of SQL, you can create scoring models based on rep activity. After tracking activities, the next step is to track the revenue associated with those activities. The campaign report below shows revenue generated in a rollup version as well as a more detailed version.

crm3

These reports were made possible by the re-design (ease of use) and consistent documentation. With a more user-friendly version of CRM, it’s easier for everyone to use CRM the same way, which leads to more accurate reporting.

Conclusion

CRM is a powerful and essential tool for sales and marketing. For it to succeed, sales reps need to enter data in a consistent and thorough manner.  Documenting phone calls in CRM is a process sales reps will repeat thousands of times throughout their sales careers. By making the process easier, both through training and redesign, CRM can help you generate reports and analytics that will allow you to make effective business decisions.

CRM Made Easy: How to Track Account Renewals

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CRM Made Easy: How to Track Account Renewals
by Michael Hurley – September 2015

Are you using your CRM system to project final renewal numbers? Are you able to identify accounts that might be harder to renew?

The Way We Were

In 2012, during my first renewal campaign  with the Houston Astros working with then Director of Season Ticket Services, Alan Latkovic, our “CRM system” was an Excel spreadsheet with every single account listed as a line item and the columns  laid out to reflect “touch points” or times of contact with Season Ticket Holders (example below).

hurley tpm

This method of touch point management worked in lieu of an actual CRM system. But, there isn’t much tracking and it’s not easy to project renewals. When we rolled out Microsoft Dynamics CRM before the 2013 renewal campaign, our eyes were opened to the benefits of tracking renewals. Today, after years of tracking accounts and tendencies, we can project renewal numbers to the percentage point even before we receive the first response.

Using renewal scores we have real-time information on which accounts require a little more “love.” We quickly see which accounts have not responded at all. We strategically plan an offsite visit with them and maybe even take Orbit along.

orbit

Using CRM to Track Renewals

Alan Latkovic (@AlanLatkovic), Senior Director of Season Ticket Services and Operations with the Astros, accentuates the importance of using  CRM to track renewals and project the final renewal numbers.

“With the tools of CRM we are able to score accounts who respond to the initial renewal call daily, monthly, and annually.  Providing this data to our analytics team, we are then able to project renewals and carry the information over each season to create new renewal benchmarks.”

Tracking every conversation and response for each account ultimately makes the big picture become more clear. The Astros use a very simple but effective renewal tracking method throughout the renewal campaign. We categorize accounts based on an initial indication of renewal.  If an account’s initial response to us when they receive their invoice is that they are not renewing, we mark them as “unlikely to renew” in CRM, at the same time if an account lets us know they are planning on renewing and processing the invoice, or “the check is in the mail” we mark them as “likely to renew” in CRM.  Using renewal scores, we can project what an account will do, and by tracking the data of renewal scores over time, we then have an idea of what percentage of accounts in each score grouping will ultimately renew.

The Importance of Tracking Renewals

When it comes down to it, we simply cannot overlook the importance of tracking renewals and building renewal campaigns around the tools of CRM. Katherine Tran, Manager of Membership Services with FC Dallas, stresses the importance of being able to forecast future renewal cycles by using CRM:

“The importance of tracking renewals is second to none.  It allows teams to pinpoint customer trends over the seasons and helps forecast future renewal cycles.  Teams can plan their renewal efforts and campaigns based on data from previous years.”

When following trends in renewals over the years, and knowing which accounts renew and when, a much clearer picture emerges when forecasting renewal numbers.  While using Excel will get the job done, it’s no comparison to the benefits a true CRM system provides.

Cover photo courtesy of Ezhil Ramalingam, India.

 

5 Characteristics of the Best Salespeople in Sports

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5 Characteristics of the Best Salespeople in Sports
by Andre Luck – September 2015

As an Inside Sales Manager I am often asked what the best salespeople do to be the best.  Fortunately, I’ve had the opportunity to manage or mentor over 100 salespeople so far in my career. I have seen many times what the top performing salespeople have done to separate themselves from their peers.  What makes these salespeople great?

Attitude

One of the most important characteristics of a successful salesperson is the attitude you bring to the office every single day.  Although, being positive and having a smile on your face is important, bringing the right attitude to the office is more than just that.  As a salesperson it means fully embracing your role as a salesperson that is tasked with generating revenue for your organization.  It means having a confidence and assertiveness that will help you close sales and overcome tough objections from customers.  And most importantly it means being in total control of how you react to all situations. One of my favorite quotes that I share with every one of my new hires is from Charles Swindoll that says “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.” I tell my salespeople that no one else is in control of your attitude but you.

Work Ethic

When I was a sales rep I took great pride in my work ethic. I look to hire salespeople with a strong work ethic as well.  Sales is a numbers game. More times than not, the people who put in the most work are at or near the top of the sales board.  Come early, stay late, make five more phone calls, set one more face to face appointment, do whatever is needed to put yourself in the best situation to succeed. Hard work is not the only recipe to success, but long term success is impossible without it.

Consistency

It seems simple: Be consistent. Do the little things right every single day.  But, it’s tough to do. Consistency requires great discipline. It’s easy to fall into bad habits.

Travis Baker
Travis Baker

Travis Baker, Inside Sales Manager for the Arizona Diamondbacks says, “There isn’t much that separates the good reps from the great reps on our staff.  Because of our hiring process everyone is talented and everyone works hard.  So it comes down to day in and day out consistency, as well as a refusal to lose.”

Make a conscious effort to stick to the fundamentals. Do the little things right every day that others do not have the discipline to do. It adds up after a full sales campaign.  I always feel more confident in a salesperson’s long term success if s/he produces revenue consistently instead of making a big sale every now and again.

Discomfort

Some of the best advice I ever received: If you are not stepping out of your comfort zone, then you are not challenging yourself to grow.

For most new salespeople, it’s uncomfortable to strike up a conversation with a random stranger. It’s uncomfortable to ask someone you just met (and then tells you no multiple times) to spend thousands of dollars.  But, you are tasked with doing this as a salesperson.  The fear of the unknown is too much of a risk for some. They play it safe. They stick with comfortable.  The best salespeople understand that if they do not take risks–do not get out of their comfort zones–then they will not reach their full potential.

Initiative

All sales reps typically have the same resources at their disposal.  They receive the same training, same types of leads to call, and the same products to sell.

Success comes down to what you do with the opportunity.  Look at inside sales as more than just another job. The best reps see it as the start to their careers.  They are all-in. They give 100% commitment to whatever it takes to be the best.  Losing is never an option.  When things don’t go their way they don’t make excuses. The best reps proactively seek help from a boss, a mentor, or peers. Even when there’s little overall sales momentum, they find ways to create momentum for themselves and their sales team.  During training with new hires I always share a quote from Will Rogers, “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”

Utilizing LinkedIn for Business Prospecting

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Utilizing LinkedIn for Business Prospecting
by Mike Dimitroff – July 2015

My sales philosophy: Better to go after the big fish than waste time fishing for minnows! Anyone can go to the local watering hole, cast a line, and catch small fish. But if LinkedIn is your fishing pole, businesses will be the big fish you are trying to catch.

[dropshadowbox align=”center” effect=”lifted-both” width=”550px” height=”” background_color=”#ffffff” border_width=”1″ border_color=”#dddddd” ]“It’s no secret that today’s business decision makers have greater control over the buying process. Three-fourths of B2B buyers use social media to educate themselves before making purchasing decisions and twice as many use LinkedIn to research purchasing decisions than any other social network.” ~ LinkedIn.com[/dropshadowbox]

If 75% of B2B buyers do social media research prior to buying, you can bet that business professionals preparing to make a large monetary commitment will run a background check on the seller–and that’s you!

First Impressions

People buy from people they like and often decide if they like you within the first few moments of contact. What will buyers think if they look on your LinkedIn profile with no picture? A photo helps prospects put a face to the person they’re talking to and helps develop familiarity.

Your story

Provide a short background story about yourself and list your job responsibilities. I recommend listing sales accomplishments since people are more likely to buy from people who are successful at what they do. They perceive that if other people are buying from you then you must be trustworthy. These may seem like nuances, but they will help build trust with your prospective buyer and trust ultimately leads to sales.

[dropshadowbox align=”right” effect=”lifted-both” width=”350px” height=”” background_color=”#ffffff” border_width=”1″ border_color=”#dddddd” ]”jesse salazarNew and different methods to contact decision makers are invaluable. LinkedIn is an effective, smart tool for prospecting new companies, identifying decision makers and increasing your network. Professional salespeople will definitely increase productivity, generate qualified leads, and have a higher closing ratio when using LinkedIn.” Jesse Salazar, Manager of Season Sales, Houston Rockets[/dropshadowbox]

No Off-Season

At the Houston Rockets, our motto is, “There is no off-season!” Although some sales reps choose this time to relax and take a break, this is the perfect time to build your sales pipeline. I spend most of the off-season business prospecting.

Prospecting

Prospects can come from oil & gas magazines, billboards on your drive into work, or simply searching under the “people you may know” tab on LinkedIn. With over 500+ connections, many are within my target industries of oil & gas, construction, & law firms. When you search for a new company on LinkedIn simply type in the company name and it should pop up under the drop down menu. Once you have your company selected you can begin to filter by city.

[dropshadowbox align=”right” effect=”lifted-both” width=”350px” height=”” background_color=”#ffffff” border_width=”1″ border_color=”#dddddd” ]rob“LinkedIn is an essential tool for staying connected to business professionals and a creative method to target companies. C-level executives are almost impossible to get on the phone. LinkedIn is just another way to get in front of decision makers in a competitive business environment where their time is limited to unique salespeople who they see as a resource to get them immediate results.” Rob Zuer, VP of Ticket Sales & Services, Denver Nuggets[/dropshadowbox]

Once you identify a company, contact one of the following from your search of their LinkedIn profiles: Business Development Manager, Marketing Manager or Executive Assistants to CEO. These are typically the people that either make decisions on purchasing season tickets or handle the distribution of tickets.

You make the call

Call the mainline of a company and ask directly for the person by name. I’ve seen sales reps call the mainline and use basic intro lines like this:

“Hi, this is Michael Dimitroff with the Houston Rockets. I was wondering if you could put me in contact with the person who handles season tickets purchases at your company.”

Gatekeepers are taught to screen such calls and you’ve just given them a layup! Instead, act confidently, as if you’ve already had a conversation with the person.  Ask using their first names (e.g., Rob, or Rob Zuer; not Mr. Zuer) to give the sense you are familiar with them. Once the gate keeper transfers you to the direct line…now it’s time to work your magic and catch the big fish!

10 tips to shape your ticket sales career

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10 tips to shape your ticket sales career
by Stephen Gray – May 2015

Many of the tips I’m about to share I received in the classrooms at Baylor as a student. Others I learned during my time at Spurs Sports and Entertainment.  They helped me grow into management. I hope they help you with your career. Some may seem obvious; but sometimes the most obvious advice is the most overlooked. 

  1. Win! Regardless of what else you do, the most important thing at the end of the season is: Did you take home the gold?  “It doesn’t matter whether you win by an inch or a mile. Winning is winning,” – Dominic Toretto from The Fast and the Furious.  If you are working next to others that have been with the team about as long as you, then make sure you come out on top of the sales board.  Or, surprise everyone by beating out a veteran.  A great place to start winning is in a sales contest.  Winning a few sales contests to start off my career at SS&E helped get my name out there to the entire sales floor.  I started receiving nicknames like “Stone Cold Steve Gray” and won multiple trips.  I know it’s not possible for everyone to win,  but what is always possible is to hate to lose. 
  1. Trips with teammates, whether for fun or business, are always company trips. Congrats! You’ve won the sales contest and are on your way to a free vacation with your teammates.  This will very likely happen at some point early in your career, so it’s important to understand that what happens on these trips DOES come back to the office with you.  Be sure to have fun, but be responsible.  Managers want staff members they can depend on.  If you want to make a great impression, be the responsible one of the group that is looking out for your teammates.
  1. The days of sales calls are not over. Thanks to the S3 program, I came out of school knowing I needed to hit the phones harder than my peers to be successful.  As a hiring manager, I now know how truly rare that mindset is.  Many candidates say they’re ready and know it’s a big part of the job, but saying and doing are completely different things.  If you land a sale job, focus on making as many quality calls and face-to-face meetings as possible.  Never make calls just to hit the numbers your manager gives you.  Your goal for every call is to move that lead further in the sales funnel. Every person you speak to should receive your full attention.  Have effective, open-ended questions ready to go. Most importantly: Listen.  Learn what they are passionate about and this will open longer conversations and higher close rates. 
  1. Take bullets and give accolades. To be a leader everyone can trust and depend on, you must be able to take responsibility, even for things not fully in your control. Attendance may be down and your manager jumps on the team.  Take ownership: We (I) should have done a better job selling & we (I) will make up for it the next time.  Make sure you do make it up.  Next, don’t wait or ask for praise.  Instead, give it out as much as possible.  This is one of the best tips I’ve received for building a positive culture in the office.
  1. Always under-promise and over-deliver. Before unloading all of the great benefits and gifts available to a buyer, stop to think about which ones to save to add value later. Especially do this when putting together proposals and contracts.  Hold some of the good stuff back that isn’t essential to getting the deal closed.  That is how you go from a salesperson to a hero in your client’s eyes.
  1. Find a mentor. Find an in-office mentor (who holds the position you seek one day) and an outside mentor.   Meet with the inside mentor every other week to discuss those matters s/he is most familiar with.  Visit with the outside mentor each month to gain a broader perspective.  Always bring a note pad. Always take notes.  This shows respect, indicates you are listening, and demonstrates that you plan on using what you learn.
  1. Limit wasting time during work hours. Are you tempted to browse ESPN, Facebook, or fantasy sports at work? Instead, when you need a break, pick up a book or listen to an audio book for professional improvement.  This goes over a lot better when your manager sees you not making phone calls or sending e-mails.
  1. When you succeed, share it. Nothing makes a worse teammate than making a sale and not sharing anything about it.  Share how you found the lead, how you approached it, and how you closed the deal.  These stories fuel sales teams to keep going and close more deals.  Become a mentor to others.  Find a college student or new teammate that appreciates advice and wants to learn.  Help them find their way and it will often lead to you developing as well.
  1. If a teammate needs a boost, call a meeting–regardless of title. One of the most impressive things a sales representative can do is call a meeting with teammates to get them fired up about calls, season ticket campaigns, or the upcoming theme night. Sales managers can be motivational, but sometimes they need help from the leaders on their teams.  When a sales representative calls a meeting, it is typically much more effective in motivating the team than the manager calling a second or third meeting that week.  The leader of the meeting doesn’t always have to be the veteran.  You just have to be passionate about what you are saying and remind them that as a team you can accomplish the task at hand.
  1. Think outside the box. To separate yourself from your peers, you must think for yourself and come up with new ideas and strategies. Once, I met with the principal from a San Antonio ISD elementary school to present why her school should participate in our annual School Day game.  Afterwards, she said what I had heard before: “We don’t have a field trip budget.”  How could we get these lower-income schools on board? In the corner of the principal’s office was a brand new Xbox 360 and a bicycle.  I asked, “I’m just curious, what are those for?”  She said, “Our school bought those to use as an attendance incentive with funds provided by the state for this purpose. Students with perfect attendance are entered into a drawing for a big prize each month.”  I asked, “So eight students win prizes throughout the year?  What if we made our School Day game the attendance incentive next year?  That way every kid with perfect attendance will win a prize.”  The principal loved it and bought over 300 tickets for the game.  We used this model for all of the lower-income schools I met with and my School Day sales numbers quadrupled.  Soon, I was teaching my teammates and other sales teams on how to sell the game to schools without field trip budgets.

Whether these tips are obvious or not, you would be amazed by the number of people that don’t follow through on most of them.  Without these tips, I don’t know if I would’ve made it this far in sales.  It can be tough at times, but the thrill of winning, sharing, and helping others develop in their own careers has made every minute worth it.  The next step for anyone that wants to be a leader, mentor, or just a good teammate is to take note of the best advice you’ve ever received and be sure to share it with your peers.

Making CRM training tolerable: The 10 Commandments

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Making CRM training tolerable: The 10 Commandments
by Chris Zeppenfeld – May 2015

One of my favorite sales reps said this to me coming out of a CRM training session a few years ago.  I think it’s the best analogy I’ve ever heard about CRM training.

“Going to CRM training is like going to the dentist….no one really looks forward to going, but when you are done, you’re usually glad you went.”

Let’s face it, CRM training isn’t sexy.   Click here, do that, fill this fill field in, make sure you do that first, blah blah blah.   However, user training (and user adoption) is the most critical element of CRM implementation.  Here are 10 axioms to follow as you set up your user training for CRM.

1. Thou shalt not have 5 hour marathon training sessions.
I’ve probably conducted somewhere between 2,000-3,000 software trainings in my life.   If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you can’t possibly hold a sales rep’s attention for longer than 45-60 minutes.  Maybe less.  An Indiana University study says that the average attention span of students is actually around 15-20 minutes.  Yikes! Make this a hardline rule right now:  Training sessions cannot be longer than 60 minutes.  The moment you hit 60 minutes…close up and stop training. Trust me, they’ve already stopped listening.

2. Thou shalt not cram all of the CRM training into 1-2 days.
We have a “CRM Boot Camp” that stretches across 10 (yes, 10!) days.    Why so long?  Repetition!   Repetition is the key in software user training.  I’d much rather have 10 shorter training sessions over a span of two weeks than to try to cram 2 marathon training sessions over a day or two. I purposely want my reps to go through the training, then go do something else not CRM related (aka forget about things)….and then come back the next day and see what they recall.   Remember, your reps need to know how to use CRM properly every day…not just this one time.   You’ll get much better rep recall when they run repetitive “sprint” sessions rather than “marathons.”

3. Thou shall not have “all staff” training sessions.
This one is brutal.  I cringe when I hear a VP/President instruct the CRM Manager to “grab everyone in a conference room and go through the whole CRM thing.”  Think back to the last time you had an all-staff meeting. How many people were fiddling with smartphones not paying attention to the speaker?  I did a quick survey with my own staff last time we had a non-CRM related all-staff meeting: 78% of my reps admitted playing with smartphones during a portion of the meeting. When the classroom size gets too large, it’s extremely challenging to make sure everyone is following along with you.

4. Thou shalt not intermingle departments.
There are two parts to training sessions: “This is HOW you do it.” and “This is WHY you are doing it.”  The first deals with compliance.   The second deals with buy-in and understanding.   How much you decide to dive in on the second part is the key.   With newbie Inside Sales reps, it’s often best to focus on the “click here, do this” part. They are still trying to comprehend the sales scripts they just spent 7 hours learning in role-playing. So, it might be information overload to start going into the intricacies of 1:N relationships in CRM.   My goal is to get newbie sales reps to do X correctly. For more experienced reps in Premium Sales, however, give them insight into why a certain form or process is being done the way it is.  Get buy-in and understanding from senior sales reps who have a far greater influence on the sales staff.  Sure, it might be “easier” on you to shove all of the departments into one training session.  However, the way you’re going to teach a “compliance” session is going to be much different than teaching an “understanding” session.

5. Thou shalt not have the CRM Manager move the mouse.
Think back to your teenage days learning how to drive a car.   Did you learn more from the passenger or driver’s seat?  Reps will learn far better if they are the ones behind the wheel. There is no prize in showing how quickly YOU can navigate CRM. It only matters how well they can navigate CRM. Have reps login as themselves on training PCs to mimic “real” experience in CRM. They see their My To Do List, their leads, their dashboards, etc.  Even in a group setting with multiple reps, always have the rep move the mouse on the screen. If they don’t do it, they won’t remember it.

6. Thou shalt make sure the rep’s boss is in the first few training sessions.
Nothing undermines CRM  quite like when the rep’s boss doesn’t show up for the first training session.   The typical dialogue between the rep and sales manager usually goes something like this, “Go see (insert CRM Guru here), s/he will run you through that CRM stuff.”   Remember, the reps report to Sales Managers, not CRM Managers.   When sales managers don’t show up for CRM training at least early on, it undermines the importance of CRM in their jobs. A special note to sales managers who don’t show:

[dropshadowbox align=”center” effect=”lifted-both” width=”450px” height=”” background_color=”#ffffff” border_width=”1″ border_color=”#dddddd” ]What you are telling the rep is that while you say CRM training is “important,” it’s apparently not important enough for you to stay in this room and make sure the rep is paying attention.[/dropshadowbox]

7. Thou shalt not worry about anything else in CRM other than completing a phone call on the first day.
Everything the reps do in CRM falls into two buckets:  1) things they do about 100 times a day   2) things they do maybe once a day.  Guess which singular activity they do 100 times a day….phone calls!   The most important thing the reps have to do (correctly) in CRM is completing the phone call screen the way you want them to do it.  Don’t worry about anything else in CRM until you are 100% satisfied that they can complete a phone call correctly without you standing over them to monitor it.  Sometimes, you might get reps that will try to skip forward (how do I search this?  where do I go to do that?). Tell these over-achievers that you are purposely putting blinders on them and you’ll get to that training later in boot camp.

8. Thou shalt tailor the training to the type of rep in the room.
Especially when you are doing new sales reps onboarding with CRM, you tend to encounter three very different types of reps. It’s important that you identify which types of reps you have in your training room.

  1. “Soldiers” are the majority of your sales reps.   Soldiers come in with a “tell me what to click on, and I’ll do it” type attitude towards CRM.
  2. “Old Guard” are the minority of your sales reps.  Old Guards tend to be skeptical that what you are about to show them in CRM is going to be better than their “tried and true” methods.
  3. “Questioners” are the rarest of your sales reps.  Questioners want to know WHY something is the way that it is in CRM – and may not comply until they are satisfied with your explanation.

The people you should most be concerned with are the Questioners.   They are often the most influential about CRM to their sales rep brethren (positively or negatively). For more on this, check out my past S3 article that explains this in greater detail.

9. Thou shalt have mini-training sessions periodically with each department if you roll out a new feature.
Let’s say you roll out a new feature that can help them in CRM.   Maybe it’s a new view that organizes info better for them.   Maybe it’s a new process you’ve built in CRM that allows them to make appointments quicker.   Quick!   Grab the reps and huddle them together.   These mini-sessions don’t need to be elaborately planned.   It can be impromptu at their desks – or even better in a nearby conference room.   Your sales reps and managers might actually welcome it…it gives them a quick 10-15 minute breather from making calls.  I recommend doing these mini-sessions twice a month to refresh them on cool features they may have forgotten about and/or teach them new features that can help them do their job better.

10. Thou shalt make sure everyone can see the screen and read the text.
I know this one sounds really obvious, but you’d be surprised how many times this gets overlooked.   CRM from a UI perspective has a ton of small icons, menus, and fonts.  Even if you have a decent sized display for your CRM trainings (projector, large TV screen, etc.), it might still be difficult to read the text in CRM.   Remember, your software training deals with more than just icon and shape recognition….much of your training will involve the rep reading text and making an appropriate user interaction in CRM.  As you read this article now, take 10 steps back from your monitor/screen.   Can you still read this text?  If you can’t read the text, then your reps are too far away in your training room.

5 Tips For Managing in a Social Selling Environment

kirk_wakefield 2015, Lead, Sales Management, Sell, Tickets , , , , , , , 0 Comment
5 Tips For Managing in a Social Selling Environment
by Justin Gurney – April 2015

Does this sound familiar?

“Great job Brandon! You made 150 calls today, those will be sure to turn into sales, so keep it up.”

“Ryan, wow you set 10 appointments this week leading the way.”

“Mark, you were on the phone for 200 minutes today, way to dig in with your prospects!”

Whether you are a sales manager or sales rep, it probably does. It’s how most sales managers in sports manage. In fact, I did this same thing and even copied my CMO and VP of Sales on this e-mail every day so they could chime in and reinforce the point.

How did my top reps respond to this?

  • I had to write up the top performing rep in the entire company for faking calls and even fire a couple of talented ones.
  • One of the most talented Inside Sales reps I ever had went to Enterprise Rent-A-Car rather than accepting a promotion to Group Sales.
  • Rep burnout –
    • What they say: “I want to manage one day.” What they mean: : “I want to manage so I don’t have to deal with these annoying Hustle Metrics.”
    • What they say: “I want to ultimately get into marketing.” What they mean: “I can’t see myself doing this much longer.”
    • What they don’t say: “I want to be a career sales person!”

Do you want to be a manager?

When I asked one of the top performing sales reps at Linkedin if she wants to manage one day she responded by saying…

“Absolutely NOT, who would want to deal with all that comes with managing when I can control my own paycheck, have total autonomy, and be challenged by working with different businesses every day.”

Note: This particular sales professional was recruited to Linkedin from a world of “pounding the phones” because she discovered how to use Social Selling to become more efficient.

My reaction? “WOW!”

In three years working in the NBA’s Team Marketing and Business Operations Department, meeting with hundreds of sellers at various levels, I don’t think I’ve heard one sales rep, at any level, say something like that to me.

I could site a number of different research projects that show that this kind of sales environment is BAD – regardless of the source–because we know sales rep tenure drives business growth and rep turnover costs a lot.

So how do we solve this?

There is one finding, above all, that I learned directly from a Linkedin study of 100,000 business professionals that inspired me to study and understand social selling:

[dropshadowbox align=”center” effect=”lifted-both” width=”550px” height=”” background_color=”#ffffff” border_width=”1″ border_color=”#dddddd” ]Sales professionals with a high “Social Selling Index” feel more inspired at work.[/dropshadowbox]

So, what are Linkedin managers doing differently to attract top performing sales reps that are grinding out hundreds of calls/day and turning them into inspired sales professionals?

My co-workers at TMBO and I recently took a field trip to the Linkedin office at the Empire State Building for a “Managing in a Social Selling World” training session. Here are the 5 keys to success for managers:

1. Become The Expert

Social selling is here to stay and sales managers have to master it in order to manage it. This will take time, effort, energy and intellectual curiosity. I’ve been studying this now for over a year and I learn something new every day. If we aren’t willing to to take the time to master this than #2-#5 aren’t possible.

2. Train, Train, Train

Did you know that sales reps forget 87% of sales training after a month and 70% of it within a week?[ref]Download the report from Qvidian [/ref] Once we become the expert, we must reinforce how to weave social selling into the sales process. Don’t flip a switch or pile more work on top of the 100 call minimum. Share success stories on how to build a proper profile, how to use Advanced Search, how to ask for a warm introduction or referral, how to write a proper connection request or inMail, and how to maximize groups.

3. Practice What We Preach

Be active on Linkedin. Connect with your reps’ top clients. Post sharable content. Do everything top performing reps are doing. Pull up profiles in your one-on-ones. Coach your reps on how they can use Linkedin to find a warm introduction or engage with insights. This is way better in one-on-ones than reinforcing that reps are not making enough calls.

4. Use Social Selling Index as a Primary Measurement tool

Click Here to Understand the New Formula For Calculating Social Selling Index. Caution for control freaks out there, you are going to have to learn to let go – but your reps will be more inspired and love the autonomy.

5. Reverse Pipeline Management

Rather than focusing on how many calls are made or appointments are set, first focus on sales! Sales reps gravitate to what we measure and recognize. If we continue rewarding quantity in the first stage of the sales pipeline, regardless of quality, we will continue to have high rep burnout and fake phone calls.

On the flip side, recognizing and rewarding sales performance along the pipeline, regardless of whether it was through e-mail, text, in-mail, networking events, in arena activity, etc. will lead to more inspired sales professionals. In fact, you may want to remove the term “Hustle Metrics” altogether.

 

Four Key Strategies to Make Your Sports Career Flourish

kirk_wakefield 2015, Careers, Lead, Learn, Personal Development, Sales Management, Sell, Tickets, Work ethic , , , , 0 Comment
Four Key Strategies to Make Your Sports Career Flourish
by Deno Anagnost – April 2015

Is your career in ticket sales just starting to catch fire? Or, are you a seasoned veteran or manager feeling as though your career development is becoming stagnant?

Either way, I have four strategies which can take your career and personal brand to the next level. I have been very fortunate in my career to work alongside and meet with some of the best sales executives in professional sports. These individuals use these strategies to make a positive impact on their organizations and community. This kind of approach is worth imitation and will be noticed and contagious to those around you.

Focus on who (not what) you want to become

People dance with mediocrity because they focus solely on what they want to become. Their career goals are all about titles, money, and what they think is “success.” The short term, fast track mindset is strictly measured by timelines and dollar figures: “I need to be a manager in two years and making six figures in three years.”

Effective sales executives focus on (1) who they want to become and why, and (2) not on what they want to become and when. When you focus on who you want to become, attention shifts to what you can control. Create positive habits driven by who you are and want to be. Start thinking about others more. Establish what you stand for as a professional and why. Become a better version of yourself than yesterday. The right position will find you if you focus on being the very best at the position you have, whether it’s a student, an intern, a sales rep, or in management. The end reward isn’t the money, position or awards. It is what you now possess to give and contribute.

Lead with an abundance mindset

An abundance mindset believes an ample amount of success and resources exist to share with others.

Sales executives at every level can have a scarcity mindset. In a ticket sales environment, this means you believe there is a limited amount of success and sales to be made. Leaders with this mindset feel the need to hoard knowledge and resources. This scarcity mindset creates unnecessary competition that promotes negativity and leads to needless conflict between colleagues and departments.

When you have an abundance mindset, you congratulate and learn from others’ successes. When you have a scarcity mindset you look for ways to justify why they had success and you did not. This distracts focus from the functions of your job which leads to poor results. Someone with an abundance mindset will be consistently generous with their time, praise, information and resources. A sales executive with a scarcity mindset is highly jealous, and will shield information for fear someone else will have more success with it then they will.

An abundance mindset does incredible things for your personal brand. Your actions will show you have the big picture in mind. You will be viewed as someone who is selfless, and in return, you will become someone who receives more information, more responsibility, and more praise. Ask yourself: “Am I contributing to the greater good of the sales department? Or am I taking all that I can so I can win?”

Be present

Some of the best sales executives I have ever been around possess a piercing ability to focus. They become increasingly more accomplished than peers. How?

  1. They are professional students of time management.
  2. They work efficiently without making mistakes on the small details without getting distracted.
  3. They regulate their environments and remove potential distractions from line of sight.
  4. They aren’t on work phones while also texting on cell phones, typing emails or browsing websites.
  5. They are active listeners. When they ask you a question they are genuinely interested in connecting to uncover a way to help you.
  6. In meetings, their computer screens and cell phones are turned off to eliminate distractions.
  7. They give all of their attention to you and the task at hand; they aren’t just “checking the box.”

This approach carries into their personal lives. They aren’t texting or sending emails at the dinner table. When they spend time with friends and family, that’s what they are doing. They engage in conversations and activities that build healthy relationships. The core of this strategy is to focus on being present in all areas of your life. Put tremendous work into being present and you will have deeper, more fruitful relationships.

Don’t give or take excuses

Our biggest problem as sales professionals is when we can’t even see  we have a problem.

Every time I make an excuse I tell a little lie to myself that I end up believing. Doing this blinds us. We lose our self-awareness. These little lies exaggerate the faults of others and inflate our own egos. We quickly see the world through this negative view no matter how big or small the excuse is.

When we take action to do the tough things best for the long term we build grit within ourselves. This makes us more prepared for the next tough challenge ahead in our lives. In contrast, each time we rationalize or excuse we become more mentally weak. We become less confident. We fold when even easier obstacles arise.

Don’t let external situations control your internal attitude. Giving excuses is one thing. Taking them is another. Nothing defines a sales culture more than the excuses leadership accepts. Excuses are excuses. We all use them. What we don’t see is that excuses focus on things outside of our control. Do these sound familiar?

  • I’d sell more if I had better seats to sell.
  • If I had a different title I could get to decision makers easier.
  • I didn’t hit my goal because the team stinks.
  • This lead list is weak.
  • I don’t have enough time.

Sales leaders who accept these excuses can expect mediocre results or worse. Instead, look for ways to coach reps to identify when they are making excuses. Create habits and a sales culture built around professional, personal, and revenue development.

Conclusion

I wish I could tell you these strategies are easy to implement. These are not quick fixes. Over time, these strategies will change your approach to this business. People can try to fake this approach, but then words and actions won’t align. However, when habits and words do align with these strategies, people will see you as someone with courage, someone who can stomach the cost of leadership, and someone to admire. Who do you want to be?