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Why are internships so important for employers?

kirk_wakefield 2016, Lead, Learn, S3, Sales Management, The S3 Program November 17, 2016October 31, 2018break into sports, churn, hiring, human resources, intern, Internships, interviews, partners, reasons people leave jobs, relationships, sports, talent management, turnover

by Kirk Wakefield – November 2016

Meaningful Careers Begin With Meaningful Relationships

We need meaningful relationships. Young employees thrive or dive on the strength of positive relationships in the workplace. Such important relationships should start well before college students graduate.

We spend the bulk of adult life with people at work (see chart). According to research, the top three reasons people leave jobs are relationship driven:

Supervisor: People leave managers not companies.
Co-workers: Appreciation, recognition and respect from peers make or break us.
Culture: How we personally fit with the values of those we work for and with points us to open doors or out the door.

Wouldn’t it be a good idea to get a head start on knowing the nature and culture of these people before launching a career?

When is turnover too high?

The most productive recruitment strategy would seek more, not less, information on candidates. Too often recruiters make decisions based on a resume, references or referrals, and a few hours in an interview. The average turnover rate in sales is 25%. Many believe if the employee churn rate is higher than 10% the problem is the manager not the employees. None of us want to be that person.

As professionals, now is the time to invest in the lives of young people while they are still in school. They need your experience, guidance and counsel to understand and discern the best fit to start careers. Your organization gets the best read on recruits by getting to know them 12-24 months in advance of hiring decisions. You–and they–will make better, more informed decisions. Internships provide the needed edge to make good decisions and the opportunity to give back like others have done for us.

Commit this to be your best year yet in relationships and recruitment.

Contact Kirk_Wakefield@baylor.edu with questions about S3 recruitment for careers and internships.

Three things I’ve learned in starting a new collegiate ticket sales center

kirk_wakefield 2014, Sell, Tickets August 1, 2014November 1, 2018college, CRM, hiring, new, sales center, sales management, starting, ticket sales, university 0 Comment

by Chase Jolesch – August 2014

In the last five years, colleges have started outbound ticket sales centers modeled after professional sports. After spending nearly three and a half years working with the San Francisco 49ers and Legends Premium Sales, I received the opportunity to go back to my alma mater and start an outbound ticket sales center at Baylor University.

I’ve been working the past eight months to develop Baylor’s program. The three important things I have learned so far are (1) create a positive relationship with the ticket office, athletics foundation and marketing department, (2) implement a CRM system to help manage fans more efficiently and (3) hire and lead the right employees.

Create Positive Relationships with Other Departments

The ticket office, athletics foundation and marketing department all work with tickets in a variety of supporting roles. I connected with each department to learn how they work and be able to implement productive changes.

Creating these positive relationships between departments is built on communication. As Matt Rousso, Director of Ticket Sales & Service at the University of Southern California, shares,

“At USC we work closely with our ticket office on all ticketed athletic events leaning on their expertise to help improve overall processes as well as the fan experience. There is no doubt that we will continue to improve our synergies in this respect as our tenure together increases.”

Each department has a variety of objectives, but the overlapping goal is to provide a great customer experience to each fan.

Implement an Effective CRM System

We recently implemented a CRM system that our ticket sales center, ticket office and athletics foundation all access. This helps internal communication so we know what is going on with our fans as we document calls, sync e-mail lists and make notes in the system. The ticket sales center uses CRM to prospect leads and turn them into specific sales opportunities.

Rich Wang, Associate Director of Analytics & Fan Engagement at the Minnesota Vikings, has over eight years of experience in the database world, believes

“having the right information is key in today’s world. CRM provides the level of detail and insights a sales center can act on in real time. Further, CRM can provide data that allows an sales organization to form tangible relationships between existing clients and prospective targets.”

For a CRM system to be a productive tool, every department needs to be involved, and for that to happen you need the right employees.

Build the Right Team

We have taken a methodical approach to building the Baylor ticket sales center. The culture we want to create is one that cultivates talent, but also challenges and pushes. Finding the right candidate can be difficult, so we look for candidates eager to learn, work well in teams and want to be challenged.

Jared Kozinn, Director of Business Development-Premium Seating at the Detroit Lions, has experience building sales teams in the NHL, MLB, & NFL. Jared says he likes to, “look to hire passionate candidates with positive attitudes that want to learn and are open to constructive criticism.”

While finding talent through a variety of sports networks, including the Baylor S3 program and referrals, our sales center is beginning to take shape.

It has and will continue to take some patience to get things where they need to be to make it an overall success. Through positive internal relationships, CRM collaborations with fan experiences, and training the right employees the Baylor Ticket Sales Center is well on its way.

Sales Management: Why Process Trumps Talent

kirk_wakefield 2014, Lead, Sales Management, Sell, Tickets June 1, 2014November 1, 2018ability, hiring, retention, sales management, sales training, salespeople, skills, talent, ticket sales 0 Comment

by Flavil Hampsten – June 2014

Which matters more: Process or Talent? That’s an easy one. Process always trumps talent.

Before you get upset and start defending how talented your staff is and that you couldn’t generate the numbers that you do without them, imagine how much more productive they would be if you gave them leads that close at four times the normal rate? Or if you have sales events for them that routinely lead to $100,000 days?

I’m not going to completely define what process should be in place, but I will say that as a sales manager, process always trumps talent. Here is why.

#1 Talented Individuals Are Simply Not Enough

Sales managers need to hit a departmental goal. There needs to be method to maximize revenue from each individual on the team. Therefore, a process should be devised to assist everyone in order for the department to achieve goal.

I’ve never spoken to a sales manager who claims to have all A+ sales talent on staff. Most have a mix of A+, A, B, and C sellers. However, most have an A+ revenue budget to achieve. Having a great process can bump the level of each seller and give the department a better chance to achieve goal.

#2 Talent Comes and Goes, Process Stays Forever

[dropshadowbox align=”right” effect=”lifted-both” width=”250px” height=”” background_color=”#ffffff” border_width=”1″ border_color=”#dddddd” ]Having the right process in place has been an important element to the success of the teams I have managed throughout my career. The hiring process, sales process, lead-gen process….even convincing sales people to fall in love with the process of becoming great. They might not believe it right now, and I don’t think I did when I started my first job in sports, but process and persistence almost always trumps talent. ~Brent Stehlik, EVP/CRO Cleveland Browns[/dropshadowbox]With the ambitious nature of today’s sales executives, the average life of a sales executive is approximately two years. With no guarantee to keep top talent, the only method to ensure that you keep results is to have a process that maximizes each opportunity, regardless of which salesperson in assigned to it.

Why only two years? Generally speaking, the A+ sellers are the ones who can leave first, simply because other teams recruit them away with money and titles. Most times, sales managers hands are bound with budgets and departmental structure making it difficult to match the offer and the salesperson leaves. However, the departmental goal does not change. If a superior process is in place, the current salespeople will continue to deliver at a high rate, a new top salesperson will emerge, and the new salesperson will generate top numbers quicker.

#3 Talent Pool is More Like a Talent Puddle

Hard fact, but with the amount of positions to fill, the low pay, and extremely long hours in sports, it’s nearly impossible to hire all A+ sales talent. Therefore, by default, to keep your positions full you must hire a mix of talent levels in order to achieve sales results. A process is the only way to make this happen.

Even if you have one of the best recruiting and inside sales programs in sports there will be times where positions are empty or when talent is lagging. As a sales manager, you owe it to your company and your career to protect yourself from these times. The most foolproof way to do this is to engineer and implement a superior process that maximizes revenue regardless.

With work and deliberate practice talent can be created. However, superior talent cannot be created without hard work and deliberate practice while in a superior process. More importantly to a sales manager, you cannot have a successful sales department without a process to make everyone better. The talented individuals are simply not enough; you need to create and train talent to optimize performance.

Want more on good processes? Read Flavil’s, No More Cold Calls

Cover photo courtesy of Rosemary Demirkok

S3 Board Member Spotlight: Kris Katseanes, FC Dallas

kirk_wakefield S3 Spotlight, Work ethic January 1, 2013November 2, 2018FC Dallas, hiring, management, marketing, MLS, Sales, salespeople, soccer, work ethic 0 Comment

by Travis Martin – January 2013

Kris Katseanes, Vice President of Ticket Sales and Service for FC Dallas, has been an invaluable member of the S3 Advisory Board. Because of Kris’ leadership and willingness to mentor the careers of young people entering the profession, Baylor’s S3 program annually places interns and new employees with FC Dallas.

Each fall semester Katseanes visits the Baylor campus to interview S3 students for internships the following summer. For most juniors this is the first real interview with a team. Katseanes helps calm the tension as students walk into the one-on-one interviews. As with other on-campus interviews with board members, students meet with the S3 Program Director, Dr. Darryl Lehnus, to help learn for the next interview.

All the students who meet with Mr. Katseanes quickly learn about his opinion of the value of hard work. His strong work ethic was instilled in him since he was a boy. Growing up on a potato farm, hard work was the only way to go when your day starts at 4:00 am.

One demonstration of this kind of dedication came one afternoon when Katseanes found inefficiencies in the team’s database. Salespeople were wasting time and it was clear the system needed organizing. Since the team did not have a specific person assigned to the database, Katseanes took it upon himself to work from 7:00 pm that night to 7:00 am to clean up the leads in the system. This not only helped them gain more sales, but gained admiration around the office for making everyone’s life easier.

Along with integrity and networking, work ethic represents part of the Baylor S3 W-I-N acronym instilled in students. Katseanes believes we reap what we sow and luck finds people who work hard. For young professionals, the best way to improve your career is to volunteer for anything and everything. This puts you ahead of the person next to you and gets you noticed by the right people.

“But, you have to be careful,” Katseanes says. “I see young professionals always looking to the next step so much that they can’t be content with the current. The grass isn’t always greener on the other side, so find a place where you can be happy.”

Vice President of Marketing, Communications & Strategic Planning FC Dallas — Kelly Weller

“He’s fair, creative, solution and result oriented,” said Kelly Weller, Vice President of Marketing, Communications & Strategic Planning with FC Dallas. “Everyone has a chance to succeed with him. They are given all the tools, resources and time to perform their best to not only hit their individual goals, but to help achieve the overall objectives of the company. He’s one of a kind in my book!”

Katseanes loves working with the S3 program because of the leadership the program offers to its students. At FC Dallas, Katseanes has developed a leadership development program that helps employees set written goals with measurable results and deadlines. Katseanes enjoys working with the the S3 professors and S3 graduates, because the emphasis is on preparing to enter a career and not just get a job.