training

How the San Antonio Spurs Grow Good People

kirk_wakefield 2016, Integrity, Lead, Personal Development , , , , , , , , , ,
How the San Antonio Spurs Grow Good People
by Laural Logan-Fain – April 2016

Defining Culture

Culture is defined as the customs, rituals, and values shared with the members of an organization. You can see it by watching the way people interact every day. Culture is ever evolving. Culture is not something you can necessarily control; but it is something about which you can be purposeful. Management guru Peter Drucker once said, “Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you’ve got.” At Spurs Sports & Entertainment, we recognize that every employee plays a part in shaping our culture. Like any worthwhile venture, it takes consistent effort with all of us working together as a team to create a culture that is reflective of our values: Integrity, Caring, Success!

Climbing the Corporate Ladder

Biologist and educator Thomas Huxley noted, “The rung of a ladder was never meant to rest upon, but only to hold a man’s foot long enough to enable him to put the other somewhat higher.”

When we hire at Spurs Sports & Entertainment, we actively seek people who are not only highly proficient in their roles, but also fit with our culture and reflect our corporate values. Many of our staff have grown up in the organization, starting out as interns or assistants, but over time have grown to become our managers, directors, and vice presidents. This is great for stability, but as with any company, our staff (especially our ever-growing Millennial population) are eager to climb the proverbial corporate ladder. However, as a relatively small organization with many long-tenured members, the ladder may seem to some more like a step stool with only a few rungs.

Changing the Conversation

Author and motivational speaker Zig Ziglar once said, “Too many people spend more time planning how to get the job than on how to become productive and successful in that job.”

Like most organizations, we are mindful of increasing employee satisfaction and decreasing turnover rates. To accomplish this, we began to shift the conversation. Instead of focusing on promotion and ladder climbing, we emphasize continual personal growth and ongoing professional development. We implemented an Individual Development Plan (IDP) and began having career discovery (or as we lovingly call them “What do I want to be when I grow up?”) conversations with staff. As part of the IDP, staff also set short- and long-term goals and identify support they need to achieve their goals. The focus is on the whole person. We still talk about career paths and promotions, but the conversation has expanded to include “How can I grow personally? How can I develop professionally?”

Develop, Grow, Lead

As author and leadership guru John Maxwell states, “Success each day should be judged by the seeds sown, not the harvest reaped.”

In an effort to assist employee development we launched our corporate university, Spurs Sports & Entertainment University (SSEU). Our SSEU tagline reads: “Growing human capital is our number one priority.” Classes are offered during work hours, are hands-on, and cover a variety of topics. They are facilitated live by in-house experts to encourage the cultivation of ideas and relationships across departments. SSEU is supported at the highest level of the organization and every executive teaches a different course. Staff are invited to have breakfast with the president and discuss culture. They can learn about strategic planning, including the development of major vs. minor league sports, from an executive vice president.

We offer values based leadership courses that reinforce our corporate values and provide tools for staff to better handle conflict and work more effectively with one another. Our Leadership 101 series helps managers make the transition from being an individual contributor to an effective leader of people. Other course topics include game presentation, presentation skills, using data, creativity, writing skills, and much, much more. We also offer facilitated team building sessions for departments and cross-functional teams to help break down silos and build trust. Critical to having a successful culture is recognizing that employees are our greatest asset. Through SSEU, we continually invest in our human capital.

The Results

A year after launching the IDP and SSEU, our company culture survey reported increases in employee satisfaction. Employees identified that someone at work encourages their development (88%, up 15%); their manager takes time to talk with them about their professional goals (91%, up 10%); and they have a good understanding of their strengths and areas of improvement (82%, up 17%). Our culture continues to reflect our values of Integrity, Caring, Success, but it has evolved to include greater opportunities and support for staff to grow personally and develop professionally.

Pitch Perfect Alpha

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.

9 Ways to Best Use Time to Build Your Sports Career

kirk_wakefield 2015, Careers, Integrity, Lead, Learn, Networking, Sales Management, Work ethic , , , , , , , , 0 Comment
9 Ways to Best Use Time to Build Your Sports Career
by Jeff Eldersveld – June 2015

The most valuable thing any sports professional can give is time. It doesn’t matter what stage in the career – looking for a job, recent hire at a job, or a seasoned veteran – because how time is spent defines one’s self and, ultimately, one’s career advancement.

Time management is often not formally taught in school or even at jobs for that matter. Yet it is directly mentioned in a vast majority of sports job descriptions. Entering college, students are thrust into an environment where they have to balance a workload of multiple classes, assignments, and extra-curricular activities. So, they become self-taught time management enthusiasts. Some students figure it out. But, what worked in college may not equate to success in the sports industry when it comes time to get a job, start a job, or continue as a seasoned veteran in this industry.

How to Best Use Time to Get a Job

Let’s focus on first-time job seekers.

  • 1. Intentional Internships: To get a job you have to have experience and to get experience you have to have a job. So, the most important use of your time should be finding an internship that directly translates to a desired occupation, rather than just accepting whatever will give course credit. Sometimes that means pursuing & creating an internship where one didn’t exist. You must intentionally commit scheduled time to develop relationships & connections. Your university, as well as the sports organizations in your area, often provide opportunities to network with executives. You should be first in line and last to leave after getting their business cards.
  • 2. Navigate Patience vs. Persistence: College students work their way through four years of school (or more) and have a job waiting for them when they graduate. Wrong. Not in sports! In a perfect world, sports administration programs would have rolling graduation dates to coincide with the off-seasons of the four major professional sports. Because that is not a reality, most first-time job seekers must be patient. The hiring cycle in sports does not always fit with recruiting practices of corporate America.

While patience is necessary, persistence is required to make sure your resume floats to the top of the pile when a job opens. Time must be spent reaching out to prospective employers letting them know about a related school project, something you saw in the S3 Report (duh), or some form of warm and NOT random conversation. Then when a job does open up, the decision becomes much easier on who the employer should reach out to first.

How to Best Use Time as a Recent Hire

Too many want to rush this stage without taking the time to develop their skill sets, instead diverting focus by looking for the next promotion or better job opportunity.

Figure1-Candour1
Linking Candour to Leadership
  • 3. Train like it’s a marathon, not a sprint: Rarely does someone become General Manager or Vice President before the age of 30. Developing leadership competencies (see right) don’t happen overnight or even in a few years.  Marathon runners are known for superior endurance and mental toughness. Half of running a marathon (other than the 26.2 miles) is believing it can be done. Time must be devoted to training, learning how to crash through “the wall,” and sacrificing momentary pain for long-term accomplishment.

Recent hires need to work like this. Impress the person who hired you by showing a high level of commitment and ability to accomplish delegated tasks. It may seem tough to endure while wondering if that promotion is ever going to come. That is a mental block or wall to overcome. Stay focused on the task at hand. Gradually earn more responsibility as you train, ready to go the entire distance. Don’t be the one who stops halfway and hops on the bus for the easy ride back home.

How to Best Use Time as a Seasoned Veteran

As you develop leadership skills and are in a position to lead and help others, two of the best ways to use your time are to give back and to work with the right people.

  • 4. Give Back: To become a “seasoned veteran,” others had to help along the way. Devote time to the next generation of up-and-coming sports industry superstars. These superstars could be looking for internships, first-time jobs, or taking a step to further their careers. But one thing is the same: a knowledge transfer from a veteran is what will help pave the way for the superstar’s future success.
  • 5. Hire the Right People: There is no better way to spend time than building a highly functional team. The trick is to identify resources during one’s career that produce top talent either by coming up through a highly reputable organization (led by seasoned veterans) or college students who have been given a superstar skill set by their institutions. Once these areas have been identified, finding the right people becomes much more efficient. And with efficiency comes better productivity and more time to train – making the team that much better.

Time is Always Needed for This

Here are a few exercises to practice no matter what career stage.

  • 6. Say Thank You: Handwritten notes are still king because they take time to write. But, don’t neglect a verbal thank you, either. Whether in the office or over the phone, saying thank you preaches humility – which is also why this act should be done to subordinates as much as superiors.
  • 7. Learn More to Teach More: Take time to find your inner curiosity. Discover something new like learning HTML or attending an online seminar. Better yet, gain new knowledge and disseminate that knowledge amongst peers and coworkers. It doesn’t help anyone when knowledge is concealed.
  • 8. Call Your Family: Whether it’s a special occasion like Father’s Day or just the start of a new week or month, make a point to reach out to your family – especially Mom and Dad. They are, after all, the ultimate seasoned veterans.
  • 9. Find Your Happy Place: Everyone goes through difficult days where stress pops up in unforeseen ways. Powering through it some days may work but use these opportunities to “take a lap” around the office. With most teams, a lap means walking around the arena to clear the mind and refocus but it could also be in the form of a physical workout.

Cover photo courtesy of Jeff Davidson.

 

Making CRM What Your Sales Staff Wants

kirk_wakefield 2015, CRM, Learn, Relate, Sales Training , , , , , , , , 0 Comment
Making CRM What Your Sales Staff Wants
by Brooke Gaddie – March 2015

Get to know your staff

No two sales staffs are going to be exactly the same. No two reps on your staff may be the same. In order to achieve the level of acceptance that you want, you have to make the system do what they want. That means getting to know your salespeople.

My job is to make sure that 60 reps across three franchises in both sales and service utilize CRM. Roughly four months into our CRM implementation I would by no means say that we have it all figured out, but we’ve made some huge strides.

Get help. Get Ready.

[dropshadowbox align=”right” effect=”lifted-both” width=”300px” height=”” background_color=”#ffffff” border_width=”1″ border_color=”#dddddd” ]Excel can sometimes be the frenemy of CRM. It provides a great blueprint on what is important to the rep (if a sales rep is going to take the time to make an excel sheet, it must be pretty important stuff for them to track). However, Excel is that safe, familiar security blanket that reps coming running back to at the first moment of indecision or doubt with CRM. If you can convince the reps that organizing in CRM is better than their own Excel sheet, you’ve won. ~Chris Zeppenfeld, Charlotte Hornets[/dropshadowbox]We are fortunate to work with some extremely smart people at KORE Software to help make our system the best it can be. They offer a sounding board to bounce off ideas to see if what one rep wants is feasible and will help others achieve goals. We talk frequently with the Charlotte Hornets (Chris Zeppenfeld) and Utah Jazz (Adam Grow),  who have plenty of experience and offer great ideas.

If you’re just starting to implement a new CRM solution, don’t expect to be done when launch day arrives. We spent months thoroughly preparing and thought we were in pretty good shape, but since Day 1 have adapted almost daily to tweak things to work the way the reps want. Some days it is as simple as adding a box for favorite player. Other days it’s sitting down with a rep to figure out how to put everything they once had in Excel in CRM.

Train, Train, Train Again

If I have learned anything in the last four months it is this:

You can’t tell a room full of people something one time and expect them to remember it.

Train, train often, train one topic at a time. When we began training we did it in each department’s weekly meeting. That can quickly turn into a conversation with one person about one really weird situation while the rest of the room tunes out. What does work?

  1. Pick one topic.
  2. Go to the area where that teams sits.
  3. Walk them through what they need to do.
  4. Explain how it helps reach their goals.
  5. Send a follow-up email with the links to screenshots for reference.

While this takes more time on the front end, it gets results. The reps retain the information much better. Once we began these 30 minute sessions in the department’s area, reps started to buy-in and become more productive.

Conclusion

Changing the way someone operates is never going to be easy. It will take work; a lot of work. But when you find the way to train and motivate employees to do something that helps them reach their goals, we all enjoy the outcome. The thing to remember is that not everyone, or maybe anyone, will want to look at something the same way or to complete the task the same way. You have to learn and adapt with them.

Cover photo courtesy of Andrzej.

 

Students: Finding your Perfect Sports Business Employer

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Students: Finding your Perfect Sports Business Employer
by Brian Norman – January 2015

Students: Finding your Perfect Sports Business Employer

It’s your senior year. You’ve been through hundreds of hours of classroom instruction, completed multiple industry internships, and built your network extremely well. You’ve taken advantage of every opportunity. You are ready to jump head first into a full-time position within the sports business.

Now that you’re ready for the real world, how will you choose your perfect employer?

This is a simple question I ask every job candidate I interview, yet I’ve found it is very hard for many to answer with ease.

How can you find your perfect fit? Be honest with yourself, and decide what job characteristics are most important to you. You’ll find many of the biggest factors below.

Coaching

Who will you report to? Personally, I believe this is the most important aspect of finding the right fit. Your first boss in the sports business should be someone who will actively coach you in your first role.

They should genuinely care about your long-term success and develop a personalized plan to help you accomplish your goals. You should expect them to push you to accomplish your goals while also serving as a resource and support system along the way.

This individual should be proactive in providing feedback, as it is important for you to consistently understand your strengths and areas for improvement. They should know how to best deliver feedback, and how they can assist you in applying it in real time.

Finally, their reputation matters! It is important that your first supervisor is well respected and well connected as, more often than not; they are your primary connection to the rest of the industry.

Culture

Simply put, culture matters. Some questions to consider asking your future employer:

  1. Does the leadership team promote and foster success at every level?
  2. What type of traditions are unique to their organization?
  3. Are best practices both shared and celebrated?
  4. Do employees truly root for one another?
  5. Is the organization proactive in seeking new opportunities and trying new ideas?
  6. Is executive leadership accessible?
  7. Do business departments collaborate well across the board, or do they operate in “silos?”

Training Program

You will learn more in your first 12 months in the business than you can ever imagine. Your training program is vital not only to your success in your first year, but it serves as the foundation for your entire career.

In Philadelphia, new sales executives with the 76ers go through an intensive two-week training program before they begin reaching out to prospective ticket buyers. This ensures they are truly ready to communicate with prospects, while also giving them the confidence to succeed early on.

While your initial training is important, consistent ongoing training is equally as crucial. Just like professional athletes, you must continue to fine tune your craft and work on making yourself better everyday.

In Philadelphia, the sales leadership team provides consistent ongoing training to their staff every Wednesday and Thursday morning. This training focuses on different topics each week, keeping in line with the current sales process in order to give members of the sales team the tools necessary to succeed.

Opportunity for Growth

The best hiring managers aren’t looking for the next entry-level candidate. They’re looking for someone to groom to be the next great sports business executive.

In order to do so, they must provide opportunities for entry-level employees to grow within the organization. Therefore, you should ensure these types of opportunities exist when applying for your first position.

Further, be sure to ask about additional opportunities that may exist after your first promotion. Does the organization you’re interviewing with offer their senior level employees the opportunity to further grow their careers through “track” programs? Remember, career growth doesn’t end after your first promotion!

Exposure

Your first job in the sports business should serve as an extension of your college curriculum. You should constantly look for opportunities to learn more about the industry.

In order to do gain this knowledge, you’ll undoubtedly need exposure to other members of the organization you work for.

Does your potential employer facilitate these opportunities?  Are you given access to materials to broaden your knowledge of the business?

Pay Scale

Unless you’re a 20-year-old who can hit a 100-mph fastball, throw a 50-yard touchdown pass, or guard an NBA All-Star, chances are you’re never going to get rich off of your first job in professional sports.  A typical first year sports business executive in ticket sales used to be less than $35,000 (when this was first written), but better offers today (2021) are in the $40s with a chance to make more on commissions and bonuses depending on the position and level of success.

Should an additional few thousand dollars be the deciding factor on which job you take?  My advice? It should not.  Make sure every other category measures up before relying on pay scale to make your decision.

For those looking to learn more about sports business compensation, click here to see inside sales rep salaries from Ziprecruiter of roughly $45k or $22/hour. The question really isn’t what your starting salary is; the question is where are you going?

Location

This factor is entirely personal and unique to every one.  One thing is for sure, having the ability to move out of your hometown, city, or state drastically opens up your opportunities.  There are 122 professional teams within the four major American sport leagues, or over 140 counting MLS.

Limiting yourself to 2-3 throughout your career can inhibit your growth.  Nonetheless, it is important to find what makes most sense for your personal situation. Just know that you’ll spend about one-half of your waking hours with people you work with (see the graph in the cover photo). That’s a lot of time to spend with people if you pick the “right” location, but the wrong job.

10 Things Newbies Need to Know About the Sports CRM World

kirk_wakefield 2014, Careers, CRM, Learn, Relate , , , , , , , 0 Comment
10 Things Newbies Need to Know About the Sports CRM World
by Chris Zeppenfeld – June 2014

I get this call/voicemail at least once a week from other sports teams…it goes something like this:

[dropshadowbox align=”center” effect=”lifted-both” width=”350px” height=”” background_color=”#ffffff” border_width=”1″ border_color=”#dddddd” ]“Hey Zep! We’re looking for someone to manage our new CRM program. Do you know anyone who would be good for this CRM opening for my team?”[/dropshadowbox]

I’ve had this conversation hundreds of times, so I thought it would help to summarize those talks in one spot:

1.  The job market for CRM is growing rapidly.     If you’re an aspiring CRM wanna-be for a team, that’s terrific news.

    • Over ¾ of the NBA teams have CRM currently in place.
    • By the end of the 2014 calendar year, I expect 90% of the teams in the league will have implemented a CRM system.
    • Almost all of these teams have at least one person dedicated to CRM but many of them have hired or are looking for a coordinator underneath them.
    • Over half of the teams in the 4 major sports have CRM right now. I wouldn’t be surprised if every team in the “Big 4” has a CRM within the next 2-3 years.  It’s a matter of when, not if at this point.

2. CRM Departments are starting to become their own recognized departments.    Over the last 2 years, we’ve seen teams start to branch CRM/Analytics/Business Intelligence into their own departments separate from Ticket Sales, Sponsorship, or Marketing. What do these departments look like?

    • Many  have a Director (3+ years of experience with a team) overseeing the department,
    • One or two analytics personnel (3-5 years of experience), and
    • One or two CRM Coordinators (entry-level).

If you’re coming out of college in the next 12 months, the entry-level CRM Coordinator job is starting to become a regular posting on the job boards (check TeamWork Online regularly!).

3. There’s not a large pool of experienced “Sports CRM” people.    The job is relatively new to sports in general.   When I started with Charlotte in 2009, I was one of the first 10 people to be fully dedicated to CRM in all of sports. That means in sports most have only been in CRM roles for 1-2 years.   Therefore, hires often come from outside the sports industry.

4. Teams want to get smarter on how they make business decisions.  [dropshadowbox align=”right” effect=”lifted-both” width=”250px” height=”” background_color=”#ffffff” border_width=”1″ border_color=”#dddddd” ]brett kahnkeCRM has become a terrific gateway into sports analytics. It is the core function of most business analytics departments. And because its greatest strength is its ability to consolidate information, it naturally becomes the gateway to learning related business skills, such as database management & integration, business intelligence software, email marketing, consumer profiling and customer segmentation. ~Brett Kahnke, VP of Analytics & Technology @MNTimberwolves [/dropshadowbox]As recent as 5-6 years ago, sports teams were light years behind regular business when it came to database and analytics tactics.   The teams’ thirst for getting smarter has evolved quite rapidly in the last few seasons.    The amount of new technologies has increased tenfold.   I dedicate at least one day a week to researching new technologies, programs, or improvements I can make to my CRM just to keep up with everyone else!

5. Most teams with CRM have (by now) integrated all revenue generating departments into their CRM.    Three years ago, most teams with CRM only had one department at most in their CRM (usually Ticket Sales or Sponsorship).   At the recent NBA Analytics Summit, a quick show of hands revealed that most teams have Ticket Sales, Email Marketing, and Sponsorship corralled in the CRM world.   Being in charge of the program that controls the world of the three biggest sources of revenue makes the CRM people more valuable to the organization….and further exposes the CRM personnel to a wider range of areas of the team’s business.

6. If a team is hiring for their #1 CRM position (head of department), they will look for experience.    Usually a team just getting CRM will also look to hire their very first person in CRM around the same time or after implementation has finished. Personally, I think this is backwards…you should hire the CRM expert first, then go buy the CRM, but I digress.

What kind of experience is needed? This person must have a solid foundation of the technical aspects of a CRM database. They should:

    • be comfortable moving large data table sets, customizing forms, entities, fields, etc.,
    • have experience creating user interfaces, and (most importantly)
    • have experience training people on software.

I can’t stress enough the need for CRM Directors to be skilled “teachers” as user adoption is the #1 reason CRM implementations fail. It won’t be the technology that causes it to fail.  I’d put more emphasis on the candidate who has experience teaching people how to use a software and working with high-level management on analytical reports than the world’s most knowledgeable CRM person.

7. If a team already has a #1 CRM person, the skillset for their #2 and #3 CRM people is more about potential to grow than past CRM experience. The 2nd and 3rd in-command CRM people should be groomed to eventually take over the #1 role within 2-3 years either for the team (when the #1 perhaps moves on) or for another team who is looking for a #1. We’ve hired two coordinators in my time here in Charlotte, and both times, I was much more interested in their potential than their actual database knowledge. And so should you.

8. The entry-level CRM job is like an apprenticeship. I’ve often said that being my CRM Coordinator is like being in an apprenticeship.   I’ll teach them all I can about CRM for 2-3 years; then they should know enough to be as successful as they want to be in this field for their careers.

As a newbie, it’s OK if you don’t know Microsoft CRM or Salesforce very well. My concern is that when I show you how to do (insert task here) in CRM that you can pick it up quickly, learn it, and remember how to do it in the future.   Both of my coordinators have been excellent hires, yet neither one of them had more than a semester or two of database internship experience.

Here’s what I look for in order of importance:

  1. Can you quickly pick up what I teach you?
  2. Do you have the maturity to eventually run a department in a few years?
  3. Are you an extremely organized person?  Are you nearly obsessive with having things in a neat, organized fashion?
  4. Are you self-motivated? Do you want to be in front of a computer for up to 12 hours a day?  Do you see CRM as a career?
  5. Do you have at least some basic idea of how databases work? Have you worked with contacts, opportunities, accounts, etc.?  If not, have you ever done any kind of importing leads into a database?

9. Not everyone has to do ticket sales to get into sports; there’s a spot for the analytical yet creative type out there. Ask yourself these questions:

  • Do I consider myself to be a creative person?
  • Am I a person who tends to make data driven analytical decisions in my life choices?
  • Am I the type of person to get annoyed when some messes up my alphabetized DVD collection?

If you answered yes to all three of these questions, the ticket-sales-make-100-calls-a-day path is probably not for you. A lot of college students choose the ticket sales path simply because it’s the most prevalent way to “get your foot in the door.” Just because it’s the most common way, doesn’t mean it’s the best fit for you. Creative, outside the box, analytical personalities typically do not make great sales reps. They do, however, make great CRM Coordinators.

10. There are plenty of Sport Management majors, but not a lot of people who “majored” in running CRM. There’s a ton of sport management programs around the country, but an overwhelming majority of these focus on marketing and selling. They churn lots of good candidates for future marketing and ticket sales positions for sports teams.  These candidates have experience being in a CRM environment (namely making calls within the CRM), but that’s honestly not all that helpful. While I’d still value personal traits over experience, I admit one reason why I value candidates from Baylor University is I know these students have direct experience assigning leads to reps through CRM, making customizations in the CRM, and analyzing data. So, if you’re still undecided, check out the S3 program here. Or, start getting CRM experience at your university or the university’s contacts.

Does using social media in selling increase performance?

kirk_wakefield 2013, Luxury Suites & Premium Tickets, Sell, Sponsorships, Tickets , , , , , , , , 0 Comment
Does using social media in selling increase performance?
by Wayne Guymon – October 2013

Social Media is all fun and no work, right?  Those “millennials” are always on their phones, checking Facebook and “LOL’ing” with their friends.  It always seems to be “tweet this” and “hashtag that.”  I can hardly understand what they are saying sometimes!

The truth of the matter is that social media, when used effectively, can be an extremely beneficial tool.

A study of business-to-business salespeople found that 42% frequently use social media in their selling efforts to:

  1. Build awareness.
  2. Prospect.
  3. Obtain leads.
  4. Connect with customers and keep them feeling important.
  5. Maintain good business relationships.
  6. Obtain referrals.
  7. Communicate thoroughly.

As we might guess, 73% of millennial’s use social media in selling, while 60% of Gen X salespeople do, and only 33% of baby boomers.

More importantly, the sales performance of those who use social media in these ways is significantly higher than those who don’t.

During a recent brainstorming session with one of my sales AE’s, we pulled up a prospective partner’s Facebook page.  By literally spending a few minutes browsing the page, we completely overhauled our proposal to incorporate some themes that we discovered.  When we subsequently made the pitch, the client remarked on how our theme was spot-on with their current objectives.

While there are plenty of fun and games involved, used effectively and efficiently, social media can help lead the sales charge for your sales teams.

How about your sales team?

At your next sales team meeting, see how your group is doing by asking the questions below.

How can we use social media and which social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Vine, Instagram, blogs, etc.) work best to:

  1. Increase your awareness among potential and current customers?
  2. Prospect new customers?
  3. Obtain leads? Referrals?
  4. Connect with customers and make them feel important?
  5. Maintain good business relationships?
  6. Communicate thoroughly?

We’d like to hear what you come up with! We’re all learning together! Tweet to us @BaylorS3 and @Wguymon. #sellsports

Join the S3 Report.

The study of 309 B2B salespeople from a national sample was conducted by: Schultz, Robert J., Charles Schwepker, and David J. Good (2012). “An exploratory study of social media in B2B selling: Salesperson characteristics, activities, and performance,” Marketing Management Journal, 22 (2), 76-89.

Cover photo courtesy of Leah Carroll.

 

 

Sales training for CRM: The 3 sales rep types & how to reach them

kirk_wakefield 2013, CRM, Learn, Relate, Sales Training , , , , , , , , 0 Comment
Sales training for CRM: The 3 sales rep types & how to reach them
by Chris Zeppenfeld – June 2013

How can CRM fail?

Numerous studies estimate that somewhere around 50% of all CRM implementations ultimately fail.   That’s scary.  Why do CRM implementations fail?

User adoption is usually at the top of the list of most of the articles on the subject.  The recurring theme is reps and managers need ongoing CRM training to fully benefit from the installation. That brings up questions like:

  • How often do you train?
  • How long are the sessions?
  • What measurables should we use?

But, the most important questions is:  HOW am I going to treat each rep in the training session?

Typical sales responses

Tell me if any of these sound familiar among sales reps:

  • motivated by instant gratification
  • want things to be fast and quick
  • paranoid about protecting leads
  • concerned about how they will be judged by their manager
  • hates anything that slows them down from selling
  • dislikes having to put info into CRM for the sake of putting info into CRM
  • expects something to happen immediately whenever a button is clicked

After training roughly 2,000 people in my career in software, I’ve boiled it down to three types of reps you are likely to encounter in CRM training sessions. The major challenges are 1) getting buy-in and 2) keeping their attention. Achieving these goals requires different approaches with each type of rep.

THE QUESTIONER

Symptoms: 

  • always asks if CRM can do something that you haven’t built yet in CRM,
  • often the most engaged reps you have,
  • potential to be managers someday, 
  • most likely to be curious about something in CRM you never trained them on

Diagnosis: Questioners aren’t your typical rep. They want to know WHY something is the way that it is.   You may only have one or two of these people on your entire sales staff.

Treatment:

  1. Important to develop good relationship since they can be your best source of ideas for new things in CRM
  2. Focus on how CRM can make them smarter than the average rep
  3. React quickly when they complain since they can “poison” everyone else with their vocal barbs
  4. If you do create a new tool in CRM based off their suggestion, make sure to give them credit so they feel engaged
  5. Spend more time explaining the logic behind the new task and less time having them repeat the task over and over again in the training session

THE SOLDIER

Symptoms: 

  • rarely raises an issue about CRM (but if they do it’s all of them at once)
  • not curious at all about the other things in CRM outside of their world,
  • uses CRM as a means to an end rather than a tool to help them improve as a sales rep

Diagnosis: Soldiers are your typical rep: Here’s what the world looks like, put your head down, and sell it!

Treatment:

  1. Focus on showing them that CRM makes them faster and more efficient
  2. Use them as showcase examples to your staff to reward good CRM habits
  3. Engage them and ask for their input when considering adding a new feature to CRM
  4. Tell them to click where and when, and they will do it (as long as it is fast)
  5. Try to get as many repetitions as possible during the training session of the new task you are showing them

THE OLD GUARD

Symptoms:

  • usually most tenured reps consistently selling at high volume,
  • stuck in their ways,
  • struggle to get notes in CRM,
  • think their way (spreadsheets, note cards, outlook, etc.) is “good enough” to do the job,
  • often say things like, “I sold XXXX without CRM then, so I don’t need to learn this new CRM thing”

Diagnosis: Old Guards are usually skilled salespeople, but are a mixed bag when it comes to CRM adoption.

Treatment:

  1. Show them indisputable statistics that using CRM helps their winning percentage
  2. Show them that the time it takes to put in a note in CRM is less than what they are doing now (literally conduct a time trial session – if his method is quicker/better, you have a design issue)
  3. Focus on the bare essentials (put your notes in) of CRM rather than all of the bells and whistles
  4. Lean on managers for enforcement of CRM when you get non-compliance
  5. If you have to resort to threats of taking away sales for lack of CRM notes, make sure that comes from the sales manager not you!
  6. Much better to have 5 CRM training sessions over 5 days that last 10 minutes each vs. 1 training that lasts 60 minutes straight

Sales Training: How to Handle Objections

kirk_wakefield 2013, Sales Training, Sell, Sponsorships, Tickets , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Sales Training: How to Handle Objections
by Sean Ream – May 2013

Handling Objections

How often do you hear the proud statement from a sales representative, “I just had a great conversation, they are definitely going to buy.”  A natural response from the manager usually is, “What are his/her concerns?”   And then comes the answer you don’t want to hear.  “They don’t have any.  They just want to look the information over first.”

How do managers eliminate these conversations?  How do we not only handle the stalls and objections, but seek them out?  Younger salespeople typically avoid objections because they aren’t fully prepared to handle them.[dropshadowbox align=”right” effect=”lifted-both” width=”250px” height=”” background_color=”#ffffff” border_width=”1″ border_color=”#dddddd” ]

Gregg Allen
Gregg Allen

Coupling urgency techniques and preempting objections before they become an issue is a crucial step to shortening the sales cycle, which gives the salesperson more time to find that next client. [/dropshadowbox]

How should objections be handled? Let’s line up all of the objections so we know what we are working with.

  1. Identify the stall or objection,
  2. Ask for and isolate all roadblocks, and
  3. Gain a commitment from the customer pending a solution to all of their concerns.

As veterans in the sales process we understand that drawing out objections is a natural part of the sales process.  Yet, one challenge I have faced as a manager/trainer is how to impart confidence and excitement to attack the hoops customers make us jump through.

At the Major League Soccer National Sales Center, we have built a library of drills to battle this challenge.  Here are a couple of favorites you might want to add to your arsenal.

Objection Rolodex Workshop       

Trainees begin with a standard issue Objection Rolodex (see picture below).  Start by asking the trainees to whiteboard all objections heard on the phones, no matter how crazy they may seem.   Once all roadblocks to a potential sale are exhausted, the class enters these objections on the top of an index card within the rolodex.imageimage

Take the top two or three objections and ask the class to contribute or develop their best rebuttals.  Responses are recorded on the back of the corresponding index card.

The real power of this exercise lies within the freedom to think creatively with no pressure and to build off of teammates’ ideas.  Perhaps you can award a prize for the best new rebuttal.

Running this exercise each month brings recent objections to the forefront and salespeople can share rebuttals that are working.  The Rolodex then becomes an updated resource to review and share throughout a sales career.  Documenting great responses ensures they are habit-forming and never lost.

Objection Flip Cup 

We repurposed a favorite college drinking game, flip cup, utilizing root beer or water for this game.  (Google if unfamiliar.)

The catch is that a common objection is entered on the bottom of the cup.  Once the root beer is consumed, the trainee reads the bottom to find the objection.  Before attempting to flip, the person directly to the right must provide a rebuttal to the objection.  If the cup does not land on its top, the partner must reply with another rebuttal.  This continues until the cup is flipped on its top.  The process begins again with the next teammate and progresses down the line.   It’s a race!

Managers can stand behind the trainees as a judge.  Was the rebuttal truly a response that could handle that particular objection?  We also videotape these games for review on a debrief.  Practice and repetition helps make these rebuttals commonplace on the phone.

Our younger sales staff loves this game.  I wonder why?  More importantly, it forces your partner to develop a new rebuttal in a very short amount of time.  Especially if you have a teammate who is as bad at flip cup as I am.

Improvisational Comedy Exercises

Improv forces participants to listen, accept all ideas given to them by their partners, and react in a way that moves the scene or conversation forward.

In the clip, “What’s in the box?”  we explain the way the exercise can be completed and how it relates back to ticket sales.  Please contact us if you would like more information on this exercise.  We are happy to provide tips to get the most out of these drills from a facilitation standpoint.

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