– Mark Few, head coach of Gonzaga about Jalen Sugg’s three-point buzzer beater in the Final Four.

By Steve DeLay

If you were still awake at 11:30 p.m. Eastern on Saturday night, you saw the end of a tremendous basketball game as Gonzaga beat UCLA on a buzzer beater.

What was even more amazing was Gonzaga head coach Mark Few’s comments after the game when he said, ‘we practice that all the time.  He makes them in practice all the time.’

It got me thinking about practice and the power of practicing so much, doing something in live action is second nature.  It works for last second buzzer beaters where the coach doesn’t need to take a timeout because his players know what to do.  It works for practicing your golf swing where you have it so engrained, you can take it easily from the range to the course and have your swing, or your putting stroke hold up under pressure.  It works for the military who practices and drills over and over so in the heat of the battle, soldiers don’t have to think, they just do.

PRACTICING YOUR SALES PITCH

My question to you today is have you practiced your sales pitch enough where it will hold up under pressure?  Will you know what to do when that key prospect tries to throw you off with an objection?  Will you know how to act when the prospect gives you a crazy curve ball about having to ask his or her dog, spouse, neighbor or long lost brother before they say yes?

Sure, practicing your sales pitch isn’t nearly as cool or sexy as practicing 40 footers to win a Final Four game.  It’s not nearly as much fun as practicing hitting drives 300 yards.  But, it’s your livelihood.  It may not be as much fun but it’s way, way, way more important.

Most teams give new salespeople some initial sales training for a couple days or even a week.  Then, they turn the salespeople loose.  There is no follow up practice.  The rest is up to the salesperson.  Imagine if Mark Few left it up to his players on what to do in the last three seconds of their Final Four game.  Would the same result have happened?  Highly doubtful.

If your sales manager isn’t like Mark Few, take it upon yourself to practice.  Pull one of your colleagues in to an empty office and practice your sales pitch.  Watch webinars, invest in yourself and your own training.

Like Mark Few didn’t on Saturday night, don’t take any chances your salespeople know what to do.  If you need more practice but don’t have the time, I’ll practice with them through The Ultimate Toolkit’s online sales training programs at https://courses.theultimatetoolkit.com/

You’ll be glad you did.

For the first time in a year, teams are starting to hire.  That means training and management are right around the corner.

Talking with Teamwork Online last week who is the largest sports recruiting service in the country, their executives indicated things are starting to pick up…not 100% back yet but making progress.

The question is, if you’re a sales manager, are you ready to hire, train and manage again or are you out of practice?

Here are some tips and ideas to re-invigorate your approach.

HIRE FOR APTITUDE FIRST

Does your candidate have the native skills and personality characteristics to be a successful salesperson?  Do you even remember what native skills you’re looking for and what personality characteristics fit best in your organizational culture?

Do they have the ‘it’ factor or are you merely looking at their resume and hoping their previous experience carries over? 

IS YOUR TRAINING PROGRAM READY?

Once you hire for aptitude, do you have the training program ready to make sure that salesperson is successful virtually immediately?  After 12 months of waiting, you better have that on-boarding and sales training process nailed to a ‘T’.  You can’t wait for a ramp up period.  Those salespeople have to produce now.

More importantly, are you prepared to be involved as a manager?  Too many times pre-pandemic, did I go do sales training at a team and the manager seemed to always have to step out to take care of something and then came back three hours later.  You have to be part of and actively involved in the training.  The old type of on-site sales training may be harder to come by in a tighter budget era and less crowding in to a conference room.  Sales managers have to take a stronger, more visible leadership role in training and providing resources to succeed.

SETTING THE RIGHT EXPECTATIONS AND GOALS

Once you have the new staff on board, do you have the right goals and expectations set for them?  I’m talking activity goals, sales goals, training goals and more.  Are the salespeople participating in understanding how you set those goals and why you set them or are you just handing them to each person and saying, ‘good luck’?

More importantly, are the goals specific and consistent?  That means not just goals for the year but goals for the month, week and day.  We celebrate daily, weekly and monthly goal achievement at our teams at The Ultimate Toolkit Company.  Do you?  Do your salespeople even have monthly goals to reach or is it a big, scary number at the end of the line they are staring down?

FEEDBACK, FEEDBACK, FEEDBACK

If you laid off all your staff or even a decent chunk of your sales staff, you haven’t had to regularly give feedback and consultation.  Do you have your system in place for not just one-off feedback but daily, weekly and monthly feedback for each person on your staff?  Many of them will be new so don’t take any chances on whether they will produce immediately. 

IT’S GOING TO BE A CRAZY SPRINT

You’ll need more sales in a shorter amount of time from less people.  You have to be prepared as managers and operating at 110% efficiency.  We can help you with your training with our online programs at https://courses.theultimatetoolkit.com/.  Feel free to give me a call at 702-493-2661 or shoot me an email at stevedelay@theultimatetoolkit.com.

The last year has been a nightmare for the sports industry – canceled games, games with no fans and games with a few fans.

Yuck!

But, we’re inching closer to a return to normalcy. I know with my teams in Macon, Georgia, and Florence, South Carolina, we’re planning to operate at full capacity come May 27 when our season starts. (fingers and toes crossed and an offering to the baseball gods and coronavirus demons)

If you’re a sales manager that’s been more or less sitting and waiting for the last 10-11 months, it’s about to get totally, completely, insanely nuts, especially if you’re in a summer sport like Minor League Baseball, USL soccer or the WNBA.

Let’s think about what you have to do as soon as you get the green light to have fans.  (we’ll hope at full capacity!!)

1. Get your schedule.  Yep, still waiting on that schedule for this summer?  Hopefully your league office has it and is just waiting for the go-sign.
2. Put your Sellout Strategy in place.  Once you get that schedule, which games to focus on for sellouts?  Which games to ignore?  Early season games in April or May where you have little or no time to sell or weekday games early and late in the season?  Give me a call at 702-493-2661 or email me at stevedelay@theultimatetoolkit.com and I’ll share a Sellout Matrix template.
3. Develop your ticket products.  Now that you have a schedule and a Sellout Strategy, what do your ticket packages look like to drive those sellouts?
4. Plan group and single game theme nights.  You’re going to need groups to get sellouts and you’re going to need your best and brightest single game promotions.
5. Set up your marketing timeline.  What’s your budget?  Did you learn enough about digital marketing strategy in your down time to maximize your social and digital ad strategy?  Do you need classes like our Ultimate Toolkit Digital Tix Class?
6. Hire salespeople back.  This could be bringing back furloughed staff you let go a while back or more likely, brand new salespeople.  You and every other team are hiring in the next 60 days.  How do you stand out?  If you’re interested in having your league build a candidate pool that has already been trained, check out what is happening with the ECHL Sales Candidate Training program.
7. Train salespeople.  It may be listed as the last step but is likely the most important.  Those salespeople have lost their edge or if they are new, they haven’t ever had an edge.  What if you could put them through online training before they even set foot in your office?  Training directly from The Ultimate Toolkit’s Online Training programs.
8. GO, GO, GO!!!!

Yep, the next 4-6 months are a crazy sprint.  Are you ready?  If you’re looking at this list and say “Yep, got those points covered.”  That’s terrific.  Congratulations.  If you’re looking and thinking diving under your desk for the next six months and coming up for air in September, that’s understandable.  Give me a call at 702-493-2661 or shoot me an email at stevedelay@theultimatetoolkit.com to talk strategy and tactics.  I’m happy to help.

In this case, I was happy to help someone trying to get ahead

By Steve DeLay

I was impressed he had the guts to ask.

I’m talking about an email from an out of work ticket salesperson.

He had been laid off when coronavirus hit, like just about every other ticket salesperson in the industry.  But, instead of wallowing in self-pity, or going to sell cell phones, he was trying to do something to get ahead and improve himself.

The emailer said he had seen my LinkedIn post on our new Ultimate Toolkit/ECHL sales training program for candidates wanting to get hired in to the ECHL. 

“What does it teach?,” he asked.

I explained it was the guts of The Ultimate Toolkit training for group sales and B2B sales.  The only difference between this program and the standard Group Sales Superstar and B2B Tix Superstar was that ECHL sales managers reviewed the videos instead of me.

“Sounds daunting,” he emailed.

“Nope,” I responded.  “It’s perfect for someone like you looking to get back into sports.  You get the training you need, and you get reviewed and noticed by an entire league of sales managers.  If you don’t like hockey for some reason, you can always put ‘Ultimate Toolkit Certified’ on your Teamwork profile and apply for other jobs outside of hockey.”

There was an email silence for a while, maybe 20-30 minutes.  Then I received ‘the ask’.

“Can you loan me the 60 bucks?," the emailer asked.  “I’ll pay you back double if I get a job.”

That’s what I call asking for the order.

I was impressed he had the nerve to ask.  I loaned him the $60 to go through the training program and told him, ‘I’ll be following your progress.  I expect big things.”

The Ultimate Toolkit online training programs aren’t for everyone.  This isn’t just listening to a few modules while you’re watching TV and then claiming you’re ‘certified’.  You have to really study and practice.  But, if you truly want to get trained and get noticed by sales managers for ECHL teams or other teams that will be hiring soon, it’s the best $60 you’ll ever spend. 

If you know are interested in working in the ECHL, or getting Ultimate Toolkit certified, have them check out the ECHL/Ultimate Toolkit training program.  While I’m only loaning $60 to that one candidate who had the guts to ask, I will keep an eye out for your progress on your way to being a superstar in ticket sales.

Make life easy for your bosses

By: Steve DeLay

“How are we doing on ticket sales?”

Do you have an answer for this question when your owner asks?

My team presidents do when I ask. You should as well with one simple report.

The report I’m talking about is month by month ticket sales vs. budget.

IT’S THE REPORT, STUPID

Here’s what most teams do and why team owners become maniacs and sales managers become basket cases.

You and your staff set a ticket sales budget for the season. Hopefully, you go deeper and set ticket sales goals for season tickets, ticket packages, groups, hospitality and even single game sales.

Then you let it sit there. It’s a huge, scary number when you look at the season as a whole and don’t break it down in to bite-sized pieces. After all, if you were trying to lose 30 pounds, would you stare at that 30 lb. number or would you say you wanted to lose 5 pounds a month for six months? Which would seem easier to accomplish?

I’m sure you keep track of your progress. You probably do a daily sales report. But that only shows you how you are doing against the total budget. We all know that sales come in waves. The start of the selling season is pretty slow. Closer to the start of the season, sales ramp up dramatically.

Make your life easy. Simply set month by month goals for each ticket product you have. Those month by month goals will add up to the total budget goals for each product for the year.

Now, when your boss or owner asks, “How are we doing on ticket sales?”, you can give him or her specific numbers and say something like,

“We’re ahead of pace by this much in seasons, behind by this much in ticket packages and overall, we are even with the pace we need to be in order to hit budget.”

He or she will just nod, and head on their way to the next conversation or subject.

I can tell from experience, my team in Florence, S.C., is way behind our monthly pace in season ticket sales. Am I panicked? Nope, because I know we’re way ahead of pace in ticket package sales, more than off-setting the shortfall in season tickets. I ask, my president tells me and I move on to the next subject.

Simply, a month by month report works whether you are in-season right now, or anxiously awaiting the rules, guidelines and details to be able to sell for this summer.

SET IT FOR YOUR SALESPEOPLE AS WELL

We all know young people don’t respond well to big, scary goals. Their year-long sales number is so out there to them, it’s incomprehensible. So, make them feel like they are accomplishing things by breaking down their goals the same way you do for the team, month by month and product by product.

Then, celebrate each time you hit those goals. Little victories in this environment will go a long, long way!

As we start the 2021 year, let’s not waste time looking back at a 2020 that was a train-wreck of a disaster. Let’s look forward to 2021 and starting thinking about what a return to sports normalcy could look like. But, there will be challenges. How will you handle them?

What if…?

WHAT IF you’re told by ownership you have to operate with 50% fewer salespeople than you had before but still sell the same number of tickets as before? What digital tools can replace salespeople? 

WHAT IF when you do get the go-ahead to hire your sales staff back, every other sports team in the country is hiring at the same time? How are you going to present your ‘career’ opportunity in a way to make it seem like the best place in the country to work? Have you built your organization’s culture and brand up in a way to get the best and the brightest or will you have the same old job descriptions, posted in the same places?

WHAT IF when you do get the go-ahead, you only have 30 days to sell tickets until your home opener? How are you going to get your sales staff up and running and trained quickly to be effective? Cram everyone into a crowded conference room for two days of training…two days you can’t afford to lose in such a short sales season?

WHAT IF what you thought were your loyal season ticket holders don’t return as quickly as you hope? They’ve lived a season without you and a season without the fun of going to full sports venues and decided they don’t need to spend the money on season tickets? Instead, they’ll buy game by game. How will you adjust your ticket product marketing mix, post-pandemic?

WHAT IF your ad budget is cut in half and the same tried and true forms of advertising like radio and TV don’t work? What if, as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram usage levels out, even those strategies don’t work as well as they used to for you? What are you going to do next to sell more tickets and develop personal relationships with your fans?

WHAT IF you took some time to study businesses outside of sports that have survived and prospered in this nightmare and learned their customer experience secrets? Jesse Cole, owner of the Savannah Bananas and author of “Find Your Yellow Tux” has turned the Bananas in to a wildly successful business, not just a wildly successful summer collegiate baseball team. He’s done it by turning his business upside-down and copying the best outside of the sports industry. He studies companies like My Cookie Dealer, a cookie maker out of New York who has created a fanatical following selling 5 lb. cookies.

WHAT IF at the start of 2021, as you return to work with new energy and vigor, you and your staff took a step back and reviewed every single thing you do to sell tickets, sell merchandise and sell sponsorships and decided the same old, same old isn’t going to work any more? Would you have the guts to change? Would you have the perseverance to see change through like this little bear cub? Do you have this much determination??

If you want some help answering these WHAT IF questions, give me a call at 702-493-2661 or send me an email at stevedelay@theultimatetoolkit.com.

• FOMO
  

• or fo·mo

  ^{[ foh-moh ]}

  noun Slang.

  a feeling of anxiety or insecurity over the possibility of missing out on something, as an event or an opportunity: If I say no to buying tickets to a sporting event, I get a bad case of FOMO.
  
  

  Fans are catching FOMO.  They are fed up with staying home and want to go out and do something.  They want to be entertained. 

  However, you can’t just assume they will come back.  While some fans are chomping at the bit, a big chunk of your fan base may have put you out of mind since you’ve been basically out of sight for the last eight months when they couldn’t come to games.

  In this case, the FOMO virus is a good virus and we don’t need a vaccine for it.  In fact, we want to help you help your fans catch FOMO.  It doesn’t happen by accident and there is no guarantee your fans will even want to catch FOMO so you have to help them get infected.

  There are two symptoms of FOMO:

1. Limited supply.  This has been solved in many cases with restricted capacity, especially for hockey teams starting play this week in the ECHL and right after the first of the year in additional ECHL markets and AHL markets.
   
   That limited supply means you get to create a sense of urgency for your fans to quickly purchase the tickets you do have available or they are likely to get shut out. 
   
   
2. High demand.  This symptom is a little trickier to treat.  This is where you have to engage your fan base and anyone even remotely interested in your team to get excited about coming to a game this winter or spring.  This has to be much, much, much more (did I emphasize more enough?) than just messaging that you are back and you have a good team.  Your hard core fans will buy in to that message but all of your other target audiences will need more convincing.
   
   You have to focus on the entertainment, atmosphere and fact that you’re providing an outlet for fun, family entertainment.  

HOW TO HELP YOUR FANS CATCH FOMO

Once you’ve diagnosed both symptoms, the key to developing FOMO in your fans is engagement.  How are you engaging your fans with content, stories and buzz surrounding your team’s return?  You can’t easily do this right now with the usual events, player appearances or town halls.  You have to do it via social and digital media and effective email marketing.

To learn how to do that, check out our next digital ticket sales webinar on Tuesday, December 8 at noon Eastern.  You can sign up at Digital Ticket Sales Webinar.  We’ll give you examples of teams who are helping their fans catch FOMO and building wait lists in the thousands for as soon as their tickets go on sale.

FOMO might be the most important virus our fans can contract over the next few months to recover from the COVID 19 nightmare we’ve all been living through during 2020.

If you can’t join Tuesday’s webinar, send me an email at stevedelay@theultimatetoolkit.com or give me a call at 702-493-2661 and I’ll fill you in on how my teams, the Macon Bacon and Florence RedWolves are helping our fans catch FOMO.

• It won’t be easy.

  I’m talking about selling tickets to businesses.

  But you need to.

  You need to sell season tickets and ticket packages. You need to sell hospitality and employee outings.

  You need to sell to businesses for three key reasons:

1. They are more reliable. Especially in a down economy, you need a solid concentration of businesses buying your tickets. If you’ve sold them correctly, they are buying to help their business grow, reward employees or thank clients. Those aspects matter even more in a down economy.
2. They have more people to use the tickets. More employees, more clients and more salespeople. 
3. They have more money to spend. Let’s face it, top businesses can buy your premium seating, even if the local economy is struggling, much more than individuals who are just big fans of your team. 

The usual tools of calling to get appointments, going to networking events, visiting clients in their offices to ask for referrals will work. It will just be much harder.

You’ll still need the key fundamentals of finding the top decision maker and getting an appointment. The difference is the appointment may be virtual, or at your arena or stadium. 

Once you get that virtual appointment or in-person socially distanced appointment, you’ll still need to ask the right questions to make the right recommendation. You’ll just do it in a little different manner.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized how critical B2B selling and B2B sales training is to teams, especially in a shortened off-season that’s going to be a sprint to Opening Night.

HEAR IT FROM THE BEST

That’s why, instead of me writing about it, let’s talk about it. Join me for a unique B2B ticket sales webinar with two of the industries’ best. Justin Ramquist, Associate VP for the Indiana Pacers has been selling B2B and managing B2B sales teams for more than 13 years, first in MiLB and now in the NBA. CJ Johnson is the President of the Winston-Salem Dash Single-A baseball team who has some of the highest priced sold out premium seating in all of MiLB. He is re-starting his sales team and sales efforts to the business community as well.

Our B2B Ticket Sales Webinar is Tuesday, October 27 at noon Eastern. There is limited space so sign up now at B2B Tix Sales Webinar and join me talking with CJ and Justin about the right tools and techniques to sell B2B in such an unusual sports year.

Allen Iverson made it famous. 

“Practice…we’re talking about practice, not a game.”

Michael Jordan said it even better.

“You can practice shooting eight hours a day but if your technique is wrong, then all you become is very good at shooting the wrong way.  Get the fundamentals down and the level of everything you do will rise.”

TWO THINGS WE CAN TAKE FOR GRANTED

Coming out of the coronavirus world, there are two things I think all of us in the sports world can take for granted:

1. Selling will be different. Depending on your community, your state and your fan base, the ability to get face to face meetings with top business execs and top group prospects will be more challenging.  Zoom is the new norm and you and your sales staff have to be prepared to sell differently.
2. Salespeople are well trained. I’ve heard it from numerous Sales Managers and VPs. “My staff will be exceptionally well trained.  We spent our down time role playing every week.”

BUT…

Practice is terrific. 

My question is – Have you practiced the right way to sell? Have you practiced the right way to add sizzle to a Zoom call with a prospective group leader? Have you practiced the right way to do a socially distanced tour of your facility to get new buyers?

I hear from a lot of teams about their new Zoom presentation. PowerPoints, pictures and graphs so it’s not just a salesperson doing a Zoom call with a prospect and two people staring at each other. Fantastic concept. But, have you practiced the call? Have you gauged your prospect’s responses to your presentation and measured your success? Are your salespeople as good on Zoom as they should be face to face?

DON’T GIVE UP ON FACE TO FACE

If you’re in states like California, New York, Oregon or Washington, you may not meet a client in person for another year. However, if you’re working in a state with more relaxed guidelines, there is a pretty high likelihood your prospects want to meet. You can meet at their office in a good sized conference room or meet at the ballpark or arena. 

Here is why face-to-face meetings are still so critically important.

At the ECHL marketing meetings in June, Tim Statezni from the Las Vegas Raiders gave some stats on their success in face-to-face meetings vs. virtual meetings when they were selling for their new stadium.

It shows that the face to face is still much, much stronger than virtual. Wherever possible, face to face still reigns supreme.

We can take two keys from Michael Jordan’s quote:

1. Practice the right way, the right techniques. That means if you’re going to do virtual meetings, make sure your salespeople know what to say and how to run those meetings.
2. Get the fundamentals down. That means making sure your sales staff, wherever possible still focuses on the fundamentals of getting face to face and talking about value. 

RAMP UP QUICKLY

As sports teams, we’re in real danger of fans putting us out of sight and out of mind. We see that with tumbling TV ratings. It’s up to our sales teams to bring us back from the abyss. We have to ramp up their training quickly and cost-effectively to do that.

We can help you save time and ramp up with those fundamentals, the right practice and the right techniques through Group Sales Superstar and B2B Ticket Sales Superstar, our online training programs.   

Feel free to give me a call at 702-493-2661 or email me at stevedelay@theultimatetoolkit.com. I’m happy to help.

Use all your resources wisely to succeed this season

Six weeks. 

That’s how long you might get between the announcement your season is on and your first home game. And, I don’t think I’m understating this when I say that those six weeks may be the most important six weeks in your franchise’s history. After all, if you don’t come back strong from the pandemic, you may never come back at all.

If you’re a minor league baseball team, you might have a little longer. The president of a Single-A team told me last week he hopes to have their schedule in late January for a season that starts in early April. Maybe 10 weeks.

Anyone who has sold group tickets knows that most groups, unless they are buying group tickets to see LeBron and the Lakers, don’t commit until they know what game they will be going to. That means, you have six weeks (or maybe 10 weeks) to sell all the group tickets you need for your first month of games. 

“Aack,” you might be thinking. No way you’ll succeed. Who knows, maybe you can say some silent prayers that your state government continues to restrict your capacity. Just don’t tell your owner what you are wishing for.

Whether it’s six weeks or 10 weeks, you’re going to have to move fast to maximize ticket sales, and especially group sales. Staffing, training, execution, more training, finding the group leaders, convincing them to come to an outing.  How to do it all in that short window?

WE CAN HELP

This year, more than ever, training is critical. And, I don’t mean the usual ‘pull everyone into the conference room for two days and drill them’ training. I mean quick, inexpensive, down and dirty training that accomplishes everything you need in that short six week window.

Group Sales Superstar 3.0 can do that for you. Check it out at GroupSalesSuperstar.com.  Here’s why it works:

• You get the same training as if I was standing in front of your staff. Same content, same video review, same on-going coaching.
• You don’t have to crowd everyone into the conference room – something certainly not ideal during the coronavirus world.
• You can start it tomorrow, or as soon as you have your staff back on board.
• The cost is nominal, just $297 per person. Same as it has been since Day One.

SEE FOR YOURSELF AT OUR GROUP SALES SUPERSTAR WEBINAR

Don’t just trust me though. I’m hosting a 45-minute Group Sales Superstar webinar to explain how it works and how your team can benefit.  It’s Thursday, October 8^th at noon Eastern.  You can sign up here.  Jess Knott, Director of Sales for the Altoona Curve, will talk about her experience with Group Sales Superstar and Brittany Middleton, Director of Group Sales for the Macon Bacon, will talk about the steps the Bacon took to sell group tickets this past summer.

It’s your chance to find ways to maximize sales this season.  If you have any questions feel free to give me a call at 702-493-2661 or email me at SteveDeLay@theultimatetoolkit.com.