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.