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!