Enhance Your Customer Prospecting Process for Sport organisations with airSlate SignNow

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all right this week our topic is on prospecting and crm or customer relationship management um you know when we think about selling in the sport industry we often think right to that sales room right hectic place calls being made phones ringing off the hook sales being made people celebrating but the truth is there is a lot of behind the scenes prep work that is done before a call is even placed to a potential customer and that's going to be our focus this week to look at that behind the scenes work that sales departments do in order to prepare for the actual selling process which we'll be getting to starting next week so again the focus for our unit this week is on that prospecting piece and also how sport organizations manage data through customer relationship management systems okay so when we talk about prospecting we have to talk about this concept of lead generation so without great leads it doesn't really matter what kind of sales culture you create or how many great sales people you hire and it may sound cliche but it's true time is money and sales so you don't want your sales staff wasting time on leads that aren't going to go anywhere right you want to go where the interest is so in that regard great leads are like gold to sales reps and because of that there are really two effective things that support organizations can do to help or assist their sales teams be successful and the first is just to provide ongoing training right that makes sense the more training you provide your staff the more successful they're likely going to be but the other thing that support organizations can do to help their sales teams be effective is provide those great leads and it there really is a lot of data out there that would suggest that the teams that focus on lead generation tend to do better in terms of revenue generation down the road so it really is kind of an investment uh into your sales team that will ultimately help them be more successful okay so some key terms that we want to make sure that we're aware of here as we have this conversation about prospecting let's start with lead so a lead is basically just a list of names and contact information for potential buyers right so you know a lead is someone who might may or may not have interest in purchasing tickets um and generally a lead is coupled with some kind of contact information right now in order for a lead to be someone worth calling they have to be qualified okay so what we mean when we say qualified is there are essentially three different criteria that have to be met in order for a lead to be considered a prospect okay so a prospect is someone who has a need a financial capacity and the authority to buy so those are our three criteria right so someone who has a need or interest in the product product being tickets someone who has the financial ability to purchase that product and then someone who has the authority to buy the product again all three criteria need to be met in order for someone to be transitioned from a lead to a prospect and just to give you an example of why this is you know think about it a 13 year old may have an interest in buying tickets for a game right so that 13 year old may call up a sales rep and say hey i'm a big fan of the team i want to come to games but it's likely that that 13 year old does not have the financial ability to purchase those tickets nor do they have the authority to actually make that decision so this is why all three of these criteria need to be met in order for a lead to be considered a prospect again time is money want to make sure that a lead meets these criteria before you actually take the time to call them now can someone have a need for tickets but not have an interest in the team this is always an interesting question that i pose to students and the answer is yes someone could absolutely have a need but not an interest right we have to get beyond our traditional way of viewing fandom right as we're thinking about actually selling this product not everyone that buys tickets or who is a decision maker is a traditional fan in the way that we typically think of a fan you know someone like our vikings friend here the truth is a lot of tickets that are purchased our purchase from a corporate perspective right that b2b sales that we talked about last week and because of that sports organizations invest a lot of time and energy selling to those corporations and you can see that you know the vast majority of corporations that are buying tickets aren't doing so because they're a fan right they're doing so because it serves a business need right it helps them further their business goals it may help them entertain clients it may help them reward their employees but just keep in mind when we think about classifying leads into prospects that not every single one of those potential leads is going to fit our traditional view of fandom and that someone could have a need to purchase tickets but not necessarily have an interest so that's just something to keep in mind as you think about this kind of background research that is being done or preparation that's being done okay so as we think about this process of a lead transitioning into a prospect and then ultimately a customer i think it's a good way to think about it is through the sales funnel okay so you can see this is basically just an inverted pyramid and it shows that there are three stages to this process right and essentially different things are happening at each stage right so very first stages we have a list of leads right so sport organization obtains a list of leads uh they might generate that list they might purchase that list we'll talk later about how there are different ways to obtain leads but stage one is just getting the leads um generating them and then assigning them to your sales reps okay um and of course that's going to be the point in the process where you have the largest list right because you still have not filtered or qualified that list yet that's going to be stage two uh where essentially you look at those leads and determine whether or not they meet those three criteria that we outlined so this is the qualifying process and obviously the pyramid's getting smaller here right because not every single one of those leads is going to be meeting those three criteria so now we have narrowed down our leads to a list of potential prospects and then of course stage three is going to be to actually convert those prospects into customers right and again this is going to be the smallest part of our pyramid because even if someone meets all three criteria and becomes a prospect that doesn't mean we're going to get them to sign on the bottom line right we still have to go through the process of converting those prospects into a sale which can take time so this is the sales funnel process of transitioning a lead to a prospect and then ultimately to a customer all right so i mentioned earlier that there are different types of leads right not every lead is going to be classified in the same way based on the information that we have so we'll start on the left and work our way to the right here so hot leads are basically people who have contacted the sport organization and they are proactively seeking to buy tickets right so hot leads are the best kinds of leads right because these are people that are calling the team basically saying uh here's my credit card number right i want to purchase tickets so there's not a whole lot of work that has to be done from the sales reps perspective if they get a hot lead right it's just getting as much information as possible and making sure that you finalize the sale warm leads if we move our way to the right here with a warm lead basically a connection has already been made with the person prior to the seller making that initial sales call right so some kind of link between the team and the individual exists which makes them a warm lead right so this could be a single game buyer right someone who has purchased tickets in the past so we know that at least there's some interest in the team this could be a referral from our current season ticket holder we'll talk more about referrals later on and so basically a warm lead is someone that has that connection point and so um you know it's more likely that someone who's classified as a warm lead is going to purchase than say a cold lead because we know that there is that connection point and that hopefully they are meeting the three criteria that we have laid out uh finally a cold lead this is of course the least preferred type of lead um you know essentially a cold lead is someone who is on a list and we have no information about them and they're seemingly no connection point between the team and this person um you know cold lead is essentially where that term cold call comes from right you're calling someone that may or may not have any awareness or knowledge of the team and trying to convert that into a sale and again obviously this is the least preferred type of lead to have now does that mean that a cold lead can't turn into a warm lead or hotly not necessarily but it's certainly less likely and again in terms of time we want to make sure that we're focusing energy on those warm and hot leads that are more likely to transition to a prospect and sail okay i wanted to give you an example here of how teams tend to gather data on warm or hot leads and then continue to follow up so this is an example for me i had contacted the white sox back in march of 2011 about purchasing club seats for a game and ultimately you know talk to the sales rep but ended up purchasing tickets through a secondary party because i got a better deal but obviously i was considered a hot lead at the time right i had called up the team directly and said hey i'm interested in purchasing x number of tickets um and you can see that was march of 2011 that i made that call and in may of 2017 i'm still getting emails uh from this in the sales rep that i had talked to and had been probably classified as a hot lead at the time so they continue to reach out to me every year just in the off chance that i might be ready to buy at that point so it shows you kind of the investment that teams make once you are considered to be a hot lead okay so as we talk about this prospecting in terms of ticket sales we have to talk about data and information basically the more you know the better you're able to classify and qualify leads right so the more information the better anytime we are talking to or looking at a list of potential leads and generally if we have more information we have the ability to qualify right so the less information we have the less likely we're going to be able to actually qualify those leads to prospects so let's think for a minute about the type of information or data we give up as consumers when we purchase tickets so you know just think about all of these different ways in which you can purchase tickets for a sporting event you know obviously each scenario is different in terms of the information you're being asked to give up but ultimately every point of contact you make with the sport organization or even a secondary market is going to require you to provide some kind of information right whether it's you know you go to the box office you're definitely giving your credit card information if you go to the team website you're probably having to provide more info right your name probably your email probably your phone number right and then if you uh go through a secondary market you're giving even more information and so on and so forth so um you know there is a rationale behind this right the teams aren't just you know trying to waste your time and make you give a bunch of information they're actually gathering that data and filing it away into a crm system which we're going to talk about later on in the second half of this lecture but that data is so valuable to those teams because it allows them to determine the type of lead you are and whether or not you could potentially be a prospect and then customer and data isn't just important for sales reps trying to sell tickets it's certainly that but it's also important for us to realize that data can be helpful for sport marketers too right and i'll use an example from the golf course that i used to work at so we would host these ladies night out events once a month at the golf course and you know essentially sell tickets to these events and you can see here this was the sign up sheet that you had to complete before the actual event right and we were gathering data every time someone signed up for this event you can see we're getting name email address so on and so forth obviously payment information so again we required this information before they actually came to the course for the event and what we would do is we would go into our crm system we would input all this info before the actual event and then once they arrived to the event we could look up their name and tag any purchases into their account so maybe they bought a hat or a set of golf balls before the event so now we can track their buying behavior over time we would also take photos during the event and then afterwards we'd have their email address so we could email the photos so there's another connection point for us and you know give them a keepsake from the event i use this as an example because i think it shows you how that data is not just important for you know generating revenue or transitioning someone from a lead to a prospect it also allows marketers to really track uh key information about a current buyer and to hopefully generate future sales because of that information so this isn't just something that is local to ticket sales data is important to all aspects of a sport organization okay so we have as we're talking about leads we have to talk about the most common sources of leads for sports ticket offices so basically where are they getting these leads that we're talking about um and you know obviously every organization is different in terms of where they might look to gather leads but we're going to highlight some common sources of leads and this is based on a study by erwin sutton and mccarthy from 2008. okay so here's i'll do a quick overview here and then i'm going to highlight some examples so obviously a common source of lead is past ticket purchasers right we talked about single game buyers before and if you think back to our conversation from last week you know we looked at the escalator right the frequency escalator where people at the very bottom of the escalator were those single game buyers but this is obviously an interesting group of people right because they obviously have an interest in the team and the financial ability to purchase tickets right so past game buyers are a great source of leads using contest entries or promotions is another great way to generate leads if you're a sport organization so i'll show you an example here the nationals a few years ago partnered with the virginia lottery and they launched these mlb lottery tickets so you know fans could go to the local gas station and purchase a national lottery ticket which was a great partnership a great branding opportunity but the way that they were actually able to generate leads was the promotion was any losing ticket so if you didn't win the lottery which is pretty much everyone right those people could turn in their losing tickets to the team and they they were going to be put in a drawing for a second chance drawing right now in order to turn in those tickets they also had to provide a bunch of information right so name phone email address so this gave the team thousands of potential leads right of people that obviously have an interest in their product so that was a good example of using promotions or giveaways and you know people are most likely to provide information if they think it's in exchange for a potential prize or some kind of value okay online surveys are another common source of leads for sports organizations i'm sure you've been sent an online survey at some point from a team of course one goal of that survey is to gather important data right that they might use in other aspects of their business operations but a secondary motive for those online surveys is gathering information that could be used to determine if someone's a good lead or not okay i'm going to pause here and we'll talk about referrals in the second set of lectures