Calling my ticket guy at Utah

It's been a few weeks since my last post- spending 12 days in Africa slowed down my production dramatically. I wanted to talk a little bit more about our ticket sales staff at Utah- I hope you find something in this worthwhile.

When we started our ticket sales staff at Utah a little over two years ago, the attraction of larger crowds and generating additional revenue for the department was the driving force behind the decision. Two years later, while we have attained all our revenue goals, if you were to ask our customers and my bosses, the biggest success story from the creation of our sales staff the answer will have nothing to do with revenue. The biggest benefit is the additional personal relationships we have formed with our customers.
If you work in college athletics you know how often development directors and athletic directors talk about the importance of relationships. When is the last time you heard a college ticket manger talk about the importance of customer relationships? Before we started our sales staff at Utah, we didn’t spend nearly enough time and effort talking about relationships but I can tell you we talk about it all the time now. By no means is our emphasis at Utah on customer relationships new to the ticketing world- spend some time with the Director of Ticketing of a NBA team as I did with the Utah Jazz and you will hear about it over and over. While few college athletic programs can replicate the resources and staffing of the NBA ticketing model, it’s easy to look at the structure of your operation and find ways to develop better relationships with your customers.
We call our setup at Utah relationship-oriented ticket sales. We combined the roles of an NBA outbound ticket sales staffer and the account executive that services the account once the customer makes his initial season ticket purchase with the team. We morphed these two units into one. In our model, when our customers need to purchase tickets, renew their season tickets or just have a ticketing question they can pick up the phone and call the main ticket office number and be serviced by our call center or they can call “their guy” at the ticket office directly. Not surprisingly, our customers are overwhelmingly choosing and praising the personal option. Relationships are being formed between customers and their “ticket guy” during the initial sale and continue to grow over time during season ticket renewals period and postseason ticket orders. Our “ticket guys” will have at least four to six interactions with their clients every year. Our sales staff still spends the majority of their time “expanding their net” and making outbound sales calls looking for new clients but they make sure to continue to cultivate their existing relationships with their clients and are finding more and more leads through customer referrals.

For our model to thrive we continue to focus on two things:

#1. Recruit a relationship-thinking sales staff. We want account executives that have a customer service focus. We don’t look for the individual who sold the most at his/her last job; we want to find the person who developed great relationships with their customers. A short story to drive home my point… When I was doing research about one of the account execs we ended up hiring I asked his old boss to describe him. He said that this guy wasn’t his top salesman in terms of numbers but he was the best “person” in his organization. Everybody loved him, he was a guy everyone enjoyed being around. This feeling carried over to his clients and they valued his sincerity, willingness to listen and they felt he really cared about their needs. I didn’t need to hear another thing- I hired him the next day.

#2. Place a high emphasis on sales staff retention- As our ticket inventory began to shrink, our reps were beginning to work themselves out of a job. We faced a tough decision on what to do. We can’t develop great relationships with our customers if they have to talk to a new rep every year. We decided to reward our reps for the relationships they had developed with their customers by giving them commission on season ticket renewals. The commission rate is significantly less for renewals than it is for new sales but the message was clear- we appreciate and value the relationships they are forming with their clients and we want to keep our sales staff around as long as possible.

Don’t get me wrong, the additional revenue and return on investment is reason enough to start an outbound ticket sales department but don’t undervalue or undersell the importance on developing better relationships with your customers.

Starting a Ticket Sales Staff in College Athletics

I’m really excited about an upcoming opportunity to present at the NACMA convention this June in Anaheim on starting an outbound ticket sales staff in college athletics. It’s a topic I’m very familiar with and passionate about after seeing first-hand how it revolutionized how we approach ticketing at the University of Utah. We’ve moved from a transactional, call center model to a sales oriented, customer-centered relationship model. We’re generating more ticketing revenue than ever before and more importantly we have a more personal relationship with our fans and have improved the customer purchasing experience. We still have room for improvement but I’ve received a significant amount of unsolicited feedback from our fans about how much they enjoy having their own personal account representative that can service all of their ticketing needs.

Right now I’ve named the session- How to start a ticket sales staff: From selling it to your Athletic Director to hiring the right people to fit you needs. I’m not in love with the title- any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Here’s a basic outline of what I intend to cover:


How to sell the Ticket Sales Staff concept to your AD/boss

Emphasize the additional potential revenue generated and return on investment (ROI)

Wrap all your startup and ongoing costs into your ROI model

Don’t underestimate the improvement in relationships and customer service

Need to be the passionate champion of the concept- get as much internal buy-in up front as possible

Provide success stories/case studies from around the country

Provide an exit strategy in the rare instance that program isn’t matching your goals

Implementation Decisions

Types of Ticket Sales Staffs in college athletics (Full time, part time, seasonal sales academies)

What are your needs and goals? Matching your staffing to fit your needs

Hiring the right type of people

Compensation structures and strategies

Integration within your current Athletic Department structure- Marketing, Ticketing, Fundraising

Best Practices, Tips and Advice from current ticket sales managers in college athletics


Thanks for reading. I'm really hoping for some suggestions on how to improve or clarify some of my thoughts. Please post your comments below, email me at zlassiter@huntsman.utah.edu, and contact me on twitter