When the time comes for an athlete to move from the playing field to the boardroom, lots of questions arise: “What career path should I follow? What am I best suited to do given my unique traits as an athlete? How will I find professional fulfillment?” After a successful stint as a student-athlete at the…
Tag Archives | entrepreneurship
Top 5 Ways to Stay Motivated While Working From Home
Many of you who read sportsnetworker.com are entrepreneurs who regularly browse the site for sports news and education in social media. You also want to learn how to manage your own sports-related businesses, based on the successful journeys of others. Sometimes this is accomplished through reading interviews with Travis Bell and Levar Fisher. We learn…
Interview with Travis Bell About Entrepreneurship And Success
I’ve had the pleasure of developing a positive business relationship with Travis Bell, the innovative and intelligent Founder and Chairman of The Seven Bridges Group, a sports and entertainment management firm. Travis has the unique ability to develop rapport with virtually anyone and his approachable demeanor makes him an obvious choice as the agent for…
Interview with Andrew Krafsur on Spira Footwear and Sports Entrepreneurship
I recently got to meet the CEO of Spira Footwear, Andrew Krafsur. He is a lawyer turned entrepreneur and with the help of his brother, they launched the revolutionary Wavespring technology used in their running and walking shoes today. The technology has been proven to give athletes better results (both in comfort and in speed), so much…
Who Ya NOT Gonna Call?
Pro football offensive line players know which opposing team defensive guard will clobber them with a vengeance on every play. They know the dirty players with intentions of delivering late hits or even career-ending blows.
Pro players also know who their ‘go-to’ people are – the ones who have their back. The teammate who will defend them with everything they’ve got. The coach who guides, instructs, and corrects. The family member who is at every game, cheering them on.
Entrepreneurs, much like pro players, know who their “go-to” people are; the friends who will give us a verbal shot-in-the arm. We gravitate to people who share our extreme need for continual motivation. It’s important to know who to call for guidance, instruction, and correction along our path to success.
What’s even more important is who we DON’T call in times of discouragement, distress, or failure.
We’re all familiar with the famous question in the Ghostbusters movie…”Who Ya Gonna Call?” I propose to ask the question differently…Who Ya NOT Gonna Call?
Run Your Business Using Referee Signals
They are referred to as zebras but their ‘real’ title is official or referee. They stand right in the middle of the chaos and decide when someone breaks the rules, goes out of bounds, or catches the ball.
Referees all follow the same basic signals which tell us what went wrong or right. As entrepreneurs, we can learn how referee’s signals can help us in our businesses. The various signals let us know when something has gone wrong, when we’re making progress, and when we’ve made a touchdown.
Crowd Noise Signal
Are you spending too much time on non-business related conversations or out on errands when you should be working? Do you spend half your day opening, reading, and responding to emails? Excessive crowd noise in a game creates a virtually impossible situation for the visiting offense to communicate. It may be time to hush the crowd noise in your home office by focusing on tasks at hand first. This same signal can also mean dead ball. When you foolishly waste your most productive time doing non-productive tasks, it can mean a dead ball as far as your time. Quiet crowd noise and focus on your priority list.
Relationships Key to Fund Raising
(This is a guest article by Dan Westervelt)
There are many reasons why golf fund raising events fail, but without this one element being present, the chances of survival are almost nil. It is the reason why sponsors decide to support, golfers decide to play and volunteers decide they want to serve your cause. In a word, it is relationships.
The three main components of the human side of a tournament are golfers, sponsors and volunteers. All three are readily available to you if you have a relationship and it is strong enough to justify their participation. Obviously a close friendship is the best but a consistent trade association between a client and vendor are of about the same weight.
As with any relationship, it must be respected, so approach this solicitation as though you were asking permission to do something beneficial for a family member. While you need to be sure to have all the reasons ‘why’ addressed, spend even more time getting ready for the ‘why not’s?’.
Listen carefully to all the objections you hear. These are really just road maps to where you’d like the conversation to end, that is a “yes, I’ll do it”. These are the hesitations, stalls and questions you must address successfully to get them there. In my view, they are the most important part of the sales conversation as they determine both the tone and content of your reply as well as the overall result.
The Cure for “Salesheimer’s Disease”
Have you ever been ‘frozen’ in a ticket sales conversation? We all get that sinking feeling every once in a while. You’ve either lost your place in the conversation, got distracted, or reached a verbal dead end. It’s been called “Salesheimer’s Disease”; your brain goes numb, and it feels like there’s nothing left to say…
Fire All the Salespeople
There is a common problem I see brewing in sports ticket sales organizations across the nation. It started about 18 months ago, and has been spreading like a virus, bleeding organizations dry. I’m not sure where it started, but I know how it can be stopped. Here’s the problem: We’re allowing the economy to lull…