Padres Have MLB’s Best Ticket-Sales Staff; Rockies Have Worst, Study Finds
The San Diego Padres have the best ticket sales staff in Major League Baseball, while the Colorado Rockies have the worst, according to a study by IntelliShop, a company that sends anonymous shoppers into businesses to grade employees.
The Cleveland Indians received the second-highest score, followed by the Tampa Bay Rays and New York Yankees, who tied for third. The New York Mets were ninth.
The results from the Perrysburg, Ohio-based company show that some baseball teams might improve ticket sales and the ticket buying experience by following such elementary sales techniques as asking for a caller’s name.
“It’s almost scary how many basic elements of Sales 101 these guys are missing,” Chris Denove, IntelliShop’s senior vice president of research and analytics said in a telephone interview. “Not asking for a caller’s name, total lack of needs assessment, no effort to build rapport, never asking for the sale or even contact information.”
IntelliShop sells its research to organizations who want to have their sales departments analyzed by a third party. The company conducted the baseball study -- which was not commissioned by any individual team -- in an effort to boost sales.
The company had so-called mystery shoppers call teams to buy season tickets and graded salespeople on whether they took the time to assess the needs of the caller, engaged in a personal conversation, and how well they overcame pricing objections.
“It comes down to how the ticket agents perceive their role,” Denove said. “Too many see themselves as order takers, rather than salespeople.”
Personable Sales Staff
The Padres stood out in most categories, with 70 percent of the shoppers giving the team their highest rating for personality; well ahead of the MLB average of 22 percent.
The Padres overhauled their ticket sales and service team two years ago, increasing the staff to 61 from 16, including 20 inside sales representatives.
Prospective ticket buyers that used to wait 90 seconds before reaching a call center in Tijuana, Mexico, where operators took orders, now reach a live person in San Diego. Afterward, a team representative checks in occasionally to make sure they are satisfied.
Since the change, group ticket sales increased to 455,000 from 242,000. Season ticket renewal rates hit 91 percent, a Petco Park record this season, up from 56 percent in 2009. This comes during a two-year period when the team’s record improved from 63-99 in 2008 to 90-72 last season.
“We tell our employees they can never get in trouble for using their own judgment to take care of a customer,” Padres President Tom Garfinkel said in a telephone interview. “We never want to hear them say, ‘That’s not our policy.’”
Car-Dealer Recruits
Denove said the work has paid off.
“The Padres and Indians have strong professional salespeople manning the phones that would have every car dealer in town trying to recruit them if they knew,” he said.
Sales staffs that graded poorly did things like not attempting small talk or asking for the potential customer’s name up front to personalize the call, Denove said.
Greg Feasel, the Rockies’ chief operating officer, said the team would take the criticism to heart.
“Any opportunity we have to get better, we will take advantage of it,” he said.
One thing that surprised Denove was that there wasn’t a close relationship between a team’s available tickets and the amount of effort put into selling them.
“The Yankees performance is in some ways more commendable than any other team because it’s putting out this great effort when it has relatively few seats left to sell,” Denove said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Curtis Eichelberger in Washington at ceichelberge@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Sillup at msillup@bloomberg.net
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