Winter Sports ViewPoint
Love them or hate them, sales representatives are out there. Mr AKA Grasscutter, our anonymous football league head groundsman, offers some advice
GRASSCUTTER
“I was shocked to discover, when chatting with a Premier League team’s Grounds Manager, that our annual budget was roughly their weekly budget!”
S
ales representatives. Love them or hate them they are out there and want your business. This is not going to be an article ridiculing sales reps, just a few observations I have made over the years.
Luckily, we are hidden away at the back of the stadium and take some finding, so any cold caller gets my admiration for just finding us. Having said that, cold callers can, at times, be the worst. Just turning up to try and tell you about their latest product, on a match day, with a 7.45pm kick off, and you still have to double cut the pitch, mark it all out before a two hour pre-match water can, at times, be a little infuriating!
I would say to any reps, do a little homework and just check your intended ‘target’ does not have a game that evening. Better still, try and ring to make an appointment.
Other homework a rep can do is check how the team are doing on the pitch. One, who clearly had no interest in football, once asked me how we were going this season. I duly informed him we were on our third manager of the season, had not won in sixteen games and the bookies had stopped taking bets on us to be relegated. Needless to say, he was left speechless.
It’s always nice to arrange a time with a rep that is convenient to both of you. On a personal note, we tend to schedule our day around that meeting, and take a
break from work with a coffee and have a good chat. After all, most reps have some good ideas and tend to give you a different angle on various subjects that you may not have considered.
Of course, working relationships with sales representatives have to start somewhere. One particular busy a day, a rep strolled into the stadium - I knew it was a rep due to the glossy brochures under his arm! I just told him ‘sorry, but I am so busy, I cannot do a cold call just now’. In a flash, he told me it was not a cold call but an introductory call and, if he could just have my mobile number, he would like to call back at a convenient time. I gave him my number, he duly called back and, ten years later, I am still doing business with him. I liked his style and non-pushy nature.
A rep arrived one day asking for one of our former groundsman. I had to inform him that, sadly, he had died. The rep then offered his condolences. I thanked him and told him I think that, after twenty years, we had all got over his passing at the club.
Another rep that walked into the stadium one day, asking for the head groundsman, was asked if this was a sales call. As quick as a flash he came back with, “It is if I do it right!”
Working for a football league club that has spent nearly all its time in the bottom two divisions, you can imagine the groundstaff budget is next to
nothing. So, what really does my head in is when a rep tells me “they use this at the Arsenal all the time”, or “Villa is trying it out this season”.
The gulf between lower league players and those in the Premiership is not that massive, whereas the groundstaff budget between those leagues is. I was shocked to discover, when chatting with a Premier League team’s Grounds Manager, that our annual budget was roughly their weekly budget!!!
We tend to get by on the basics but, if ever we manage to get live on the TV or draw a big club away in any of the cup competitions, we know to go and see the suits in charge of the purse strings and mention we could do with a new mower or whatever we are desperate for. Some of the wide awake reps out there are aware of this too, and tend to be circling like vultures ready to offer a sale of what we might require.
At the end of the day, sales reps are very handy people to spend time with; they have some great knowledge and problem solving ideas. They have lots of contacts within the industry and, 99% of the time, are a good ally to the groundsman. Okay, they may pitch up unannounced occasionally, but there are worse offenders at that practice about, Pitchcare’s editor, Mr. Laurence Gale MSc, for instance!
Keep the faith; and keep cutting the grass, after all that’s all you do.
JUNE/JULY 2012 PC 111
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148