Abstract |
The sale of tickets, premium seating, and sponsorship is fundamental to the financial viability of professional sport organizations. With ticket sales as the most important source of local revenue for most sport organizations and the sale of premium suites and sponsorships unshared amongst other franchises (Smith & Roy, 2011; Howard & Crompton, 2004), recruiting, training, and retaining high quality salespeople is an important managerial function of professional sport franchises (Irwin, Sutton, & McCarthy, 2008; Pierce, Petersen, Clavio, & Meadows, in press). Although researchers have examined sales activities in many industries, little research exists on how salespeople utilize their time in the sport industry. Sport salespeople have a variety of responsibilities, from cold calling to working on game day (Pierce et al., in press). However, sales activities might differ based on salesperson characteristics such as gender and experience, or by organization based on level of competition or what is being sold. The purpose of this study was to determine how much time sport sales personnel spend on a variety of sales tasks, examine differences between types of sales employees, and determine if time spent on sales tasks predicts job performance or satisfaction.
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