IntelliShop Study Finds San Diego Padres Have the Best Ticket Agents in Baseball

The San Diego Padres earned the title of having the best season ticket agents in baseball according to IntelliShop’s 2011 Major League Baseball Ticket Agent Study (MLBTS). In this first-of-its-kind study, mystery shoppers made more than 500 season ticket inquiries around the league, and results show that the Padres’ agents consistently knocked it out of the park by providing top-notch customer handling and sales skills.

“The Padres agents did everything you want a great salesperson to do,” says Chris Denove, Senior Vice President of IntelliShop. “They not only made the effort to tell fans about all the advantages of season ticket ownership, they did so in an engaging way that showed great personality and enthusiasm.”

The Padres consistently scored near the top in over two dozen performance categories, including three important areas where they ranked higher than any other team:

• Inviting callers to the stadium to view available seat locations
• Explaining how season seats are discounted off face value
• Building rapport through casual conversation not directly related to the sale

The study found that agents across the league were consistently polite and well prepared to answer questions. There were, however, large differences in the amount of effort agents gave to proactively “sell” ticket packages.

“Whereas agents at top-rated teams make it a point to talk about the benefits of owning season tickets, many teams take a much more laidback sales approach,” said Denove. “It’s not that these teams provided a bad telephone experience; it’s just that they served more as ‘order-takers’ rather than proactive salespeople.”

Ron Welty, President of IntelliShop, says, “As fans of the great game of baseball, with teams and fans still coming out of a deep recession, and with league-wide attendance down again this season, we hope that the results of this study will be beneficial to all teams.”

Denove expects that management at some teams will be disappointed that their salespeople aren’t being more aggressive. He points out that if a fan lives in an apartment and drives a used car, a pair of season tickets may be the most expensive purchase they ever make.

The following provides a few examples of traditional selling steps that agents failed to perform consistently:

• Less than half (46%) of all agents collected the callers’ telephone number for follow up purposes
• Less than one-fourth (22%) invited callers to come to the stadium to view available seat locations
• Only one-third (32%) actually asked for the sale or deposit

IntelliShop will host a free webinar on June 2nd at 1:30 p.m. (EST) for all MLB teams to view the detailed study results. For information about the study, or to contact Chris Denove directly, email chris.denove@intelli-shop.com, or call 877-894-6349.

ABOUT INTELLISHOP: IntelliShop is a national mystery shopping and customer experience measurement firm dedicated to helping clients understand and improve what happens at the moment-of-truth with their customers. IntelliShop offers mystery shopping evaluations, video mystery shopping, customer satisfaction research, analytics, brand audits, and employee incentive programs. IntelliShop selects from a panel of more than 410,000 evaluators to help companies measure and improve their customer experiences onsite, on the phone, and on the web. For more information, call 877-894-6349 or visit www.intelli-shop.com