How-To Run A Better Team Business in 2010

Selling to Girls ... Buying Insurance ... Not Choke

As a challenging 2010 takes shape, Team Insight once again turns to the experts for advice for not only running a small team dealer, but for operating a successful small business. Their advice is timely, so read on, learn a little bit, and feel free to refer to Parts 1, 2 and 3 of this series by logging on to http://www.TeamInsightMag.com.

How to … Sell to Girls
By Michael Jacobsen
If you didn’t have a chance to read
through this entire special Girls’ and Women’s Sports Issue of Team Insight, here are 10 How-to Tips on Selling to Female Athletes.

1. First, realize that girls aren’t the same as boys ... Finally, after all these years of settling for sized-down uniforms and male-inspired designs, female athletes are learning to feel comfortable in their own skins. They want to look good and feel good to play good, and they want you to know it. It means fewer of them are willing to feel lost or – even worse – exposed in uniforms built for boys. They’re demanding garments that fit their shapes. They are insisting on comfort, and asking for fabrics with features and benefits that their male counterparts aren’t. And they’re feeling confident enough in a realm that was once a boys’ world to express a little feminine flare.

2. Realize that women have breasts … Continuing on that same theme, girls are demanding uniforms that take into account their own wider hips and narrower waists, narrower shoulders, and the fact that, unlike their male counterparts, they have breasts. Garments cut to fit, not just cover, a woman’s figure have become essential. Vendors are using panels to build shape into garments where curves dictate. And details like higher arm holes and necklines provide appropriate coverage for the bust.

3. Have your own sense of fashion … This can be very difficult for the typical male team dealer or roadman, but fashion influences everything from the obvious – uniforms and footwear – to the not-so-apparent, such as lacrosse sticks, softball bats or sport bags. Everyone agrees that girls have a greater awareness than boys of the features and benefits of fabrics and style and want the same kind of comfort in their uniforms as they do in their street clothes.

4. Girls want to perform … Fashion isn’t the be all and end all. Uniform makers are putting new performance fabrics into play across all categories, and dealers need to understand the often subtle marriage between performance and fashion.

5. Pink is fine, to an extent … More confident with their standing in the world of sports, girls’ and women’s teams not restricted by school colors are getting playful with their choice of uniform and equipment hues. While girls 10 years ago may have eschewed pink for uniforms because it made them look, well, like girls, today some are embracing it for that very reason.

6. Listen, don’t just talk … For team dealers, success selling uniforms to women’s and girls’ teams may come down to careful listening and a willingness to sell new styles or vendors. Find out what the customer wants rather than telling them what you have.

7. Understand what you are hearing … Do team dealers necessarily have to hire female sales reps in order to properly serve the female sports business? Or can roadmen, even those weaned on football, baseball and basketball, be reprogrammed to look at the two sides of the business equally? The answer rests somewhere in between.

8. Commit from the top down … One thing is for certain: You can’t try to sell women’s sports with a male mentality. It takes a real commitment from the top to instill this way of thinking.

9. Act and react … If you make a mistake with the male coaches, as is going to happen, they are a little easier to deal with and will ask how you are going to take care of it. With female coaches, mistakes are often taken more personally and it takes a different mindset among dealers to deal with it. Realize this in any response.

10. Finally, show some respect ... You can nail numbers 1-9 and still blow it all if you forget this final piece of advice. But what does the word “respect” mean to today’s young female athletes? It can mean as little as manufacturers designing a uniform to fit her body or a team dealer stopping by to say hi to the field hockey coach when he is in the building visiting with the football staff.
Or respect can be as complicated as a dealer changing his staff’s attitude towards the female athlete. This means learning how girls’ lacrosse is different from boys’, taking the time to understand how to fit girls for uniforms, or keeping track of how the school’s softball team is doing this season. To that end, dealers need to work with their roadmen and inside salespeople to get them to understand girls and what they want. The goal is for all sales reps – male or female, inside or out – to handle girls as they have always approached the boys.



How To ... Know how much Liability Insurance to buy
By Kristy Longfellow-Hodik
Hobson Insurance http://www.businessquote.com

To put it bluntly, you should have enough insurance to cover your ASSets!

Depending on how your team dealer operation is set up there are many considerations. Are you a sole proprietor, a partnership or a corporation? Does the business entity own the building or do you own your building individually and lease it to the business? These and many other considerations will help you determine the limits you should have under any given policy.

Liability insurance is needed to defend you if suit is brought against you and to pay if you are found liable. This simply means something you did or didn’t do that you should or shouldn’t have caused harm to another person or their property and now you must pay. “You” in this case is very specifically the entity named on the insurance policy. If you own the building as an individual and lease it to your business that is a corporation you actually have two entities to protect — you and your business.

There are many different types of liability coverage team dealers should consider and each coverage typically has its own limit.

• Premise Liability covers injuries that occur on your premise, such as trip and fall injuries. Any building, location or land you want covered should be listed on the policy or coverage will not apply.

• Product Liability covers injuries or damages sustained due to a product. Everyone in the distribution chain has an exposure whether you manufacture, distribute or sell. This is why it is a good idea to be listed as an additional insured on the policies of those providing you product. If a lawsuit results from harm caused by the product supplied to you, then their policy will defend you before your own policy must be used. As an example, if a helmet fails and a child is injured, those named in the suit could be the retailer, distributor, manufacturer, and the business who supplied the materials to manufacturer.

* Personal Injury Liability covers damages to another person’s reputation or mental state. Examples include slander, false arrest or detention, libel, etc. This injury may occur verbally or in writing. It is important not to post anything on the Internet or on social Web sites that may hurt another’s reputation.

• Advertising Injury Liability covers damages due to stealing another businesses trademark or copyright. You can be sued whether you do this intentionally or not. Screenprinting and embroidery businesses designing logos and ads must be particularly careful they are not using a design that may belong to another.

• Fire Legal Liability covers fire damage you cause to a building you rent. If you are a tenant, be sure your lease clearly outlines your insurance requirements and how the landlord is covering the building.

• Medical Payments covers injuries sustained in an accident without you being liable. For example, a trip and fall may result in the need for a trip to the emergency room. Your medical payment will pay the expense up to your limit regardless of who is at fault. The purpose of this coverage is to avoid a lawsuit.

• Limits of Liability are outlines in your policy on a per occurrence and aggregate limit. Per occurrence means any one event. Aggregate means total of all events in one year. Depending on your assets, you want to have enough coverage per occurrence to at least protect all of your assets. You can also buy an umbrella policy which extends your occurrence and aggregate limit.

Typically it is less expensive to double your underlying limits before doubling your umbrella. A limit of $1 million per occurrence or $2 million aggregate is common, however you can usually double this for a very reasonable price.

• Other Liability Coverages include Workers Compensation, which covers your liability for employee injuries; Employment Practices, which covers suits due to discrimination, harassment or unfair practices; Employee Benefits Liability, which covers you for errors made in administering an employee benefits plan; Business Auto and Hired/NonOwned Liability covers liability relating to use of autos used by the business. In addition, you want to make sure policies are in place if you have exposure to liquor, professional, aircraft, watercraft, or director and officers’ liability.

Keep in mind one of most important parts of liability coverages is the fact it pays for your defense often times in addition to your limits. Just because you think you did nothing wrong doesn’t mean you won’t get sued if someone gets hurt.

In 2003 an American Legion baseball player was hit in the head and killed by a ball that was hit by an aluminum bat. The parents brought suit against the aluminum bat manufacturer. They claimed the bat was a defective and dangerous product because it was designed and manufactured so the ball could be hit with such significant force as to endanger the safety of those playing.

The court costs were substantial and the jury recently ruled against the manufacturer, so punitive damages will also be sought after. The parents could have included the retailer and the distributor in this product liability claim. Expect warning labels on aluminum bats in the near future.

It is recommended you review your insurance policy at least annually and when you make any changes to your business. Talk to an experienced agent who understands your industry and your business. Hobson Insurance specializes in business insurance and has been well established in the sporting goods industry for over 30 years. For more information feel free to contact Kristy Longfellow-Hodik at Hobson Insurance, 800-296-7985 or kristy@businessquote.com or
http://www.businessquote.com. Watch for future articles on Loss Prevention, Cost Control, and What to do in the event of a claim.



How To ... Not Choke
By Franco Zizzo, The Mann Group

ESPN GLEEFULLY celebrated its 25th
anniversary last year and in case you missed it in honor of that milestone they selected an “esteemed” panel to determine the Top 25 in each of several categories. One chosen category was, “The 25 Worst Chokes in Sports.”

Now, for the sports-information-challenged, a “choke” is that moment a professional athlete, trained to perform under the most adverse conditions (such as before a hostile crowd or during an un-negotiated contract period), and fails to do what he or she does best. They “choke.”

All of the most memorable choke events made the list: Greg Norman in the 1996 Masters (golf), Chris Webber in the ’93 NCAA Basketball Championships, and the 2003 Chicago Cubs in the playoffs. The winner of the top spot was, of course, Bill Buckner in the ’86 World Series.

As I watched reruns of these memorable failures, I wondered what the coach, the manager and the owners of these franchises must have thought while watching their players fail. My heart went out to these talented athletes. Years of sacrifice, training and practice, plus past successes had brought them to the world's stage where they were being watched by millions.

Everyone expected them to perform at the
consistent world-class level they had demonstrated time after time. But, as the coach helplessly watches, the player fails to come through and perform; the player chokes.

Such events bring important business principles to mind:

• Your team may have performed its responsibilities perfectly, time after time.

• You may have the lowest failure rate in the industry.

• You may make your customers happy 99 percent of the time.

However, which of these times is most important? It is the next time.

Your past successes won’t matter to your customers if you fail them now. Nine successful deliveries in a row? Not noticed. Fail on the tenth attempt and uniforms aren’t available for one game and that is the event that is remembered. Thankfully, you probably won’t make an ESPN top 25 list though.

But the moral of the story is simple: Consistent execution is the key. Doing it right every time is the standard and the goal for the successful leader.

Your reputation as a team dealer is only as good as your most recent performance. Nowhere is this more realized than in our entertainment industry. An actor may have won the prestigious Academy Award; however, if their next picture is a bomb and loses millions of dollars, they may sit a long time before another offer to appear in a motion picture is tendered. As the saying goes,

“You are only as good as your last picture!”
What causes these public failures in sports and entertainment — and in team sports?

1. Lack of Focus. Distracted by the wrong things, and not keeping your mind on what's important now.

2. A casual attitude about execution. One wrongly believes that their level of performance will be the same without concentration, practice and execution.

3. Failure to perform the basics. Doing what you’d been trained to do. The leader ensures that everyone on the team is committed to the basics.

It is important that your business continues to be a winner. To assure this, the leader must continuously check and recheck that each customer is receiving satisfaction and value for their continued support of your product and company.
Remember, it only takes one failure to produce a landslide into the realm of those businesses that used to be great.

Don’t allow your customer service function or product quality to choke.

Franco Zizzo was a featured speaker at The Soccer Event in Seattle in 2009. He can be reached at fzizzo@sbcglobal.net;
http://www.manngroup.net

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