The Golf Wizard

            My own goal for my career is to be in sports marketing.  There are many genres to this field such as advertising and sales.  While I like the side of advertising, sales is also a huge makeup of marketing in general.  They are very similar to each other and I feel it would be good for me to see both sides and to learn about both.  Therefore, I interviewed an independent sales representative.  What is a sales representative you might ask? Well a sales rep goes to the different locations representing their supplier and sells them whatever they need. 

The man I interviewed, Peter Santora, sells for three golf apparel companies: Cutter & Buck, Imperial Headwear, and Sterling Cut Glass.  He goes around to all the different golf courses and pro shops in Northern California for them to place orders with those companies.  Independent sales reps are different because they choose whom they sell for and whom they don’t.  There is a circuit of courses and shops that he sells to and makes regular stops.  This keeps up the relationship and personal attention to the customers.  Mr. Santora said, “they won’t forget about you if you meet them face to face.”  This is a good motto because it is true.  I remember people better if I meet them than if I read about them online.  For my own career, keeping an open line of communication through in person meetings and online will be crucial in being successful.

Peter graduated from University of San Francisco with a Bachelors degree in business.  He started his career in sales the fall of 1981.  The day starts the same way is ends, looking at emails and phone for those first and last orders and returns of the day.  He always does this because he needs to stay ahead because he doesn’t want to loose out on orders.  One of the biggest problems is time management.  Keeping up with the orders and returns that happen overnight can put him behind for the day and he might not get to all the face-to-face meetings he had scheduled.  I can see this being very important because I wouldn’t want to sell something that I don’t have. 

Another problem he faces daily is inventory.  When customers want something that’s not in stock then he looses out on a sale.  The good example he gave me was if the Giants win and keep going in the postseason, then everyone is going to want the latest equipment with Giants logos.  Only so much can be produced and sometimes can’t keep up with demand.  He called these kinds of sales “time sensitive.”  I would think all sales people have these sorts of problems.  Keeping up with orders and knowing what’s in stock are important to being a good salesman.  Being prompt with putting in the orders to get it to the clients as fast as possible is also what makes a trustworthy salesman.  I want to be trustworthy in my own line of work so being prompt is just a good all around goal for anyone.

Overcoming these challenges can be remedied with the use of technology.  Online sales make it easier to place orders for customers.  More golf companies are going to online sales.  According to Mr. Santora, “Golf tends to lag behind when it comes to technology.”  More and more his customers are going to the Internet.  Using this to his advantage, email technology can send out “blasts” of catalogs to customers reaching many people in a short amount of time from far away.  As much as online sales are taking over the industry, it is still a personal industry.  Customers still want to see the product and hold it before they buy it.  Golf sales, in general, are still very much a face-to-face industry.  Sales aren’t going down but going up due to the Internet.  I think everyone these days are trying to find that piece of tech that will make doing business easier and more efficient.  Email, and online sales is just a portion of the potential that the Internet provides. 

After this interview I realized that sales is a very difficult thing to be really good at.  Learning all the products and clientele would take a lot of experience.  Having been in the industry for over thirty years, Mr. Santora knows his products and how to appeal to certain customers.  I hope that one day I can get to the point where I have a true beat on the sports industry.  I take away from this interview a better sense of what happens on the daily basis for a man in marketing. 

SOURCE
SOURCE
SOURCE