Colin Faulkner
Age: 38
Team: Chicago Cubs
Title: Vice president, sales and partnerships
Where born: Boulder, Colo.
Education: Baylor University (B.B.A., marketing)
Family: Wife, Jaime; daughter, Avery (12); sons, Blake (11) and Drew (8)
Favorite way to unwind: Listening to music.
Cause supported: Compassion International.
Most thrilling/adventurous thing I’ve ever done: When I was in college, I spent a summer in Alaska.
Person in the industry I’d most like to meet: Roger Goodell.
If I could change jobs with anyone for a day, it would be: I’d love to be a fly-fishing guide or ski instructor for a day.
2015 will be a good year if: We continue our progress, both on the Wrigley Field restoration and on the baseball side.
My fellow Forty Under 40 class members would be surprised to know that: We’re a housing family for junior hockey players.
PATRICK DAHL, BANNER COLLECTIVE
hen Colin Faulkner was a student at Baylor, he worked 3 to 7 p.m. most days dialing high school students, trying to convince them to visit campus. Before long, he was managing the call center staffed by his peers.
It was good preparation for his first job in sports, selling tickets as an intern with the Waco Wizards minor league hockey team. When he
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SBJ Podcast:
Forty Under 40 editor Mark Mensheha and Executive Editor Abraham Madkour discuss this year's class, some of the more interesting stories in it and how the selection process works.
graduated, he turned down a job with AT&T Wireless to pursue a sports job, even though he knew it was likely to pay half as much.
“I decided I was going to do something I really like,” said Faulkner, who weathered a slew of rejections before landing a job as an account executive with the MLS franchise then known as the Dallas Burn. “If it didn’t work out, I could always get a real job later.”
It worked out just fine.
Seventeen years later, Faulkner has risen to vice president of sales and partnerships for the Chicago Cubs, with responsibility for marketing, ticket sales and sponsorships at a franchise in the midst of a rebuild both on and off the field.
Last year brought an overhaul in ticket strategy for the Cubs. They analyzed the resale market to identify season-ticket holders who were undercutting the club’s pricing, using that data to cancel accounts holding about 1,000 tickets. They applied variable pricing based not only on game, but also on seat location. They also increased the amount of time that service representatives spent with account holders.
Season-ticket renewal rates for the coming season are the highest they have been since 2009, even as the Cubs come off their fifth consecutive losing season.
Faulkner has applied many of the analytic, process-oriented approaches he applied in ticket sales to sponsorship sales, as well, again with strong results. Earlier this year, the Cubs locked down commercial plumbing company Sloan Valve as naming-rights sponsor of their spring training ballpark in Mesa, Ariz.
“There are fundamentals of interacting with people that are transferable whether you’re selling tickets or sponsorships,” Faulkner said. “But I think a lot of it is having a good process, a good structure and being able to manage and work with people whether they’re clients or internal stakeholders. Those are general skills that are transferable.”
— Bill King
