In 2000, my then graduate students, Tony Lachowetz and John Clark, and I published an article on the concept of eduselling. In that article we laid out the process of eduselling and explained the importance of educating the customer throughout the sales process. In that article we stated that “a consumer needs to be aware of the product or service and must know how to use it and how it benefits them prior to making a purchasing decision.”
Fast forward to 2017, and the practice of eduselling has never been more critical in the sales process. Why? While consumers have more information about products and services than ever before, they also have significantly more choices of how and where to buy these services than ever before. The growth and popularity of online buying and selling and the plethora of vendors that the buyers can choose from to make a purchase has made the importance of being able to differentiate yourself critical to the seller. Depending upon the product being considered, the vendor/supplier can be local, regional, national or in some cases global.
Thus, the critical areas of education for sellers to address are as follows:
1. Why should I select you as my vendor of choice?
■ What makes you unique in the marketplace?
■ What advantage(s) do you offer?
■ Do you offer a guarantee or warranty?
■ Are your prices competitive?
■ Do you have the best selection?
2. Why should I consider visiting your location rather than purchasing online?
■ Is there a compelling reason to overlook online convenience and come in-person?
■ Is there an attraction or benefit to coming to a brick-and-mortar location?
3. What is the best medium to convey this information in order to reach the target market of consumers?
Amazon and Netflix are examples of businesses that have greatly affected brick and mortar and eliminated several prominent vendors in part because of price but also because of convenience. In both cases, a brand came into being years after the brick-and-mortar stores and made those stores outdated because of convenience issues and pricing that reflected the savings from not having a physical store.
The ticketing industry is the best example of a product in the sport industry that could best benefit from eduselling. The choices for the consumer are numerous and confusing, and at the same time the choices for sport organizations as to which vendors to work with can be just as confusing and overwhelming.
In 2000, StubHub emerged in the marketplace and gave consumers an alternative to buying directly from the teams and their preferred vendor, Ticketmaster. Up until that time, the consumer could buy ticket plans directly from the team. Consumers also could purchase individual tickets directly from the team by going to the box office or could purchase by phone or online from Ticketmaster. Prior to StubHub, the team set the price and that was the price. Scalpers on game day near the stadium or arena were the only alternative to the price set by the teams, and that price could be higher or lower than what the team had charged in the first place. StubHub provided an alternative to that situation by providing a third party with inventory that could sell higher or lower depending upon what they had paid for the tickets. In time StubHub, the first player in creating the secondary market, actually became the primary market, where consumers began their search for tickets. How did StubHub become the primary source? When price became the most important consideration in buying a ticket and when the teams and leagues provided them the one thing that they lacked at the time: The credibility of being a recognized or official partner by the team.
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The Pittsburgh Pirates use player appearances at their Field Days to drive traffic to live vendors as opposed to online merchants. Above, former pitcher Kent Tekulve signs autographs.
Photo by: PITTSBURGH PIRATES
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Fast forward to 2017, and StubHub is actually a team/league sponsor and an official secondary market provider of the team. Ticketmaster now offers both primary and secondary market options and there are a plethora of alternative secondary market choices. SeatGeek, Vivid Seats, TicketsNow, ScoreBig, Ticket Liquidator, TicketHub, Ticketlodge and MetroSeats are just some of the secondary market sources that a consumer would come across during an online search. So how does a consumer determine the best site or differentiate among the numerous vendors to make a choice? Another way of looking at the question is how do these sites edusell themselves as to their uniqueness and advantages?
Asking an even bigger question: How does the team differentiate itself from all of the secondary market options and become preferred if not primary in the eyes of the consumer? The answer to this point has been an eduselling campaign positioning ticket ownership as membership — and like American Express, membership has its privileges, or as the team refers to them, benefits. So the eduselling approach is conveying to the consumers in the marketplace that there are reasons to purchase their tickets from the team and its ticket provider, and those reasons are in the form of benefits provided through a membership platform exclusively available only through the team — because it is the team that provides the unique benefits through assets that only the team can access and provide to its members.
Not every organization can create a membership platform — nor do they need to. Other approaches particularly applicable to brick-and-mortar retail stores may involve creating traffic drivers to differentiate them from online vendors. These traffic drivers could be in the form of special appearances by athletes at a sporting goods store or perhaps clinics and product demonstrations by a vendor at the retail outlet. The simple key to eduselling is having a story to tell that explains why the consumer should consider you above all other options.
Bill Sutton (wsutton1@usf.edu) is the founding director of the sport and entertainment business management MBA at the University of South Florida and principal of Bill Sutton & Associates. Follow him on Twitter @Sutton_ImpactU.
