Q&A: Colby Carter
I interviewed Colby Carter. Colby is the Manager of Group Sales and Inside Sales for the Organization. Although this is not my dream position, the Sports Industry is all about getting your foot in the door. You never go straight to the top, you have to work to get there. Colby is a prime example of this and I was fortunate enough to get to speak with him and learn more on this matter. Here are the highlights from our conversation.
Okay for starters, where are you from?
“Born and raised in Dallas Texas”
How, what, or who really got you into sports?
“I kinda fell into it believe it or not, as far as working in it. Always been a sports fan. I grew up idolizing the Cowboys and Rangers. I got into Sports, working here, through a friend of my brothers that worked here and I was working in Sales beforehand and he said come on over so I did.”
Did you ever play any sports? For how long?
“Played football, baseball, a little bit of soccer. My main sport growing up was wrestling, actually almost did it in college, but decided I wanted to have fun instead.”
Was this your dream job, or did you have something else in mind?
“Absolutely not, no. I actually wanted to get into real estate which I guess is a form of Sales. I was more focused on the commercial side, building properties and decided when I graduated in 08 that was not the best place to go to cause of the down turn of the market so I kind of fell into the first job that came my way and here I am.”
Can you touch a little bit on your educational background? Where you went to school? What you studied, stuff like that?
“I went to school at TCU in Fort Worth, just in the business school there. Entrepreneurial Management major and Psychology minor.”
Did you have any jobs before the stars, or essentially what got you to this position?
“I Started off in insurance sales. Did that for three years, before I got into Sports.”
How long have you worked here? Can you tell me more about your role ?
“This will be my 8th season with the Stars coming up. I manage our Group Sales department and team along with the internship program. Pretty much my role is the hiring and planning of all our big group initiatives and managing our current stuff as well as interns.”
What do you like most about working for the Stars?
“I always joke with people that I have the luxury of having worked somewhere else before sports. The luxury because it is so much more fun working in Sports if you have a passion for them, which I do, and I know everyone always says this but you know if you find something you love doing you never work a day in your life. That’s Sports for me. I sell fun. My team sells fun. Selling insurance was not fun but I have the privilege of waking up everyday and not being pissed about going to work.”
What’s the most important aspect of your job?
“I’d probably say the ability to be okay with the repetitiveness of Sports, because it is grueling at times and your doing a lot of the same things over and over again. Our business cycle is always the same when we plan for stuff. So while it’s new in a new season or new year, a lot of the stuff is the same so you really do have to enjoy being around sports and going to sporting events. I would say that is the most important part. Being able to want to come to work and work for Sports during holiday times when most people are probably spending it with their families we have to work because we have a game the day after Christmas, or the day before, or something like that.”
What do you do to keep your edge?
“I think it’s realizing that you’re never gonna be the best. I’ve been in Sales for the better part of a decade and I still learn stuff all the time. I mean heck technology these days is changing the way we sell. When I started selling, email was around but people weren’t using like they are today. Everybody is glued to their computer or glued to their phone, so the traditional calling people all the time is sometimes not the best way to get in touch with somebody anymore. Texting them or shooting an email is much better in certain situations. So you always have to be able to adapt and change your methods and how you do stuff but overall Sales is pretty consistent but it is just using new things at your disposal. We even have Sales people come in, for us, every single year that teach us the new stuff that is kind of on the forefront. Were always trying to better ourselves and better of craft.”
How would you describe the work environment?
“I think it’s a lot of fun. We’re relatively young on the Sales side. Were a young, hungry group of people that are wanting to have fun, make some money and talk sports all day. So It’s pretty energetic in there as you can tell. Just having everybody in there with a common interest for Sports, it doesn’t even have to be hokey. My favorite Sport isn’t hockey, it’s football. And I just love Sports in general so I think the atmosphere here just breathes that and your always around people that share a common interest so it’s always fun.”
How much of this specific job do you feel people learn well actually performing the job rather than prior knowledge and stuff like that?
“It really depends on what your schooling was. Because I didn’t go to school for Sales or Sports Management. There’s a lot of Sports Management programs out there now and so I’d say if your in one of those then you’re probably gonna have a leg up over somebody like me that didn’t do this. A lot of what I learned in school is relatable here but not specifically to Sales, but there is a lot of stuff out there now that you can go to school for to give you a step up. A lot of what I learned and what I use on a day-to-day basis is my social skills and networking ability. That’s more specific to what I do now but it really just depends on what you’re going to school for.”
Can you describe the advancement opportunities here with the team?
“I think I’m a pretty prime candidate to answer that. I started out 7 years ago here and I’ve held 5 different roles. I started off just in Sales got promoted up to a Premium Sales role, which was pretty much just a more glorified role of what I was already doing. I was excelling well in it and then I had the opportunity to move into our Corporate Partnership and Sponsorship division as the director of Corporate Partnership with our Minor League team. Did that for a little bit, and then from there got promoted to our Inside Sales Manager. Did that for about two years and now I have held my current role for about two seasons. So there are a lot of opportunities if you are successful and if you work hard and have a good attitude. Going back to one of your earlier questions attitude is what I look for as far as candidates and people interested in working here because we’ve let people go that had poor attitudes even if they were good at what they did. Attitude in my opinion can be a cancer to an organization. So there is a lot of advancement opportunities here, people working here today have held different roles here and also people who did well and we didn’t have the next step for them so we helped them find the next step with a new team so were well connected which is nice.”
When people make mistakes how is that handled here?
“It really depends on what kind of mistakes are being made but we like to think of ourselves as a good management team and so we can kind of see signs of what is attributing to those low sales and hopefully curb those habits. We can kind of coach people and make them better. It’s early recognition of that stuff and we usually have good plans in place. As long as your going along with what were telling you to do and the tasks we put in front of you and your not succeeding then that’s probably our fault. I look at failures a lot as our management problems. How can we get better? How can we help you? Luckily we don’t a lot of negative turnover so we’re not firing people for sales. Usually all of our turnover is pretty positive. We helped the last two reps we lost find their next step and helped the progression in their careers.”
What would you say are some of the biggest challenges you face here?
“One of the most challenging parts for the Stars specifically, is that we aren’t the biggest team in the Metroplex. We’ve got the Cowboys next door, which is not only a big team down here but the Number One Sports Franchise in the World. You have to educate people on hockey down here since a lot of times they have never been to a game or just coming for the first time. So that’s always a big struggle here, trying to get people used to the hockey. Dallas is a winner city so they love to go to the team that’s hot right now. Luckily we had some success a couple of years ago so that’s probably one of the biggest struggles we have here that aren’t the top dog. We play to that though and it’s really fun and engaging environment and an experience that you aren’t gonna elsewhere. That’s what keeps people coming back.”
This is a tough one, What is one thing you wish you knew before you started working here?
“That’s a good question. I think for me I wish I knew that in Sports you often have to move around to progress. I am lucky in the sense that all of my promotions have come with the same organization but that’s very rare to receive multiple within one company. Usually you kind of get bottlenecked where you have a lot of people that are gunning for one position and if that position just doesn’t come open for a while then you’re out of luck and have to progress upward with another organization. I’m starting to realize that now, I mean our boss is our Vice President and I don’t fosree him going anywhere anytime soon. I think that’s a Sports thing, you have to realize that coming in, so you have a lot of quick promotional opportunities within your first three to five years but then you are out for that one spot against a lot of different people and maybe no one can get it because it’s not going to be opening up. That’s probably the one thing I wish I knew. That’s good for a lot of people starting out. Where you start is probably not where you’re ultimately going to end up.”
I would like to give a special thank you to Colby Carter for giving me the time to answer my questions. He was very insightful into the Sports Industry which I am attempting to break into with my current internship at the Stars. He gave me a lot of information that will help me on my journey and I hope one day to have as much success in this industry as he has.
