168 - Group Sales 101 — Part 1- Personalization Wins Group Sales

Most group sales reps are losing deals before they ever hit send. 

In Part 1 of a new three-part group sales series, Jeremy Neisser breaks down why one email template going to every organization on your list is quietly capping your response rate — and how reframing every pitch around the buyer's goal (fellowship, recognition, memories) instead of your ticket inventory tripled one rep's response rate in a matter of weeks. Tactical, specific, and built for marketing and ticket sales leaders who want a smarter outbound program this season.

KEY TOPICS COVERED
• Why product-first thinking is killing your group sales outreach
• The one question every rep should answer before sending a pitch
• Why churches don't buy tickets — they buy fellowship
• Why HR directors need the easy button, not a 68-page PDF
• Why youth team coordinators are buying memories, not pricing
• How to build five core pitches that map to your five biggest group buckets
• Using ChatGPT or Claude to categorize last year's group sales list
• The real reason your 40–50 emails a week aren't converting
• How decision-makers differ across group types — and what each one actually responds to
• The mindset shift that separates order takers from revenue builders
• What's coming in Part 2: the language shift most group sales reps miss

TIMESTAMPS
00:00 – Welcome to Episode 168 and what's different about this three-part series
00:29 – The most common group sales outreach mistake — one template for every group
01:17 – Why product-first thinking shrinks your response rate
01:45 – Case study: 40–50 emails a week to tripled response rate in weeks
03:35 – The one question to answer before every pitch
04:05 – Church outreach: why fellowship beats ticket pricing every time
05:50 – Corporate outreach: why HR directors are buying the easy button
07:44 – Youth sports outreach: memories, not seat maps
09:10 – The tactical shift: build five core pitches, one per group type
09:39 – Ninja move: use ChatGPT or Claude to categorize your existing group sales list
10:38 – Why a specific message beats a high-volume e-blast every time
11:30 – The three big takeaways from Part 1
12:00 – What's coming in Part 2: communication and the language shift most reps miss
12:57 – Share the episode and what to do this week

CALL TO ACTION
If this episode helped, share it with your group sales manager or a teammate selling group tickets — and rate the show on Apple or Spotify so more sports business pros can find it.

QUOTE PULLS
• "Every group that walks through your gate has a reason for being there. And it is almost never because they wanted to buy a hundred tickets." — Jeremy Neisser
• "The reps who ask, why would this group want to come before they send anyone anything are the ones that close more business." — Jeremy Neisser
• "She was sending 40 to 50 emails a week and getting almost no responses. Once she built five different versions, her response rate tripled in a matter of weeks." — Jeremy Neisser
• "The rep who loses leads with ticket pricing. The rep who wins leads with why this is a great fit for what they're already trying to accomplish." — Jeremy Neisser
• "Build your messaging around their goal, not your product." — Jeremy Neisser

Links:
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Transcript

Jeremy Neisser (00:00.32)
Welcome to episode 168 of the Sports Marketing Machine Podcast, powered by Revelocity Sports, the show that helps you sell more tickets and grow your fan base. I'm your host, Jeremy Neiser. Today we are kicking off a three-part series all about group sales. And before you think I've heard your group sales episodes before, Jeremy, I want to be clear, this is not what you've already heard before.

We're not talking about adding forms to your website. We're not talking about how you build prospecting lists. We're not even talking about how you close the sale. This is group sales one-on-one. The stuff that actual sales trainers don't typically teach you. This is the stuff that most group sales reps never actually get trained on. The stuff that separates reps who are order takers from the w ones that build tremendous revenue. So in this episode,

We're starting with the foundation, personalization. Let's get going.

Jeremy Neisser (01:17.848)
Here is a rather counterintuitive place to start. Stop thinking about groups. I know you're thinking, hey, that kind of sounds strange for a group sales episode, but stay with me. Most ticket sales, group sales approach their outreach thinking about the product. They think, hey, I've got a hundred tickets to sell, how do I sell them? And that mindset leads to a very generic pitch.

That goes out to everyone on that list that you have. The same email goes to a church, a manufacturing company, a little league, a chamber of commerce, a company that you're proposing for a company picnic. And they wonder why nobody responds. I remember talking to a group sales rep just three weeks ago who was frustrated. She said, Jeremy, I am sending 40 to 50 emails a week and getting no responses.

Maybe just a few here and there. And when I asked her to show me what her email outreach looked like, she pulled up one email. This was a template that she used. Just one. She was sending that exact same email to every organization on that list. So the church was getting the same pitch as a manufacturing company. The little league was getting something similar that a nonprofit would get.

Once she started to work on five different versions, one for each group type, her response rate tripled in just a matter of a few weeks. The reps who ask, why would this group want to come before they send anyone anything are the ones that close more business. I'm gonna say that again. The ones who think about the recipient, the person receiving that pitch, that email.

And really can articulate in their email why would someone want to come before they send it to anyone are and they are able to articulate it, put it together, and then hit send. Those are the folks that are gonna sell more because personalization. Every group that walks through your gate, through your doors, has a reason for being there.

Jeremy Neisser (03:35.314)
And it is almost never because we wanted to buy a hundred tickets. So the most important question you can ask before you ever pick up the phone or send an email is what why would this organization want to attend a game? Not how many tickets do they need, not which game do they want, but why are they considering us in the first place? And what would get them to say, yeah, that sounds like a great idea. I would be interested in learning more. Let's walk through a few.

Here's the first one. A church. A pastor you reach out to. They've got a large congregation. Let's just say 300, mostly families. When you reach out, are you reaching out about doing a church outing, a church group outing? No. You're reaching out about doing a fellowship night at your game, at your ballpark, at your arena, whatever it is.

They are thinking if it's a youth pastor or someone in charge of the volunteers or someone in charge of the staff or the main pastor, they are thinking about how do I build a community with the people who are coming to my church? How do I get them how do I get to know them a little bit better? They want to get people together outside of Sunday morning and it's fellowship for them, right? He's not thinking about let's do a company picnic.

He's not thinking about reserve seating. He's thinking about whether his congregation will show up. Will kids have fun? Does it feel something wholesome enough that they would put in their church bulletin to promote inside of their four walls? The group sales rep who wins that deal.

Is the one that says, hey, this is a great fit for fellowship. It's family friendly, very organiz or easy to organize, something everyone from your volunteers to your kids to your grandparents can enjoy together. The rep who loses is the one who leads with ticket pricing. Here's how much it costs to get a group discount. The person on the other end is not thinking about a group discount. They're thinking about how do they use this game to help.

Jeremy Neisser (05:50.028)
them achieve what their goal is. So in their case, it's to build fellowship amongst their folks that are coming to their church. Let's think about another idea here, another topic. The company. An HR director, you reach out to an HR director. They have, I don't know, 200 employees. She is tasked with planning a summer employee appreciation event. She's done bowling. She's done

These different dinners and social events. She's even had taco trucks show up to their office. She's done all of those things, but the boss says, hey, let's do something different this year. She's got zero time to plan for it because while she's the HR person for 200 employees. There's bound to be some sort of shenanigans happening in between their four walls, right? So she's got a budget in mind, but she has zero time to spend planning it, right? What she needs is

Is the easy button. She doesn't care about seating charts. She doesn't know when to show up on game day. She just wants to know what do I tell my people? Is everything handled? Food, seating, recognition, all of those things. She wants someone to make it easy for her to plan her company picnic. She doesn't need a PDF with 68 different things. She needs to

She's asking, hey, what what does this entail? What does this include? Hey, here's option A, B, and C. I recommend A because of the size of your staff. If you're gonna do it for for your executive staff or you're doing it for your full staff, here's what I would recommend. And here are a few dates that I would propose. Keep it simple. She doesn't need to plan a lot of stuff because she doesn't have a lot of time to plan a lot of stuff. All right, next example. youth team.

A little league team, right? Little league coordinator. Most cases it's a team mom that is really trying to figure out what to do for the end of the season. They want to do a summer event to celebrate the season. Kids get pizza or what have you. They've done pizza parties in the past. They've got trophies they're getting. They really want to do something special, right? They want to do something that the kids are gonna remember. So what is that person really buying? They're buying.

Jeremy Neisser (08:13.442)
the opportunity to make it easy on them. They're also buying something that would create great memories for the kids. They're they're buying an opportunity for kids to be able to do X, Y, or Z. If it's hockey to be high five tunnel or basketball high five tunnel. That would be great for them. If it's a youth baseball team, the kids get to run out on the field for the national anthem with the players. Like that's what they're buying.

They're buying something that's super simple and something that kids will leave and say, gosh, that was awesome because it was easy. In every case that I just shared, the little league or youth sports team, the company, the church, right? Every case, nobody woke up that morning saying, I want to buy a hundred tickets. They woke up wanting to accomplish something. And the tickets, your game is just how they get there. All right.

So let's get to the tactical side of this. If you're getting this and you're like, God man, the light bulb just went off. I'm looking at my email copy. It looks exactly the same. Like this is where it becomes tactical. Once you understand why a group is buying, your entire approach changes. Your email changes, your phone scripts change, your follow-ups change, everything changes. You don't need to reinvent the wheel for every single prospect, but you do need to build at least

Four to six, maybe even just five, split the difference at five core pitches, one for each type of group you're targeting. Churches, faith-based organizations, that's one thing. Businesses and corporates, that's another thing. Schools, educations, nonprofits, youth sports, like whatever five buckets that you have, take those. One thought that you could also do is you take your group sales list and all of the companies that are group outing last year.

Put it into ChatGPT or Claude and say, hey, I'm gonna try to categorize this because I wanna be better in my personalization, in my email marketing, or my my outreach, my sales outreach. Help categorize these. ChatGPT or Claude can help you categorize these so that you know that you're getting 16 schools each year, but you want to try to get to 30 or 35. Finding the right message that absolutely hits home every single time.

Jeremy Neisser (10:38.28)
Now you're cooking with fire. So that's a sneaky little tip that you can do. But the biggest takeaway here is create five or six different core pitches so that each of those are specific and give a different reason for attending that's specific to them. Each of them has a different decision maker. Each of them will respond to a different message. When your message meets them where they are, when it speaks to their specific goal.

They pay attention. When it feels like a generic e-blast, they're not gonna respond. It's gonna go right into the trash, or they're just gonna ignore it. The more specific your message, the higher your response rate will be. It is really just that simple. All right. Main takeaways from today's episode. Remember, this is just

Episode one on group sales. I've got two more coming, and I'm hoping you're taking this here, you're going, gosh, this is some great light bulb moments that it's going to help us sell more tickets. Takeaway number one from this episode: stop treating all groups the same. Number two, ask yourself why each type of organization would want to attend before you even email them or pitch them. Build your messaging around their goal, not your product. All right.

And then of course number four takeaway, you could take your group sales list, and this is a ninja chat tactic, you take your group sales list of what they are, the companies, put it into Claude or ChatGPT, and help them categorize it and then help them ha have it help you personalize your email that you're going to be using to pitch other folks that are just like the people that you already sold or sold last year or what have you. All right, next week part two. We're talking about communication.

Because understanding your audience is one thing, speaking to them in a way that actually resonates is another. We're gonna dig into next week the exact language shift that most teams miss, especially young group sales reps. They completely think their job is X, but it's Y, and how they talk about it is what we're gonna discuss on the next episode, which will come out early next week. If you have found this episode useful,

Jeremy Neisser (12:57.106)
Share it with the group sales manager. Share it with someone in your office. Share it with someone outside of your office, but working in sports trying to sell more tickets and grow your fan base. Because at the end of the day, I my job is to help you sell more tickets. And one way to do it is having a stronger group sales program. And if you found value, be sure to take a moment to rate or review the episode on Spotify or Apple. Or it would mean the world to me, but it would also get it.

in front of more people who are just like you. Until next week.