Tomorrow starts the first day of selling. Tomorrow I will physically pick up the telephone, dial a number, and see if the voice on the other end wants to buy tickets to the LA Galaxy. Know anyone in LA? Hook me up. Phone selling is still something I’m coming to grips with. On one hand, I’m excited to talk with people and provide them with something they want. On the other hand, I’m not looking forward to persuading someone into buying tickets that they won’t necessarily use (not that I can, but assuming that the ultimate goal is to sell as many tickets as possible, it’s what we are all shooting for.) It seems at this point that the best thing I can do is not think about it too much and stick to the script. Call people and talk about soccer. Keep it simple.
I’m excited to make remarks in this blog about phone calls both nasty and silly, but I will have to be vague in my descriptions. It’s been somewhat frustrating not being able to detail vividly the trainings that we’ve received here, but from now until basically retirement, anything learned in the workplace should not be riding the social media wave. It will eat me inside to only provide vague descriptions of people and actions, but I can’t see any way around it. In general, the training exists to get people out of their shell and willing to embarrass themselves and make mistakes in front of others. The world of phone talking is not a private one, so the sooner you can get over your fear of communication the better. That’s more or less the basis.
I live at the National Sports Center in Blaine, Minnesota. The National Sports Center is best described as a small college campus, with fewer buildings and many, many more soccer fields. Why someone decided to put a gazillion soccer fields in the northern outskirts of Minneapolis where the ground is frozen for 1/3 of the year is beyond me. But here I am. There’s also a hockey rink, a Velodrome (look it up), a few office buildings (one of which I work in), and probably a few more structures that I’ve never been to nor seen.
Blaine, Minnesota is like a small city that got accidentally stepped on by a giant and was squashed like a pancake. Everything is square and 2 stories or less. If there weren’t big, corporate logos everywhere, it would somewhat resemble communist Russia, but with way more parking lots. I think 90% of Blaine, Minnesota is parking lots, or at least pavement of some sort. When driving around, it feels as if the center of town is just up ahead, although it never is. I’m not sure there even is a “center of town”.
People in Minnesota are so darned nice. It’s like God took a survey of the nicest people in the world and moved them all to one of the coldest places possible, only because he/she/it/they knew that these friendlies would willingly embrace it. At the same time, I can’t help but think that there’s some naivety in the niceness. It’s like they would just prefer not to interact with the harsh world outside of Minnesota that is known to turn smiles into frowns. And I don’t want this to sound like a bad thing, because more than anything I’m jealous. Pick a niche and stick with it. Power on.
Went to the Mall of America this past weekend and rode an indoor roller coaster that wasn’t at all dinky. This mall really was the mall of America: It represented, to a tee, the land of the free and the home of the brave. Walking around was completely free (although anything else was not) and finding parking was only for the brave (although it was free.) We walked around, and walked around some more. Then I got a free ride on a roller coaster. It IS the little things in life...
The team with the highest attendance in Major League Soccer is the Seattle Sounders, who averaged 38,496 fans per game in 2011.
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