CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY

CUSTOMER Charlotte Knights Baseball Team Keeps Charlotte Knights the Turnstiles Spinning CORPORATE PROFILE Headquarters The Charlotte Knights are the Triple-A Fort Mill, SC just ten miles south affi liate of the Chicago White Sox Major of Charlotte, NC League Baseball team. The team’s sales Type of Business staff uses ACT! to manage ticket sales Entertainment, Sports for 55,000 group tickets and dozens of Number of Employees special events. 15 full-time, 10-15 interns during season, 100s of part-time Replacing Old-School Prospecting volunteers on game days The Charlotte Knights needed to APPLICATION Productivity Begins with streamline their sales processes and Software Clean Data institute disciplined, best practices in order n ACT! for Windows to develop dedicated fans. Originally, Over the years, the staff used various Number of ACT! Users the sales staff tracked prospects via index PC-based contact managers and earlier 8 cards and wrote custom contracts for versions of ACT! to handle contacts. Database Information each case, providing very little consistency Reps would come and go, leaving a mix of 26,000 records across the sales team. business cards, index cards and unreliable data fi les in their wake. “We’d scramble around, sifting through stacks of note cards to fi gure out who Owens engaged ACT! Certifi ed Consultant to call next or the history of the person Andrew Kaplan of ARK Sales Automation calling us,” said Sean Owens, director of Group to identify key strategies for group sales & ticket operations for the improving productivity and leveraging Charlotte Knights Baseball Club. ACT! to the fullest. The fi rst step was

CHALLENGE SOLUTION RESULTS The Knights needed to streamline ACT! helps the Knights execute The team’s sales numbers have their sales processes and institute targeted marketing campaigns, improved consistently every year, disciplined best practices in order track and service leads, develop and its top sales person (now the to connect with 8,300 customers customer relationships, sell sales director) increased his sales and prospects, and to develop individual and group tickets and from $30,000 to $220,000 within dedicated fans. manage special events. a two-year time span. “My sales went from $30,000 data importing and clean-up. Kaplan and that. The whole team has consistently Owens imported season ticket data from increased sales every year. ACT! makes to $220,000 in my fi rst two the Knights’ standard database into ACT!. us more disciplined, which we have years, and ACT! certainly embraced because it’s a lot easier for us “We had 30,000 accounts, and a lot contributed to that. The whole to make money!” of it was just garbage,” said Owens. team has consistently increased “Andy and I would stay late at the offi ce, The Knights have eight sales reps who use sales every year. ACT! makes us scrubbing the data and fi nally whittling a local network to access a shared ACT! the list down to 8,300 great contacts.” database. “Some of the old-school reps more disciplined, which we have wanted to stick with their note cards,” “The key to any successful contact embraced because it’s a lot easier said Owens. “But, it showed up in their management deployment is clean data, sales. Their numbers were much lower for us to make money!” and these new lists were like gold for than those who were using ACT!.” them,” said Kaplan. Kaplan also helped —Sean Owens the Knights develop best practices “ACT! helps us keep track of customer Director of Group Sales and Ticket Operations modeled after the habits and processes and prospect preferences, what events Charlotte Knights Baseball Club of the top sales reps. they’ve been to in the past, where they sat two years ago,” added Owens. Big-Time Sales Production “It builds a really strong customer in the Minors relationship. Fans love the team and the organization as a result.” ACT! turned the Charlotte Knights into a fi nely tuned sales powerhouse. “We Reporting Keeps Sales just type in a contact name, and boom Line-up Producing we know every historical detail on the account,” said Owens. “ACT! generates As sales director, Owens uses ACT! to ABOUT SAGE SOFTWARE (formerly Best Software) invoices, receipts, contracts and all the generate reports and drive productivity right paperwork for us. We organize our within his departments. He constantly Sage Software offers leading business management software and services that schedules for maximum productivity, examines the data and provides reps with support the needs, challenges and dreams and we never miss opportunities. information on hot leads, high margin of more than 2.4 million small and mid-sized Before, all kinds of leads would slip accounts and lists of prospects that business customers in North America. Its parent company, The Sage Group plc through the cracks.” haven’t been contacted lately. (London: SGE.L), supports 4.5 million customers worldwide. For more than Owens started as a sales rep with “I can instantly create a report that shows 25 years, Sage Software has delivered easy- the Knights but was promoted to the me which reps are more aggressive to-use, scalable and customizable software director post within three years because than others and which prospects have for accounting, customer relationship management, human resources, time tracking he was able to boost his own sales been called in a given time period,” said and the specialized needs of accounting with ACT! and spread its use within the Owens. “As a data analysis tool, it’s really practices and the construction, distribution, sales organization. “My sales went from powerful. Ultimately, it helps me manage manufacturing, nonprofi t and real estate industries. For more information, please visit $30,000 to $220,000 in my fi rst two my people better and deliver bottom the Web site at www.sagesoftware.com/ years, and ACT! certainly contributed to line results.” moreinfo or call (866) 308-2378.

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