It’s late February. About a foot of snow covers the Canal Park field where, in 40 days, the Akron Aeros, the AA-affiliate of the Cleveland Indians, will take the field in their home opener against the Harrisburg (Pa.) Senators.
Outside the office of Akron Aeros General Manager Jeff Auman, with the bitter cold and nothing but flurries in the forecast, the season seems far away. But for Auman and the 16 members of his front office staff, right now is the playoffs and the World Series combined.
“For us, the season is right around the corner,” Auman says. “The toughest part for us as a staff is we know how quick it comes every year, but we have to convince the fans and our clients. Our deadlines are here if you want to be in the pocket schedule listing, in the program, in the media guide, all those things are going to print.
“When you look out that window and it’s 16 degrees, and there’s a foot of snow on the ground, those people think they have all the time in the world to buy tickets, and get their ad in, but really, it’s coming quicker than you think.”
After graduating from Ashland College in 1988, Auman worked for his brother-in-law’s motorcycle dealerships watching the books. A couple years later, he ran into an old friend who had an internship for the Chicago White Sox, and his life took a new direction.
“It just stumped me because I was born and raised in Dover, Ohio, and I never knew anybody working for professional sports coming out of that area,” Auman says “You just don’t assume that it’s an option. You know the doctor, the lawyer, the guy in the mill, things like that.
“I immediately started questioning him, and I’ve always played football, baseball in high school and college, and thought that would be a great thing to get into.”
Luckily, the first door Auman knocked on was of the Canton-Akron Indians, the former name of the Akron Aeros. The general manager at the time was leaving to a take a position in the New York Mets front office, and the assistant GM was moving into his place, leaving that spot open for Auman.
“They brought me on as an unpaid intern for six months to do some sales and get my feet wet while they were going through that transition,” Auman says. “They brought me on full time as their business manager doing their accounting and bookkeeping. I was named assistant GM a year after that. Then, in 1994, I was named GM in Canton for the club, and I’ve been with them ever since.”
Auman sat down with Smart Business to discuss how he manages his front office, and how he attracts fans to Canal Park.
What kinds of things are you doing to boost ticket sales this year?
Like any other minor league baseball team, and even as it’s going on in the majors now, group sales are your bread and butter. We really get out there and go after it hard with our group sales force and telemarketers, trying to sell group outings, companies coming to town, companies bringing their workers, civic organizations coming out as groups, things like that.
In addition, you want to be more creative, so a few years ago, we started our Education Days programs, where we have five days in April and May where we have a 10:35 (a.m.) start. We have a binder where our staff had sat down with some teachers, as well as the Board of Education from the state of Ohio, and came up with a curriculum that’s titled, ‘Baseball in Education.’
We have 5,000 kids out here five days during the season, and it’s a fun field trip for the kids, but also we put questions on the board, and in their binder, like, ‘If Johnny runs from home to first base in 20 seconds, and it’s 60 feet long, how many feet did he go per second?’ Questions like that.
Baseball in Ohio in April and May is a tough ticket to sell when we have weather like this. With the Education Days, we can increase attendance 25,000 to 27,000 by doing five special days like that. That’s one of the innovative ways that we’ve come up with.
It’s great for us to get people in the park. Those kids, trust me, they have money. They spend it on concessions and souvenirs, but it’s also a great day for those kids, and sometimes, it’s the only way some of those kids will ever get to our park, unfortunately. It’s just a win-win situation.
With everyone struggling with the economy, we’ve gotten a lot more flexible with our season tickets. When we first came to town, we were only doing five-year and three-year terms. Last year, we started going with a one-year term, which has started to pick up some of the slack there, and then also we went to a mini-pack situation, where you could buy a number of games in a package.
Last year, we only offered three packages; this year we jumped up to 12 packages. The whole key to any business is just being really flexible and adapting to what your customers’ requests and needs are. At a time when the economy is weak like it is now, people can’t afford a whole season package, so we adapted ourselves and are creative.
We offer different weekend packages, fireworks packages, summer packages.
You have advertising out on the field and in the program. How do you increase corporate sponsorship?
We saw about a 10 percent loss last year in advertising, but we picked some of that up. I definitely think we’re in better shape than a lot of the companies out there as far as what they’re feeling. We will have all signs sold this year, so it’s actually going pretty well.
We’ve had great success in our first six seasons with support from the community, both in attendance and in revenue, sales, things like that. We’re no different than anyone else. We don’t live on an island. We’re feeling the effects of the economy like everybody else.
Unfortunately, the first thing to go in companies is a cutback in advertising, or the entertainment dollar. The good thing is when we make those calls and we do get some feedback, everybody compliments us on what a great time they’ve had here, and what a great program we’re doing, so we know it’s not something we’re doing wrong.
We may lose those groups this year, and as soon as things turn around, we know they’re going to be right there with us.
How do you convince companies to be a sponsor?
Just going out there, making phone calls, knocking on doors with our sales force. We’re doing some different events this year. We’ve located about 200 agencies in the area, and we’re going to start inviting them down, once the season starts, to the games to get them familiar about what we offer.
We’re really proud of the fan-friendly environment and the exciting atmosphere we create at our park. So we think once we get them here, we can do a presentation to those folks and see if there are any clients that they handle that would be a good fit for us.
That’s another way we’re going to try and attack that this year and hopefully open some more doors as well.
What about advertising the Akron Aeros? What’s your strategy?
We do quite a gambit. We’re on a lot of the radio stations in the area. We also do quite a bit of business with the (Akron) Beacon-Journal, obviously. We have an ad promoting that night and some upcoming games. We also do an outdoor billboard campaign through Clear Channel, which does five different billboards throughout the months of May through August that rotate per month.
We’re going to be doing a deal with TV 23 to do some commercial spots for the first time with them this year.
One of the big things we have to offer, which a lot of companies don’t, one of our biggest advertising mediums, is our pocket schedule. We do 500,000 pocket schedules in the area, so once we get those printed in March, the staff picks a different area and we just go out and drop them off.
Miller is a sponsor of ours, as well as Pepsi, so their drivers take them to all the stores and bars they visit. I bet 95 percent of the calls coming in to our ticket office, they’re looking at a pocket schedule. That’s a key marketing tool for us.
How important is it for sales to have a marquee player?
To be honest, in the surveys we’ve done in the past, most people think a winning team would be a pretty key component to that. It’s actually not. It ranked about eight out of 10 for people wanting to come to the park.
I would say the fan-friendliness, the pricing, safety, a clean ballpark, all played in to why people want to come down here. It’s a great family atmosphere and a good value, so it certainly doesn’t hurt to have a marquee player like a Victor Martinez, like last year, and having a team that won 93 games last year doesn’t hurt in any way.
But even more so than the marquee player, we found because we have had some teams that weren’t quite as successful on the field while we’ve been here, we still ranked in the top 10 in minor league baseball attendance, and first in AA. The key to that is our affiliation with the Cleveland Indians.
Without a doubt, it’s great for fans in Akron and surrounding areas to come out and see these players and follow them up through the system. Now what Cleveland has done with having Buffalo not very far away as their AAA, and us here as their AA, it’s very nice for the fans of Indians to see those players develop and keep track of them.
You’ve mentioned “fan-friendly” quite a bit. How do you create that atmosphere?
Staffing is by far the No. 1 thing. We have a great front office staff, we have a great group of ushers in our ballpark. We get phone calls and letters quite often telling us, ‘Our trip to the ballpark was enjoyable.’
We get letters from people who are retired and travel around the country going to major league and minor league parks, and wrote back or called telling us what a great time they had at our park, everybody was friendly, helpful.
You want to be, not only friendly and helpful, but have your staff and ushers be knowledgeable. If somebody has a question, you don’t want a lot of ‘I don’t knows.’
We also do the on-field entertainment in between innings to capture their attention. We want to make the whole night an event, for four hours, not only while the game is going on.
What do you do as leader to create this environment?
It’s the old adage, what comes around goes around. The ownership has been very good to me in my position, and has been very fair and worked closely together with me. That’s exactly how I treat my staff. I don’t treat them as someone being under me. We’re all on the same level.
That’s worked very well. If you just work together and you show courtesy and respect to your co-workers, then that transfers to them showing the same to the game day employees, which are the ushers and the on-field promotional staff and all that.
If that’s what you expect from your staff, then you have to show that from yourself first and foremost. It’s leading by example and not by words.
Is the pre-season the most important part of year for you?
It’s funny the number of times we get the question, ‘What’s your job in the off-season?’ Some people think we just leave Sept. 1 and come back on April 4 and everything’s ready to go, the wall signs are done, everything’s sold, the program’s ready to go.
Our most important time of the year is the off-season. From November to March is when our season is going to be a success or not a success. We work longer hours during the season, but we’re not as hectic or busy.
In the off-season, we’re not here as many hours, but we’re much busier. How to reach: Akron Aeros, (330) 253-5151 or www.akronaeros.com
