We highlighted how smaller rights-holders can grow their media rights business by seamlessly integrating sales software into their daily lives in the previous blog post. Today we’re talking about the major sports organisations – with more complex organisational matrices, higher volume of deals and different sets of requirements. After all, finding innovative methods to increase income isn’t just an issue of maximizing the opportunity for sports rights holders: it’s a need to stay competitive. 

If we look outside of sport, there are plenty of inspiring examples to choose from, one of them being Coca-Cola. Recently having made the news for the Ronaldo incident, the $238m giant’s business operations are running like a well-oiled machine thanks to deep cloud-based sales management software integration. Overall, the productivity of Coca-Cola’s service divisions has increased by 30% since the implementation, essentially reducing wasted time by a third. 

While certain top sports rights-holders such as IMG, the NBA or Discovery have successfully adopted rights & sales software, there are plenty of organisations that are yet to do so – perhaps due to hesitancy, or simply because this is neglected in favor of seemingly more pressing daily concerns.

Here are the key reasons why major sports rights-holders should embrace rights & sales management software, and the best partner for deployment:

1. Organized Database

Rights & sales management software provides you with a comprehensive view of your business. It offers the organization precise sales, marketing, and customer service information, allowing the entire department to stay in rhythm and operate on the same page. The software provides extensive information on client traits and preferences, allowing the company to make the most of every meeting and make data-driven choices based on real-time and up-to-date information. In addition, it can map out sports media specific information, clearly outlining which content goes where, and where the untapped opportunities may lie.

2. Accurate Sales Forecasts

Inadequate information results in incorrect projected sales. Great sales management software rapidly records data and offers crucial information that allows sales management to create accurate projections. Data is simple to handle and project – allowing for not only accuracy as mentioned above, but also time savings. 

3. Improved Sales Team Performance

Sales management software helps your staff to focus on sales rather than mundane but vital daily activities like manually handling excel sheets, making (and then searching for) offline notes, or sending follow-up reminders. It can automate these activities, in addition to allocating work to appropriate team members.

4. More Organized Sales Cycle

Rights & sales management software makes it simpler to discover quality prospects and choose which ones should be prioritized. Because all of the information you need is available in a single display, you and your whole sales team can effortlessly monitor lead statuses and sales progress. It will also not only give you notices on upcoming major renewals way ahead of time (so you can prepare adequately), but also flag up any smaller, yet important content licensing opportunities to hit your new business number. 

Why would you work with a software start-up?

The successful deployment of sales management software depends not only on the user themselves but obviously the vendors who created it too. Somewhat counterintuitive, but in other industries, large organizations and business are often working with small software vendors (promising start-ups) to reap these benefits:

1. Small software vendors continue to innovate

Some of the most successful business software vendors over the previous decade, such as Salesforce and Palo Alto Networks, began tiny; yet we all know the significant contributions each made to their respective fields. Companies who believed in them and adopted that software early had a clear competitive advantage over those that waited.

2. Customers can have an impact on the product roadmap

Because both technology platforms and business requirements evolve rapidly, your software vendor’s product influence and consistent feature delivery are critical.

All small software vendors are set up for rapid and frequent releases, and big companies may influence the product roadmap to ensure that their feature requests are met as soon as possible.

3. Value for money

In-house custom software creation is costly, and the user experience is inferior. As a result, for the great majority of their business applications, organizations accept conventional solutions (today frequently supplied as SaaS). SaaS solutions are always less expensive, and maintenance and deployment are generally included in the subscription choices. Given the complexities of large installations, big companies should always seek license arrangements that include end-to-end service delivery. Software start-ups generally work considerably harder to provide clients with a single price that covers everything during the contract period, ensuring that there are no hidden expenses. Some new vendors, like Slack, have pushed the business software paradigm to the next level by providing total freedom. You may adjust your subscription as you test, adopt, hire, and dismiss in real-time, providing a genuine pay as you go experience and, ultimately, the best value for money.

Is your organisation ready to modernise its sales processes? If so, then don’t hesitate longer, and contact Content Arena, where we can offer you Content Arena Manager as SaaS or a bespoke Enterprise solution. Content Arena Manager provides rights-holders with a single, collaborative ecosystem through which they can easily enter, manage, and retrieve data, allowing them to access vital metrics that drive their business in real time, make informed decisions, and unleash unexploited market potential. The best thing is that your solution will continuously benefit from regular feature and security updates specifically tailored to the sports media rights industry, ongoing monitoring for vulnerabilities, and full support from our dedicated team.