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Coaching Changes…High School Coaches and College Coaches change every day. The coaching changes are a never ending merry-go-round of new personnel. Here at Sports Data Group, we process approximately 12,000 coaching changes per month.

If you are a company or supplier that does business with the athletic departments at the High School or College level, then you had better take care to be sure that your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) database is current and is updated often. We can provide that service at SDG. We offer a complete updating package that consists of four quarterly updates per year for either college, high school or both.Read More

First, let’s start with the basics. CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. It is a very intelligent acronym. Why? Simple…because without customers we go broke. Without a good way to manage our customer list and to define details…we go broke faster.

So it is absolutely critical that the CRM database you are working with is fresh and that it is updated constantly. Not just every few years but every few weeks or months. It’s not the customer, or potential customer, that is responsible for letting you know about changes such as telephone area codes, physical address or mailing address relocations and personnel changes. Your sales and marketing staff must always be updating and refreshing your data if you want to be on the leading edge of your industry.

If you do not have the personnel or the time to refresh and update your high school coach database, college coaches database, and golf course database, let a professional company such as SDG, Sports Data Group, do it for you. We can help you keep your Customer Relations Managed.

Contact us if your customer/sales lead database is outdated or just non-existent. We will help.

Okay…first I have been in sales and sales management for over 40 years. In that time I have never seen nor heard of a “perfect” contact list for sales prospects and sales leads.

The reason for this is simple. It is virtually impossible to maintain a “real time” prospect list. This is particularly true in the area of sports where high school coach database, college coaches database, and golf course database changes for are literally a daily occurrence. The other problem is the amount of data that needs to be reviewed and maintained. For example, in the United States there are over 37,000 high schools. Multiply that number by even just a few coaches and an Athletic Director and you have some large numbers. Obviously not all of those have athletic programs and some of those have limited programs. Nevertheless…it is an enormous amount of information to compile and to update.

I remember about twenty years ago when I purchased a “prospect list” from a list company and believed I was going to get more sales than anyone else in the manufacturing company where I worked. Well, the list was terrible. Either it had not been updated in years or had never been updated at all since it was compiled. Many of the contact names I called had either past away or there was no record of them working at that company or their job description and responsibilities were totally wrong. How embarrassing is that?

I discovered over the years that the closest I could get to a perfect sales prospect list was to develop that list myself. However, that required a lot of time and additional effort. But it was much more accurate and detailed than any list I could buy.

Having experienced these pains myself, I decided to develop a source for people to purchase lists of high school coaches and college coaches that had both value and accuracy. At Sports Data Group we are constantly updating and changing our database information in order to provide the highest possible level of accuracy.

We know what it is like to invest good money to obtain no results. Contact us at SDG if you are interested in learning more.

Welcome to the first blog on SDG’s new website.

With the success of Jim Harbaugh and others, we decided to discuss the seemingly growing trend of college coaches switching to the NFL. This is Harbaugh’s second year coaching the San Francisco Forty-Niners.

From 1994 to 2001, Jim was an assistant coach at Western Kentucky University under his father and head coach Jack. After two years as quarterbacks coach for the Oakland Raiders, Harbaugh returned to the college ranks being named head coach starting in 2004 with the University of San Diego. After taking the Toreros to consecutive Pioneer League championships in 2005 & 2006, he moved up to Stanford University where he served as head coach from 2007 to 2010 and led the Cardinals to two bowl appearances that include the 2011 Orange Bowl 40 to 12 victory over Virginia Tech.

Immediately afterward on January 7, 2011, he signed a five-year deal as head coach of the NFL San Francisco 49ers and Harbaugh led the team to playoff appearances in his first two seasons there. He and his older brother, Baltimore Ravens coach John Harbaugh, not only became the first pair of brothers to serve as head coaches in NFL history (John beating Jim 16-6 in Baltimore on Thanksgiving night 2011 for one of the 49ers’ three regular-season losses) but will face off against each other in Super Bowl XLVII in New Orleans on February 3, 2013.

Not a bad start for the former Chicago Bears quarterback and college coach. Now many people are wondering if Chip Kelly can duplicate Harbaugh’s success. Chip Kelly, after a certain amount of indecision, became the head coach for the Philadelphia Eagles after turning around a mediocre program at Oregon. Only time will tell if this is the latest trend in hiring NFL coaches.