One of the things we hear consistently from smaller, regional soccer tournaments is how to compete against the larger, more well-known, branded tournament events. I am living a case-study this weekend.

My daughter is playing this weekend in a well-established, but non-TourneyCentral event. So far, I have gotten eight text messages and three vent calls from my wife who is in charge this weekend. The fields are badly marked, there are no port-a-johns on the fields, the directions getting there sucked, nobody is posting scores and on and on… (I’m not dismissing her very valid points, but I’ve heard and experienced them all before myself. My solution was to create TourneyCentral. 🙂 ) This is only the first day and they now just left to play the second day. I’ve got my cell phone fully-charged.

As I was talking to her on the phone and her voice went to the tone of the school teacher in a Charlie Brown TV show and my empathetic remarks digressed to uh-huh, ok, hmm, I began cruising around my favorite blogs. Up pops a post in The Challenge Dividend by Bob Gilbreath that nailed my experience.

In the post, he looks at a recent interaction by Donatos Pizza and American Express. Read the post to get the whole picture, but bottom line is Donatos (a local pizza chain) tries harder because they have more to lose.. and more to gain than the big, already branded, everyone knows who we are American Express (of which I am also a long-term member).

Our Advice: First, have a really good product. Starting off on the TourneyCentral platform is a good way to communicate that out to your potential guest teams. Second, reach out to the teams, put a personal touch on your soccer tournament and make the teams feel special, wanted and respected. Third, follow through with your promises.

If you are a large, well-branded tournament, think and act like you are always in second place. Never forget what you did in the early days, trying to attract teams to your tiny, unknown event. And, never stop trying to break into new markets, while never forgetting the teams and clubs that helped you get big along the way.

And, if you happen to have a Donatos Pizza in your neighborhood, call them up and offer to cut THEM a deal instead of asking them for money. When you have made it, start spreading the wealth a little bit along the way. What you give up in the short-term in money will come back to support you from a community when you may need it most. (Ok, a throw back to one of my all-time favorite movies It’s a Wonderful Life but applies here!)

Here are five easy ways to piss off your volunteers:

1. Never say please or thank you. They owe you their time because you allow them to work on your tournament.
2. Don’t bother matching up their skills with the job you need. Be sure to put someone who works in a major consumer brand marketing department on garbage detail on Sunday night.
3. Don’t acknowledge their contribution as a reason for the success of the tournament. Remember, you could do the whole thing without them if you only had the time.
4. Demand that they be available to you very late at night and on-call during the weekends. After all, you have a schedule to keep and you are very busy coaching your team… in addition to working at your day job.
5. When they are at the tournament giving their time in the middle of the day, in the rain or the hot sun, be sure to bark orders at them within earshot of your guest teams. You are much too busy fool around with civility.

Sound familiar? Even if you are not guilty of any or all of these infractions, chances are you’ve been to tournaments where you have seen this behavior.

Our advice: Be different. Be kind. Commit to creating an atmosphere where parents, grandparents and siblings WANT to volunteer at your tournament. Make it fun, however your volunteers define fun. When your volunteers are stressed out and pissed off, your guest teams feel it and it leaks over to the tournament. Guest teams, sponsors, parents feel the tension and just want to play the games and get out. When you have happy volunteers, you have a fun atmosphere on the fields and players and parents want to stick around and be a part of that for as long as possible.

And then, they can’t wait to do it all again next year.

Today, I saw a comment from a team rep come over that said this:

Our coach, John Smith has reached out to the tournament several times via e-mail in regards to us not receiving a confirmation on our acceptance into the tournament. It was only after checking the status on line that we saw that we’ve been accepted. Due to lack of follow up on your part and lack of confirmation for the tournament we are going to pull out and will be stopping payment on our check.

Got me wondering how many times the tournament sent an email to coach Smith (not his real name, of course) that went to his junk folder or he didn’t bother replying to. So, I looked it up. Four messages were sent to him, without a reply back.

Our advice: If a coach does not answer an email, CALL HIM! And, you may want to advise your teams that you will be sending emails and that if they do not hear from you within a reasonable time, CALL YOU! Email is rapidly becoming an obsolete communication tool as more and more ISPs are deciding for their customer what is and what is not spam.

And, make sure your subject lines are not spammy. A subject line like You’re Accepted!!! will probably hit the junk folder, whereas a subject line like Your team has been accepted to the 2008 Major Classic will make it all the way to it’s destination inbox. Be specific and stay away from punctuation like ? and !!!!

You may also wish to drop postcards in the mail with the team acceptance, just in case emails are not getting through. While it may seem counter-intuitive for a web site to advocate for the USPS, it is the end product, not the tools, that are the important thing.

But, please, the goal is not to point fingers around in a circle about who didn’t answer their emails. The goal is to communicate, whether that is by phone, postcard or email.

Today, I finally put the customer service number to the Wall Street Journal in my cell phone. And that is not a good thing.

I put the number in because the newspaper carrier misses my house with regularity and when I need to call them, their web site is so full of news and segmented information that I can’t ever find the number quickly.

Our Advice: Be reachable, but first, take care of those things that make teams feel like they need to call you in the first place! Keep your Frequently Asked Question up to date, your news on the front page timely, dates published when certain things are going to happen (like team acceptance and schedules). And, make sure your news is written in very simple language.

And, if the teams still feel like they need to call, keep your phone number current n each page of your web site.

I enjoy reading email that coaches, parents and team reps send soccer tournaments. It’s a great insight into our target market and keeps us on our toes about what the soccer public needs and expects from tournaments and the web site that supports it.

My favorite emails are the ones that write paragraph after paragraph of needs and concerns and then they say something like Oh, great web site, btw!

By the way??? BY THE WAY? Do they not know how hard we work on making the web site easy to use, reliable and real-time accurate? Do they not know how many weekends we have given up to make it possible for them to even notice that the web site is great? But, perhaps that is the point; at least they noticed something great when they saw it, even if it was a footnote.

Our Advice: Nobody will appreciate the blood, sweat and tears you pour into your soccer tournament than you. But, don’t expect them to. If they are not complaining about the basics like field lines, lack of port-a-potties, no water at the field, games always starting late, no referees…. you’re doing something right! Chances are they will notice that things went fine without a hitch.

Think about the last time you complained because there was no food at the grocery store. Or the last time you didn’t have a place to sleep. Yet, when was the last time you complained because the waitress was a little bit late bringing the coffee refill at a restaurant. Exactly. When the basic needs are taken care, it is only then that we find the time to complain about the minutiae.

So, the next time someone complains about having to pay for parking or a 10 minute overlap in their multiple-coach team schedule or an 8:00am game, just smile. You know you’ve taken care of the big things.

BTW, mostly nobody notices the way a TourneyCentral web site is always up and running, is accurate and is easy to use. I guess that is a good thing.