What does it take to go from selling copiers and printers to leading nearly 50 people as an SVP for the Milwaukee Bucks?
In this episode of Against The Sales Odds, Lance Tyson sits down with Jen Babcock, Senior Vice President of Ticketing and Premium Sales for the Milwaukee Bucks, to unpack the sales and leadership lessons that shaped her career.
Jen shares how her early B2B sales experience taught her the importance of persistence, relationships, face-to-face selling, and understanding the people behind the buying decision. She also talks about her transition into sports sales with the Tampa Bay Lightning and Detroit Lions—and the pivotal moments that forced her to grow from a high-performing salesperson into a leader.
You’ll also hear Jen’s philosophy on staying disciplined through rejection, controlling what you can control, earning your next opportunity, and why salespeople shouldn’t expect immediate results from long-term sales processes.
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Listen to the podcast here
From Sales Rep To SVP: Building A Sales Culture That Scales
From Sports Reporter Aspirations To B2B Sales Mastery
I am really excited about this episode of the show because this person, I feel like I have watched from the beginning to where she is now. We have Jen Babcock from the Milwaukee Bucks. She is the Senior Vice President of Ticketing and Premium Sales. That is a long title, Jen. We are excited to have you on.
I am so excited to be on.
Sunny Milwaukee. Jen, just for the audience, we were talking in the pregame a little bit. What does a senior vice president of ticket and premium sales do? What reports right up underneath you? What does that look like?
Underneath me and my department is inside sales, account executives, member service, group sales, premium sales, premium service, and also the ticket operations team.
That headcounts what? That is a big headcount. There are a lot of departments.
Almost 50.
What is that leadership team that comes up to you? How many direct reports on that end?
Right now? I have one person on the sales side, leadership-wise, Tom McComb. He is my senior director of ticket and premium sales, my right-hand. He reports to me, and then all the leaders who oversee the individual teams report to him. The VP of TicketOps reports directly to me, and then also our internal premium experiences manager. She is my little protege. She reports to me as well. She is great.
She had about three direct reports, and then everybody funnels up through that. It is interesting, as I was thinking about this and thinking about your journey, and we are going to get back to Tampa. Your days have changed drastically. What is that daily thing every day that you are like, “My world is different?” Every day when you wake up, you are like, “I got to do X today,” that is so different than when you started.
It’s funny. Now it is like I come in, and these people that I work with now are like my family. It is like, “It is not just what do I have to do today?” It is like, “What does my team have to get done and accomplished today?” It is just such a different mindset.
It is very different. What is that daily challenge? Isn’t that what is the priority? What is the match?
It depends on the time of year. Now it is summer. It is you. Everybody is on vacation, and everybody is not. It is the hardest time to sell, and I do not care what league you are in. It’s hard right now. Everybody has got other things to do and spend their money on. Trying to keep the team motivated and focused and understanding the long term of, like, “You got to do the work now so that in season and when the schedule is released, like you will see the fruits of your labor. As we all know.
I was with my SVP of revenue yesterday, Price. His name is Price Johnson. I was like, why are appointments and leads down? He goes, “Dude, it is the summer.” I go, “Good point.”
It does not matter the industry. It is hot.
Especially when you guys are on the lake there. Last time I was there, it showed us how pretty the lake is and all that good stuff. Jen, like you got here and like a lot of the audience is like, “She is an SVP.” How did she get there? Tell us, like, what is that start for you? Where did you start off?
Crazy enough, my first job out of college was selling copiers and printers for Canon, like Canon cameras, Canon Solutions America. I thought I wanted to be a sports reporter. I could not do my internship until my last semester because I played soccer. When I finally did it, I realized very quickly that it is not what I wanted to do. I was about to graduate with this communication degree, and I had no idea what I wanted to do.
Where did you go to school?
Southeastern Louisiana University. I played soccer down there. It was great.
Since the World Cup just got done, I knew you played soccer. What position?
Centermid.
There you go. You cover a lot of fields. I did not realize you were a centermid. You decide in college, like, “I do not think I want to be a sports reporter?”
Yes.
I can see you succeeding at that. You would be really good at that.
Professionally yapper. I would thrive.
I love it. I am looking, trying to figure out how this lines up. You start telling copiers. A tough call.
I go to a career fair at my school because I have no idea what I am going to do, and I am about to graduate. Canon is there, and you have to write on your name tag what your major is and the activities you have done. They grab me, and they are like, “You played sports. You are a communication major. Have you thought about sales? That is the perfect marriage of your skills.” “No, what are you talking about?” Naturally, again, I did not have a lot of, beggars cannot be choosers if you are all about to graduate. I had no job. I went into an interview with this manager in Baton Rouge, which is like 30 miles from my school.
They were opening up a new branch. I started at 401k when I was like 23. They hired me before I graduated, and it was a Fortune 500 company, you know, all the things. I ended up going there. I worked there for about a year and a half. I found out very quickly I was good at sales, B2B. I was talking to chief technology officers at 23 years old. I learned very quickly B2B, which I think is a little backwards in our industry. Typically, people learn B2C first. That was one of my things that I talk about later that is like what sets me apart a little bit, I think.
You are definitely a talker, and we will talk about the B2B stuff in a second because I actually, I conceptually agree. You and I wholeheartedly have always agreed on that. Coming out of the gate, you as a seller, what was the first wall you hit? What was the first success? Are you cold calling in Baton Rouge? Is that where you started?
Pounding the pavement, man. It was so hard. It was so tough.
I am. You are literally knocking on doors.
I was showing up, and people were telling me to get out. It was crazy. It was truly like old-school outside sales. It was awesome. Again, gave me perspective. That is another thing I will talk about later.
What did you learn real quick? What did you learn right away about yourself as it relates to selling?
On the B2B side, very quickly understanding what a gatekeeper’s job is. Their job is to protect the decision-maker, which is some mindset thing you have to get around. As a woman, it is even different. They are even more protective of women. It is easy. I have an easier time with female gatekeepers versus a male gatekeeper. It is like, how can I get on their good side? They do not owe me anything. Learning really quickly, if you make them happy, then that is going to help you get to the decision-maker.
There is no doubt.
The face-to-face thing, even calling, texting, and emailing, never did much for me. I get on LinkedIn, and I message, and you put a face to your name, and all of a sudden you are getting meetings because you are a human now. You are not a telemarketer. The face-to-face thing was number one, but also understanding the relationship in B2B sales. It is still important. It is more than one person you have to get through and talk to.
First big sale.
I sold an envelope printer to a guy who owns multiple nail salons called Regal Nails. I still remember it all over the country. He was headquartered out of Baton Rouge, and I got him to buy this envelope printer. It was very expensive because he was doing snail mail all over the country. He was printing thousands of things.
What got him? What got the sale? I mean, was that a pure prospect right from the get-go, or what got him to buy from me? What do you think?
I was pleasantly persistent.
You did not go easy.
I was calling email and showing up with donuts when he was not there, when he was there. He was going to talk to me.
Let us go back to the B2B thing. You come out of the gate at a very young age, going business to business and realizing there are hurdles, there are gatekeepers, there is influence. It is not one center of influence. There can be several. As you said, it can be the gatekeeper, can be a number two, can be number three. What do you start realizing about your strategy right there? You got the sales process, and you got the approach. Talk about both for a second.
You said, I mean, you talk about it on this show a lot, but it is way more about learning about them and what they need than it is about you walking in with the mindset of what you are going to sell them. If you walk in thinking you are going to sell them, you are setting yourself up for failure immediately. It is not about you. You’ve got to realize that really quickly, especially in the B2B world, when you move into luxury suites on our side, even more so, you know what I mean? There is a lot of ego there.
If you walk in thinking you know you’re going to sell them, you’re setting yourself up for failure immediately.
The other thing too is you have to actually take your time because you are not going to rush. Even some of the salespeople that work for me, that I pull out of sports or any other industry, I am like, “It is not transactional. It is not going to be one quick, speedy move to get it done.” You just got to do a lot of little things. You are there for a year and a half. Do you have, are you growing there? Do you have an opportunity to stay, like what happened?
To your point, a year and a half in, I was the number four sales rep in the Southeast region. It was good. I knew I was good, but I hated going to work every day. I am also making more money than anybody I graduated with because I am selling copies and printers, and I am good at it. I will make great money. I hated what I was doing. Ironically, my cousin went to Michigan State, and his roommate’s best friend, or something crazy like that, was the director of ticket sales at the Tampa Bay Lightning.
He is like, “You do sales, and you love sports. You should talk to this guy and me, being naive and ignorant.” I did not have sports management in my school. I had no idea about the business side of sports. He is like, “You should talk to him about ticket sales.” My brain again, thinking ticket sales were in a box office and printing tickets at the window. I had no idea about this. I got on a call with this guy, and he explained to me what we do.
Was it a cookie?
He tells you about what this whole world is. I literally was like, “No brainer.” I am like, “Sign me up right now.” Took a huge pay cut. I did inside sales with the Tampa Bay Lightning. Learning how to sell sports.
Is it because the first mission was to be a sports reporter, and then you are all sitting there going, I got a lane here.
I thought that to work in sports, I had like three options, and it was like the coach, the scout, athletic trainer, or yes, for sports, the four options. I had no idea I could work in sports and do sales.
Did you coach some soccer?
Yes.
Was it a younger group, like that was early on?
High school. Coaching was fun. My dad was a coach my whole life too, not soccer, but still I loved it. It just was not going to be my forever thing.
Were you a hockey fan?
Yes. I grew up in Detroit hockey town.
Just making sure.
Do you want to know who our president was or our GM when I was there? Steve Iserman. It was awesome.
The captain. For you, it is not. You are having success at Canon. If you know anything about that industry, you are top five in a region, maybe top seven in the region. You are making some good cash. There is no doubt, but you say, “I did this. I am going to bet on myself. You just go over to the Tampa Bay Lightning. Now, it is interesting about the Tampa Bay Lightning at the time, too. You are selling hockey in Florida. They have a great organization there, but like, what is that first role? Tell us about that.
Entering Professional Sports: The Tampa Bay Lightning Grind
Inside sales is, I would argue, the toughest job in sales on the ticket side for sure. It is supposed to be.
Inside sales is arguably the toughest job in sales on the ticket side.
Let your salespeople hear that. Let them hear that.
I tell them that. I tell them that when we hire them. It is supposed to be right. It is a lot about are you built for this? Can you do the grind? You come in, and at the lightning, I will tell you, we had to be suited and booted every day. The only time we could take our jackets off was at our chairs. We stood in every meeting. I do not know that I would. I do not know if I could do that right now. It is 2026. You learn really quickly that you earn things. You want the next step? You want flexibility.
You earn that. It is not given to you. To your point, I was lucky. Inside sales classes can be small, or they can be up to 30 people. For me, I had a very small inside sales class when I got there, but they were close to a sell-out because the team was doing so well after I left. Two years after I left, they went back-to-back cups. I had a really small inside sales class that was super intimate and hands-on. Again, coming in with prior B2B sales skills gave me that edge. Also, I had a really small sales class, an insect sales class, that was great for me. I got a ton of hands-on learning.
I remember those Tampa classes. They could have been anywhere from 3 to 8 or maybe 10 max. The people you started with, are they still working in sports?
They sure are. Yes. I know Chloe is selling partnerships for the Detroit Lions right now. Nicola was selling premium for the Jets. She just took a step outside the industry. I am not sure what she moved to, but they are both killers.
I thought she was on location or something.
Maybe she is. I did not know.
She is a killer too.
Both of them are absolute killers.
No doubt. You are there. You are working for Ryan Cook. What is interesting when you are there, there was not a ton to sell. Meaning, it was not that you guys did not sell. It was not a large inventory. You had sell-outs, but you had to sell what you had available is what I am trying to actually say. You come in B2B, but you probably have to do some consumer sales now, too. You just go sideways a little bit. Talk about that.
As I mentioned earlier, I did it backwards, and everybody in our industry traditionally does it, which I can say I think helped me a lot. I will say it was interesting to struggle with B2C after that, because you are so matter-of-fact when you are B2B. Going to B2C is very different, and building rapport and equity and talking about IMIs, like when you do B2B, is not as important. That was a hard shift for me as far as mindset, but I had a blast.
We learned a ton. To your point, there was very little inventory. We had one set of three-seaters in our premium all-inclusive club left when I got there. Again, because three-seaters are hard to sell. I sold the last set. I will never forget it. It was because we were forced to do a tour before we sold anything. We could not sell anything until we gave them a tour of the arena. I will tell you what, I have carried that with me through my entire career.
You probably remember that tour. There you go.
I have my training script. I show it to everybody. My blood, sweat, and tears went into this man. I had to carry it with me everywhere.
I remember that. I remember that cook was too. That was his baby. Are you there long?
Eleven months.
Now you are two and a half years in sales. If you had to put a, for the people tuning in that are in sales, maybe newer in sales or a little bit into their career, your philosophy around sales started to form around what? What would you say it was at that point? It is probably different now than it was then, but at that point it was what?
It was definitely face-to-face, in person, and getting people down. At the Lightning, it was a little easier. The team was great. When I went to the Lions, it was a different situation. Tone of inventory to sell. I was pumped about that. Did not have that flexibility at the Lightning, but the team was not helping sell by any means. I feel like this part of my career is when I really got even better at sales than I have been, despite the copiers and printers, because the team was not helping. We had a really traditional, tried-and-true fan base. People were willing to talk to us, but we had to sell everything but the team.
Eleven months, you get an opportunity with the Detroit Lions. It is interesting. Now you are at the shield, which is a different play because, you are looking like you said for the NHL Tampa Bay Lightning is crumbled and crammed. You get the Detroit Lions, even though it is the shield and the NFL-like product of cans, a great product of Tampa’s great. The product of Detroit is not so great.
Exactly, and expensive. It is the NFL. It is very expensive. I actually got great before I went into my Lions thing. I want to note one thing that happened. I had a great leader at the Lightning, Travis Pelley, Mount, or TP, still there. I did not want to leave the Lightning. I was like, “I will be in service if that is what I have to do to stay here. I love lightning.” My parents had moved to a clear water beach for the first time, like six years we lived in the same state. I did not want to leave. Thank goodness, Travis had so much grace for me because it was so unprofessional.
I am sitting crying in his office talking about this, and he goes, “Listen, you are good at sales, and that is going to set you up, and there is nothing for you to sell here. Me keeping you here is not going to do you any service. You have to go show your skills off. At the time, I thought it was wrong, and I knew everything. Thank goodness he pushed me. Thank goodness he pushed me and had that hard conversation because I went to the lines, and it was very career-defining for me. They did exactly what he said it was. Shout out to TP for being a great leader and giving me grace when I was young.
Travis is a very unselfish leader. He is always going to do right by the person before anything else. That is why he is in so much success there. That is why he has lasted at Tampa so long, because he always does the right thing. If he is tuning in, definitely shut up. He pushes you for that opportunity and says you are going back home.
Back home, I never thought I would. Never thought I would be back in the Midwest. I thought I was out and I would never go back. My parents had just moved to Florida. They are like, “Seriously, after we moved, now you are going back?”
Scaling Up with the Detroit Lions and Navigating Pandemic Leadership
Probably like, really? You get to Detroit, what do you get hired to do? What do you sell?
Everything. They were building. Jared Cosen, who I know you had on before, my mentor to this day, one of my favorites, he hired me. He was building something very impressive there. It was an opportunity to be part of the first true sales team that the Lions had ever had. When I got there, there were like eight of us, and we sold and serviced everything, which I look back on now in my career, and obviously we are much smarter about having siloed teams under our department, but everything I sold, I serviced. I sold groups, I sold premium, I serviced my premium. I can say that I have sat in every single seat that I oversee now, just about, besides ticket operations.
That was also a big part of our role back then too. At first, when I got there, my first two years, I was an account executive, selling everything. There were like 8 to 10 of us when I started by the time two and a half years in, I was at 25-ish people, like I had grown a ton. We had started splitting up our teams. Two weeks before COVID, I got promoted to the premium service team, which was crazy. The Lions thankfully during the pandemic time or one of the teams who did not furlough anybody were very lucky, but we were not hiring or promoting or anything. It was such a time of the unknown. The first two and a half years were at Ryan, with a lot of growth.
From a career standpoint, what was frustrating to you, and what got you to stay? A lot of people left sports. Sports is probably one of the worst-hit industries and everybody who has had a hard and COVID treating the product on the field essentially, or have fans to watch it. What was frustrating? What got you to stay?
Jared left in July of 2020. There was a huge opportunity.
Actually, right after I was there, because I was there right before COVID. We will get training there. It was not far before COVID. It might have been right.
Jared leaves in July. The VP that was there then says, “Jen, you have been here the longest. I really need you to just step in and, like, help while.” We figure out what this means. We do not know how long this is going to last. We are not backfilling this role. No problem. It is one of those things that I look back on in my career, and it is like, I am so it is not my resume. I did not get a title change, but I got to get on calls across the league and meet all these different directors and talk through strategy and logistics. Got to come up with the plan for what we were going to do for our suite holders during the pandemic.
We were the only NFL team to keep every single seat holder that year. I learned a lot, and I met a lot of people. When they backfilled Jared’s role in August of 2021. A full year after he left, that is when I was like, I just did essentially a director’s role for about a year. I can be a director. I am ready. I stayed for another year and then was at the Lions for almost five, I think, like 4 years and 7 or 8 months or something like that. That was my structure at the Lions, and when I moved to premium service, I had sold a lot of the premiums, so I had so many good relationships with the clients already. That was premium service, my favorite role ever. I had so much fun.
You become like a de facto leader. Essentially, like what they call a battlefield promotion, essentially, is what happened. What did you start to realize about leadership as opposed to only being responsible for yourself? What did you love? What did you hate about it?
I loved the pressure. I definitely thrive under the pressure, but it is hard. The mindset shift from rep to leader is a 180. It is not coming in and just worrying about yourself, being on time, and looking the part. Now you have to come in, make sure everybody, not only you has to do your day-to-day. You got to make sure everybody else is doing their day-to-day. The mindset, every single decision I make now, what I run through is like, who does this impact the most? Who do I need to tell?
Do I need to manage up? Do I need to manage down? Before every single decision I make, that is like the conversation I have internally. That is the biggest shift from rep to leader that I had to go through. It is bigger than you. How does this impact the team? How does this impact the organization? Does Josh need to know? Does Dustin need to know? Do my leaders need to know? What are the reps going to think? Is this going to make them happy or sad? It is a lot.
Was it the challenge that kept you in there? When I look at your career and even some of the other roles are in your natural certain things, I am not saying you are not a natural leader, but like you have that killer instinct as a salesperson from a leadership standpoint. You’ve got to start thinking about everybody else. On top of that, they may not do things the way you do them. That is super frigging frustrated because it is so easy to go, why do not you just effing do it this way?
When I went to AEG, it was my first big leadership lesson. I learned that not everybody’s like you, but that is also why there are few leaders and very many sales reps. It is like, we are the difference.
If you are there for four years, what do you finish before you move to that next role? You just wrote it up.
Service manager.
You start looking around, going, “Look, I can do more than this.” You look at the organization, put some words in your mouth, but you look at the organization, you go, “You started applying for jobs. Where do you go next?”
I was not applying for jobs, actually. Just put my feelers out. I am from Michigan. I love Detroit. The organization, my hometown team. I would not say I was ready. I was not looking, but my mindset had definitely shifted to the point that I am ready, and they just backfilled. Jared, as I said, so there was not a ton of room for growth. I was thinking about the near future for me. I was talking to my mentors and putting feelers out there and at ALSD that year was in New York. Jared introduced me to Michelle Kajiwara, Taji for those of you who know her, and she is the SVP of Crypto.com Arena.
I’ll tell you what the story is so crazy. We were at a bar called McConnell’s Rooftop Bar after sessions. This is not a session. This is more like a panel or whatever. Jared was talking to Kaj and asking Kaj, like, “What do you need? How can I help you?” Kaj said she needed a director of premium sales. They have had the role open for a while. They cannot find the right person. Jared yells at me across the rooftop to come meet Kaj. Three months later, I got the job.
Michelle is just absolutely one of the best leaders I know and talks about being just her ability to be adaptable through the years, just to stay in LA and stay in AG and mold from different roles to different roles. It is amazing. Kaj hires you. Now you are in a monster market. Detroit’s not even that big of a market when you think about it. It is not a monster market.
The footage is big.
Geography is a big market, but LA is in the top five.
It is LA, New York.
Conquering the LA Market at Crypto.com Arena
You go for everybody, everybody going formerly the staple center, the Crypto.com Arena. Your responsibility is what? You might need to describe a little bit of how these folks do business there because it is a big opportunity.
It is why. It was the first time I took a job outside of my sports career, the only time I stepped outside of the team side. AEG is more like the agency, I guess you would call it side, owned the building. They own Crypto.com Arena, and it operates with three levels of premium within the building. We own and operate all of those premium levels. When the Lakers come to play, they have a home game. They operate lower bowl and upper bowl season tickets, but all of the premium suites and premium, like men’s club seats and tables, lounges, long tables, those sorts of things, that was my team. My team, I was the director of premium sales there. They were responsible for selling suite leases, mostly, but also some of our PR seats, premium seats.
For perspective, though, give folks an understanding of what the prices are. You are Detroit, but now this book of business is just a monster.
More tweets than Ford Field. It is a person arena with over almost 200. It had over two and then one ninety hundred and ninety seats.
Two hundred plus events a year.
When I was there, there were Lakers, Clippers, Kings, Sparks. Of all the concerts and events, the Grammys, as I mean, it is the busiest between MSG and Crypto. It is like every year they go back.
A suite lease for a night because if I got a suite for the Lakers, I was getting it for the Clippers. I was getting it for everybody.
That is the hardest part. Everyone’s like, “You are in LA, the Lakers, like it had to be easy.” No, it was not, because what people could not buy was just the Lakers. If you wanted the Lakers, you also had to buy everything. If you bought a suite lease, you are getting all the events, all the teams, which in itself is a full-time job to manage. Twelve tickets in a suite for over 200 events. You need a full-time person to manage those tickets. I will always argue that a suite lease is the hardest sale in sports. In the partnerships, people are laughing at me. Listen, it is a very expensive box, and nobody needs it. How do you convince a company that you need this box and you have to make it work for yourself?
You and I are 100% in agreement there because you cannot move it. It is fixed. It is a fixed location. You cannot do much with it, considering Monumental is one of our biggest customers, and they are doing the same thing in Washington with the investment capital one, and AG is a customer. It is hard. It is very hard, regardless of what league give from the perspective of pricing a suite goes there for like a concert could go anywhere from what it is just a night if you had to stick a tab on it.
$2,000 a seat, maybe depending on who it is.
You could have twelve seats in a suite. For a lease, you could be anywhere from a half million dollars to a million five a year.
Half million on average, for sure. When I last built those tunnel suites, those were five million a pop. Those were insane.
These are not short-term. As you are thinking about it, you are talking that you could be anywhere from 6, 9, 12 year leases. These are decade-long. These are major commitments for organizations. You got to run the gauntlet. How does your B2B piece come back now? It comes back really hard.
Where I thrive. This is like my happy place. No, it is great. I mean, I think I love the challenge of trying to convince somebody they need this suite. I love it. It is a riot. The difference between Canon and this now is that there was a need. Copiers and printers are things people need for their business. This is a luxury. This is a watch. It is a little bit more of an ego stroke and his dinners and whining and dining and all of those things. I love that.
I love trying to learn what motivates people, what is going to get them to make decisions. Do I have to get their kids out? Do I need to bring their wife? Is it their gatekeeper? Is it the lawyer? Is it the CFO that makes the decisions? I love asking the questions and reading people’s body language, hearing what they are excited about, what they laugh about, and then applying that to show that we can be partners here. This makes sense.
It is messaging in the matrix. It is both. You are figuring out the matrix. How do you message? You are selling something nobody needs. At best, that product affects how they do business. It is not going to help them sell more. It affects how they sell. It affects how they brand themselves. It affects how they leverage. It is a different play. You are there, and you are managing the team.
Four senior premium sellers report to me. I have a manager who reports to me. Junior sales reps report to that manager.
You might want to also describe too that this is probably not even for anybody in this industry, it is not even a pure management position. The reason I say that is because you actually are actively helping your salespeople get stuff across the line. You are as much in the selling role as just like a partner, a leader of partnership.
I never went on more appointments than I did when I worked at crypto. Again, before that I was selling myself. Those were all my own appointments. I was going on everybody’s appointments that I could all the time. I did not personally have a sales goal. I was not getting paid commission. I was.
You were responsible for getting them to produce.
Their success was mine.
From a strategy standpoint, because the sale is wider, longer, more of a center stage. What happens to your strategy at this point? More of the same, but I’ve already changed some things up.
I had to learn the market. LA is very different from Tampa, which is different from Michigan. First, getting to understand the market a little bit better and the way we need to approach things, like the Midwest, very nice people here. You do not need to go after them aggressively. In LA, they are much more ego-driven. They like to just tell people that they are even talking to us to buy a suite lease. There are a lot more jokers out there. Being more direct out there.
How does your leadership style change?
Overcoming Imposter Syndrome and Leading Veteran Teams
In the first true leadership role I was in, my imposter syndrome was through the roof. I was managing people. Two of the people I inherited applied for my job. That is tough. Half of my team was already there.
Are you serious? You are going in already. They already applied. They did not get the job. You are, you now are like, I would not say the enemy. You got some, maybe some in front of me is a little bit. I like the gun for you. Did you know that going into the role?
I did. Manny and Kaj were the best leaders in sports, making sure to give me all the things and make sure I knew that I was supported. Although this is a situation like “You have earned this role, and you are supposed to be here.” That was tough. That is the first thing you have to navigate. It was not like that either. The two who applied for my role were not doing anything to me personally, but I had that in my head too.
It is on your shoulders to wait. You said two or older.
Half my team was older. My approach was, and I think I am glad I did it this way when you are inheriting a veteran team, to walk in and be like, “You guys are going to teach me as much as I can teach you.” Tell me how you guys are doing things here. What is working? What do you love? What is not working? What can I help get across the finish line at the end of the day? If you guys succeed, then we all succeed. If you guys fail, then we all fail. It is not just about you. We are in this together, and all I am here to do is help you make a ton of money and hit your goals. My approach that way definitely landed better than if I were to come in and be like, “This is my team. We are going to do it my way, and I know everything.” We have all had those leaders, and that just does not land.
It does not. That is really important there. It is not even a subtle thing. Actually, you have to behave that way because there are people that come in, maybe do not say, “This is my team,” but they are like, “We are going to do it this way.” It is kind of my way or the highway, or you are actually going to embrace it. How much resistance did you get? I am sure you got a little bit.
The first three months were tough. I was learning how to be a leader, and they were figuring me out. They had a very veteran leader who oversaw. The director of premium sales role before me was there for like 5 or 10 years. I had a lot of things.
You had a little bit of a shadow on you. No doubt. What was the thing that really did it for you that you knew you won, but what was also the most frustrating thing for you? I always like asking you questions about frustration because you definitely have no problem talking about it. I know you weigh things out in your mind all the time. That is why I am asking you what frustrated you.
What frustrated me the most was probably that I had not been on the team side. Not having access to ask for, like, we use a lot of player events and access to coaching and basketball ops and all the other things, you know, in my prior roles. When you are not on the team side, you do not have that. You do not have access to that. Learning how to get agile, that being said, we had a ton of other resources. AG, to your point earlier, is very broad. They do not just do sports. They do everything, and it is global. They also do Coachella and all those things. I had different vessels to use to help me close deals. I just had to learn how to plug those in and pivot our sales pitch to do that. I do not know that I would say it was a frustration, but it was definitely something I had to learn about.
To maneuver. You had to make your adjustment there. How did you know you were succeeding? What was it? Besides hitting your numbers, you always hit your numbers, how did you know you had it? You are starting to succeed.
It is funny. I was only there for a short time. I was there for a year and three months, which was not my intention. I planned to be there for three to five years, but I think it was after I left, Lance. It was like when I left, the feedback and the calls and likes from not just my colleagues, like my side-by-side, who are still my best friends to this day, came to my wedding. Many in college too, like “You are miss man.” How you carry yourself, and I did not.
It was interesting coming into this role from that role because it made me feel way more confident in myself, knowing that, like, “I am meant to be here. This is not a coincidence anymore.” This is not. I was not just lucky I was here. I was picked to go to that job, and now I was picked to go to this job, right. It was not like I was the last one standing. Hearing everybody miss me and talk about how the way my leadership impacted them, and they missed that, was very telling to me.
I ask female leaders this all the time, and I have had multiple conversations about this. Before you go to Milwaukee, which is your next move, how have you dealt with it? I just asked Taylor Lara this the other day on a podcast. She is with the Commanders and her sponsor. How have you dealt with sports sales, sports management? It is a boys’ club. It still is. It is not intentional. Every league, every team has tried all kinds of things with diversity, and things have progressed and gotten better. How have you dealt with that as a female leader?
It has definitely gotten better. From ten years ago, when I started to know it, it has gotten better.
There is no doubt.
Some people love to say, like I do not care that I am a woman, my work will speak for itself and like all these other things. I wish that were the case, but whether it is right, wrong, or different, the reality is you being a woman makes you different here. Some people will take you less seriously. Some people will say terrible things to you. That being said, you could also use it to your advantage. Me being in sales and a female in sports separated me.
We know this traditionally, most women in sports stereotypically go into service because we are maternal and all the other things. The fact that I am a killer in sales made me stand out. Frankly, I like service more than I like sales, but I was so good at sales and my great mentors like Jared and like Lance Tyson on this call who told me like, “Listen, I know you could do it all, but like what you are really good at and will separate you as being in premium sales.”
There is no doubt. I am so glad you said that with the service, and I want you to finish that thought. You are not getting pulled just in the service and fighting your way out of that. If you are tuning in and you are in service, that is a thing. It does not mean you are in the wrong spot. What it means is like to get experience on both sides because you got the service experience in Detroit, but then you got both in LA.
You are on the big stage there. Talk also because, like, I think Mika Marsh and I were talking about this, and you guys, you two both have a lot of very similar traits. You are also super emphatic. What you hear from Jen right now, like her just being very straightforward with her communication. I am being very careful with this question, Jen, so you can slap me later. As a female, has that benefited your video?
That is such a good question. It can be both. It is true. You have got to figure out how you are perceived. Again, whether you are doing it on purpose, it is reality, and perception is reality. You have got to figure out if you are. Know that I am not for everybody. I know that I am opinionated and passionate, and I know that about myself. We better believe in every email and every interaction. I am kind. I say hi. I say good morning.
I overdo my kindness, knowing that I am passionate and I am demanding and I am going to ask for a lot. I know what I need to do to make sure I am perceived the right way. Again, that is not saying I agree, and I love that I have to put smiley faces in my emails. That being said, I also know that if I do not, I will be perceived not the way that I want to be. If I want to grow, I have to be able to adapt. The farther I grow, the higher I get, the more I can help move that stereotype away. For the time being, I know what I need to do to get where I need to be.
It is so important there too, if you have always over-arched on the people’s side of it. Whereas, as direct as you are, you put a lot into your people. You invest a lot in your people. I would say, even like training, you invest a lot. You have always had, like, I am to put a lot into you, not just with a group like ours. I am just talking personally, and spending time with them. That is important, but you are not soft at times. You know what I mean?
If you do not have them, you get this role, talk about the trajectory, we are back to center. We are right back. A year and a half, and you are only at your fourth organization. The Bucks are fourth. Not counting Canon. Canon is five. You are already at the top of your game. You are at SVP. You got a big title. You got 50 people reporting. You got 5 or 6 direct reports. You get the job at Milwaukee. What is the first role there, and how do you move up into the SVP role?
Building a Repeatable Sales Culture with the Milwaukee Bucks
One of my big things with leadership is, like, think no matter what role it is, it is in my experience since I have been here, whether it is a rep or a leader, I think you need to have the mindset of going in with 3 to 5 years. Know that you are in a role for 3 to 5 years at least. For the most part, not everybody has that mindset. You’ve got to go in and learn how to do the job. You have to be able to do the job at a high level. You have to be able to do your job and the job that you want. That takes 3 to 5. That helps people’s mindset when they get in.
You do not just hit your goals one year, and you are like, “Great. Where is my promotion?” I have the mindset there at crypto to do the same thing. About a year later, I go to ALSD again. I swear they are going to stop sending me to ALSD, and I meet the old SVP who was here. Three months later, he called me. There is a VP role here. It ended up being too good to be true, too good to turn down. I ended up leaving crypto for a year and three months, which I felt terrible to do to Kaj and Manny, but they were the best leaders, and they were like, “Jen, you got to take this job. We cannot. You will not get that here.
That is, man, I cannot.” Manny is like, “I cannot give you my job. That is my job.” I came to the box as the VP of Ticket and Premium Sales. Very similar structure. All the leaders were reporting directly to me at that time, and now I am a step above that, and now Tom has shifted into what I was when I first started. Overseeing all of the same teams minus ticket operations. Ticket operations just joined me six months ago.
Probably a little different play for you.
Very different from LA. I am from the Midwest. It was good to be back. I love my blue-collar people. Traditional market again, which I love, but I was hired here, and I knew it when I took the job because they had built a new building. These things all happened within seven years. New building, Pfizer Forum, two MVPs in his years, a championship, and then a Dame trade. All of that happened within a 7, 8 year span. That is, people are lucky to get one of those in their entire career, let alone all those things happening in seven years.
To come here, it is nobody’s fault prior to me, but this has turned into an order-taking culture because they could. There was a ton of inbound. There were a ton of things that were bringing them success. My job was to come in and make it scalable. How do I define success is that the process is repeatable and scalable. We cannot look at the Dame trade a year and be like, “Look at our numbers, they were the greatest they have ever been.” I am like, yes, because of Damian Lillard, not because we had a great strategy. If I cannot apply that and teach it, then we cannot count that as our successes, and that is not in our control. I came in, and my job was to turn this into a sales culture again.
It went back to being like Tampa. Tampa did not have to have a sales culture, but they were always ready to have a sales culture. They were winning, but we practiced being a sales culture. It is not proactive play. I do not say this very often. Share on the sidelines. Always appreciate it. Just being involved with your success and you. A couple of things I want to point out to everybody tuning in. Jen never gets too high or too low. You can just hear it in her. Does not overcelebrate, and she does not undercelebrate. As I was thinking about this, you are always in the moment. If you listen to the interview, you, she had to actually go back and say, “What was that moment like?” She is in this moment right now. Would you agree with those statements?
Absolutely. I had to work at those. Thank you for pointing it out because I did not always used to be like that. Passion is one of the best things about me. It makes me great at my job, but it is a blessing and a curse. You have to be able to harness it and control it and like to be able to use it to your advantage and not let it bring you down.
I do not know if you thought about this. Your trajectory, talking about a fast track. What is interesting is what she said for everybody tuning in. She never forced her moves. She leverages her network. She knows people. She always has. She will talk to me. I know she talked to my VP. You are always talking. You leverage that network. You leverage it for your people.
You got a lot to be proud of. Now, as we bring this bird down for a landing. A couple of things, one, if you had to, like, give us a summary today, if you are a salesperson, give some advice. If you are selling today, regardless of industry, sports, whatever, Canon, if you had some folks back in the day. What do you have to be thinking about today in sales? It does not matter if it is B2B or B2C. You have to think like what?
It is trusting the process. I do not know if that ever changes. It is like, especially going from B2C to B2B, you are going from very transactional sales to a long-term sales process. Even some right now, keeping these people focused is like, “Listen, you might not see it right now, but you got to keep being consistent and being disciplined.” When you are young, buddy, it is hard to be disciplined. Can you come in every day, smile on your face, and know that you are going to get told no all day long, and keep coming in with a smile on your face? Controlling the controllables every day.
We talk about what if you close it with a four percent close rate. That is damn good. That means what percent of the time are you getting told no? It is like keeping that mindset that, like, “This job is really hard, but I can control my attitude. I can control my outbound efforts. If I can do that, then at least I can say I am doing everything I can do.” That is what I ask of my team. As long as you guys are coming in every day and busting your tail, then I am never going to, I can fall on the floor for anybody that is coming in and busting their tail, but when I have the issue is when you are coming in and you are not giving it all you got because that is not what we do here.
Enduring Sales Advice and Defining True Success
You have a well-defined process, I think, which is important. Here is what success looks like in this process. You define it. From a leadership perspective, you manage, and you have worked with a lot of generations of people as a leader now. What do people need to be thinking?
You cannot manage everybody the same. It is different than it used to be. It used to be very black and white. We found a ton of success here with a pretty non-traditional approach to leadership and being extremely transparent, being very clear with them about the why behind every decision. We should never make a decision without having the why, even if they do not agree. If you guys want transparency, that comes with the agreement from you guys that you will be mature enough to disagree and commit. That is what the game we play is. That is how business is.
It is about alignment. People need to know what it is, how it works, why it is important, and get them to align. I do not have to agree with them to align, but if you do not have those things in front of you now, well said. Last three questions. You are going into a big deal. You are going on one of your sales freak builds. They look, even though you are the SVP, they said, “This is big. You got to come.” What would you, what song are you playing in your head? Right before you get out of the car, your best Jordans on go.
Goodness gracious. Put me on the spot. I might play Big Poppy, honestly.
Nice. I love it. Second question. If you have to give any book besides mine, what are you going to give? I am not saying you give books, but if you had to give somebody a book, what would you give?
Leave from whatever you were doing feeling like you did your best and the person you talked to feel good after.
I am going to plug Raven Jemisin. She is our old EVP. She is the president of the Kansas City Current right now. She wrote More Than Representation: The Cheat Codes to Own Your Seat at the Table, which is one of the best books I have read in this industry. For anybody in the profession, it is great. It talks about politics and how politics is always connoted so negatively, but you can make it positive. They do not all have to be negative, but you have to play the game. We are definitely political as leaders and people.
Last question, you have a niece or nephew who is six or seven years old. Remember, you are sitting at the edge of a dock. They are 6 or 7 years old. They say, “Jen, what does it mean to be successful?” You say, “Go.”
Six or seven years old. I would say, “Did you leave whatever you were doing, feeling like you did your best and the person, whoever you talk to, do they feel good after you talk to them?” More so about how you make people feel.
That is very concise. I love it. Jen, I totally appreciate you being on this call. Thank you so much. I cannot wait to get this posted.
Thank you so much, Lance.
Important Links
- Jen Babcock on LinkedIn
- Crypto.com Arena
- More Than Representation: The Cheat Codes to Own Your Seat at the Table
