how would you Respond:

Of the information provided in the case, what is most important in your design of a sales incentive plan for the three sales staff? How does this information affect your plan design?

Advertising is based upon the number of seats sold. The number of seats sold depends on how well the team is performing. The three sales agents needs to focus on selling the premium seats so seats shifting does not happen. So, the most important part of the design of sales is to speak with fans that are willing to buy the premium seats. I would also develop a season pass that includes premium seats. The season pass can allow fans to come to every home game with premium tickets and gives them a slight discount than buying single tickets at the time of each game. The season passes will allow them to fill more of the premium seats up at each game.

b. Your textbook talks about unit rate plans. Which of these types of plans would you use for sales of tickets? Which plan might be appropriate for sales of advertising? Why?

"Products or services that sell themselves, where sales ability isn't as crucial, inspire different compensation packages than do opportunities where the salesperson is more prominent" (Newman, Gerhart, & Milkovich, 2017, p. 523).If this was a team that performed well, their tickers would sell themselves. I know my local basketball team won the NBA finals back in 2016. Most of their tickets sold themselves. For a team that is having a hard time in sales, I would recommend them focus on market maturity. "As the market matures, the sales pattern for that product will change, and companies need to adapt the compensation for their sales force accordingly" (Newman, Gerhart, & Milkovich, 2017, p. 522). Our textbook then mentions, "In maturing markets, companies focus both on performance-based pay tied to customer satisfaction" (Newman, Gerhart, & Milkovich, 2017, p. 522).If they had a good team, they may not need to advertise as much because the team performance would sell the tickets. Since the team is not that great, they have to advertise and hope that it reaches enough fans to where they will at least get their money back from advertising and then more money to earn a profit for it.

c. What factors influence the dollar amount you can pay for increases in ticket sales?

As I mentioned earlier, if the team were to create season passes which allows the tickets to be at a discounted rate, it can increase ticket sales. They can also lower the premium ticket tickets prices as well. They will be losing money per ticket on it but more people will be buying tickets which will in return increase ticket sales.