Numbers Do Matter

How the sales funnel works

Sales funnel stages will vary by company, but they are generally divided into four sections.

• Awareness: This stage includes the largest amount of customer prospects. It's at this stage in which customers have determined a problem, begun searching for a solution and become aware of an organization via content marketing, an email campaign, social media marketing or other avenues.
• Interest: At this stage, the number of customer prospects begins to decrease, but the possibility of a sales conversion increases. This is generally when the customer will engage with the organization, request more information and ask questions.
• Decision: Once the customer has become aware of the organization, reached out and sought answers to questions, it's time for the decision. This stage of the process may include sales offers and further research into the different options presented by the organization.
• Action: All of the previously mentioned stages funnel down into the final step: action. At this point, the customer has decided to purchase the product.

Now that we've established how the academy looks at its marketing campaign, the RDB academy operates as the only established Class A Rookie development independent baseball school league for 21u players within the U.S. while major league baseball has established and uses the academy model overseas, it has no such affilliated program within the U.S.and those programs pay the operators of those academies.

The RDB operates as a non-commercial nonprofit while players are paid a stipend it allows the academy to operate in the black, with little to no Red Ink, the model could be used for a more advanced aged player mostly used by independent baseball clubs players average age mid to late twenties, while mature many are never going to advance past the AA level. And are simply used to fill roster spots, of which there is nothing wrong with that, but today's audience goes to a game to see talent that potentially will get to the AAA level though that journey is a long one with breaks needed alone the way in order for that happen.

Stadium's are being built based upon flawed numbers of which can be twisted anyway needed if attempting to sell a community on such ideas, in Cleburne the Depot will be a nice facility to watch a game but the question as to whether the numbers suggest a based area team being independent can sustain itself or if infrastructure built around such a complex would be able to survive, simply look just southeast of Cleburne to the city of Hillsboro the Outlet complex while being in a prime location well over a half million cars pass the location daily, and yet today it sits mostly empty a good example of flawed numbers.

Now come back to Cleburne far less traffic travel alone hwy 67 and even fewer the Toll road which ends right at the door of the stadium, and you can see the suggested numbers won't match up and the city while growing simply don't have the numbers to interest the big box store guys, so there is some question as to whether the storefront development will ever go in, but the city has already declared it would buy back the land if no development starts within a year, this supports the numbers being flawed.

And being that the commissioner over the independent league has said in a Wall Street Journal interview that teams within his leagues lose a million a season, what would suggest an independent baseaball team being successful in Cleburne? nothing.

The Cleburne Eagles academy baseball 21u organization can and will compete on and off the field major league baseball is using the academy model to develop future talent, and we have a proof of concept model testing phase in place to develop the program long term instead of simply placing a team in town and suggesting they will come, the numbers from an attendance point of view say it will take much more, of the now two area independent organizations that will be conducting business in the area of baseball the newset one has no numbers to look upon but the other average attendance number ranked number 252 of 283 teams in 2016 with an average of 984 per game and average 1,108 fans in 2015.

The other team which is located in Cleburne has merged with a former team and that team averaged 646 per game, many of the players and the manager from that team now make up the Cleburne organization roster, the reason these numbers are important you ask well if the team according to the league commissioner loses one million dollars a season and may have a fickle public there is no amount of fuzzy math that would point to success right.

Unless there is a trojan horse to the model what if the team had no rent while charging any other group a fee to use the stadium, then just maybe for its first two season it could appear to be successful even though it would have red ink longer than hwy 67, but the other thing would be if they were allowed to charge let's say a school district a fee while again they have no such fee could this be fraud upon the tax payer?

The entertainment dollars in such a small market will be tested, fans of todays sports are not fans but are an audience that choose what events it will attend,there by making it a sports organization business to have policy and understanding of the new marketplace.

If the RDB academies were just another baseball program, then the numbers would be all there is to it but we're also a community based organization who reinvest for reasons of not selling tickets but to build and uplift. It will be tough for any organization when the numbers come into the equation minor league sports teams on average lose a lot of money, with that being said all the groups will be challenged.