The GMs Handbook

The GM’s Handbook is a business coaching resource with 16 chapters by Minor League Baseball’s top front office executives. It offers sales advice, budgeting and leadership from the unique world of MiLB that welcomes 44 million fans in 160 ballparks annually, generating $850 million in revenue. The Handbook showcases chapter contributions from six team presidents, seven vice presidents and three general managers providing multiple sales advice perspectives, customer service, and sport management. This text focuses on how to drive sales while applying servant leadership, focus on money management and keeping young professionals engaged despite age gaps within the office environment. The GM’s Handbook is positioned to be one of the top leadership books best sellers of 2018, not only for those seeking their first employment opportunity but also for those c-suite executives looking to grow their own leadership skills.

This personal perspective collection of chapters is written by sixteen of minor league baseball's top industry leaders; six team presidents, seven vice presidents and three general managers. All ready to guide the reader down a path of understanding the complex role of running a minor league baseball franchise toward revenue success. It offers a no-holds barred approach toward improving the reader's acumen on various topics such as how to sell more cold beer, warm hotdogs and popcorn each time a fan visits the ballpark while protecting per cap margins; why free tickets historically have been an absolute sin that winds a franchise into a revenue purgatory for multiple seasons no matter how you spin it; and where prospecting for new business means cultivating retention as well as referrals from your current fan base. This book aims at delivering on what really matters above all else in the world of minor league baseball, specifically the mascot race results during the seventh inning stretch on a Wednesday night. Because minor league general managers don't control the wins or losses on the scoreboard by game's end.

Minor league baseball general managers focus their time on revenue generation, selling massive amounts of group tickets to local companies and non-profits, developing merchandise and logos around re-branded team names based on food groups or small animals, creating crazy single game marketing promotions that attract community and media attention, delivering fantastic food and beverage options that cause fans to drive for two hundred miles to open their wallets for the right to experience it, configuring unique sponsorships that activate for local businesses that drive traffic back through the sponsor's doors, as well as manage a front office combination of paid staff and free interns, most of whom are fresh out of high school or college and working in their first job ever.

The GM’s Handbook eBook Categories

1. Baseball
2. Business
3. Mentoring & Coaching
4. Leadership
5. Business Writing
6. Finance
7. Personal Success
8. Sports Management
9. Customer Relations
10. Hospitality, Travel & Tourism
11. Sales & Selling
12. Public Relations
13. Sports & Entertainment
14. Budgeting & Money Management

Troy Kirby has worked extensively as a professional writer for over 20 years. In his career, he's written feature stories for two daily newspapers, several weeklies, served as a sports communication professional at two athletic departments, has been a contributed for SEAT Magazine, managing editor of Ticketing Today and founder of the Tao of Sports website - which has provided business news to sports industry professionals since 2012. Kirby has earned degrees from Seattle University, Eastern Washington University and Centralia College. He is originally from Lacey, Washington and has lived in various places throughout the West Coast.