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| EA Sports Cup |
| Gent, Belgium |
| 2008/11/15 |
Teams attending
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The basics of Management
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| posted by: jetset on 2007-11-23, 21:22 |
| viewed: 197 times |
| comments: 2 |
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page 1: Article
First, let me introduce myself for the people that don’t know me yet. I’m Steven Leunens, age 20 and I’m currently the CEO of TeK-9 Networks Ltd. I have a girlfriend for three years now (love you sugah) and I’m about to study marketing in Belgium, where I live. I often get asked questions about management and "how do you do all that?" so I decided to make this little article for the people interested. If you have no interest what so ever in acquiring sponsors and attracting companies then skip on through to the demo’s and the scene news, nothing to see (read) for you here.
I’ve divided this article in 5 main pieces that, in my opinion, are the five key elements to success in the early stages of the clan management. These are:
Motivation, Organisation, Team play, Professionalism, Luck
Let’s start off shall we?
Motivation
The world of today is full of people trying to "get there" and make it happen. What would make you different from all the others? The first thing that is really important when trying to manage a team is motivation. You will have successes and failures, as you know Rome wasn’t built in one day. The key element of motivation for a manager is the motivation to carry on, even when things don’t go as you planned and it turns out for the worse. The best managers out there are the ones that keep on going and learning from their mistakes and believe me, you will make them. I once recall a wise quote that said: "The greatest mistake in life you can make is continually fearing you will make one". And to tell you the truth, the guy who said this was right. Go out there and make mistakes, but don’t just say "bah too bad" but learn from them. This is step one in improving your skills as a manager.
Organisation
The next thing that should be done is organisation. Organise your assets, if any, organise your team(s), your crew, your thoughts. Get it all straight. A mix of styles, profiles and organisation won’t do you any good. If you do this from day one, your job will be much easier.
Organise your teams
Write down what players you have, what tasks they do and how they do this. Check if there are ingame leaders and perhaps even managers for specific squads.
Organise your crew
If you have a crew of webmasters, movie makers, newsposters or any others surrounding you, assign them some tasks to do but remember, always appreciate their work! You won’t be able to do this on your own (especially not on the long run). Make sure you commit yourself to your crew as you commit yourself to your team!
Organise your assets
Try to find out what could make your team stand out from the rest. What are your key elements to success and what drives you. These will be the key elements you will convince your possible sponsor with.
Organise your thoughts
Sometimes you need to think abstract, and sometimes it is imminent you think straight and clear with a certain goal in your head. When talking to a sponsor, think clear and direct and talk towards a deal, which is ultimately your goal. When preparing to talk to a sponsor, think abstract, brainstorm about what could convince him.
Team play
A rather small part in this article, but nonetheless this part will grow out to be your number one occupancy in the future. When your team grows in strength and size, and so does your sponsorlist, then you will have to be able to work together with your growing organisation. Failure in doing this part could result in major setbacks.
Professionalism
Possibly the most important part you will read now, professionalism is what ultimately convinces your sponsor to take you onboard. There are some key elements you should understand about companies and what drives them, but they all come down to one simple element: return on investment.
Whenever a sponsor agrees to equip a team with their latest gear or give them support in any way, he has made the decision that this could only benefit his company or organisation. This means that the investment he has to make will return to him as profits coming from the sponsorship and possibly even more. There are several ways to convince the possible partner that your organisation would be a good investment but in my honest opinion, nothing works like coming across as professional and stable. Let’s go into more detail about how this is achieved this shall we?
Professional look
Get your team a clean image, a good website and some good content on it. Giving your audience a decent "portal" to show their interest in your team is vital as these people will prove imminent in convincing your sponsors.
Professional presentation
E-mailing to possible sponsors or contacting them on IRC or by phone should always be done in a professional manner. Never start off a letter by "hey there" or "howdy". This will come across as childish, arrogant and unprofessional and the remainder of the letter, no matter how good, will always have been influenced by your start.
Do not bombard your sponsor with information, a single page is often more than enough to get the interest going and when interested, present them with the information they request.
Focus more on the return of investment for the sponsor (ea 1000 people visiting your website each month) then the players who are in your team, their hobbies and what they like to do when their parents aren’t home. A sponsor isn’t all that interested in that information, he would like to know more what this would cost him and what he would get in return.
The last thing I would like to mention when talking about professionalism is progress. You will probably start off with a silly excuse for a sponsorship presentation but that’s O.K., even I started out like that. What you should do is take another look at it after you have sent it and just make a new one for the next company you will mail. Each new mail you make you will improve the content of the initial mail and it will just get better and better… Strive for perfection!
Luck
Although perhaps silly, you will need some luck when contacting sponsors. Sometimes it’s a matter of being on the right place at the right time and sometimes it’s not. By sticking in there, I believe you can forge your own luck.
That concludes this (boring? J ) article on the basics of management. For those who sticked till the end of it, I thank you and I hope I didn’t bore you too much. If there is enough interest I might look at some other aspects of management and write something about that too. But for now, this is it. Feel free to comment on what I’ve written here (I too, am far from perfect) and if you have any questions you can always reply to this article, write me an email or contact me on IRC.
With kind regards
Steven Leunens
CEO TeK-9 Networks Ltd.
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| #1 |
 MiB'sHakur |
2007-11-27 15:34:02 |
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nice |
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| #2 |
 zNETrndom |
2007-12-04 22:02:59 |
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ye really nice articles m8 |
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| The basics of Management |
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