“A successful organization must concentrate on satisfying a targeted group of customers who place the highest value on the goods or services it offers. The company that does not make additional efforts to please these customers can stumble badly. Busy chasing the wrong customers, the company strays from what it does best, is more likely to encounter failure, and, in the process, alienates its most profitable customers.”

We see this happening with Peter’s former team, the Fire. Season ticket holders are angy, based on what they write at Big Soccer, due to their belief of the perceived diminishing value of their entertainment investment.

The team, tellingly, has suffered high employee turnover, particularly in the critical season ticket and group sales department.

“Low employee job satisfaction and high employee turnover can create a downward spiral that causes sales and profits to plummet. ”

Only in the last few games, near the end of the season, has Toyota Park begun to fill up with fans. Which is surprising considering the team’s woeful home record.

The team is run by an absentee owner, who hired a former American football executive (of a team that has no problems attracting season ticket holders or pleasing fans) as general manager. So he has two strikes against him: unfamiliarity with the sport and no real experience in dealing with customers and need to be stroked.

And when you consider the mixed target audience for the Fire — the diehards/knowledgeable fans and familes attending with their kids’ teams’ group outings — the complexities of pleasing everyone seem to create a recipe for unhappiness all around.

I only wish Peter was back. But since that’s not going to happen, I wish him success with the Red Stars.

As a former season ticket holder who brought family and friends to games regularly for the last decade, the experience always left them impressed and often times they returned on their own. Largely because issues I have with the organization I have attended a single game and I brought only one other person. Neither of us have returned, not necessarily because we don’t want to, but because the Fire organization has made it quite difficult to do so. I was unable to attend any Red Stars games this season due to scheduling conflicts, but the praise I have heard heaped on your organization has inspired me to make an effort next season to get to at least one game and experience the same fan friendly experience I so dearly miss having when going to Fire games.

Sincerely,

Ben K.

The core is that people need to be entertained or get satisfaction. They need to have fun, leave with a smile. Creativity shouldn’t be downplayed as much as it is in the first two articles.

Peter, please share your “entertainment” package, some call promotion, others call it bang for your buck. I am not talking about over-delivery of fan experience, but the ability for people to laugh, enjoy, feel, and care. These are things that people smile about and share at the water cooler the following day. I label as: The Visceral, The Brag, and The Status: Crazy halftime promotion, Getting people to see their kids on the pros field, Season ticket VIP party. I know you’ve got more.

What I learned most from Peter (which I think he learned from David Letterman Top 10 Lists): Sell what’s hot and in the mass market. If it’s tweets, then you buy parakeets and implement a halftime promotion. If it’s Kate & Jon Gosselin, you do an impromtu look alike contest for 8 kids.

Peter, your commandments are now out. Share your fun, too.

Thanks for the enjoyable reading.

I lived in Chicago and Elgin for years and supported the Fire before moving back to my hometown of Tulsa about three years ago.

When you were putting together an effort to get MLS in Milwaukee, you had an agreement with Wisconsin youth soccer that generated thousands of season tickets.

How did you approach putting that together?
Were there egos involved?
Seemed like a tough/risky thing to try to do at the time.

Here in the United States, Peter is nothing short of an absolute pioneer — and a loyal and humble one at that.

Over a hundred times, maybe more, during the last couple of years, I’ve heard someone in the Section 8 parking lot mention the following: “if Peter were still here, we wouldn’t be having these problems.”

And they’re right.

I believe that such a statement, together with its myriad variations I’ve heard, is a phenomenal testament to the lasting affections that Peter provokes from those he comes into contact with. Watching him work — no, “work” isn’t the word. Watching him weave his way through the Section 8 parking lot, anyone can witness such testaments take human form.

What Peter has dedicated himself to manifesting and to sustaining and to growing — PURELY the sport of soccer here in the US — provides us with so much joy, with vital, even affirming outlets for our frustrations, our needs to just be around others, to make memories.

Peter is the antithesis of the AEGs that pollute our league.

When I moved here a few years ago, I knew no one. Now though — thanks in huge part to the club Peter envisioned and the social network he helped to weave around that club — I have nothing short of a big family. Peter was among the first to welcome me.

He deserves thanks from all us, thanks he neither expects nor will ever solicit.

Thanks, Peter — keep the great articles coming!!!!!