One Wish Away

Chairman, SRO Partners

“When I was 13 I had a paper route,” recalls Jon. “I had about 50 customers when I started out. It took me about one hour to deliver the papers. I noticed I only delivered about one of every three houses. I thought it would be just as easy to deliver them all. I wrote a letter to all the neighboring prospects and asked them to subscribe. I said they would love the paper and I would deliver it through rain, sleet, hail and snow. It worked. I doubled my customers from 50 to 100 and it still took me only about an hour per day. Eventually, I had over 150 customers. That was the beginning of my first direct response campaign.”

In order to overcome his shyness, Jon sold Encyclopedia Britannicas door-to-door while attending college and playing basketball for Notre Dame. He felt that if he could do this, it would force him to talk and get rid of his terrible shyness. And oh, what a salesman and marketer he has become.

After stints in advertising and selling TV syndication Jon was offered a job to help boost dismal ticket sales with the Buffalo Braves professional basketball team. They were in deep trouble. One demonstration of his outrageous marketing was a plan to sell out the house for their last game before moving and becoming the San Diego Clippers. He sold a sponsorship to the local Budweiser distributorship and hired an Elvis impersonator to perform just after the death of Elvis. It headlined: “The King of Beers presents: A salute to the King of Rock and Roll and the Buffalo Braves.” Attendance, normally under 4,000 filled the 19,000 seat arena to the rafters, a complete sell out.

“We had done such a good job with a lousy team at Buffalo that Larry Weinberg, then owner of the Portland Trail Blazers hired me in 1979. Larry served as a real mentor to me and was not afraid to try new and innovative things. As Senior Vice President/General Manager we created the model for selling out the house in team sports. We sold out every game for eleven straight years. We were the first to bring radio in house in the NBA. We went from $50,000 in radio station rights fees one year to over $900,000 net profit from radio alone the next year. We were making more on radio than the rest of the NBA combined. We also brought TV in house and were the first to use database marketing.”

The New Jersey Nets then recruited Jon as their President and COO. When he came on board he remembers asking to see the Nets database and was told it had been deleted from their hard drive to make more room on the computer. Talk about starting from ground zero, in just three years, Jon set all time attendance records, sellouts went from zero to 25 and sponsorships went from $400,000 to $7,000,000.

Jon is currently chairman of SRO Partners, Inc., a sports marketing company which specializes in team and event marketing for NBA, NHL and MLB teams. He is also the author of several books including: Ice to the Eskimos: How to Sell a Product Nobody Wants. In his latest book, “Success Is Just One Wish Away” Jon encourages us all to make a wish, but to make sure it’s the right one.” What might be the right wish for you that could change your life? Begin now by chasing after your own special rainbow.