Everyone imagines the stereotypical Sports Agent as a man with slicked back hair, ruthless in negotiations, and always on his cell phone. While stereotypes often simplify or generalize a situation to a great degree (there are women agents that do not have slicked back hair and are calm and collected in negotiations), they sometimes hold some truth. Cell phones are a huge part of every successful Sports Agent’s life. The job is a 24/7 commitment to be available to all of your clients whenever they need you (even if it is to just sit and listen to them talk to you about their problems). If you are not willing to adopt the cell phone as your true best friend (sorry dogs), then you are not ready to become an agent.
Now that you love your Samsung, Motorola, Nextel, etc., when are the proper times to use the cell phone? LetsTalk, a company that sponsors surveys to find out information about cell phone etiquette recently conducted a survey to find out what places the general population finds it allowable to use a cell phone. The results are below:
- 66% say it is allowable in a Supermarket.
- 63% say it is allowable in a Car.
- 45% say it is allowable on Public Transit.
- 38% say it is allowable in a Bathroom (my personal favorite place to talk).
- 21% say it is allowable in a Restaurant.
- 2% say it is allowable in a Movie Theater.
This survey shows that there are a lot of people out there who generally look down on cell phone usage. IMHO (in my honest opinion), I don’t care what people think about my usage in private places (bathroom, car). In addition, you may have to upset a majority of people by picking up calls from your clients in every other public arena. Only 2% of those polled deem it “OK” to accept a call in a movie theater, but in this business, you must always be available when a client calls, and therefore may have to make quite a few people unhappy with you as you walk out of a movie with your phone at your ear.
The Sports Agent world is already too congested with registered agents and many hopefuls that wish to one day break into the business. There would be no reason for this blog if there were not a ton of people interested in the subject. This blog received 65 hits yesterday, and about half of the referrals were from Google/Yahoo searches on how to become a Sports Agent. Be aware that these cell phone polls/results exist, and that they may have to be ignored by the “slicked back hair/ruthless” successful agent.
[tags]cell phones, sports agents[/tags]
One reply on “Agent’s Best Friend: Cell Phone”
[…] Mark Rodgers is a Florida boy. He went to FSU for his undergraduate degree and for Law School (I’ll forgive him for that) and then worked for a couple of law firms before becoming an independent Sports Agent in 1997. He mostly does all of the work for his clients on his own, and used 6,000 minutes last month one only one of his two cell phones. I have already discussed An Agent’s Best Friend before. The workday begins at 5AM and sometimes end as late as 1AM. That’s a 20 hour day, something that you will have to be able to handle at certain times if this is the profession for you. […]