| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' 17:31 - Jan 21 with 24318 views | dalemark |
There is a very real danger that we are rotten from the bottom leading upwards within the club. The current playing squad are at risk of undermining the board & fan effort of the past 2 years.
Lack of effort, lack of commitment, lack of leadership... Quigley sarcastically clapping and nodding at the away fans at full time, players running and hiding...
After 100 years in the football league, after a 2 year fight to save the club, after the unification of a fanbase to remain fan-led, today we stare onto the abyss.
At the behest of Tony Pockney last Saturday, I sent an email to him on Monday with feedback and ideas for the club.
Almost one week later, I haven't even received a courtesy 'thanks for your email' response. If the ideas are rubbish, or not welcome, that is fine - but to not even get a simple reply raises questions about motivation and drive that need answering.
I never intended to make this email public, but for the sake of transparency, this is what was sent:
"Tony,
Following on from our conversation on Saturday Tony, I wanted to get in touch about some concerns / feedback / ideas for the retail and commercial side of the club. I take no pleasure in highlighting concerns, particularly following the unbelievable work the board did to safeguard the club from Morton House (which will never be forgotten), but at a time when we are losing £20K per week it is incredibly frustrating to see so many missed opportunities to increase commercial performance — the vast majority of the ideas I will outline below cost nothing other than existing wages, and just require some commercial acumen and forward / joined up thinking. I had a conversation with Simon over LinkedIn on the 2nd December 2021 offering voluntary support or consultancy for the retail / commercial side of the business, as I have ~15 years experience leading retail and omnichannel transformation and performance programmes, but didn’t hear back after the initial messages. That offer still stands today — I want to help.
There are lots of instances that I am aware of where sponsors, potential sponsors and corporate hospitality guests have had difficulty getting in touch with the commercial team. When they have managed to do so, the response has been underwhelming with false promises, long SLAs and generally a lethargic attitude. A few of them very much feel like once the club has their money they are no longer valued, and that is a dangerous position to be in. We need to quickly build relationships with small, medium and large businesses in the Rochdale Borough that have been allowed to lapse. Its frustrating that a smaller sports club in the town (Hornets) seem much more adept at doing this than we are, particularly given the size of our commercial team at present. Rochdale as a town is lucky to have a professional football team — its our job to help people understand that and build relationships so they want to be part of our journey.
Idea #1 — Add value to existing sponsors. Do this by updating all player imagery (social media / scoreboard) with images of their player sponsors (these have recently been added to substitutions which is a huge step forward)... at Barrow they read out the names of sponsors over the tannoy when announcing the squad and substitutions etc. This is a free and easy way to add value to sponsors at zero extra cost, and would help them reach people who may not pay much attention to the scoreboard. Give every single player sponsor a feature on our social media channels — ‘Friends of the club February’ or something similar. Tag them in where we have their profiles, thank them for their support and give a brief piece about what they do. This would add so much value to the businesses we have as sponsors and foster so much goodwill. Most importantly, tell them we are doing it! Let them know how much additional value we are giving them at no extra cost — at a tough time for the club, we appreciate their support.
Idea #2 — Have a huge drive on reengaging with existing and lapsed sponsors. Ask them in a consistent format (survey or similar) how they are REALLY finding their relationship with the club, and don’t be afraid of constructive feedback. Find out what they love about dealing with us, and canvas their opinions on how we could add value to them ahead of them sponsoring again next season. Use this insight to drive our commercial offering in 2023 and beyond… if we are to remain fan led, that needs to permeate throughout the club. Sponsorships should be sponsor led. Executive packages should be people led. Retail should be demand and customer led… you get the idea. If we get this right now, we have time to shape sponsorship for 2023/24 and beyond. As a thank you for their time and feedback, offer them a couple of free tickets for an upcoming match. Have the commercial team on hand to meet them and have a chat with them face to face on the day — this would be so much more powerful than a relationship based on emails or phone calls.
Idea #3 — Leverage remaining sponsorship opportunities for this season. It was great to see the sponsorship angle with Danny Lloyd, but that quickly lapsed back to normal when we signed Eastwood back. There was no mention of sponsorship on his welcome article — a missed opportunity. Lets look at selling sponsorship for injury time - £50 per match or £500 for the rest of the season. It would cost nothing to add an image onto the scoreboard, and they would be guaranteed to have their business name read out twice per game. Contact lapsed player sponsors and ask if they would be interested in a discounted rate for the rest of the season. Lets start building up an active and engaged sponsorship database ahead of next season — warm leads if you will. I don’t know whether we have an active pipeline software or CRM, but if we don’t then free alternatives are available.
Idea #4 — Have an agreed process for updating the social media headers and fixture board at 15:01 on every matchday. Until 10am this morning we were still advertising Colchester (H) as our next game on social media. It’s a 2 minute job, and just creates a more seamless experience for the occasional attendee. The next fixture should be showing as people walk out at full time, and should be showing to anybody who checks social media during the current game. As part of this, we could be making better use of the billboard on Sandy Lane / Wilbutts Lane. It is still advertising season tickets that went off sale 4 months ago. One graphic showing all upcoming matches that month could be put up as soon as the last game of the current month has finished. This is the only idea I’m proposing that costs actual money, and we could even offer that out for sponsorship — get a company to pay for the print and install and give them a prominent space on the billboard.
Idea #5 — Work smarter not harder with our retail offering. As of now, I literally cannot go onto the club shop website and buy a Dale pen, a Dale mug, a Dale notebook, a Dale water bottle. I appreciate your point about minimum order quantities, but for the items I just mentioned they will not expire. The Hendo merchandise became available a whole month after he broke the record…. If we were thinking commercially, as soon as he was two goals away they should’ve been ordered and in the stock room. The minute he broke the record there should have been tweets ready to go advertising them… how many people would’ve gone to the shop immediately after the Salford game to get a piece of memorabilia there and then whilst the feel good factor was still around? Missed opportunity.
We could be advertising relevant products on every single article on the website. Hartlepool travel? Link to the coat sale we have on because its going to be cold. Fitness in the community programme? Link to fitness wear that we have, as the target demographic may not have sportswear already. Player interviews? Link to autograph books and pens. It is so simple, and it should be easy to track click through & success rates. Fans of the club are a captive audience, but they may never go onto the shop website as it is currently so poor. Link something from there that is relevant to an article they’ve taken the time to read and I’d expect a decent uplift.
Idea #6 — Following on from Idea 5, I’d be interested to know if we have explored ‘direct from supplier’ stockists. If ordering minimum quantities is a challenge and we rarely break even on items, de-risk it by taking a smaller profit from items that are dispatched by the manufacturer. It saves us sitting on stock, and even if we just take 20%, 20% of something is better than the current 100% of nothing. If we are not in the financial position to take risks on lines, lets look at getting the whole online shop running in the same fashion as the personalised section. The recent kit survey was a fantastic idea — we could do similar for our retail offering to shape what we want to do in future… I’ve attached a really simple draft as a starting point.
These are some really simple ideas which, as I outlined at the start, require no funding but do require passion, forward thinking and a joined up departmental approach from the people we employ to deliver on our commercial and retail performance goals. They are in the main simple, free and measurable. You know as well as I do that historically the club has been slated for poor commercial offerings and departments working in silo. Building on the good work you guys have done in terms of accountability and reporting, there is a huge opportunity to make a sizeable and noticeable difference across these areas of the club. I’d be happy to come and have a face to face conversation with you to work through the above in more detail, and discuss more aspirational future ideas such as targeted advertising and endless aisle through our online offering, at a time that is convenient. There is a groundswell of pride amongst the fanbase, and a real willingness from people to help. I’m proud to support a fan owned / fan led club, as are others… we all have skin in the game and a reason to make this work.
Let me know if you have any questions on any of the above, if you want to meet to discuss in further detail, or if I can help out in any way at all."
[Post edited 21 Jan 2023 17:33]
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| (No subject) (n/t) on 00:50 - Jan 29 with 4071 views | Shun |
| (No subject) (n/t) on 21:16 - Jan 21 by HullDale |
I've got a mate who emailed JWJ & the Events email address almost two weeks ago about booking a do in the Ratcliffe.
After no response, they have now booked elsewhere and the club have missed out on room hire plus bar takings.
At least the big blue sign looks pretty though. |
‘At least the blue sign looks pretty.’
I know you’re being tongue-in-cheek, HD, but it really doesn’t! It’s such an ugly sign. As a friend said on Twitter, it looks so cheap and uninviting. |  | | |
| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 08:33 - Jan 29 with 3801 views | fitzochris |
| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 19:43 - Jan 28 by James1980 |
Jeez that's not good. Although if I strolled up to the main entrance and said im with Castleton wood in my best Lancashire accent you would expect staff to challenge me. |
Smith Metals have a long history of supporting the club, James, and, if representatives of the company, after identifying themselves as such, are then asked what the company has got to do with the football club, I’d be asking questions too. |  |
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| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 09:27 - Jan 29 with 3691 views | itsallaboutthedale |
Good suggestions, shame you didn’t get any acknowledgement, the commercial team should have an account, the guy managing the bars has one and he’s responding to fans and listening, hope the fans forum in February gets an answer to some of these.
They need to listen to fans, feedback needs to be constructive like this, I can imagine they are not looking forward to the 9th
The players need to do better, it’s soul destroying watching it week after week. |  | | |
| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' (n/t) on 11:16 - Jan 29 with 3541 views | DaleBars |
| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' (n/t) on 18:19 - Jan 28 by HullDale |
It has to be said - service in both Dale Bar & Studds was good again today too.
They had real issues with card machines / connectivity in Studds at half time, out of staff control, but handled it as well as they could. [Post edited 28 Jan 2023 18:21]
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Thank you for the positive feedback. Will raise the connectivity issue with our providers. Technology can cause all sorts of headaches which is out of our control, as you mentioned. Very pleased our staff handled the situation and believe the connection was resolved.
On another positive note, I would like to mention, the live feed was back!! A lot of hard work has gone into getting this back up and functioning, BOD, commercial, maintenance etc. Hopefully this will generate more revenue over the bars. [Post edited 29 Jan 2023 11:24]
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| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 12:25 - Jan 29 with 3451 views | James1980 |
| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 08:33 - Jan 29 by fitzochris |
Smith Metals have a long history of supporting the club, James, and, if representatives of the company, after identifying themselves as such, are then asked what the company has got to do with the football club, I’d be asking questions too. |
Crikey sorry Chris I misread/interpreted, so it wasn't just a case of someone being asked to show their credentials. They were actually asked by a member of staff what the company they said they're are connected with has to do with the club. | |
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| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 12:32 - Jan 29 with 3415 views | fitzochris |
| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 12:25 - Jan 29 by James1980 |
Crikey sorry Chris I misread/interpreted, so it wasn't just a case of someone being asked to show their credentials. They were actually asked by a member of staff what the company they said they're are connected with has to do with the club. |
So I’ve been told. | |
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| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 12:37 - Jan 29 with 3386 views | kel |
Seriously pathetic. According to one director the commercial team work “very hard”. I’d suggest first thing tomorrow they need to look at a list of existing sponsors then. If they can find the time of course. [Post edited 29 Jan 2023 12:38]
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| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 12:45 - Jan 29 with 3350 views | Thacks_Rabbits |
If an employee has been so abrupt and rude then frankly they should no longer be an employee!
Every customer should be treated as the most important person in the room, regardless of who they are, it’s just another thing to add to the list of the regression of the club.
Can you imagine this happening when Les, Frannie, Richard etc. being in charge. Not a snowball’s in Hell! |  |
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| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 12:49 - Jan 29 with 3320 views | kel |
| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 12:45 - Jan 29 by Thacks_Rabbits |
If an employee has been so abrupt and rude then frankly they should no longer be an employee!
Every customer should be treated as the most important person in the room, regardless of who they are, it’s just another thing to add to the list of the regression of the club.
Can you imagine this happening when Les, Frannie, Richard etc. being in charge. Not a snowball’s in Hell! |
Hate saying it but the impression I get from the club and people I’ve spoken to is that they don’t give a shite what us mere mortals think. If that’s the road they want to go down then good luck to them. | | | |
| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 14:52 - Jan 29 with 3166 views | 442Dale |
Does being employed in football automatically launch some kind of special level of endeavour where it has to be acknowledged at regular intervals how hard people work?
If anything to say it when things aren’t done well only serves to illustrate that working hard doesn’t always mean working effectively and efficiently. That then reflects badly on organisation and processes. |  |
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| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 15:12 - Jan 29 with 3132 views | D_Alien |
| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 14:52 - Jan 29 by 442Dale |
Does being employed in football automatically launch some kind of special level of endeavour where it has to be acknowledged at regular intervals how hard people work?
If anything to say it when things aren’t done well only serves to illustrate that working hard doesn’t always mean working effectively and efficiently. That then reflects badly on organisation and processes. |
Perhaps it's a euphemism for "making hard work of it" |  |
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| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 15:23 - Jan 29 with 3096 views | TVOS1907 |
| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 12:45 - Jan 29 by Thacks_Rabbits |
If an employee has been so abrupt and rude then frankly they should no longer be an employee!
Every customer should be treated as the most important person in the room, regardless of who they are, it’s just another thing to add to the list of the regression of the club.
Can you imagine this happening when Les, Frannie, Richard etc. being in charge. Not a snowball’s in Hell! |
No, but it might have done with the person in charge of them. |  |
| When I was your age, I used to enjoy the odd game of tennis. Or was it golf? |
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| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 18:42 - Jan 29 with 2836 views | Thacks_Rabbits |
| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 15:23 - Jan 29 by TVOS1907 |
No, but it might have done with the person in charge of them. |
Not sure who that would have been but can’t say anyone was ever anything but pleasant to me and went out of the way to help. Missed Steve W off the list as well who was also more than pleasant | |
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| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 20:21 - Jan 29 with 2656 views | nordenblue |
| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 12:45 - Jan 29 by Thacks_Rabbits |
If an employee has been so abrupt and rude then frankly they should no longer be an employee!
Every customer should be treated as the most important person in the room, regardless of who they are, it’s just another thing to add to the list of the regression of the club.
Can you imagine this happening when Les, Frannie, Richard etc. being in charge. Not a snowball’s in Hell! |
Some folk at the club could do a lot worse than listen/watch of few articles with Warren Buffett and listen to his views on how to treat customers, I find him a superb listen. | | | |
| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 20:46 - Jan 29 with 2613 views | D_Alien |
| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 20:21 - Jan 29 by nordenblue |
Some folk at the club could do a lot worse than listen/watch of few articles with Warren Buffett and listen to his views on how to treat customers, I find him a superb listen. |
Can he help out with the catering? | |
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| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 22:40 - Jan 29 with 2450 views | nordenblue |
| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 20:46 - Jan 29 by D_Alien |
Can he help out with the catering? |
He does a splendid vol-au-vent... | | | |
| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 22:51 - Jan 29 with 2423 views | downunder |
| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 20:21 - Jan 29 by nordenblue |
Some folk at the club could do a lot worse than listen/watch of few articles with Warren Buffett and listen to his views on how to treat customers, I find him a superb listen. |
Definitely worth giving consideration as a seat on the board. |  | | |
| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 07:22 - Jan 30 with 2283 views | nordenblue |
| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 22:51 - Jan 29 by downunder |
Definitely worth giving consideration as a seat on the board. |
Possibly... could do with increasing his bank balance a bit first though,, that $100 billion won't go too far | | | |
| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 09:40 - Jan 30 with 2111 views | 49thseason |
| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 07:22 - Jan 30 by nordenblue |
Possibly... could do with increasing his bank balance a bit first though,, that $100 billion won't go too far |
A single share in Berkshire Hathaway will cost you $470,000 Dollars! There is a story about two blokes sitting next to each other at the BH agm.
" how much did you get in for"?
" nineteen"
" wow, nineteen thousand, well done!
" no, just nineteen......" |  | | |
| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 09:53 - Jan 30 with 2088 views | DaleiLama |
| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 22:51 - Jan 29 by downunder |
Definitely worth giving consideration as a seat on the board. |
I got it down under  |  |
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| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 13:20 - Jan 31 with 1779 views | AtThePeake |
Do any current sponsors have anything positive at all to say about their dealings with the current commercial team? The 2 or 3 I have spoken to have been very negative and that's without the second-hand stories that have been told on here and the handful of others who have spoken negatively about their experiences attempting to purchase hospitality packages lately.
It's very clearly an issue that needs to be fixed. The board can claim that there's a reduced interest post-pandemic (where was that reduced interest last season?) and that the commercial team are working incredibly hard, but from what I have heard and read, I really don't think either of those things are true. |  |
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| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 13:33 - Jan 31 with 1740 views | D_Alien |
| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 13:20 - Jan 31 by AtThePeake |
Do any current sponsors have anything positive at all to say about their dealings with the current commercial team? The 2 or 3 I have spoken to have been very negative and that's without the second-hand stories that have been told on here and the handful of others who have spoken negatively about their experiences attempting to purchase hospitality packages lately.
It's very clearly an issue that needs to be fixed. The board can claim that there's a reduced interest post-pandemic (where was that reduced interest last season?) and that the commercial team are working incredibly hard, but from what I have heard and read, I really don't think either of those things are true. |
It's how that particular Dept is being led. That needs saying. The Board know who it is [Post edited 31 Jan 2023 13:33]
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| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 15:37 - Jan 31 with 1579 views | bluevein64 |
| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 13:33 - Jan 31 by D_Alien |
It's how that particular Dept is being led. That needs saying. The Board know who it is [Post edited 31 Jan 2023 13:33]
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Further to rumour, forum posts and second hand information if sponsors are being treated badly by member/s of the commercial department (if they haven't already) then the sponsors should raise the facts/issues with the Club higher management as a matter of urgency (the Club can't afford for this type of situation to fester and multiply) if it's the case as D Allien suggests and "The Board know who it is " then the board should act quickly and stop the potential rot, Dale are bottom of the league, in financial difficulties, trying to attract outside investment ........ in this current climate hardly a tempting sponsors investment , if I were a potential investor/sponsor reading these posts I'd most definitely be looking to invest elsewhere - having read previous posts (this is my only source of information of this matter) the immediate thoughts that comes to my mind is that the commercial department are "Working Very Hard " enticing sponsors to sign up with the motto "Hook em and FV<£ em" just imagine a potential investor (slightly off track I know ) intending to plough a fortune into the Club hoping at least to experience a special match day experience and there's some oik from the commercial department intending to screw that up, with a bit of luck this/these person/s won't be drawing their wages from Rochdale AFC for muck longer. |  | | |
| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 15:55 - Jan 31 with 1537 views | D_Alien |
| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 15:37 - Jan 31 by bluevein64 |
Further to rumour, forum posts and second hand information if sponsors are being treated badly by member/s of the commercial department (if they haven't already) then the sponsors should raise the facts/issues with the Club higher management as a matter of urgency (the Club can't afford for this type of situation to fester and multiply) if it's the case as D Allien suggests and "The Board know who it is " then the board should act quickly and stop the potential rot, Dale are bottom of the league, in financial difficulties, trying to attract outside investment ........ in this current climate hardly a tempting sponsors investment , if I were a potential investor/sponsor reading these posts I'd most definitely be looking to invest elsewhere - having read previous posts (this is my only source of information of this matter) the immediate thoughts that comes to my mind is that the commercial department are "Working Very Hard " enticing sponsors to sign up with the motto "Hook em and FV<£ em" just imagine a potential investor (slightly off track I know ) intending to plough a fortune into the Club hoping at least to experience a special match day experience and there's some oik from the commercial department intending to screw that up, with a bit of luck this/these person/s won't be drawing their wages from Rochdale AFC for muck longer. |
Just further to that... it'd be a damning indictment if the board didn't know who was heading up the commercial op.
[Post edited 31 Jan 2023 15:56]
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| 'You're Not Fit To Wear The Shirt...' on 16:21 - Jan 31 with 1475 views | HullDale |
This is interesting timing - I also can't remember such warmth being shown before as 'friends & existing sponsors'
Have Smith Metals paid for this sponsorship, or is it an apology / gesture of goodwill after the rumoured issues experienced in hospitality?
Follow up question - there have been 5 new sponsorships over the last week that I can see... Dodgson, Mellor, Eastwood, Bennett & 'substitutions sponsored by'.
Three were advertised - Dodgson, Mellor, Bennett.
Out of the five, how many resulted in additional funds coming into the club? |  | | |
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