Sponsorship lies are ubiquitous in our industry. It’s a temptation to call them “white lies” because they’re usually not intentionally deceptive. But calling something a “white lie” also implies that no one is getting hurt, when you most certainly are.
Sponsorship lies come in many forms. But whether you’re not hearing the truth, not reading between the lines, or you would just rather believe the lie, you need to know that none of this is helping you achieve your sponsorship goals.
This blog is about how to spot the lies sponsors tell rightsholders, the lies rightsholders tell themselves, and what to do about all of them.
(Someday, I’ll get to a blog about the lies rightsholders tell sponsors, because there are some doozies!)
Sponsors lie. They do it all the time. That doesn’t mean they’re bad people, or that they’re being malicious, because they’re not.
In fact, some of theese lies relate to letting you down easy, which is unfortunate, as it’s much better for you to get the unvarnished truth. Others are unnecessarily vague statements that are very easy for overly-optimistic rightsholders to misconstrue. In both of these cases, it’s imperative that you know what these lies really mean, so you can respond appropriately.
And for the record, I encourage sponsors not to say any of these things, because it really doesn’t serve anyone’s interest – including theirs.
You’ve created a sponsorship proposal and submitted it to an array of sponsors. Or maybe you’ve filled out a bunch of online sponsorship submission forms. Then you hear nothing. You email or leave a voicemail, and still nothing. Eventually – and sometimes many months later – you receive an email thanking you for your submission, but all their funds are currently committed.
99.99% of the time, this is a lie.
What they’re really saying to you is that your proposal was terrible, and to stop wasting their time. Maybe it was an uncustomised proposal or worse, a prospectus or letter of request. Maybe you didn’t make a business case or show any interest at all in their objectives or target markets. Maybe you offered levels – gold-silver-bronze, or somesuch. There are myriad red flags that a sponsor looks for, and maybe your offer was full of them. Whatever the reason, they’ve just told you to go away, but because they don’t want to be mean, they’ve framed it as a financial impediment.
How do I know this? Because if they had any real interest, they would at least open a dialogue. If it was a potentially good opportunity, they could consider reallocating funds from another channel in the brand budget. If they couldn’t invest this year – for whatever reason – they’d be asking to discuss a sponsorship for next year. And if you put in the work to submit a strong, customised proposal that just wasn’t right for them, most sponsors would do you the courtesy of telling you that.
How to respond
The first thing you need to do is take on board that this is the nice version of “your proposal was terrible”. The second thing you need to do is learn how to create much better offers. Offers that are creative and strategic and make a business case that a sponsor can sell internally. Offers that centre on the brand’s overall marketing objectives and ALL of the markets they could leverage to. And you need to learn to properly research and interview sponsors before you commit an offer to writing.
I know… it’s a lot. But if you’ve received more than one or two “all our funds are currently committed” letters, things absolutely have to change.
Below are some resources to give you a running start. My very strong recommendation is that you set aside some time – I’m guessing 60-90 minutes – and go through these resources in order. Don’t skip any of the recommended blogs, just because they may sound peripheral, because they’re not. Do that, and I guarantee your proposals – and your entire approach – will improve out of sight. You won’t get a “yes” all the time, but you won’t get the brush-off either.
If you need more assistance, including a step-by-step process, you can make a modest investment in one of these resources:
The previous lie took a lot of words to address. This one is much quicker.
If you do the right thing and submit your proposal to a brand manager (or similar), and get a response referring you to the sponsorship manager or their online sponsorship submission form, you’ve been rejected. They just don’t want to be the one to tell you. So instead, they refer you to a gatekeeper, where your proposal will sit in a virtual pile for possibly months until someone eventually sends you an “our funds are already committed” letter.
The big issue with this is that most rightsholders will take this as a good sign. Wooo, they’re interested! They want us to talk to the sponsorship manager! Then you resubmit your proposal, follow up for ages, and wonder why it hasn’t worked out.
How to respond
You can respond by following instructions and submitting to the sponsorship manager or online form, but you’ll be wasting your time. If you’ve got time on your hands and want to give it a shot, go ahead, but please know that getting any kind of positive response will be an extreme long shot.
You’re much better off…
A couple of specific blogs that may help:
If you hear this from a sponsor, you may put it in the category of “news” and blow past it. That would be a mistake.
In most cases, a sponsor will tell you this when they’re either considering not renewing the sponsorship, or they’ve already decided they’re not renewing. And they’re telling you this because they’re trying to soften what may be a tough blow.
How to respond
In this case, you absolutely must respond to the sponsor, so you understand exactly what’s going on, and you can get on with your next move. I suggest something like this:
“I understand your needs and priorities will change from time to time, and that may require changes to your portfolio. What I’d ask is that – if you decide you’re not going to renew – you let us know as soon as you know, so we can plan.”
This does two things. First, it positions you as both a professional and a peer. Second, it gives them an easy opening to tell you what’s really up. They may straight up tell you they’ve actually decided not to renew, or they may say no decision has been made, but they’ll know by a specific date.
If they haven’t made a decision yet, you could go down the track of finding out why they’re considering exiting, and if there’s any chance of salvaging the situation. This will require both work and humility on your part, but can be effective.
These blogs may assist:
This is the less good cousin of “we’re reviewing our portfolio”, and when you hear this, it means they won’t be renewing. They’ve made the decision. You’re out.
What you don’t want to do is focus on the word “unlikely”, reframing it as, “we have a chance”. Being an optimist is pretty much a requirement for selling sponsorship, so this happens a lot. Then you double your efforts to deepen your relationship or add sweeteners to the renewal offer, hoping for the long shot that never comes.
How to respond
Instead, you want to…
For a more comprehensive action plan, read:
If you’re speaking to a sponsor, and they abruptly end the conversation by telling you to “just send something” or “just send something generic”, they don’t actually want you to send them something. They just wanted to get out of the conversation.
Maybe you bailed them up at a conference or industry event. Maybe they picked up their phone, thinking you’d be someone else. Either way, you launched into a pitch like you were shot out of a cannon, and they realised quick smart that you care more about your need to sell than you care about their brand, objectives, and markets.
Whatever the circumstances, if a sponsor tells you to “just send something generic”, don’t let your optimism get the better of you. That wasn’t a real invitation.
How to respond
The worst thing you can do in this circumstance is to send something generic. It won’t go anywhere, because they never wanted it in the first place. With that in mind, you have a few choices:
I tend to lean toward the first two options, but I do know of a few times the final option did start a more fruitful conversation.
Now that we’ve gone through some of the white lies sponsors tell, it’s time to address the lies rightsholders tell themselves.
I’ve referenced “optimism” a couple of times already, and the optimism that so many people in this industry have is at the root of several of the lies that rightsholders tell themselves. But whether it’s optimism or inexperience talking, believing these things is going to hurt, not help, your sponsorship efforts.
In case you don’t know what a sponsorship broker is, it’s a person or agency that secures sponsorship, generally on a retainer plus commission basis. Unfortunately, lots of rightsholders that are struggling to sell sponsorship think getting a broker will be a panacea. Most of the time, they’re wrong. This is for several reasons:
There are way more rightsholders that want a broker than there are credible brokers to service them. That means they get to pick and choose who they work with. Unless your property is relatively large and well-established, they’re probably not going to be interested. You could burn weeks of your sales window trying to secure a broker, and end up worse off than when you started
I’m not bagging sponsorship brokers. If you get a good one, they can be a real asset to your efforts. I even have a small broker registry right here on this website. I’m simply saying that securing one is likely to be more difficult, more expensive, and more risky than you think it is.
What to do instead
Understand that trying to find a broker after your sponsorship efforts have proved less than fruitful will be nigh on impossible. You’ll have already used up a big chunk of the sales window, and brokers aren’t keen on selling with a short lead time.
Instead, decide if you’re going to try to get a broker super-early in the sales process, and set yourself a timeframe to secure one. Two or three weeks should be plenty of time to see if there’s any genuine interest and get one or more proposals to consider. If it doesn’t work out – and a lot of the time it won’t – you’ll still have enough time to get into the marketplace on your own.
Here are a few resources that may assist:
I hear this mostly from people lamenting that they don’t have any relationships with sponsors, so how are they ever going to sell sponsorship.
There are definitely some very well connected people in the sponsorship industry, but honestly, that’s not what’s going to sell sponsorship for you. A compelling offer, a best practice approach, and targeting the right people is what’s going to do the selling.
That’s not to say there isn’t a role for personal relationships, and if you can access an insider contact, that’s a great foot in the door. But treat it like that: A foot in the door. You still need to build a business case and sell it to the brand decision-maker.
What to do instead
If your executive director or a board member knows someone in senior management of a company, ask them to reach out and get the contact details for the brand manager. That way, you can reach out to the brand manager with a reference and go through the sales process properly.
If you don’t have any “ins”, don’t despair. If you commit to a best practice approach, your offer will still stand head and shoulders above most of what a brand manager receives.
As I write this, predictions about the global economy are all over the map. But here’s the thing: Even if there is a downturn, sponsors will still invest in sponsorship. Scratch that. Sponsors will still invest in good, strategic sponsorships that they know will drive results for their brands. This means the already high bar for making a significant sponsorship sale gets even higher, and the necessity for excellent sponsorship skills gets even more pronounced.
I’m not saying that if your skills are good, a tough economy won’t be… well… tough, because it does get harder, and your revenue may be affected. But if your sponsorship revenue drops from okay to terrible, it’s more than just economic factors at play.
One big sign of this is if you’re losing multiple sponsors on renewal. Chances are they’re rationalising their portfolios and you fell into the category of “dead wood”. If you’re taking the same approach to new potential sponsors that got you categorised as dead wood, you’re not going to be very successful.
What to do instead
Realistically, you may want to revise your sponsorship budget down and work with that. But that lower projection for operational resources doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to retain as many sponsors as you can, and continue to sell sponsorship.
Ensuring your skills are top notch is going to go a long way to keeping the revenue flowing in tough times. The resources outlined above will help you get there.
For more specifics, read:
I had a chat with a rightsholder not long ago. They said they wanted to increase their sponsorship strike rate – the percentage of sponsorship proposals sent out that resulted in a sponsorship sale. I asked what kind of numbers we were talking about, and they said they sent out over 500 proposals and sold five new sponsorships, mostly in the low- and mid-range.
Less than 1%. I was speechless.
I asked how they’d picked those 500 companies. They said they got a list of the 500 biggest consumer brands in the country. Not the brands with the best market and brand fit. Just the biggest.
I asked whether they’d customised the proposals. They said they did a search-and-replace for the brand name, but otherwise no.
I asked who they targeted. They said sponsorship managers.
I told them I was surprised they sold five.
Sponsorship is not a numbers game. Sending hundreds of identical proposals to professional gatekeepers is never going to get a good result. You may think it looks great, but to a sponsor, it’s just another junk proposal. Delete. Move on.
But this is the way a lot of rightsholders run their sales process. Some even have quotas for how many proposals they send, and that’s just so wrong.
What to do instead
First off, don’t do this numbers game thing anymore. Tell your boss from me that’s it’s stupid and counterproductive. Then, set yourself some new goals:
The result will be that you’ll target far fewer sponsors, they’ll be better matched, your proposal will be much more likely to be considered, and your strike rate will go up.
Wow, this ended up being a long blog! So I’ll keep this short.
By calling out these lies, I’m not vilifying sponsors, nor am I calling you delusional. In fact, these lies are so common that they border on normal, but that’s not good. And if you believe them, they’re going to undermine your results.
If you’re interested in working with me, I can provide the following options. Just click through for more information and drop me a line if you want to discuss.
Please note, I do not offer a sponsorship broker service, and can’t sell sponsorship on your behalf. You may find someone appropriate on my sponsorship broker registry.
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