Being successful at selling and retaining sponsorship requires a sophisticated approach, a number of critical skills, and a replicable process. My blog, white papers, and books are chock full of advice covering all of that. But sometimes, what a sponsorship team needs more than anything else are good prompts – good questions – reminding them of important parts of the sponsorship equation that often fall by the wayside.
In this blog, we’re going to cover a number of high-leverage questions you can ask that will get you a long way toward best practice. These are also super useful for bringing your broader team, senior executives, and even your board, along with you.
I’ve addressed seven of these questions below, along with why they’re important. On many of them, I’ve provided a link to a dedicated blog or other resource that will provide more details.
Before you reach out to a sponsor – before you send the first email or message, or make the first call – you need to do your homework.
Set aside about 30 minutes to research each potential sponsor. You want to find out things like:
For a full rundown on how to find as much as possible of this info, as quickly as possible, read Don’t Send a Sponsorship Proposal Until You Read This. You can find a sponsor information template in The Sponsorship Seeker’s Toolkit 4th Edition.
If you do this homework, you can demonstrate that you’ve taken the time to get to know their brand and markets in that first outreach. Literally reference a couple of things you found in your research. That will set you apart from the overwhelming majority of approaches they get. It will also be critical for offer development, once you get further into the process.
Your first meeting with a sponsor is not a time to pitch. Whether in-person or virtual, it’s probably going to be short, and you should be focused on two things:
The research you’ve done will go a long way to getting good information from the sponsor. Start with something you noticed in your research, then ask a related question, such as, “You’ve marketed as a heritage brand for some time, but recently you’ve gone with more of a classic-cool angle. Is this a new direction for the brand, or more of a summer, seasonal thing?” This again demonstrates that you’re not the typical rightsholder, and that’s a very good thing.
Once you’ve filled in any gaps in your understanding of the brand, their priorities, markets, etc, end the fact finding with, “Is there anything I’m missing?” And if you’ve demonstrated that you’ve done your homework, they’ll fill you in on anything they deem important for you around the sponsorship. They’ll want to give you all the information you need to create a great offer for them. That’s when you ask permission to submit a customised proposal.
During that fact finding meeting, you’ll definitely talk about their objectives. Some of those objectives may have been obvious from your research, and others they may tell you about. Either way, it’s really smart to talk about measurement alongside. You could say something like:
It’s often good if you can throw out one or two measurement options. If you’re on the wrong track, they’ll a) still be impressed that you’re thinking about this; and, b) tell you how they do measure that objective.
If you’re really smart, you’ll ask this follow-up question: “So, you can use that as a benchmark for measuring the impact of a sponsorship?”
Bringing up measurement at the early stages accomplishes a couple of things:
For more insights on measurement, read Sponsorship Measurement: How to Measure What’s Important.
Once you’ve done your homework and met with the sponsor, you should have a very good idea of what they need to accomplish, and with whom. In design thinking speak, you’ve done the analysis, and now it’s time to get really creative with offer development.
Offer development isn’t about coming up with a list of benefits, it’s about coming up with a range of ways that a sponsor can leverage the sponsorship to achieve their goals. THAT’s the part of a proposal where vision is established and sponsorships are sold.
The first step to this is to put yourself in the sponsor’s shoes. Literally, tackle the offer development process from the viewpoint of the sponsor, and what would you do if you could do anything with it to accomplish your (the sponsor’s) goals.
This is a big, fun process for your group, hitting questions like:
The above should give you a good start. You can find the entire offer development process in these two resources:
Once you’ve developed your offer, you’ll need to formalise it into a proposal. There’s a proposal template in The Sponsorship Seeker’s Toolkit 4th Edition. You can also get the basics in my video tutorial, Sponsorship Proposal Basics in About 15 Minutes.
If you’re trying to get existing sponsors – or sponsors on renewal – to up their leverage game, so they get a better result, it’s a great idea to offer to collaborate on developing their leverage program. As you’ll have some experience with the above process, it makes sense that you should facilitate. This also makes it easy on the sponsor.
Ask the sponsor to get a range of stakeholders into a room. This should include brand and sponsorship management, sales manager(s), members of their social and data teams, HR, loyalty marketing, and any other stakeholders that could benefit from using the sponsorship to meet their goals.
Once you collaborate on a leverage plan, it will be the sponsor’s responsibility to execute it. But that will be a lot easier and more thorough with cross-departmental buy-in.
Another option you can consider is facilitating leverage planning for all of your sponsors at the same time. I do a LOT of this for rightsholders of all kinds. You can find out more on my Sponsorship Partner Training page.
This question isn’t always pertinent, but when it is, it’s very pertinent.
The basic idea here is that if you embark on a new initiative or promotion, or work with a new media partner, there may be room to get one or more sponsors involved. I’m not saying that you should be necessarily hitting up your sponsors for more money. More that you should look at these as opportunities to add value to the relationship.
If you’ve got a budget for servicing – and you should be setting aside at least 10% – you should be able to cover any hard costs for getting a sponsor involved.
Again, this isn’t about finding some new place to do a logo slap and trying to charge the sponsor for it. It’s about adding meaningful, strategic value to the sponsorship at no extra cost. The difference between adding that value and constantly trying to sell more stuff to your sponsors will be crystal clear at renewal time.
Finally, this is a question you want to ask when there’s a question whether the sponsorship is coming to an end.
Maybe the sponsor tells you they’re reviewing their portfolio. Maybe your region is sinking into a recession and budgets are being cut. Maybe the sponsor is facing an acquisition, scandal, or some other challenge. Maybe they’ve just sponsored something gigantic, and may be looking to cut other sponsorships to afford it.
Whatever the issue might be, it’s a lot better to know about it early than to just cross your fingers and hope it turns out okay. That’s where this question comes in.
You should be having regular contact with your sponsors. If something happens that could be a warning sign, just ask them about the potential impact on the sponsorship. You could even add, “As I’m sure you can understand, if there’s a likelihood you won’t be renewing, it’s much better for us if we know early.”
For more on this, read 4 Warning Signs that a Sponsor is Planning to Exit.
While these questions may seem simple, what they unlock for your organisation and your sponsors is anything but. These questions are about resourcefulness, preparation, lateral thinking, and avoiding surprises. They invite you and your team to go deeper to get sponsorship right, and that’s always a good thing.
For all you need to know about sponsorship sales and servicing, you may want to get a copy of The Sponsorship Seeker’s Toolkit 4th Edition. You may also be interested in my white papers, “Last Generation Sponsorship Redux” and “Disruptive Sponsorship“.
I’ve also got a self-paced, online sponsorship training course, covering the whole sales process, with lots of inclusions. Interested? Check out Getting to “Yes”.
If you need additional assistance, I offer sponsorship consulting and strategy sessions, sponsorship training, and sponsorship coaching. I also offer Sponsorship Systems Design for large and/or diverse organisations. Please feel free to drop me a line 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.
© Kim Skildum-Reid. All rights reserved. To enquire about republishing or distribution, please see the blog and white paper reprints page.