I’ve created many dozens of blogs, white papers, tutorials, and more all about how to do best practice sponsorship, as well as the functional benefits of doing sponsorship well – more revenue, easier renewals, more engaged sponsors. This blog is not about that.
Instead, I want to acknowledge how difficult, frustrating, stressful, and sometimes miserable the job of sponsorship sales can be. This is a job that can beat you down, demoralise you, and make you wonder what the hell you got yourself into.
I see you. I really do.
This isn’t about the functional “whys”, it’s about the emotional “whys” (with some functional fixes). Changing your approach may get you better results, but change can be hard, and if you’re feeling discouraged, it may just seem too hard. So, this blog is about the emotional benefits of doing sponsorship well – about why it’s worthwhile for you and your wellbeing, not just for your bottom line. My hope is that maybe… just maybe… making the emotional case will make getting sponsorship right appealing enough to change course, instead of giving up.
So, here we go! This is how it feels to do sponsorship right. I’m starting each section with things I’ve heard from rightsholders countless times – things you shouldn’t have to feel – before going through how you and your organisation can change it, and providing a few resources.
“If I were them, I wouldn’t buy what I’m selling.”
“Dealing with potential sponsors is so intimidating.”
“Cold calling sucks, and I procrastinate way too much.”
This lack of confidence is something that usually stems from a person that has landed in a sales job with one of these two situations:
Here’s the thing… most sponsors are much further along the sophistication spectrum than rightsholders. Yes, there are plenty of exceptions on both sides. But if you’re feeling like any of the phrases above, chances are you’re trying to sell weak, badly structured, largely uncustomised offers to sponsors that know better, and they can spot that immediately. Some sponsors will dismiss you straightaway, while others will use the tried-and-true go-away strategy of telling you to “just send me something”, then ghosting you forever. Either way, what they’re really saying is that it’s just not good enough, and you can feel that. No wonder you’re lacking confidence!
It will come as no surprise that the first thing you need to do is learn what best sponsorship is about, why it works, and build a framework that supports doing sponsorship well. Yes, this will require some homework, and likely getting some buy-in, but it will be 100% worth it to your results and to you.
Once you do that, the fog of “what the hell am I doing” will clear. You’ll see both the path forward and all the places you’ve veered off that path in the past. You’ll understand sponsor expectations from the sponsor’s point of view, and how to frame your properties as far more valuable and leveragable than ever before. You’ll shift your approach from transactional to a three-way partnership between you, the sponsor, and the fans. Most importantly, you’ll see the real value of what you’re offering to sponsors on their terms. Once you’re there, your confidence will soar.
And lest you think that building your sophistication will alienate any old school sponsors you approach – and there likely will still be some of those – it won’t. There are ways to deliver a best practice offer that makes so much practical and strategic sense, while still delivering the old school stuff those sponsors want.
Helpful resources
“I’m selling the same exact packages over and over. I think the sponsors are just as bored as I am.”
“How many calls did I make today? How many meetings did I confirm? It’s just a numbers game to this organisation.”
“Sponsorship is a marketing function, so I thought it would be creative. Boy, was I wrong.”
When I hear things like this from sponsorship professionals, it breaks my heart. More than that, it sounds like sponsorship is breaking their hearts. They know – and you probably know – there’s more to sponsorship than copy-paste proposals and cold calling. There has to be, right?? I mean, sponsorship is anchored on often super-fun and interesting things that people care a lot about. How can it possibly be this mind-numbingly dull?
If the above quotes feel eerily familiar to you, please know that you’re not alone. Rightsholders around the world are boring sponsors with rehashes of the same uncustomised, self-centred proposal that was used last year. Rightsholders around the world take terrible internet advice and roll out gold-silver-bronze offers that make sponsors want to gouge their eyes out. Rightsholders around the world waste whatever modicum of creativity they may have on creating a proposal full of eye-catching graphics that tell a sponsor exactly zero about what it has to do with their brand and target markets.
Rightsholders around the world are doing this, but just because it’s common doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do.
The good new is that modern sponsorship is enormously creative. It has to be. Creative thinking, not pretty pictures, is what drives sponsor vision. Creative ideas set your offer apart from the literally thousands of other proposals a sponsor receives. And combining creativity with analysis and strategic thinking is the secret sauce that will position you as a smart, savvy, sophisticated pro. That’s top 1% stuff. Maybe top 0.1%.
How do you get there?
The result of this for your organisation is that you’ll be much more successful at selling and retaining sponsorship. The result for you is that every day will be different, every sponsor will be different, and every offer will be different. You’ll fall in love with the interplay between sleuthing out sponsor backgrounds, analysing their needs and marketing, and unleashing your (and your team’s) creativity. Your job will become stimulating and amazing and fun. You’ll start to think of yourself not as a sponsorship salesperson, but a sponsorship strategist and creative. That’s a great feeling.
Helpful resources
“So. Much. Rejection.”
“I was the third sponsorship manager in a year. Now I know why.”
“This job is crushing me.”
If you’re involved in sponsorship sales, some of your offers are going to be rejected, even if you do everything right. It comes with the territory.
Please don’t take the rejection personally. Sponsors say “no” for myriad reasons. Yes, if your offer is crap, they’re going to knock you back (more on that below). But there are many other reasons for a “no”. Maybe your property duplicates something they already have, or takes place at a time of year when their calendar is already full. They may be restructuring or have political issues that are putting decisions on hold. They may be concentrating on one huge sponsorship right now. They may simply not have the internal buy-in they need to make it work.
That said, you do need to figure out if your offers are, in fact, crap. And if your strike rate for selling sponsorship is depressingly low and/or the sponsorships you do sell are mostly tiny rats-and-mice deals, that may well be the issue. I’m not saying that to be mean, but I want to be real with you.
I strongly recommend autopsying your offers, ensuring that the information provided, the structure, the flow, the ideas, and the focal point are best practice. I want you to take a good hard look at how you build your hit list, and whether you’ve found multiple points of relevance and meaning for every brand you’ve approached. I want you to analyse your process, because if the proposal came before the research, analysis, and creativity, it’s not going to be good.
After training with me – and reassessing all of the above – I’ve had literally hundreds of emails from people who have submitted or presented their first best practice proposal. They’re beyond excited, because they’ve had incredible feedback on the offer – often hearing that it’s one of the best sponsorship proposals they’ve ever seen. There’s nothing like it to kickstart confidence in a new approach.
I ask them to update me when they’ve got an answer, and lots of them do make the sale (or a bunch of sales). But here’s the kicker: Even if they don’t, it’s not because their offer was crap. In fact, they’re often invited to chat about next year or a different property. They’ve demonstrated to the sponsor that they’re good at this, that they’re not wasting the sponsor’s time, and turned a “no” into “not this time, but stay in touch”. That’s big. That’s resilience-building.
Helpful resources
“I feel like I’m begging for money.”
“Sponsors have the money, so they have all the power.”
“The big rightsholders get the big sponsorship money. Smaller rightsholders end up fighting for scraps.”
I hear these things all the time, particularly from mid-sized and smaller rightsholders. They feel like this game is stacked against them, and that sponsors will never treat them as peers. The bigger issue, however, is that they don’t see themselves as peers to sponsors. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.
If this sounds like you, knock it off, because it’s not true. There are two reasons why.
First, yes, there are some sponsors out there who are real dickheads, and they do treat rightsholders badly, but they are a tiny minority. The vast majority of sponsors want to work with organisations that are their peers; that have sophistication and strategic nous on par with their own. And they’d rather work with a sophisticated, small organisation that understands what they’re trying to accomplish, than a huge organisation that sells sponsorship like a commodity and doesn’t care what they need.
Second, the real driver of sponsorship results isn’t size, but meaning. Sponsors need that meaning to drive results through sponsorship. Without it, sponsorship is purely cosmetic. Sponsors need it, and you have it, and if you know how to harness that, you’re a peer.
If people are passionate about what you do, that’s powerful and valuable. If people are passionate about the larger themes around what you do, that’s even more powerful and valuable. And if you can show sponsors how they can leverage that meaning across longer timeframes and bigger geographic area – not just a two day festival in Cologne – you’re creating a leveragable platform that could outstrip the results of some of their biggest sponsorships. I’ve done it. I’ve taught hundreds of rightsholders to do it.
So, stop lamenting your size. Stop worrying about your timeframe or geography or how you’re possibly going to compete with the big guys, because when you switch from selling benefits to selling meaning and passion, the game changes entirely.
Helpful resources
This is an amazing industry. It is fun. It is creative. You can be a respected peer. You can punch way above your weight.
If you invest your effort in different ways, and pick up a few new skills, you can make the same frustrating job feel completely different. It may or may not become your dream job, but at least it won’t feel like a soul-sucking hellhole, and that’s a good thing.
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.
© Kim Skildum-Reid. All rights reserved. To enquire about republishing or distribution, please see the blog and white paper reprints page.