CHAPTER 8
Sales Process
Sales Checklist
You have done your research, the sponsor is interested, and there’s no spinach in your teeth—it must be time for a meeting!
Prepare, Prepare, Prepare
It has been suggested that the sales process is 75 percent preparation, 10 percent sales pitch, and 15 percent follow-up. If you have the opportunity to meet the sponsor in person, ensure that you know everything you can possibly find out about their company before you walk through the door. You need to know what matters to your potential sponsors and how they measure success. Are they after sales opportunities, launching a new product, preparing for a share issue, or embarking on any of a myriad of other marketing activities? Get your Sponsor Information Checklist filled out as much as you can before you meet, and you will have a much more fruitful discussion.
Make Contact with the Right Person
Companies are full of people who can say no but can’t say yes. You want to ensure that the person you meet with is not in that category.
Good Contacts
The best contact you can have is the brand manager or group brand manager (overseeing a whole group of related brands in categories such as “cereal” or “broadband”). These are the people who can say yes, who do have budget control and flexibility, and most sponsorship seekers don’t target them, so you are more likely to get their attention.
In smaller companies, the marketing manager is a good option. No marketing manager? Try the general manager.
If you have a geographically targeted opportunity for a national or global brand, you may want to contact the regional marketing manager or general manager. Often, they have their own budgets, but even if they don’t—or if your offer outstrips what they can approve—a regional manager can advocate for you with the head office.
Worse Contacts
Sponsorship managers are not generally your friend. One of their primary jobs is as gatekeeper—keeping you away from the real decision makers. And because they have the word sponsorship in their job titles, most sponsorship seekers assume that’s the right place to make an approach, so there is a lot of competition for their attention. Your offer may be amazing, but the chances of them addressing it and shifting it to the decision maker efficiently are probably slim.
Another bad option is the CEO or other senior executive. They won’t say yes, but they don’t want to say no either, so your proposal will get handed down the chain until it gets to the sponsorship manager, who will then deal with it as above.
Avoid at All Costs
Brands often work with a number of agencies—advertising, PR, social media, event production, etc.—and these agencies often play the role of gatekeeper, whether it’s been assigned to them or not. And while many have seen the light on full integration of their clients’ marketing plans, others play to their comfort zones and will see your offer as a threat. A handful of them will even steal your creative ideas, give you the flick, and present them to the client as their own (rare, but it happens). Don’t submit proposals to agencies. It’s volunteering to put an external third party between you and the decision maker, and that’s never wise.
If agencies are a no-go, online sponsorship submission forms are even more so. This is nothing but automated gatekeeping. Ignore them completely and speak with the brand manager.
What If You’re Referred Away from the Brand Manager?
If you’ve done the right thing and approached the brand manager (or marketing manager/GM), and they’ve then referred you to the sponsorship manager, there is about a 99 percent probability they’ve told you no and they just want the professional gatekeeper to do it for them. You can do what they ask, but it’s a long shot.
If they refer you to their online form or an agency, that really is a for-sure no. Don’t continue to waste your time and energy. Just move on to a more receptive prospect.
With any of these, there are exceptions, but it’s much better to play by the rules than to count on you being that exception.
Determine What You Want to Achieve from This Meeting
Ideally, your initial meeting should be about gathering and confirming information. Both you and the potential sponsor want information. You want to create a customized proposal that addresses your sponsor’s specific marketing objectives, and you need to expand on what you know in order to connect them with an appropriate offer. On the other side, your potential sponsor wants to know about you and your event. Your counterpart will be asking you a few key questions:
• Who are you, and why should I do business with you?
• What’s unique about this property, and is it meaningful to my brand’s target markets?
• Why will people attend or participate?
• What’s in it for me?
• How much is it going to cost me?
It will increase your credibility exponentially if you can answer all of these questions before the sponsor asks them. You should be able to sum up your event, your expertise, and your enthusiasm concisely, providing the key information to your potential sponsor, so that you can then get on with your own information gathering.
Check Your Vocabulary
It is important in sales meetings to speak the corporate language. This reminds your corporate contacts that you think like they do—in business terms. Start substituting corporate terms for terms that are often used by smaller sponsees and nonprofit organizations (see the following table for some examples).
Mind Your Manners
Be on time and keep the meeting on track and on schedule. Speak with confidence, smile, and shake hands firmly. Speak clearly and remember you are there to gather and check information. Remember, you have two ears and one mouth for a reason—you need to listen twice as much as you speak. Whatever you do, don’t go into hyper sales mode. And be sure to follow up the meeting with a personal thank-you note (see sample later in this chapter).
Don’t Act Needy
If you are a nonprofit organization, make it clear that you are not looking for a donation. Ensure that your contact knows that you are not asking for a donation because this will often be their assumption. It will be even more imperative for you to be very businesslike, using business vocabulary and discussing the project in terms of it being an investment.
Always Focus on the Sponsor’s Needs
Remember as you talk that these people are not interested in meeting your needs but in achieving their own business objectives.
On a related note, don’t talk in depth about the connection between your organization and the sponsor. They are much less interested in your organization than they are in making a connection with target markets that interest them. Position your organization as a conduit for building those relationships.
Don’t Discuss Price
Don’t talk about the price until after you have excited them about the idea. Avoid setting your price until after the initial meeting. It is acceptable to discuss a price range or an indicative amount but always follow that with the caveat that it is only an indication and that the fee will be set based upon the benefits package offered as a result of the meeting.
Be Enthusiastic
Your enthusiasm is your greatest selling tool. Following the meeting, send a thank-you letter outlining what you have discussed, answering any questions, and indicating when they will receive your formal proposal.
Using a Broker
No one can sell your organization or its products the way you can. However, if your organization lacks the skills, experience, or resources to sell your sponsorship property, hire a broker.
What to Look for in a Broker or an Agent
Experience
Ensure that your broker or agent supplies you with a list of clients (including the specific events or properties he or she has acted as a broker for), amounts raised for each, how long the sales processes took, and references. If you are working with a larger sales agency, be sure to get references on both the agency and the specific person or team handling your event.
Understanding of the Product
Does your broker understand and empathize with your project? Has he or she worked with similar properties?
Value Added
Determine exactly what your broker will and will not do. A good broker will work with you to ensure that the property, marketing plan, and offer work for potential sponsors.
Professional Affiliations
Is the broker a member of at least one recognized sponsorship or marketing association?
Exclusivity
No sponsorship brokers worth their salt will handle a property unless they have exclusive selling rights. Tag teams are bad for them and bad for you. Have they insisted on exclusivity? For how long? It is not uncommon for a broker to request a period of three to twelve months for the securing of sponsorship.
Hunger
How hungry is your sponsorship broker? A good broker is hungry for the project. Is yours?
Presentation
How does your broker present himself or herself? Is the broker professional? What are his or her meeting and presentation skills like?
How S/he Works
Ask how the broker sells properties. What is the broker’s strategy and philosophy? If the broker takes an uncustomized, shotgun approach to sales, don’t use him or her.
Marketing and Business Knowledge
Many brokers specialize in particular areas—sports, events, arts, community. Find out the areas of specialization. Who are the broker’s contacts? What are his or her networks?
Follow-up and Reporting
At the beginning of the contract period, establish how frequently you want the broker to report back, what information you need, and in what format.
Fees and Payments
Brokers work on a commission basis with the fees ranging anywhere from 10 to 30 percent or even more. Brokers are paid this commission only if they successfully negotiate the sponsorship on your behalf. Brokers are responsible for producing their own sales material. However, if you want flash brochures, videos, and whiz-bang presentation materials, you will be expected to cover production and printing costs. Also, you need to be clear on whether the commission is to be paid from the total amount sought or added to it. For example, if the broker is raising $100,000, are you paying $20,000 of the $100,000 the broker raises, or does the broker have to raise $120,000 to cover his or her own commission? The latter is becoming much more common and is usually more desirable for you.
Contracts and Letters of Agreement
Ensure you have a contract or letter of agreement. The contract should include commission payable, reporting deadlines, clearances and sign-offs, exclusions, time frame, and amount sought. Also, include whether the commission is to be added to the total amount sought or paid from it.
Consulting Assistance
If you need assistance determining the nature of the property, pricing, and packaging or assistance in managing the sponsorship, the broker will charge an hourly fee or a project fee for these services. Fees range from $150 to $300 per hour.
Where to Find Brokers
There are a number of ways you can find a broker.
• Personal referrals. Use your network and find out who’s good.
• LinkedIn. Use your best, most practical, least spammy LinkedIn groups to get referrals to good brokers that specialize in your category.
• Sponsorship association. Call your local sponsorship association and ask for a referral. We have a list of sponsorship associations in Appendix 2.
• Power Sponsorship. PowerSponsorship.com has a broker registry with contact details for brokers around the world.
Other Ways of Selling
While we are big advocates of contacting a sponsor directly and tailoring an offer to their needs, this is not the only way to get your opportunities in front of the right people. Here we outline a number of other channels through which you can introduce your organization and/or sell sponsorship.
Agencies
Although we’re not fans of submitting sponsorship proposals to agencies, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t introduce yourself and your property to them. The purpose is not hard sell and not about any specific client, but rather to show agencies how you can help them add value to their clientele.
Share Our Strength, a small U.S.-based antihunger organization, introduced itself and its sponsorship opportunities to a range of PR agencies that represented major food manufacturers and producers. Eighteen months after these initial introductions, Gollan Harris Chicago invited Share Our Strength to pitch a sponsorship proposal to one of its largest clients, Tyson Foods. The pitch resulted in a multimillion-dollar partnership.
Matchmaking Services
There are several websites offering sponsorship seekers the opportunity to list their opportunities on a database. The idea is that sponsors will search based on their needs and find a good opportunity. This approach is easy and cheap and would seem to be a good idea. Unfortunately, there are also some downsides.
It is difficult to know how many sponsors will be searching the database during your window of opportunity, much less the number that will be appropriate to you. Our experience is that you will hear from far more companies trying to sell something to you than sponsors who want to discuss investing in your event. Finally, if you do have a strong partnership orientation, it will be very difficult to showcase that in this type of forum. The upshot is that if it is free or very inexpensive, give it a go, but expect to be inundated with junk mail.
Directories
A number of event directories operate in much the same way as the matchmaking services—dividing events mainly by type, time of year, and region. The main difference is that these directories tend to be annual, established, and have a wide, reliable readership of corporate sponsors. Sponsors often use these directories as a starting point to understand what sponsorships are out there. If they are interested, they then contact the property directly to discuss the opportunity and develop a partnership.
We recommend listing in established directories, particularly those published by sponsorship associations and publications (see Appendix 2). Note, you will still get junk mail, but the potential of your listing contributing to a sponsorship deal is most likely a lot higher than with online matchmaking services.
Internet Auctions
We are starting to see sponsorship being sold via Internet auction sites, such as eBay, with some packages being sold for well above the normal asking price. While this approach does get the sponsorship in front of a lot of potential buyers, the lack of discussion and customization and the abbreviated decision time frame tend to create short-term transactions rather than long-term, marketing-oriented partnerships.
If you want to try this out, we recommend using it only for sponsorships offering a very limited array of benefits, such as hospitality packages or exclusive vending rights.
Preliminary Letter
Proposal Cover Letter
Meeting Thank-You Letter
Rejection Thank-You Letter
