It’s Not Who You Know 25th July, 2016

Far too many of our new business meetings focus purely on who Slingshot knows at Board level with brands. Undeniably, we know a lot. But that’s our business – it’d be like if McDonalds didn’t know what types of condiments to use for their hamburgers. It would be ludicrous if after 6 years of selling sponsorship rights to global brands, we didn’t make a friend or two along the way.

Unfortunately, almost all sponsorship sales agencies use this angle in their pitches – providing a false sense of security, to the potential new client, that sponsorship sales is all about speaking to the right person. This couldn’t be farther from the truth.

In my 15 years of selling “stuff”, it’s almost never about who you know. Bad salespeople focus on this in a new business pitch because it’s easy. Rather than take time to review the boring strategic processes that underlie sponsorship sales, it’s easier to provide wow factor by name dropping. This masks the fact that the challenge of selling sponsorship actually is controllable by a rights holder and can be fixed without hiring a specialist sponsorship sales agency, and no one really wants that do they?

Slingshot’s approach is never about the black book, which many think is unconventional and also means we lose a lot of pitches to those that guarantee sponsors and often unachievable revenue targets. The smoke and mirrors sales pitch champion who they know, but if you are struggling to maximise your full sponsorship potential it’s not because of your sales people, your property or your access to LinkedIn – it’s your commercial strategy.

Without a commercial strategy that understands what assets you have, what assets brands require to drive ROI, your fair market value and a pretty spectacular proposal – you honestly don’t really have a chance. I am pretty good friends with a lot of big brand buyers, but even I can’t flog something without the above. Gone are Chairman’s Whim days, but it means you have got to start thinking about your proposition if you are going to invest time and resource into selling sponsorship.

Do Social Media Benefits Really Benefit Sponsors? 15th September, 2011

Social media has not only changed the way an audience can interact with a sponsorship property, but also with how they can interact with the sponsors of that property and vice versa.  Without fully understanding social media for the organisation in question, it would be impossible to try and deliver value to a sponsor associated.

Here are some top tips and questions to ask yourself before you consider integrating sponsorship benefits within your sponsorship proposal.

Do You Have an Online Audience?

Many sponsorship proposals include social media activation with their audience for prospective sponsors; however, this is typically even before they’ve even set up the account.  Many rights owners do not realise that it can take a significant amount of resource to develop and manage social networks so make time to do your research before you promise brands something you aren’t able to deliver at the point of signing the contract.

The benefit of social media is that it is instantaneous, but if you haven’t developed your social network before you offer the rights over to a sponsor, you aren’t offering much of anything.

Is Your Social Network Engaged?

Once you’ve built your social network, you need to ensure that the users are engaged with your content.  If you don’t have an engaged audience then there is no benefit to a sponsor of your property because their message will be falling on deaf ears.

5 Tips to Creating Engaging Content:

  1. Be relevant
  2. Provide insight
  3. Offer competitions or money-can’t buy benefits for engaging with you
  4. Provide exclusive content they can’t find anywhere else
  5. If possible, try to be genuinely funny

Does Your Social Network Want to Hear From Your Sponsors?

Your network is important and needs to be treated with care.  Do not sign them up and then bombard them with messages that they do not want to hear.  This rings true for any and all communication, but especially with social media as it far easier to individuals to block messages online than it is through the post.

Make sure to listen to your audience and provide them content that they find valuable.  As long as your sponsor’s messages fall in line with these guidelines you can ensure that you are truly delivering the benefits you are offering.

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