Are you responsible for developing external partnerships for your organization? Whether you are brand new to sponsorship sales or a few years in and simply looking for new tips on how to improve your proposal technique, you’ve come to the right place. We work with the nation’s leading sports teams, nonprofit organizations, and event hosts, providing them with accurate brand decision-maker contact information, alongside forecasted sponsorship insights to help them identify timely partnership opportunities.
With so many people trying to get a piece of a brand’s marketing budget, make sure your pitch is getting to the right person at the right time. To help, here are insider details on how our most successful clients find partnership opportunities long before their competitors (and techniques that have helped them build sponsorship proposals that convert new partners).
To put it simply, a sponsorship proposal is a formal proposal that clearly outlines how your business can offer additional value to an organization or help them meet particular deliverables through a partnership. Whether you seek sponsors for your cause, event, sports team or organization, partnerships are an excellent source of funding.
Too many sponsorship sellers just blast a ton of companies with a one-size-fits-all proposal. This approach will not produce significant results. To access the brands you really want to work with, take a strategic approach. Here are three steps to complete before crafting and sending off your next proposal:
Before you build a tailored proposal, identify ideal sponsorship partners by narrowing down the companies that might be a good fit for your cause, event, or organization. Determine who’s a qualified partner by answering these questions:
Brands have one goal in mind – getting in front of and converting their target audience. As someone selling sponsorship, it’s your job to convince them that your organization can do just that. So how do you find the brands that align with your audience? Successful sponsorship sellers leverage technologies to do the heavy lifting for them. Winmo’s sales intelligence platform lets you build custom brand lists using demographics and even planning periods so you can match audiences to when they’re spending. Alerts also allow you to get notified in real-time when brands have specifically opened up spend towards sponsorship so you can nail the timing of your outreach.
Once you’ve identified the brands you’re going to target next is knowing exactly who to connect with. While marketing is typically the go-to decision makers when it comes to sponsorship, other departments to look into might include public relations, community affairs, public affairs or supplier diversity. Again, technologies can help you work more efficiently here as well. Winmo empowers sponsorship sellers to quickly search and export titles like: VPs and Directors of Sponsorships, Sports Marketing Executives, Event Marketing Managers, Experiential and Lifestyle Marketing Contacts, Brand Managers, Sponsorship Coordinators, Entertainment Marketing Managers and more.
Another quick way to scope out potential new sponsors is to see who your competitor’s current partners are. Simply go to their websites and evaluate who is investing sponsorship dollars with them. If you’re unable to gather intel from their website another alternative is leveraging Winmo. Clients can quickly see exactly which brands are partnering with their competitors via integration with HookIt. Here you’ll be able to see percentages of sponsorship spend across teams, leagues, venues, and events – with additional data on specific partnerships and sample promotions.
Now that you have an idea of which brands might be good partners, it’s time to do some homework to determine if your organization’s vision and revenue goals align with theirs. Extended research will allow you to find commonalities between your organization and the space they work within. Then, your pitch can justify how you and your team have partnered with similar organizations within their realm of work.
When conducting your research, you will want to find the answers to the following questions:
Here are the channels you should be taking a look at to research a potential sponsor:
If you want to create a proposal that will stand out from the rest, you need to show the decision-maker that you truly understand the nature of their business. Often times, a company will have a multitude of brands- make sure you do your research on those as well. Typically each brand will have its own marketing or sponsorship staff so keep that in mind when identifying the decision-maker.
Whether a brand is B2B or B2C, it’s likely you will find them on multiple social media channels. Typically you can quickly access these links in the footer of their website, or run a quick Google search. Take a peek at who’s following them to get a better idea of who their audience might be. You can also utilize hashtags to determine what people might be saying about them online.
Of course, never forget about old faithful! Run a Google search to keep up with what’s going on with the brand. Are they receiving any new funding? Exploring new target audiences? Hiring for any significant team members? These are just a few of the six triggers that indicate it’s prime time to reach out about sponsorship opportunities. Using this information in your proposal will help ensure that your pitch resonates with the potential sponsor and answers their biggest pain points.
When the marketer is looking over your sponsorship proposal they are looking to answer one question, “what’s in it for my company?” So the main question you need to answer when writing your proposal is, “what value can my organization offer this company?”
If you answer yes to any of these questions, be sure to hone in on how partnering with your organization can help the brand reach these deliverables throughout your proposal.
Finally, you’ve identified your prospective sponsors and you’ve done your research- now it’s time for the exciting part, actually building out your proposal!
At this point, you know your proposal needs to be personalized, it needs to identify the decision-maker’s pain points and provide solutions to those problems- but what actually needs to be included in your sponsorship proposal?
The first thing you will want to include in your sponsorship proposal is a formal letter. A sponsorship proposal letter briefly highlights the topics that will be covered in more depth throughout the entire package. This includes who you are, what you are offering the potential sponsor, and how the partnership will benefit their organization.
You’re likely prospecting potential sponsors who align well with your audience, so make sure you highlight this benefit first. Sponsorship is all about the exposure, so if your opportunity can help a brand get in front of its desired target demographics, you are encouraged to lead with that sales point.
You will want to keep this short and to the point- two paragraphs maximum. First, you will want to discuss your event, cause, team or brand. Next, describe the opportunity itself and how collaborating with you will be beneficial.
Most sellers offer “Gold, Silver, and Bronze” sponsorship levels because it’s easy- and potential sponsors know it. Tier level sponsorship packages give brands the impression that you don’t really understand what they are trying to accomplish, and if you did, your package would be customized to fit those needs.
Remember those four questions you were trying to answer in the research phase? This is where you have the opportunity to present a menu of options that will help them achieve those goals with the partnership. Let them know that these options are simply suggestions and that you are flexible.
If you’re like most companies, 87% of your clients are willing to give you a testimonial – but only 10% of companies ever asked for one. It is highly encouraged that you reach out to past clients for some form of advocacy. One of the best ways to prove value in a sponsorship proposal is to rely on past partners to speak about the experience they personally had.
Sure, you can talk about how great you are, but it means a lot more coming from a third party. Sponsorship and marketing decision-makers do not want to feel like they are being sold, so outside endorsements make for great workarounds. But keep in mind, the people signing off on your proposal want to see numbers, so make sure these testimonials go beyond the surface and include details around actual results and ROI.
This is your call-to-action, so do your best to make it intriguing and encourage a “next-step” conversation. Make it obvious that nothing in this proposal is set in stone, rather a conversational tool to have a deeper discussion. This is not where you ask them to make a payment or “pull the trigger” on the deal. Your proposal won’t sell the opportunity for you, the relationship you build with the decision-maker will.
Now that you have your perfected proposal, you need to make sure they answer the phone or open their email so you can get it in front of them. But decision-maker’s inboxes are flooded with proposals daily, so how do you make yours stand out from the rest?
Since 20% of people check their email at least five times a day, naturally, this is a go-to form of communication for sales professionals. But what good is an email if you can’t get your prospect to open it? According to Convince&Convert, 35% of email recipients open emails based on the subject line alone, so it is imperative that yours captures their attention. Have some subject line ideas but not sure how they will perform? A/B test them and see which one gets the most opens- then start using that winning subject line moving forward. Coschedule also has a great tool that will grade and provide feedback on how to improve your subject lines. Check it out here and be sure to bookmark it for later!
You’re a human and so is your prospect, what do you both have in common? You hate being sold to; take that into consideration when writing your messaging. If your email sounds like a script, it’s going to turn your prospect away. Besides, you’ve done your research and you know their business needs so craft messaging that proves it! For example, if the marketer you are reaching out to is new to the role, start your message off by congratulating them on the new position before jumping into your sales spiel.
At the end of the day, decision-makers want to hear the numbers. They have people to report to and if there is no ROI, there is no budget to support their ideas. If you have them, throw in some statistics to peak their interest and initiate a response.
Don’t lose patience or get frustrated when reaching out to prospects. The follow-up is so important. According to sources, 80% of conversations don’t happen until the fifth outreach and 44% of sellers give up after just one follow up. That means that nearly half of your competition is giving up after just two outreach attempts. For maximum success, remain persistent in following up multiple times and through a variety of touch points.
Phone calls are still an effective form of communication despite what others might say. In fact, 92% of all customer interactions happen over the phone. With the average business person receiving an average of 115 emails per day, a phone call might be exactly what you need to do in order to stand out from the competition.