kim skildum-reid's
corporate sponsorship blog

I am contacted by a lot of sponsorship seekers who are unsure where to start with raising sponsorship, or they are trying to raise sponsorship and it’s just not happening. Many of them have read the books, but realise they need more help and that it needs to be individualised. They also realise they don’t have the budget or time for a full consultancy.

What they really need is a jump start, so by popular demand, I’ve created the Power Sponsorship Jump Start program for sponsorship seekers.

See below for an overview or download the PDF brochure for the Power Sponsorship Jump Start for all of the details!

What is included?

The Power Sponsorship Jump Start is an individualised program of education, coaching, and sales material development. You’ll be working directly with me. The program includes:

Development of a proposal template

Not sure how to showcase your property? What to include in a proposal? Not to worry, as Kim Skildum-Reid will develop a quality proposal template for your property. The proposal will be based on best practice principles and sponsor-side insight gleaned from 25 years of advising major sponsors.

Three coaching sessions

You will receive three coaching sessions for your use over the course of six months. How you use these sessions is up to you, but some suggestions are:

• Collaborating on a hit list of potential sponsors
• Developing customised sponsorship offers to slot into your proposal template
• Offer pricing, including in-kind options
• Negotiation and renewal preparation
• Issues management

On-demand access to webinars

You will receive on-demand access to five full-length webinars for sponsorship seekers, allowing you to quickly raise your own skill level. These webinars include:

• Essentials of Best Practice Sponsorship (90 min)
• Best Practice Offer Development (90 min)
• Best Practice Sponsorship Sales (90 min)
• Short Lead-Time Sponsorship Sales (60 min)
• Critical Skills for Sponsor Retention (60 min)

On-demand advice

Just have a quick question? You can email, call, or Skype me anytime for the duration of the Jump Start.

Recommended resources

You will receive a copy of The Sponsorship Seeker’s Toolkit 3rd Edition, as well as a compliment of my white papers. Once I understand your situation, I’ll also provide a list of recommended reading and resources, including specific sections of The Sponsorship Seeker’s Toolkit, other pertinent books, white papers, specific blogs to read, specific blogs and Twitter feeds to follow, and more.

Collaborative workspace

As a Jump Start client, you will have access to a private, secure, collaborative workspace for document sharing, questions, comments, and more.

Who will benefit from a Jump Start?

The Jump Start has been created for sponsorship seekers and is equally appropriate across categories, from arts organisations to festivals, professional development to sports, and many more.

The program is fully tailored to your needs. Below are just a few of the situations where a Jump Start could make a real difference to your results:

• You are just starting to seek sponsorship and are unsure where to begin.
• You have a new property for which to seek sponsorship, and you want to get it off to a flying start.
• Your sponsorship program has gone stale or hit a plateau and needs to be reinvigorated.
• You are moving up in class – seeking bigger sponsors than you ever have before – and want to get it right.
• You were hoping to find a sponsorship broker, but can’t find a good one, so you’re on your own.
• Your sponsorship sales team is new or inexperienced, and you need them up to speed fast.

Not sure if a Jump Start is right for you? Drop us a line with your questions on admin@powersponsorship.com, US +1 612 326 5265, or AU +61 2 9559 6444.

I meet a lot of sponsors, and something that strikes me with alarming frequency is the fact that so many of them are quite aware of what best practice sponsorship is about, and the benefits of doing it, but haven’t taken any steps to elevate their sponsorship approach to that level.

Why would so many sponsors bother to talk such a good game, when they have no apparent interest in playing it? What is stopping them from taking the steps necessary to benefit their brand using a more strategic approach? The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced it’s fear. Below, I’ve outlined the five biggest fears I see all the time.

You’re afraid it will be more work

You’re right. Getting sponsorship to really fly does require a lot of work. The good news is that best practice sponsorship spreads that load to the most sensible people, so your workload is likely to be different, but not bigger.

Here’s the thing, sponsorship does not work in a vacuum. To get the most out of it, it should be used as a catalyst – integrated across your other marketing and business activities. That means, you will be working with decision-makers from across your company and, newsflash, they are all better at their jobs than you are.

Got a sponsorship with a social media angle? Work with your in-house (or contracted) expert to develop the plan and then – yay! – they implement it. Got an employee angle? That’s where the employee experts, HR, come in. Sales? Your sales team is much better placed to develop the promotions and get retail buy-in than you are. The list goes on and on.

If you do sponsorship right, your job changes from “doer” to “wrangler”, as you manage the process through the different departments. And because those departments are already experts, they will be able to accomplish a lot and do it both expertly and efficiently.

You’re afraid of the higher bar

What if you make some changes and, lo and behold, they actually work? Suddenly the bar may be raised on everything you do!

While some corporate managers relish in meeting higher expectations, not everyone is in that category. Let’s face it, some would rather coast.

The thing about best practice sponsorship is that once someone – read: your boss – sees how smart, effective, and creative it is, they will become best practice true believers and you will be a star. And yes, that means higher expectations.

The good news is that once you know how to construct a best practice sponsorship leverage and measurement program, it is easy to replicate the process for the rest of your portfolio. It’s creative, it’s fun, and so very gratifying. Thinking that you shouldn’t make the first jump because the bar will eventually go up is silly and self-defeating.

You’re afraid that if you take a different approach, it will make you look like you were dumb before

I see this one a lot. A sponsorship manager or team wants to make a change, but they don’t want to admit to colleagues and bosses that they had it wrong – or at least not right – before.

Here’s the good news: You have a window of opportunity. Best practice sponsorship is not so common that you will look like you were late to the party. It is new enough that you can say you’ve been doing some research on global best practice and you want to overhaul the approach. There is absolutely no shame in that, so take ownership and lead the process. Be the spearhead. You’ll look like a visionary.

You’re afraid the sell-in will be tough

This is a valid fear. Sometimes corporate cultures just don’t readily embrace change and knowing you have to fight inertia is enough to stymie any attempts at progress.

Education is your friend. Distribute white papers (“Last Generation Sponsorship” is a great start). Involve colleagues in leverage brainstorms. The fastest thing you can do, however, is to host some in-house training with someone who really knows best practice sponsorship and how to teach it. Show your colleagues the light and they will see the possibilities for your own brands.

You’re afraid the perks will dry up

Sponsorship managers – particularly at bigger companies – are on a pretty good wicket. They get invited to a lot of events and get a lot of tickets that mere mortals dream about. It’s so good, that it is perfectly understandable that you don’t want to change anything, just in case you miss out.

It won’t happen. There is every chance that your portfolio may change to better reflect brand and target market needs, but you’re still going to get all the good invitations. As long as you still have a hand in decisions, you will not miss out.

There you go. Five fears you really don’t need to have. There are no excuses. Get out there and embrace best practice – for your brands, your career, and yourself. You won’t regret it.

Here’s the thing… I’m not sure what to call what a sponsor does with their sponsorship. Way back when, it was referred to as “maximising” a sponsorship, then “leveraging”, and now much of the world (but not so much here) uses the term, “activation”.

I have to say, I naturally gravitate toward “leverage”. I think it is more accurate, as those activities serve as a multiplier – a “lever” – on the results achieved. That said, if I’m confusing people, I’m open to change.

So, I’m throwing it to you. I really want your opinion. Do you have a preference for “leverage” or “activation”? Most important, why do you feel that way? Or do you think they’re more or less interchangeable?

This blog is full of how-to about selling sponsorship. I thought I would do a quick round up of some of the very common ways sponsorship seekers undermine their own efforts.

1. Make assumptions about the sponsor’s objectives
2. Make assumptions about the sponsor’s target markets
3. Don’t customise the proposal (AKA use “search-and-replace”)
4. Take a shotgun approach
5. Offer sponsorship levels
6. Your tone is arrogant
7. Your tone is needy
8. Start the sales process with the proposal
9. Submit the proposal to the Sponsorship Manager
10. Submit the proposal to the CEO
11. Submit the proposal via an online form
12. Submit the proposal to an agency
13. Any kind of hard sell
14. Threaten to sell to a competitor
15. Send a “letter of request”
16. Corner the sponsor at a function
17. Include a lot of irrelevant props (DVDs, etc)
18. Concentrate on your needs, not the sponsor’s needs
19. Structure your proposal as follows: Loads of pages about your property, benefits list, price
20. Don’t give the sponsors enough lead-time to get a leverage program in place
21. Make a pest of yourself
22. Approach sponsorship as a “numbers game”
23. Claim your property has “broad general appeal”
24. Put a junior person in charge of sponsorship
25. Invoke guilt
26. Put the sponsorship out to tender
27. Tell the sponsor they will be “a good corporate citizen” or “give back to the community”
28. Spam the industry with your uncustomised proposal and a 5 GB attachment
29. Emit any sign of desperation

I was tossing up between that title and “No, I haven’t fallen off the edge of the planet”.

You’d be justified in thinking so, considering how quiet I’ve been recently. Quiet and un-prolific don’t really come naturally to me, but I’ve had some extenuating circumstances. Without going into the gory details, about seven weeks ago, I was totally blindsided and am now suddenly single. So, there you go.

My brain has just not been in the game. Or rather, it hasn’t been in the sponsorship game – not as much as it should be. The good news is that I’m feeling a lot more like my normal self. I’m back to writing and am beavering through all of the blogs I’ve left half-finished over the past couple of months. You’ll see a lot of new content being posted at a pretty rapid pace, so don’t panic if your RSS feed starts to clog up with my back-dated blogs. It’s temporary. I’m catching up.

More good news is that I’ve come up with a new service for sponsorship seekers, which will be launched next week.

The upshot is that I’m very glad to be back in this game, working and writing and offering advice on a subject that I really love: Corporate sponsorship. Thank you all for your patience while my brain has been otherwise engaged.