Have you ever gone above and beyond to deliver value to a sponsor and they’re still not happy?
You give them extra tickets, extra advertising, extra hospitality and you regularly give them additional benefits that you’re not contractually bound to provide them. But, for some reason, they still don’t necessarily see the value, or it’s not received as well as you’d hoped for.
Or, perhaps you give them these extra perks and special treatment, and they respond by saying nothing.
Despite this extra effort, perhaps you’ve still found yourself in conversations where your sponsor seems unhappy, or doesn’t feel the sponsorship is delivering value.
In your head you’re probably screaming ‘BUT WE GAVE YOU EXTRA ADVERTISING, WE PUT YOUR LOGO ON LOTS OF THINGS WE DIDN’T HAVE TO, WE WENT ABOVE AND BEYOND FOR YOU JERK FACE!!’
‘ALL WE DO IS GIVE EXTRA VALUE, YOU UNGRATEFUL SON OF A……’
Whoa there, you’re getting a little carried away….
You might just be missing some good two-way communication.
Adding additional value to a sponsor can be pointless, unless you know what they value. Value is subjective and it’s our job as sponsorship seekers to understand what our sponsors see value in. NOT what WE think is valuable.
Value is in the eye of the beholder, and great sponsorship seekers understand this. It’s also why tailored sponsorship approaches like the KICK *SS method outperform generic predefined sponsorship packages like Gold, Silver, Bronze. Because they are tailored to the sponsors’ needs.
Let’s see if I can provide an example to help break it down a little.
Imagine you really wanting to buy an SUV. It would be great for fitting the family in, for being able to take them on holiday, and for a general run around for school pickups and taking the kids to school.
Not to mention, you can chuck the dog in the back without messing up the seats.
You’ve got your heart set on getting a new SUV, and you know exactly what you want.
When you go to the car dealership to look at the SUV options, the sales person tries to do everything but give you what you want!
They offer to sell you a Mini, or a Lamborghini, or an 18-wheel Mack Truck.
They try everything like ‘but I’ll throw in free car grooming for a year, I’ll give you a 20% discount, I’ll give you a free roof rack, I’ll upgrade the stereo’.
Slowly you become frustrated, because you know you want an SUV. That’s what’s going to add value to your life and suits your needs.
You leave frustrated because the sales person doesn’t seem to care about your needs. You head off to buy an SUV elsewhere.
The sales person would be wrong to think ‘I offered so much extra value to that person and nothing would satisfy them. That person was impossible. What an ungrateful butt hole!’.
Sponsorship is similar.
If your sponsor values being able to use their sponsorship benefits to create their own marketing campaigns, then making it as easy as possible for them to do that would be adding value. If they value money can’t buy experiences or hosting opportunities, then providing more logo placements might not be as valuable as you think.
It’s perfectly fine if you see value in it. You may be thinking ‘But we sell that logo placement on the field, or on the side of the building for $20,000, and we gave it to them for free!’.
By providing this extra benefit to a sponsor, you may feel like you’re adding extra value. But we want to do things that THEY see as valuable, not what WE think is valuable.
Remember, an 18-wheel Mack Truck may well be worth $500,000 to the right person looking for a Mack Truck, but it won’t be worth that to the person looking for an SUV.
In some cases, it may be a pain in the butt, rather than actually adding value.
Previously, I’ve talked about how if you offer some free last-minute advertising to a sponsor, it may be more of a hindrance than a help. Because they may have weeks’ worth of scheduled marketing already lined up, and they have to drop everything in order to prioritise this last-minute advertising which risks throwing out their deadlines for other high priority work that was planned.
Would you offer a free hot coffee to a person craving an ice-cold drink?
Would you give someone a free brazilian wax if they really wanted a hat?
We need to understand our sponsor’s needs and wants in order to understand what they see value in.
If a sponsor is saying they don’t see value, or doesn’t seem overly impressed with the additional benefits or perks you’re giving them, then it could be a hint that you need to do some listening.
Ask them, ‘what do you see value in?’, ‘what works for you?’, ‘what are you working on at the moment that we can help with?’.
You can then have a think about how you might be able to serve those needs. Ask them, ‘would it be helpful if we did XX?’. Try not to get into the habit of just assuming you’re adding value.
Otherwise, just like the SUV example, your sponsor may go somewhere else.
The more you can understand about your sponsor and the more you know about their business and how it works, the more you’ll be able to deliver true meaningful value to them.
We help sponsorship seekers like you gain 3 x more sponsorship on average. Book a call with us today to see how we can help you get more sponsorship.
