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06. 01. 2010
MANAGEMENT SUMMARY
While brands have bene ted greatly from the
development of Internet software that manages
sponsorship related activity throughout their
business chains, the sponsorship sales side has
experienced only marginal gains. Several tools have
been deployed to aid sales promotion (online listing
1
services), contact management (Salesforce) and
post-sales activity (Property Port). Surprisingly, a
Conf id ent ial
dedicated resource designed to help develop bona de
sales leads from real time data remains elusive.
Considering brands are now making decisions
based on real-time data, today’s selling environment
demands better information management. To
stay relevant, sponsorship sales professionals must
understand brand activity quickly and thoroughly.
Unfortunately, the evidence suggests current
alternatives make adequately meeting this challenge
much more di cult than should be the case in an
Internet economy.
General consensus among sponsors is about only
one percent of unsolicited proposals receive serious
consideration. is leaves two options for sales
professionals: either more proposals can compete to
be among the fortunate one percent, or the volume
of proposals must decrease as a result of being the
product of more research and customization.
Spending more time and money on research and
quali cation in the name of producing fewer, more
customized proposals enhances the need for reliable
information. However, despite the need to have
more insight the resources to capture it remain
limited and fragmented. ” e average sponsorship
A survey of today’s sponsorship information market
reveals a hodgepodge of resources critical to the rst proposal meets just 44.8%
stages of prospecting. Individuals tasked with selling
sponsorships mostly turn to brand web sites and
publications focused on sports business, advertising,
of brands’ needs.”
marketing, and sponsorship. Search engines and – Sponsorium, October 2009
blogs are commonly used, as are mass-market social
media sites. Published directories o er random bits
of information about brand decision-makers and
deals. While these sources can yield good data, they
also may be time-intensive to survey, incomplete, out
http://sponsorpitch.com
3. of date, and/or provide limited strategic insight about brands. that the tenures of high-level brand decision-makers
Accordingly, given the relationship accurate, timely are quite short (generally less than two years for many
information has on persuading brands on buying sponsorship CMOs, for example).
opportunities, SponsorPitch believes sponsorship salespeople As the less expensive directories are published,
need a dedicated prospect quali cation tool that can provide their accuracy can quickly begin to erode. e more
06. 01. 2010
real-time, robust brand intelligence. Combined with a expensive sources require constant reconnaissance by
new approach to collecting brand activity data online, this dedicated sta . is can drive their cost above $5000
system can reduce research time and free the sponsorship per year and include data for hundreds of brands
sales force to develop more targeted, creative pitches with outside the scope of interest of many properties.
more value to sponsors. us, the choices are to do in-house research, pay a
few hundred dollars for data that may or may not be
accurate, and/or spend massively for limited data that
SPONSORSHIP SELLING CHALLENGES:
2
means nothing without other research that drives
Whether the seller is an agency or a property itself, the creation of proposal content. In other words, even
challenges of selling sponsorships are almost always the same. after a brand’s decision makers are identi ed, the
Conf id ent ial
ose selling them must: research and diligence has only just begun.
– Understand brand messaging, positioning, and
target audience CHANGING FROM AN INDIVIDUAL
– Know what brands want from sponsorship and if/ TO COLLABORATIVE APPROACH
how the opportunity at hand can meet these wants,
preferably before solicitation Clearly, the challenge of gathering brand
intelligence is daunting, particularly when assessing
– Present turnkey activations and leveraging programs
many brands. ough everyone acknowledges
to alleviate the need for brands to determine how a
the need to deliver informed, tailored proposals to
sponsorship will work for them
quali ed decision-makers, only so much time can be
– Clearly identify the true decision–makers in each organization spent on research before salespeople must consider
Essentially (rightfully), brands want sponsorship sellers matters of e ectiveness, e ciency, and their other
to be armed with knowledge as if they worked inside the duties. e principal frustration comes down to this
brands they target. ey must know things like a brand’s vexing dichotomy:
spending activity, audience, business model, marketing – Spend more research time on each company,
strategy, messaging, sales channels/retail locations, activation generate fewer proposals, thereby increasing invested
tactics, etc., to make successful pitches in most cases. is time on each and the opportunity cost of rejection
puts a great burden on sponsorship sales executives. Several – Spend less research time on each company,
interviews conducted with sponsorship sales professionals generate more proposals, but reduce their quality
con rmed a required minimum of 1-2 hours of research per and response rate because they are less targeted.
brand to obtain a cursory understanding of its business and
sponsorship activities. Presenting an initial communication Another matter to consider further is the
capable of securing a conversation or meeting requires perspective of brands, particularly large and more tat.
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approximately 2-4 hours of diligence. visible ones, which can easily receive more than 500nulla
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sponsorship solicitations per month. Essentially,
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One of the smarter sponsorship sales strategies is to have not only are the same brands being pitched
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informal conversations with brand decision-makers that misguided proposals, many people spend many hours
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don’t include sales pitches per se. No-pressure conversations duplicating e orts researching virtually the same
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can help reveal how content brands are with currently data and attempting to answer the same questions.
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sponsored properties, their future spending plans, and When factoring in how few proposals receive serious
sponsorship objectives. nostisi.
consideration, most prospecting research done by the
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Published contact directories can help identify relevant universe of sponsorship salespeople is simply wasted.
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brand employees with whom to have these discussions, but Worse, the totality of sponsorship sales e orts
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many other people likely are trying to contact them to have produces so many unwanted proposals that brands
similar conversations. Moreover, personnel and activity in would rather say no to everything than spend time
organizations change over time. Research clearly indicates trying to nd the appealing one percent.
243 5th Ave #121 New York, NY 10016
4. 02$&()5*6&$)7*+)'/##(5/)4/
While an every-man-for-himself approach opportunity to take a great leap forward given the fact most
to prospect research might seem to preserve a people are now comfortable embracing the ethos of the
competitive advantage, the true added value for social web, i.e., giving is the new taking, through sites like
properties lies in their assets, attributes, creativity and MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Digg, Wikipedia,
ability to execute a given sponsorship opportunity. LinkedIn, Jigsaw, etc. Internet users know they receive
06. 01. 2010
Even if brand activity data is shared between other much more information from these applications than they
sales executives representing di erent properties, the individually contribute to them due to the network e ect. In
sale does not hinge upon the intelligence each one turn, they perceive information as a commodity and implicitly
has. Instead, it hinges upon a property’s ability to understand that user-generated and third party content drives
assimilate data, generate e ective ideas, and convince the quality of their experiences. us, they appreciate the
a brand buyer that the property’s ideas and assets will value of sharing and are willing to assume the responsibility to
deliver value. Sharing information between peers do it themselves, a philosophy not yet e ectively embraced by
would therefore save time on research and make the sponsorship industry.
3
prospecting for leads exponentially faster. is in As a multi-billion dollar industry, sponsorship and the sales
turn would lead to a higher percentage of valuable professionals who fuel it deserve a resource that:
Conf id ent ial
proposals for brands, better outcomes, and ultimately
more deals. – Provides access to targeted real-time data about brand
sponsors while reducing time spent qualifying leads
Optimally, one salesperson would research a few
– Aggregates strategic conversations among properties
brands and share the intelligence gathered with
with insight into and interest in the same brands
other salespeople collecting data on other brands.
– Allows time saved on prospect research to be put toward
developing greater value propositions (better assets and
”McDonald’s gets 2,700 unsolicited activations) in sponsorship proposals.
sponsorship proposals each year and
Accurately and e ectively customizing and
rejects every single one of them.” articulating sponsorship o erings to decision-
– John Lewicki, McDonald’s
makers that clearly demonstrate understanding of
Director of Sports Marketing brand needs is now an imperative in the sponsorship
industry. is requires the ability to keep pace with
information more quickly than current practices
is would create a dynamic whereby everyone who allow. e collection of relevant, accessible, real-
contributes receives exponentially more information time brand intelligence can: drive faster development
than they individually collect. Whereas one person of more informed proposals; foster collaboration
might need more than a month to investigate and
assess 100 brands, 10 collaborators could collectively
among property peers researching or already servicing
spend less than a week to size up those same 100 like-sponsors; and leverage the comfort with social
brands. Individuals acting exclusively in their own networking applications into value for sponsorship
interests have no chance of matching the productivity sales professionals. Perhaps more importantly,
of a group of dedicated collaborators working together a dedicated intelligence tool will result in more,
to increase the value of a resource. better proposals and be an impetus to lift the value
sponsorship can bring to brands.
THE CASE FOR A NETWORKED Simply stated, an interactive brand intelligence
BRAND SPONSOR INTELLIGENCE database driven by collaboration is the best way
DATABASE to bring researching sponsorship prospects and
e assessment of current industry conditions,
qualifying sales leads into the 21st Century.
demonstrates sponsorship has clearly been left
behind most other industries because it has failed
to evolve to the new real-time information-sharing For more information:
standards of the Internet. is suggest there is an Kris Mathis Michael Munson
kris@sponsorpitch.com mike@sponsorpitch.com
