I have seen and heard lots of horror stories around hiring consultants and expectations not being met.
Two things to know though before you read further. First, we are a consulting agency. The Partnership Group – Sponsorship Specialists® provides consulting services to brands who invest in sponsorship marketing, and to those properties that sell sponsorships to theses brands. We are not a sales brokerage agency nor a “matchmaker”. We consult and provide advice and tools for our clients to do the work themselves short and long term. We are always very clear about this because when we are not… expectations are not met!
Second, yes, unfortunately we have been part of some stories that have not ended well… where expectations were not met, or expectations of what we promised to deliver and what our client thought that meant were different. I want you to know we are not perfect but there have only been probably two or three of these horror stories in our closet over the past 15 years and with over 140 clients.
So how do you avoid horror stories when hiring your sponsorship consultant? Here are my “5 To Watch” suggestions:
- Understand the goals and outcomes: There is never anything worse than you expecting to get something and the consultant delivers something else. Be really clear what you are looking for and make sure you both agree what that is, and put it in writing! If you are looking for a consultancy to determine the assets that you have to sell and what they are worth; ensure the consultant can do that and that is what they will deliver. I have seen where the client is expecting that and got a report that identifies the strengths and weaknesses of their brand and what they should do to make their brand stronger and redevelopment of their website which they claim will in return attract (and somehow sell) more sponsors! Or the organization is seeking sponsorship sales and gets a consulting firm who does not go out and get the money for them. Know your goals and make sure that consultancy can deliver, different consulting agencies deliver different services and results.
- Be sure to compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges: In alignment with #1, know how to compare what different consultants are proposing. (And yes, always feel comfortable in getting more than one quote and talking to more than one prospective supplier.) We have witnessed many times where one proposal offers a full program that is comprehensive and perhaps includes the inventory asset identification, the valuation of assets, tiering of assets for bundling into package format, policy development, strategic plan development and mentoring services. WOW, a full package deal… and yes more expensive than the supplier who is just going to deliver a cursory inventory asset identification and valuation for 60% of the price or less. But then they will upsell you (because you will need those extra services to do your job correctly) to do all the other work which will eventually having you paying 20%+ for the final comprehensive outcome. We have seen this so many times. You get what you pay for. If you don’t have the budget to it right, don’t do it or at least lower your expectations!
- Know who you are hiring – get to know them before you hire them: Hey you are climbing in bed with these folks! Their job is ultimately to get to know you and your organization really well. They are there to help really build your sponsorship program and make it the best it can possibly be. If you love to have drinks and spend those consulting hours over drinks and meals, (paying for the food and booze on top of the hours) know that your consultant loves to do this too… there are ones out there that love to “brainstorm” over drinks several times a month at your expense. Know if they are going to be punctual… or not. Get to know them before you select them. It is like dating them first, then getting married when you know they are the right firm for your organization. Just because they look good on paper / web… does not always tell the true story. Have they been helpful to you leading up to your selection process? Did they support you internally and externally prior? Do they match your culture? Enough said…. Don’t climb into bed with anyone (consultant or sponsor) until you know them well.
- Set timelines and hold them to it and yourself: You probably have some deadlines. Will the consultant be able to deliver on time? Have you spoken to their past clients? (I always suggest to those we are talking to that they look at our website and determine which clients they would like to talk to. I have always felt when a consultant gives you three references they typically have prepped those past clients or know they will give a great review. Far better that you choose who to speak to!) Do you have an actual timeline of deliverables in the proposal / agreement? What are the penalties if these timelines are not met? But you have to be on time as well. A great deal of your consultant’s work will require you to deliver information or provide access to events, people or venues. If you cannot make those timelines you cannot expect them to deliver on time. We typically say that for every day a client is late for a deadline they are required to meet, there is a two to four-day extension on the end deliverable date for us. That is because we have scheduled staff and time to complete on schedule and if we need to reschedule it means moving other client’s workloads around.
- Avoid RFPs: I know your procurement department is going to hate this one, but if you want to get the best possible consultant for your sponsorship program, you need to do all of the above, especially getting to know the prospective consultant. Either prior to RFP posting, or built into the RFP (if you have to go to RFP) there needs to be a cultivation period. As well RFPs often fail to separate apples from oranges. A huge issue. I have recently seen situations where the organization spends time with three to four industry consultants, gets a true lay for the land, gets to know them and also is able to then separate the apples form the oranges, knows their punctuality from follow through in the “get to know you” stage and also is able to clearly define expectations. They also know realistic timelines and budgets because they have conferred with three or four consultants prior and learned enough to build an accurate and applicable RFP. Then they go to RFP. I commend them on this!
It is when a procurement department produces an RFP and knows nothing about the project or services. It is not like buying #11 envelopes! We recently did not bid on an RFP because they wanted a full inventory asset valuation (IAV) and mentoring time and they wanted it all (IAV and 100 hours of mentoring time) for $20,000 and done in 4 weeks. But it was a procurement department that did the RFP with no consultation or understanding of the product. We just laughed. The IAV for an undertaking like that would have been 14-16 weeks and the cost would be around $80,000. The sponsorship department / fundraising department knew better, but procurement did the RFP with no input.
The funny thing is that they hired a “firm” who said they could do it in 4 weeks for $20,000. The delivery was 15 weeks for the IAV and the consulting time was another 4 months after that. The product that was delivered for the core services (the IAV) was poor. Then in additional to the cursory type IAV there were a bunch of add-ons… and the organization ending up paying over $70,000 for a poor quality product that they could not use and did not meet their needs or expectations. But hey… procurement got the lowest price (initially) for the RFP and were quite pleased with themselves.
This is obviously not an exhaustive list, but should help you to be more successful in selecting consultants. If you have any great ideas on avoiding consultant disappointment, please feel to share them on our blog or through Twitter LinkedIn or directly with me.
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