Where Does Experience Come From?

Where Does Experience Come From?

Experience is a great thing. It is something that many of us have a lot of—and many don’t. There is no substitute for experience. You can study hard and learn lots from text books, but when it comes down to it, you need hands-on experience to be successful. Could you imagine a surgeon opening you up when all he or she has ever done is read about that surgery—or any surgery at all? How about the plumber fixing your kitchen sink or the server taking your order and bringing out your meals? Without experience, we are nothing.

So, it is important that new folks who enter our sector get hands-on experience. They need to have their hands held, or at least be watched over, to train them and nurture them to success. I don’t care if it is in getting meetings, doing discovery sessions, building proposals, developing or implementing activation plans, or delivering on fulfilment. They need hands-on experience. I love this part of our business. At the Partnership Group – Sponsorship Specialists®, we do a lot of this type of training and mentoring. There is incredible satisfaction in it—especially when you see clients’ staff members reap the reward and bring success to their organizations from a sponsorship perspective. It makes you smile—sort of like watching your child graduate from university and knowing you had a little part in that success. You are so proud for them and inside you feel good. You shared your experience to help them get experience. We believe this is important and part of the holistic sponsorship program within an organization. You can have all the valuations and activation plans you want, but if your team as an agency, brand, or property lacks experience, and if you fail to grow and develop that team with more and more expertise, your sponsorship program will fail.

Recently, while talking about experience and its importance, someone said, “Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want!” I pondered and nodded. Later, I thought more about this and really understood how true it is. I remember one of my great mentors and someone I looked up to, Don Armstrong, who recently passed, made me sit in the broadcast booth high above the ice surface at the Saddledome and watch, but more importantly listen, to the radio broadcast of the Calgary Flames. My job (eventually) was to build sponsorship programs for clients of the Calgary Flames radio broadcasts. But before he let me go out and sell, I had to experience the broadcast. I had to learn and understand what it sounded like, what the features were, how the amazing long-time voice of the Calgary Flames Peter Maher sounded, and how he promoted sponsors and partners. I had to experience this all for about six months before I was ever able to build a proposal. I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to be schmoozing prospects and making money. But I had to be where I didn’t want to be to get the experience I needed to be successful. Throughout my career, each time I didn’t get my way, I gained experience. And today, I am grateful. Relationships that didn’t work out brought experience. Deals that fell through taught me what not to do the next time. Wrong turns at a fork in the road gave me a better road map to follow. Truly, experience comes from doing the things we don’t want to do/happen.

So yes, often the staffs of clients we work with want to do it their way. Often, they don’t want to follow our direction. Often, they want to take shortcuts and not be shadowed. But those who don’t get what they want often gain the most experience and are the most successful.

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