Someone has to take the blame. No one at the top ever wants to accept responsibility. I recall an old saying about something that rolls downhill and the folks at the bottom get the brunt of it. So who do you blame when sponsorship revenue goes wrong? Who is to blame when the monies are not coming in?
Recently the blame for failed revenue expectations being met by the New Delhi Commonwealth Games was laid on the “hired guns”. The organizing committee for the Commonwealth Games claimed the failed revenue expectations were all the fault of the two companies hired to raise $122 million in sponsorship for the Games. As a result both companies were terminated. In my opinion this is a scapegoat blaming. It is truly a series of senior officials needing to lay the blame to protect themselves. The Delhi Games have been plagued with so many issues including late venues, cost overruns and poor organization. As the Games are underway I look to understand why or why not these “hired guns” are to blame for the dismal failure of the meeting revenue expectations.
The two companies that were terminated delivered the targets as expected for the Sydney Olympics and the Melbourne Commonwealth Games. They are presently engaged to manage the sponsorship sales for the Rio Brazil Olympics. This is not a “fly by night company”. They are well versed in what they do and successful for their clients. Thus I come to believe the blame is not 100% theirs. (In my opinion they are to blame for not having severed the contract with the Delhi 2010 Games sooner – once they determined the issues involved that would impede their success.)
From my experience, there are probably many contributing factors; the biggest is the failure of potential sponsors to believe that the property they are investing in will actually deliver on what they promised to. This is why sponsorship is not transactional, but relationship and trust based. If the sponsor cannot have the trust that the property will deliver no one will be able to sell the product. Second is political interference. I have seen this so many times where the sponsorship selling agency goes out, works on a deal and the board (or in this case the host organizing committee) puts too many barriers in place to close the deal such as tickets, access, business opportunities etc. In this scenario the property senior management fails to understand that this is a business partnership not charitable giving and wants to control all the factors and not allow the sponsor to get a favourable ROI.
It is amazing when revenue does not come in who gets the blame. Most often the people to “blame” (the ones who get the stuff at the bottom of the hill) are the front line sponsorship sales people. When they “don’t deliver”, they get fired. I truly question this. I have in the past six months seen two sponsorship people lose their jobs (one in a sport organization and one in the arts) because they could not “close” the business soon enough. When I looked at the organizations (and both are previous clients) I could see that the environment for a successful corporate partnership with the organizations did not exist. In both cases the senior management felt “entitlement” to the sponsors’ money. These people did not understand it needed to be a relationship. Furthermore they wanted the money “now” and did not understand sales cycles as I commented on last month.
So who is to blame? I am sure it is more complicated than I make it out to be, but in my simple world, if there is not a culture for partnership, trust and relationship that is win-win, a sales person who can sell icicles to Eskimos cannot help.
These are just one person’s thoughts. Yours are welcomed, please comment below, and thank you for reading.
Brent Barootes
President
Partnership Group – Sponsorship Specialists
Office: 403-255-5074
Toll Free: 888-588-9550
brent@partnershipgroup.ca