I love this saying. “Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want!” It is so true. But often I have to remember it. So often I do not get what I want. It ranges back as a kid at Christmas to yesterday. But when I look back on all of these situations, I gained experience. And as sponsorship professionals we need to keep this in mind. Whether it is the client you wanted or the closing of the deal or the ROI measurement on a sponsorship marketing investment, you gain experience when you don’t get what you want. Perhaps it is an activation that was not exactly what you wanted, and it fails or works great… there is a learning there. You have gained experience.
Once I had a prospect I really wanted to add to my list. Someone else on the team got it. I was quite upset because I believed I was the best rep for them. The experience I gained was around my presentation skills and my failure to see the value that my other team member could bring that I could not. As a team, we secured the prospect, they got great ROI and I eventually inherited that client when my teammate switched “teams”.
On another occasion through Partnership Group – Sponsorship Specialists® we were vying for a new piece of business. We had one other competitor as we were both the finalists shortlisted. We lost the business. They “won”. As it turned out, the client was a “client from hell” – extremely hard to deal with. Pushing scope of project creep and always asking for more. Years later I was having coffee with that competitor and they said “I wish you had won that business” and I laughed. I learned to work hard, deliver results and let everything else go by the wayside.
And finally, there was a situation where we lost an RFP. We had done work for this organization before, so we knew all the players including procurement. We scored the highest out of all proponents on four of the five categories. We came 2nd last in the fifth category. That was the price category. The RFP was awarded to a firm who ranked in the bottom third of all the judging categories expect price, where they were number one. And as noted, they won the business. I spoke with procurement afterwards and he provided me with those stats I quoted. I said, “so you did not hire the company with the most applicable experience, the best strategy to move it all forward, the best references / case studies and the strongest team to deliver but instead went with a firm that came 6th out of the 9 submissions in all those areas but came first in the price category?” And he replied, “yes, that is correct”. So, I said, “so you hired the cheapest firm available?” and he laughed and replied, “you know I cannot say that is true even if it is!” The experience I got from this when I did not get what I wanted was that we need to stand behind what we believe the value of our product is and not budge from that. You cannot buy a Cadillac for the price of a Ford Focus. What we deliver is worth the price we charge. We stand behind our product and when we lose an opportunity on price that is fine. We understand. And you should be doing the same. Do not “bastardize” your asset valuations or rate card just to get a piece of business.
What was really interesting was that property came back to us 2 years later and hired us to redo all the work that was delivered by the company that won the RFP. And they paid us our full rates, no questions asked. So that truly exemplified the experience I gained by losing the business in the first place and not getting what I wanted. This time it came with a smile!
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