As a sponsorship selling property you need to remember that this sales cycle is the same for you and your prospects as it is for the Partnership Group – Sponsorship Specialists™ and our prospects and clients as I noted last week. Educate, show success and custom-build proposals; It is a simple cycle.
Keep in mind the cycle is long, so you need to have a lot of prospects in the funnel. That said, your core list does not have to be huge. Some of these prospects will be at the front end of the cycle, discovery sessions and education. Some will be in the proposal development stage and others in the presentation or negotiation stage.
Finally, there will be some prospects in the closing stage (hopefully). If you had 10 prospects in each stage, that would be 50 prospects. If they are the right 50 prospects (and 40 of them should be very qualified or they should not get to the second level), this is more than enough to be working on.
On my prospect list (I do business development for the Partnership Group – Sponsorship Specialists™) I have 42 “active clients”. That is all. Some will close in the next few months; some will close 36 or more months from now. My goal is to be able to provide about $1,000,000 of services per year to clients through the Partnership Group – Sponsorship Specialists™. With this prospect list of 42 in different stages of the process we can be successful. Of course there is also about another 20-30 prospects that I have “dropped” from my list as they just have not panned out or are not responsive to follow up. So I “let them go”. We need to learn to do this. About 10% of these seem to resurface (or have done so over the last decade) and become “active” on the list again after about 24-36 months of dormancy.
The message for sponsorship sales properties; know your sales cycle and work the cycle to be successful. Ensure you have a manageable number of prospects in the funnel in the five different stages of the process. Even with a specific annual event you should have prospects year-round in all five stages of the process. Don’t make your list too long, keep it to no more than 50 active in total with 10 or so in the “brand new prospect” stage at any given time. And remember, this is new prospect development and does not include renewals and fulfillment or stewardship of closed sponsors and partners.
For the brands and sponsors, you need to know this cycle too. We urge our corporate clients not to sign any deals that are not at least six months out from the time of signing to event or operational date. This allows the brand or sponsor to plan and implement a proper activation program and also ensure that they can manage the program. As long as the brand understands the sales cycle of the property and also the brand is fully educated and organized, the cycle can speed up, but the brand is always (and should always) be in control of the timelines. The exception to this “in control” rule is when the brand is not making the best investment possible and the property recognizes that and slows down the cycle to be more effective and deliver better ROI for the brand.
These are just one person’s thoughts. Yours are welcomed as well, so comment below, and thank you for reading.
Brent Barootes
President
Partnership Group – Sponsorship Specialists
Office: 403-255-5074
Toll Free: 888-588-9550