Prospecting is the key to success. If you are not talking to the right people and organizations, you will not be successful for long. The wrong matches are short lived. Success is not a station you arrive at; it is a way of travelling. We need to be focused on prospecting for our success travels.
I am asked all the time by properties who they should be calling on—who is hot, who has money, and who is looking to partner! With our expertise, we help them to determine those. We don’t typically provide lists. We show them how to figure it out and connect with the right people so they can do it on their own in the future. We also have tools to support their success.
This morning, I want to share some insights on determining “suspects” from “prospects,” and provide some help in prospecting for long-term success. Here are five approaches or ideas to consider when prospecting, understanding that if you are a professional sport team versus a charity with one staff person versus a municipality, the applicability will be different.
- Look to see who you spend money with—who are your suppliers. If you spend money with them, they want to see you continue to be successful. They want to keep your business, so you should be talking to them. Furthermore, if they are a vendor to you, you can probably help them secure other clients as well. This process works. Talk to the people that hold your accounts.
- If you have a subscriber base, be that ticket subscribers if you are a sports team, performing arts organization, or festival, or you are a charity with donor emails, or a member association, take a look at your email data base. Most people use their personal email for these accounts, but some use their work ones. If you have 5,000 people in your data base, even if just 100 use their work address, you now have a warm lead into these companies. Of that 100, possibly 15 are companies that you would like to prospect. Now you have 15 warm leads!
- Don’t go after the telecoms and financial institutions just because they have money (or so you think). If they are not a fit, you are wasting your time and theirs. Furthermore, as a colleague of mine, Christi Cruz always says, “Stay in your own lane.” If you are a small local charity doing a golf tournament in rural PEI, RBC is probably not your best prospect for title sponsorship if they don’t have a local branch in town, or even in a nearby town. You may be better off looking at a local credit union. Let the big properties go after the big sponsors. Stay in your lane. (Noted: There are exceptions to the rule, but exceptions are not the norm.)
- Know who your audience is. If you can deliver youth young adults 14-24, talk to the businesses trying to reach them like clothing stores, food outlets, and movie theatres, not financial management companies and relators! You have to know your audience. Where do they spend their money? How much money do they spend? Some research for a client that we did through our Sponsorship Playbook prospecting tool clearly showed the client that there were three companies in the children’s education expenditures channel that indexed very high. That meant that our client’s audience was three to four times more likely than the average Canadian in the same psychological and sociographic cohort to spend money at these stores. This client “owned” this audience for these three brands. But the average spend was under $500 a year. So, it was probably not the best investment to target these stores because your folks might love those stores more than others, but they are not impactful spenders in that category of children’s education products. Know your audiences, what they spend and where!
- This is a really simple one. Look at your own network. Do you have a dentist, lawyer, accountant, barber/hairdresser, grocery store you shop at a lot, clothing store you buy from all the time, etc.? You probably do. I do. Which of these, if not all, are looking to find more customers? I am guessing quite a few. So why not help them grow their business through a sponsorship with your organization? And guess what? You already know them, so it’s much easier to get a discovery session with them!
I hope this helps, and if you ever want to chat further about prospecting, please reach out to me.
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