I have written about prospecting before. I have covered off all the bases around making sure you know your audience. Once you know your audience you can generally prospect better because you know who is trying to reach that demographic. For instance, if the people attending your event primarily are 18-24 females… then figure our where 18–24-year-old females spend their money and go after those businesses. You have the audience they want!
And if you hire a consulting firm, traditionally they have the insights and knowledge to tell you who you should be calling on. Hey, we are one of those consulting firms! We get paid to tell you who to call on and why! Or we tell you who not to call on and why not. And we fit (for the most part) in with all the others who do it just the same. And that is the fact that the information provided by all thee brilliant consultants (lol… us included) is anecdotal. It is based on my 35 years of experience; plus, information we have in the files of a company that has been operating for almost 25 years. Plus, we are talking to brands every day, some are our clients, so we “know” who is looking and “who” is not and “what” they are looking for and “what” not. At least for the most part. But the key here is that this is still anecdotal. There is no science behind it. There is no data proof. There is no metrics to empirically show you who you should be calling on or why. Or up until the last 8 or so years this metric based prospecting has not been available to our industry.
The question is “how do you know who your audience is?”, and “who should you be calling on?” Once you know that you are 75% of the way there.
Some agencies can show you data based on high level survey and terms like “propensity to buy” or “likelihood” to buy, but if I am a brand I want empirical data that shows who your audience is as a property based on quantitative data specific to your specific organization not the general population. Then as a potential sponsor I want to know how much they spend (your actual audience) annually my types of products. So, if I am a fast-food joint, I want to know that of all your audience (be that a charity and donors, a symphony or sports club subscriber base or festival and attendees etc.) what percent of them are eating fast food 3 times a week or more and perhaps how much they annually spend on fast food. And if it turns out that you have 40% of your audience eats fast food 3 times a week and spend as a result $2350 per year each and that 40% of your audience account for 60,000 people that is $140,400,000 (no there is not extra zeros there… one hundred and forty million per year) per year spent by your audience on fast food. Now if I am a fast-food restaurant or restaurant chain, I would be saying… tell me how I can reach those 60,000 people that spend $140M a year that you have because I WANT them.
And yes, that can be done. We, through our Sponsorship Playbook™ product, (and others and their products) are already using data segmentation combined with algorithm development and AI to deliver this type of information. This is combined with the powerhouse data and insights Environics PRIZM5 Canadian consumer profiles delivers to us and then that is overlaid with income and spending appendages to pinpoint such information as noted above.
It is scary. But it is amazing. All of this starts with your data base and not the details… just the postal codes. (Guess why everyone asks for postal codes…lol) And most people don’t know this but within every single postal code across Canada there is 22,000 (yes twenty-two thousand) pieces of information associated to the people who live in that specific postal code. It is scary that there is that much info associated to your postal code but awesome when you are truly trying to figure out who your audience / subscribers / attendees / donors really are, really, really are… down to how much they spend at say Casino Niagara each year or a Bosley’s Pet Supplies or Montana’s Restaurant. The age of technology has opened doors to allow properties to pinpoint who their audience truly is and where they are actually spending their money. It is amazing, (did I mention that already?) and we have been doing this for clients since 2018!
Like everything else in our sector from AI proposal writing support to real time audience feedback to software to manage your assets and fulfilment programs – prospecting has grown beyond the anecdotal knowledge and experience formula for who to be prospecting to empirical data based prospecting that tells you specifically who your audience is, where they spend their money and how much! That to me is fascinating.
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