Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day—the day we share our love with our loved ones. Perhaps you will bring home flowers or chocolates to your partner. Maybe it will be a romantic dinner for two. If you have young kids, they are probably heading to school with lots of little cut out Valentines for all the kids in the class, perhaps even with Valentine cupcakes for everyone!
Valentines of today (created by Hallmark and executed so well by the flower and chocolate industries) is supposed to be about love and caring. Whether it is your first Valentines together or you have been together for 50+ years, it is about expressing your love and admiration, and the relationship that exists between you and another special person.
Some may wince at this, but I look at partnerships the same way. A great deal of my training on sponsorship, sales, or business relationship development is based on a comparison to dating. I show how lead generation followed by the sponsor cultivation period/discovery sessions, ultimately to the “proposal” and then the consummation of the proposal and the “making it work” over time phase all relate to those same steps in the dating world. (In another TMC© we can go into that deeper!).
If our relationships with our sponsorship partners are like marriages or dating, what do you plan to do for your partners tomorrow? When I lived in Calgary, my Rotary Club sold and delivered strawberry shortcakes on Valentine’s Day as a fundraiser. I bought hundreds and sent them to clients and their staffs. But you don’t have to go that far. You can send an email, DM, or text and tell your partner (brand or property) how much they mean to you and wish them a happy Valentine’s Day. It will make an impression. How many of your competitors will be wishing their partners in business a Happy Valentine’s Day? You will truly differentiate yourself and stand out (versus sending a physical or virtual Christmas card that everyone sends and gets lost in the plethora of “season’s greetings”).
So, from me to you—Happy Valentine’s Day! I really appreciate you reading my TMC. Thanks for being a subscriber.
If you want to send a Valentine’s Day gift to a local municipal sponsorship professional, encourage them, or even pay for them to attend the WSC® – Municipal Sponsorship Summit being hosted later this month on February 27-28 in Richmond Hill, Ontario.
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