Sponsorship Strategist

3 trends to innovate your sponsorship value

If you’ve worked with me or taken one of my workshops, you know that one of my mantras is that selling sponsorship is all about selling the future. If that’s the case, it follows that an important activity for you is to keep an eye on the future, at least the near-term future. You’ll want to pay attention to changes and shifts in the marketplace that present opportunities for your organization and sponsors. These shifts provide you with important information about brands, culture, your audiences, and about the business landscape in general. These patterns can influence new ideas for your sponsorship efforts and value you create. Read on to get started with three trends I see. Read more →

Are you a sponsorship opener or closer?

How’s your sponsorship sales follow through? Are you proactively taking the steps necessary, from beginning to end, to complete sales and move your prospects to the next step, with recovery time in between? Or fizzling out before this important step? Read more →

Sponsor logo clusters and other marketing problems

You know how some marathon t-shirts or nonprofit event emails or hard copy invitations have a big jumble of logos, most of which are so small you can’t even read them? Have you ever wondered whether this glob of logos is valuable? Read Gail Bower's response to Kivi Leroux Miller's "When Sponsor Promotion Consumes Your Communications Channels," who likens this display to a Times Square billboard. Read more →

Sponsorship and relationships

Not all sponsorship deals work out. When they don't, things can get awkward. Learning from a personal experience what can happen when you don't continue to build a relationship. Read more →

Don’t sell green bananas.

I see lots of organizations selling green bananas. Unripened sponsorship programs that are undifferentiated, commoditized, and seller-focused. Read more →

Stop before you call

Have you ever instructed your staff member who has no sponsorship skills to go call some random company about sponsorship? You might be tossing your team into the sponsorship abyss. Read more →

17 Corporate Sponsorship Dos and Don'ts

Here are 17 hot tips to fire up your sponsorship development engine. Read more →

Should your sponsor be your conference speaker?

Recently I’ve noticed lots of conferences, large and small, providing sponsors with the right to be a speaker. Here’s why this move can be problematic. Read more →

3 Giant corporate sponsorship mistakes nonprofit organizations and associations make

During the season of New Year’s resolutions, beware of very bad habits your organization may have picked up by osmosis in the marketplace. These habits could be costing you a lot of money in both liability and money on the table. Keep reading to learn more about 3 pretty big mistakes organizations make. Read more →

Corporate sponsorship and effective marketing for professional services firms

If professional services companies — law firms, accounting practices, marketing and ad agencies — are on your sponsorship prospect list, you’re going to have to use more persuasion to educate and acquire them. Recently, the presenters of a webinar aimed at professional services providers highlighted their research on the types of marketing tactics that these firms use. They also revealed which work and which don't. Read more →