Pursuing Partnerships

That’s also the approach Reid Romsaas takes. As vice president of sales at CRC Meeting Management in Minneapolis, Romsaas maintains a database of about 1,200 people who have attended clients’ conferences in the past four years. These are the fodder for new sponsorship searches, but he and his colleagues don’t depend completely on cold-calling.

“We’ll sit down with [CRC] officers and say, ‘How do you want to approach this for the new year?’ We divide up who we’re going to contact. For instance, John, one of the officers, might call certain people because he has a good relationship with them.”

Human nature being what it is, some sponsors are motivated by a competitive spirit. “I think that the thing that probably is generally most successful for new sponsors is just to see that their competitors are sponsoring us. They say, ‘Huh, am I missing something? Maybe I should be looking at [sponsoring] them.’” says Martha Nevanen, director of partnerships and sponsorship at the Minnesota chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators, a trade association for professionals in public relations, marketing, and other corporate communication. (She’s also vice president of marketing and communications at United Properties, a real estate services company in Bloomington.)

The only catch is that sponsors often ask for exclusivity within their fields—to be the only, say, soft drink maker or office paper supplier on the roster. So if their competitors are on the roster, jealous companies may be shut out.

No biggie, Nevanen says; they can simply scoop the competition on a future sponsorship deal. “We have professional development conferences and seminars, but we also have networking and membership events,” she explains. “So, for example, if a sponsor can’t get into a professional development conference [because of an exclusivity agreement], maybe they want to look at a networking event. It will give them the same type of exposure, but in a different way.”

The Courting Process

Once potential sponsors are identified, event planners usually send out form letters and follow up with phone calls. Some of these efforts generate actual, face-to-face meetings. That’s half the battle, but Fitzpatrick warns not to assume too much, too early.

“I always go in with a proposal ready, but knowing I’m probably not going to get the sponsorship from that first initial meeting,” she says. “Generally, I’m going to spend more of my time listening to find out what their needs are and how we can match them. I think one of the mistakes many event planners make, especially at nonprofits, is that they go in looking for only their side of the story. They have to realize this is a business-to-business transaction.”

Mason says it’s important to provide visuals—don’t overwhelm them with pages and pages of  text. “You can show them one picture and say ‘You’ll have a banner like this over the entrance to the event,’” she says. “That is so much easier for them to grasp and for them to sell to their higher-ups. Usually it’s got to go to a couple of different levels in a corporation before they sign on. So I think that any time you can give them a tangible visual, even a video, you’ll do better.”

What do potential sponsors care about? Numbers, for one thing. A solid estimate of attendance will give them an idea of how many impressions they can make. “A sponsorship is really about a commercial exchange,” Mason says. “They are buying something and getting something in return. So be really realistic with those numbers. If they are inflated or if they are not quantifiable, the sponsors are going to figure it out. Any kind of outside quantification process is  always helpful—you know, if the police department is quoted as saying there were at least 10,000 people there.”

But not all crowds are the same. Sponsors are especially interested in the demographics of your event. They want to assess attendees’ potential as customers.

“In our work, the biggest challenge for us is to identify the real value to the potential sponsor,” Nevanen says. “As a nonprofit association, you can easily get hung up on the fact that you need money and you need help doing your events. Really, for the sponsor, it has to be about getting name recognition, being associated with a credible organization, and having exposure to the right kind of buying audience.”