You’ve no doubt noticed my silence here for quite some time. It’s not that I’ve been too busy (that would be a cop-out) or that I’m not interested, but I’ve just got so much in my head that I can’t get the first ideas on (digital) paper. Borrowing inspiration from my friend Lee Schneider’s 500 Words, I am going to commit myself to one weekly post. If I get more in there, great, but if not, each Wednesday you’ll be able to avoid your own mistakes by learning from mine in my “Wednesday Wisdom”.

We’re basically at the end of the sponsor search season for cycling, and my projects will end up about 50% successful (not bad in this economy, methinks.) It was eye opening, though, for at least one of my clients, to see how much more holistically sponsors are looking at relationships than they used to. I thought I’d share with you a few concepts that they need to wrap their head around before they restart their search. Hopefully you will find them useful as well.

1. Integrated Sponsor Programs – Integration works on two different levels. First is the planning and connection of your various platforms (in-person, website, social media, etc.) so that they leverage and support each other in a way that makes sense for the sponsor you’re pitching. Second is the integration of your various human elements. Particularly for those in team sports, it is critical to create plans for individual athletes that integrate them with the team’s efforts.
2. Metrics - Everyone knows that a successful sponsor program must have metrics. From the sponsor viewpoint, you need to show more than just media impressions data, your proposal needs to demonstrate an effect on elements like customer engagement and influencer relationships. On the sponsored property side, your data needs to show in detail who was reached (both demo and psychographics), where, and how.
3. Stories - While data is great, it’s not possible to sell a sponsorship on numbers alone. Stories from real people about the positive effect you’ve had for them will go miles further than any data point. Integrate these into your pitch to illustrate the various benefits you are selling.
4. Time - Be honest with yourself about the timeline. Just because you need money now doesn’t mean that your sponsor is ready or able to commit now. Plan far enough in advance that you can pull together your program(s), data, and stories, find sponsors (this is very time consuming), present to them, and then negotiate your partnership with the sponsor.

This is by no means a complete or exhaustive list of items necessary for a proposal, as there are plenty of other resources that will walk you through the basics. However, the further beyond the basics your proposal goes, the greater your chance of success.