Selling Local Sponsorships for Nonprofits: Reaching Out

A cause is often the cornerstone of many sports and entertainment sponsorship platforms. Today's "key learning" comes from Joe Waters, who is the Director of Cause Marketing for Boston Medical Center, an avid blogger at Selfishgiving.com and a rabid Boston Red Sox fan. In addition to being a one-time winner of the SponsorPitch Friday Caption Contest, he has agreed to lend us his insights on cause marketing, which is more important than ever after Performance Research revealed that 41% of consumers believe sponsorships of nonprofits should increase to raise opinions of corporate America.

Now that you have a some strategies for finding qualified prospects, let’s look at making some progress at getting some extended face time with new prospects that are neither current sponsors nor aware of your organization. Yep, I’m talking about prospects in that outer ring and making cold calls.

Regardless of the channel of communication (e.g. phone, email, in person at say a networking event), the following rules apply:

Your #1 goal is to stay prospect-centric. Always be prepared to adjust your messaging with prospects to meet their needs, interests and goals. You may have just spoken to three prospects this morning that were happy to talk solely about the event sponsorship, but can you make the shift when the next prospect wants to talk about your nonprofit’s mission? Not all sponsors commit because of the marketing benefits. You have to adjust your pitch accordingly if you plan to keep their interest and preserve their potential as a prospect for sponsorship.

Stand out from your competition. Let’s face it: most business people have pretty low expectations of nonprofit types. They expect you to ask for money, and to bring little else to the table except your empty, cupped hands . But if that’s all your hear from every fundraiser that passes through your office day in and day out, that gets a little old. Be different. Ask them about their business. Start by offering them something. Enlighten them on how supporting a cause can deliver a competitive edge and boost employee morale, among other things. Show them you know a little about their industry and competitors. You know what the average fundraiser does (that person may even be you!) step out from that mold and you’ll get the attention you want and deserve.

Don’t give them an excuse to say no. This is my pet peeve. Mailing prospects reams of information. Not calling people back when they ask you to. Designing sponsorship packages with little creativity and even less flexibility. These are all excuses (no, good reasons) for prospects to say no. I always say that you never want to get to a point with a prospect when she gives you a flat-out “no.” Psychologically it’s a big threshold for a decision maker to cross and when they do, well, they generally mean it (Think mom: “No means no!”). So why would you want to do something stupid that will hasten a fatal, perhaps unalterable response? Think about it.

Persuasion is incremental. Dude, these things take time. It isn’t going to happen with one call, or one email, or one meeting. You need to plan for sponsorship success and how each interaction will bring you a closer to your goal. So if the objective of that first call isn’t to close the sale, what is it? It’s a question you should know the answer to before you pick up the phone. Then get busy with steps 2 through 22.

With all the uses of technology these days, the phone is still probably the first thing you pick up to contact prospects. Here are some of the most common questions I get about working the phones.

Should I leave a message? Depends on who on my team you talk to. @holtmurray very rarely leaves a message. He’ll call and call until someone picks up. He believes leaving a message just gives a prospect a reason not to pick up their phone the next time they see your number. I, on the other hand, like to leave a message. A quick one that includes info about why I’m calling and a couple benefits to him or her. I think a message softens up the prospect so when you do get them on the phone it’s not a total “cold call.” They know why you’re calling and, if you’ve left a good message, may be neutral or mildly inclined to your proposal.

How should I deal with gatekeepers? Do your best to make them your friends. They are valuable allies in getting to the prospect. It can be a long, hard slog to success without them. Another tip: they want something too. Sometimes it’s something that will save them from the boredom of their jobs. Other times it’s talking to someone who has similar challenges in their life (juggling work and kids, a long commute, difficult roommates, etc.). Yet another is for someone from all the organizations they work with to remember them–and not just the boss–around the holidays! Sending over a half-zip sweatshirt with our logo on it to a prospect’s assistant has gone a long way in securing a new friend and ally. As Malcolm X said, “By any means necessary!”

When should I stop calling? If they are bonafide prospects, never. This goes back to never giving a prospect a reason to say no. As long as you never drive the prospect to the point that they tell you to get lost, you should be able to call from time to time to pitch them on new programs, to follow up on emails, to invite them to events, etc. We just recruited a prospect that we had been calling for five years! Qualifying them as a real prospect and being persistent paid off!

The phone is the most popular way to reach prospects. But email is another great communication tool and I have some suggestions for using that as well:

Keep it short. There’s nothing worse than a long email. Keep it to a 150 words or less. Think about it: how did you feel the last time you opened an email and had to scroll down to finish reading it? Did you want to get another email from that person?

Bullet everything. Attach nothing. To make it easier to scan your email for key info, bullet, bold, underline the things you want your prospect to read and remember. Also, everything you want your prospect to see should be in the email itself, rather than risking putting anything vital in an attachment. That doesn’t mean you can’t use attachments, just make sure what’s in them is not vital to the goal of your email (FYI: I attach things all the time, but it’s additional, not important, information).

Use email to accelerate and entrap. Like you, I use email to get information to people quickly. For our annual Dinner Gala that I’m selling sponsorships to right now, I threw away the sponsorship letters years ago and rely on emails and the phone to recruit sponsors. In addition to accelerating the process, email also entraps when prospective sponsors tell me on the phone they haven’t received the info. “Really? Well, I’m sending it to you right now. Is it in your inbox so you can open it and I can walk you through the sponsorship? Yep, I love email. It’s like an electronic speed trap for prospects. And like we use to say when we were teens, “You can beat the cop car, but you can’t beat their radio!”

The next stop in our sponsorship series will look at how to craft winning presentation for prospects. Faceless phone calls and emails are history. It’s show time.

Joe can be reached at [email protected] and followed on twitter at @joewaters and at selfishgiving.com . If you are interested in contributing your key learnings, shoot us an email at [email protected]