How to De-Risk your Assets to Sponsors

When you break down sales it is essential you de-risking the thing you are selling.

You are trying to tell a story that helps them believe that this asset will lead to results in the goal your client has for the partnership.

This week on The Inches Podcast Rich and I dive into why it is important to de-risk your assets and how you can present this to your partner.

You can listen to the whole episode HERE but below are some notes from the episode.

Fit is vital to de-risking

We talk about fit every week it seems like, but it is really important to de-risking.

How can you help them de-risk if you don’t know their goals?

If you can understand their goal you can backtrack and tell the story of how your asset can help them reach it. This, by definition, is showing the path to how your asset will help, therefore de-risking your solution.

Trackability helps you de-risk

The more trackable your assets are, the less risky they are.

Why? Because you can prove whether it is doing well or not.

If you can’t track it, you can’t judge it. The sponsor knows this and understands that they may be throwing marketing dollars down an endless hole if you can’t show the metrics.

With trackable assets, you can not only convince and show them they will see results but also how you’ll be able to adjust if things aren’t going as planned.

Understand this and utilize it in your pitches.

Reverse engineer the goal and show how your asset will them achieve it

Getting back to fit, with your overall presentation you should be guiding them on how your asset can help them achieve their marketing and advertising goal.

To tell that story, you need to reverse engineer your assets and take your prospect through every step to how you plan on getting fans to take the action.

If your sponsor’s goal is to sell a car, you can’t just say “fans will see our in-stadium sign and think of your brand when they want to buy a car.”

There is a LOT of risks if you go with the above. Honestly…why would a brand say yes to that. They may as well put some flyers up themselves.

Instead, if you reverse engineered it like this:

“Your goal is to sell a car, I think we can all agree that no one buys a car just from an in-stadium sign, they buy from relationships. Our goal is to help your dealers build opportunities with our fans and condition them with some branding in the stadium. Here’s how we’ll do it…(insert dealership visits, digital re-targeting, signage here)”

This shows them that you understand the goal, you get how the dynamic works in their business, and are setting a path to put them in the best position to succeed with the partnership.

You are showing them how this will work, so there is very little risk.

Overall, you are the shepherd guiding them

A shepherds job is to guide the flock to safety. The same can be said about our job in sponsorship sales.

The goal when you walk into that meeting is that when you walk out of there your partner can clearly understand why they should choose your assets & partnership and how they will lead to their goal.

We talked last week about the structure of your presentation, that is the blueprint to telling your story, but the content needs to de-risk them in buying.

You are the guide, show them why your asset is the best advertising option to reach their goals.

Written by Nick Lawson, Co-founder at SQWAD. SQWAD helps sports teams and events connect fans to sponsors digitally during breaks in the action with digital activations & contests.