Do You Need A Sponsorship Consultant?
You don’t hire a sponsorship consultant because your team can’t sell sponsorships. You hire a sponsorship consultant because they are specialists and you have a goal to meet.
Using the right sponsorship consultant for your sponsorship program will make all the difference between meeting and exceeding your revenue goals and falling short year after year. The question is how do you know if you need a sponsorship consultant?
You need a sponsorship consultant if:
- Your team has only a basic understanding of how sponsorship works
- Your team doesn’t have much experience with sponsorships
- You have new revenue goals that require a higher level of sponsorship
- You need help with executive buy-in to sponsorships
- You are adding new activations to your portfolio or are doing a portfolio overhaul
It is not the right time to hire a sponsorship consultant if:
- You don’t have a marketing plan in place
- Your senior executives don’t champion outside advice and direction
- You don’t have a solid brand in your niche
- You plan to hand off sponsorship to a third party and not be involved
A sponsorship consultant is your personal expert on sponsorships, but they can’t work in a silo. Executive buy-in and access to your team and resources are imperative to your sponsorship program’s success.
Once you have decided to hire a consultant you have to decide how you want to work together. Will you hire your consultant on a project by project basis? Will they handle your whole portfolio, or will they be on a retainer? Let’s look at each.
Single Project – If you have one large event per year you can hire a consultant to work just on that event sponsorship. You can even specify a specific set of deliverables like a sponsorship prospectus, list of 300 leads, an email sequence and a sponsorship goal of $100K.
Project-Based – This is a holistic, all-encompassing consulting project that included help with outlining sponsorship goals. This approach also includes the development of an overall sponsorship assessment, recommendations, development, and execution of a sponsorship strategy.
A project-based consultant will provide a definite set of deliverables. In this scenario, your consultant will be educating your executives and your team on sponsorship best practices. Having an experienced consultant of this type of project is important because they need to be able to see the potholes in the road and be able to guide the team around them.
Retainer – A sponsorship consultant on retainer needs to have a great skill set in order to be on retainer because they may need to perform different tasks including meeting with stakeholders, staff and representing/supporting you at industry events. Having a sponsorship consultant on retainer could be a great resource if:
- You have a very complex sponsorship and require high-level expertise on an as-needed basis
- You have a talented but inexperienced team that needs guidance to develop them into your future sponsorship team
- You have more work than people
- You have great marketers on your team, but you need a “closer” – someone to get the contracts over the line and signed
Hourly – You may be thinking you want to pay your sponsorship consultant on an hourly basis because it’s cheaper. You couldn’t be more wrong. You pay your consultant based on outcomes not on how many hours they put into your project. If a consultant comes to your project with a number of successful projects under their belt and a book of business (pre-qualified leads they are willing to market your event to), and the ability to close deals then they will expect a percentage of the sales. Expect to pay 10%-20% of your sponsorship revenue.
In-House – At times it may be a good idea to hire an in-house sponsorship consultant to work on your team for a specific amount of time, but this usually won’t work for a high-level consultant that manages a high-functioning team. Also, most professionals have more than one account – which is beneficial to you because they have the experience and staff to manage your project properly.
What Type of Consultant Do You Need?
It is easy to find a consultant who wants to help you with your sponsorship project for a fee. It’s more difficult to make sure you have hired the right person for the job. Below are some of the specialized areas of sponsorship consultancy you may want to work with:
Strategic Consulting
Hire a Strategic Consultant if you need help with your sponsorship strategy. This is not a marketing position, but your strategist does need to a person of creativity and action. Your strategist should have experience with taking a sponsorship program from A to B within a specific time period.
Implementation Specialist
This person offers full-service sponsorship assistance from soup to nuts. This includes everything from designing a sponsorship prospectus to being in charge of sponsorship execution, to working on-site at your event as the sponsor point of contact. Your implementation specialist should have one or two folks on staff to manage all the moving parts and the ability to mobilize more folks for on-site events if needed.
Sponsorship Sales Consultant
A sponsorship sales consultant can be the most important person on your team. Once your sponsorship program is developed, the prospectus is designed and key sponsors identified, you still need to close those deals. Contracts signed equals dollars and no amount of excellent planning can get around that. This consultancy has demonstrated experience in the field. They can plan email sequences, call campaigns, follow-up schedules and have people on their team who are professional but fearless about getting the contract signed. Experience with consultative selling is necessary and a track record of making sponsorship revenue goals is a must.
Ideally, your Sponsorship Sales Consultant will be part of the implementation team and can take on a leadership aspect when necessary.
Hiring the right sponsorship consultant is key to making your revenue goals. Leave yourself plenty of time to do your research and speak to several people. Six months before your event is not enough time to bring on an implementation consultant, but you may be able to get a good result with a sponsorship sales consultant.
Have a Budget for Your Sponsorship Consultant
Keep your budget in mind also. You want results but be careful of handing over full payment for a project before you see results. A fair budget would be 20% of your expected sponsorship income, paid on a draw over a few months to a year.
To avoid risk many asset holders want to avoid paying anything until they see some sponsor dollars come it but by insisting upon this you are just ensuring one of two things:
- You will have a hard time finding an experienced consultancy to take on your project
- You will hire a less experienced consultant who will take your project and put someone junior on it while they look for actual paid clients who they will put most of their time and energy into
Every business has operating costs. By demanding your consultant work for free is unprofessional. After all, professional consultants already know they have to produce results for their clients, but they can’t do that if they can’t pay for the resources needed to execute your sponsorship plan.
For more information on sponsorships visit www.boothbid.com.