Sponsorships are critical to successful pro sports. Teams, leagues, and venues rely on sponsorship revenues to support their operations. Likewise, sponsors rely on the deals they work out to reach their audiences by way of events that make long lasting impressions. At the heart of it all is sponsorship management software.
Where teams are concerned, software powers the sponsorship sales process. After the fact, it is the main tool through which sponsorships are managed. So without a reliable, powerful, data-driven software package to work with, teams struggle to maximize sponsorship sales.
A Five-Step Process
The sponsorship sales process can be broken down into five basic steps. Each step of the way, managing everything through a sponsorship management software package is key to efficiency and productivity. KORE is the developer of one of the industry’s leading sponsorship management platforms.
According to KORE, here are the five steps of the sponsorship sales process:
1. Prospecting and Pipeline Building
Sponsorship sales begin with identifying potential sponsors and developing a sales pipeline to get from introduction to closing. The sales team uses a variety of resources to track prospects. They identify several dozen initial prospects that they can research. After brainstorming and networking, they choose the organizations they will approach with sponsorship offers.
2. Inventory and Asset Valuation
Step #2 in the sponsorship sales process is inventory and asset valuation. This is the practice of evaluating events, programs, and opportunities as assets that can be sold to sponsors. Each asset is a signed of value.
3. Proposal Development
Inventory evaluation is followed by proposal development. The marketing team creates tailored sponsorship packages for each potential sponsor based on a variety of factors. They account for audience demographics, sponsor goals, and so on.
4. Pitching Potential Sponsors
All the work done in the office is brought to bear when it is time to pitch potential sponsors with customized deals. Pitching may start with cold calls or advice visits. New information is gathered, questions are answered, and sales teams look for open doors to submit their proposals.
5. Activation and Fulfillment
The process is completed with sponsorship activation and fulfillment. Now it is time to coordinate all the details, establish lines of communication, and focus on delivering all promised assets.
Data Drives It All
It turns out that the sponsorship sales process is very repeatable. Teams that master it tend to have a fairly easy go of it, at least under normal circumstances. But the wild card in all of this is data. Sponsors need data to understand what it is they are being asked to do. They need data to confirm that a sponsorship deal is worth investing in.
It goes without saying the teams want to maximize the value of their sponsorship deals. Doing so requires a thorough understanding of fans. Not only that, but fans also need to be segmented for messaging purposes. Sponsors need to see data on all of this, data that proves teams know what they are doing.
Sponsorship management software is ideal for this sort of thing. A good software platform is capable of gathering all sorts of fan-related data through ticketing systems, in-event purchases, social media interaction, etc. Crunching the data to help sponsors effectively target their core audiences creates a winning sponsorship deal that makes everyone happy.
If sponsorship sales are what you do, where does your data come from? You might consider learning more about KORE Software and their sponsorship management platform. Your success boils down to data and how it is utilized. So how and from where you gather your data matters.
