The first thought that many of my clients have is this: “What we could offer and what they wanted was not in synergy”
If you are at the stage where you are getting rejections here and there (let's say between 20 to 50), this is the best time to get curious as to why those potential sponsors within your niche do not want what you offer.
Action Step:
To help you find answers, I recommend to send at least 20 to 50 emails to those who have said 'no' on why they decided to not to join you as a sponsor.
This is important. Either you'll get critical feedback on what's wrong with the sponsorship packages and how to improve it, or you'll see that sometimes it's not the right time, or they have no budget etc.
Too many times when I do a follow-up on the "No"s, I have gotten amazing insight to on their marketing budget & timeline ("we usually approve event sponsorships every year in March") or their business priorities (we are not planning to invest in any event sponsorship this year") or simply because they are busy since they are a huge company that received many invitations to sponsor events ("we already have a few events that we're involved in).
If you got any of this, congrats!
This means you are on the right track.
This shows that you had already:
A) Make sure that your sponsorship benefits in your proposal is already a solution to your sponsors' visibility, sales & authority-building problems
B) Price it reasonably accordingly to the solutions offered
But if your sponsors is just plain ol "nah, I'm not interested"
Then something else is happening.
The problem is there's a mismatch in the sponsorship profile targeted.
Let me explain in business to customers analogy.
If you approach a pizza lover with a pizza offer, the answer is never "I don't want that" but "I'm not hungry now, can I visit your store tomorrow?" or "I don't like pepperoni pizza, do you have hawaiian pizza".
But if you approach someone who doesn't love pizza - the answer is always "I don't want your pizza. Like ever."
See the REAL problem?
This is where I encourage you to take a step back and relook at all the sponsorship profiles you're approaching to make sure it meets your sponsorship criteria with the right targeting.
Cheers to your event success,
Rashidah
