You got the meeting with your potential sponsor. While you're very excited, you're also not sure how to make the meeting and enjoy all the 30 minutes the prospect has allotted for you.
If you have a hard time doing this yourself, that's fine, below I present 30 well-thought-out and effective questions to make the meeting happen.
The questions I have listed below are intended to discover the target audience, preferred assets and desired outcomes of sponsors, through exploratory or discovery meetings.
It's not desirable or necessary to ask all these questions, but having them nearby or etched in memory will help keep the conversation going.
Questions about the Audience
· Could you tell me about your ideal client? · What do your customers value most?
· What kind of feedback do you hear from your customers so we can help? · Our audience is X, Y, Z. Is this an audience segment you are looking for?
· Could you tell me more about the demographics of your target audience?
· What do you want your customers to think? What action would you like them to take after meeting you?
·Tell us more about your digital presence/strategies/followers on social media?
·Is having audience data important to you when making sponsorship decisions? · What kind of audience data is important to you?
Success measures and ROI
· Have you been involved in sponsorship before?
· What action do your customers take immediately before making a purchase? · Have you used the sponsorship strategy to get leads?
·What do you need as an objective result of a partnership to consider it a success?
· I noticed you are sponsoring X, how is this partnership working for you?
·What do you like most about this partnership?
· What kind of advertising are you involved in right now? Are you happy with the results?
·What do you want marketing channel X, Y, Z to offer you?
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Tell me about your sponsorship experiences. What worked and what went wrong. · How important is it that your employees are involved in the sponsorship process? · How important is networking to you? · Who do you expect to meet when attending a networking event?
·Or is brand awareness one of your advertising goals? Why? Why not?
· Do you have experience with email marketing or sampling? Tell me more about it. · What are some of your biggest challenges in connecting with customers? · How much does it cost you to win a new customer? · What is the most expensive part of attracting new customers? · What is your best technique for getting people to sign up for a test / visit your website / sign up for your email list? · What are some of the metrics you use to determine the success of a sponsorship investment? · What are some of the frustrations you've had with other properties that we could work to avoid? · Are there any “must have” benefits you would like to see?
Don't ask all these questions at the first meeting
Of course, if you only have 30 minutes of sponsor time to spare, we wouldn't suggest asking all 30 questions. Even with a longer meeting, you want to choose the questions that are most pertinent to your organization and your goals. Limit it to seven, maybe ten questions that really matter.
After all, you want to give the sponsor time to reflect on their responses and respond accurately and thoughtfully. Also, as we said before, they should also be given a chance to ask follow-up questions.
The discovery meeting is two-way, or at least it should be. Also, you want the meeting to be comfortable, not like an interrogation where it's one question after another.
When the meeting starts, ask if you can take notes. It's especially polite to do this if you're meeting in person with a potential sponsor. Write down information for each response you receive.
Then, after the meeting, review this information, compare it to your own goals, statistics, and numbers, and start working on your proposal.
Conclusion
As someone trying to sell a sponsorship package, it's important that you carefully analyze your own sales tactics.
If you've been looking for potential sponsors with a proposal right off the bat, that might be why you're not getting any responses.
Instead, it's best to use a kick-off meeting for the discovery phase. By asking the right questions, you can learn more about the sponsor and use that information to start planning a strategy.
Running out of ideas for creating marketing activations? So, go to this article and learn how to create sponsorship opportunities.
A hug,
Jonathan Belluzzi Sponsorship Specialist