Five Ways to Build a Better Relationship with Your Sponsor

Navigating a sponsor relationship can be daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. There are several ways to build a better relationship with your sponsor, and they all involve having and maintaining great communication, at all times. Here are five bread-and-butter ways to build a better relationship with your sponsor.

1. Communicate Your Expectations

Building the best relationship possible with your sponsors requires they know your expectations. Communicate with them your goals and all of the results that they should expect to see from your services. Ensure each partner understands what you can offer as an agency or rights holder, and vice versa. You should be very familiar with each sponsor’s goals and strategy as it relates to your property to help ensure a long and healthy relationship.

2. Create & Maintain That Close Working Relationship

Wanting to create a close working relationship may seem to be a no-brainer, but if your sponsor happens to be located thousands of miles away, or just has a completely different schedule than what you’re used to working with, you must acknowledge that it is essential that you work closely with them, and that you maintain that close working relationship. Determine their preferred mode of communication, and maintain a consistent relationship from there. Sponsors want to work closely and easily with rights holders, but sometimes that may take compromise from both sides to ensure success.

3. Maintain Transparent Communication

A big part of working closely with sponsors that some forget about is maintaining open, transparent communication. Discuss all of the work you’ve done and what lies ahead in great detail in order to show your sponsor all that goes into your services, and how your work is worthwhile.

Often, it’s worth it to recap each event (or series of events, as the case may be) with your sponsors. Keeping both sides in the loop as much as possible will help with tactic changes need to be made - each partner can react more quickly.

4. Get to Know Sponsors’ Target Markets

Not only is it beneficial to get to know your sponsors’ target markets so that you can get your work done, but it’s also important to get to know your sponsors’ target markets so that you grow more in common with your sponsor. Thus, you’ll grow closer with your sponsor.

When first starting your relationship, no doubt you’ll have shared your property’s typical audience. As the partnership continues, you’ll want to work together with your sponsor to find the particular events, activations, or advertising that fits best with their goals. Remember, sponsorship is most successful when both sides work together: each side has information the other needs to do their best.

5. Meet Sponsor Expectations

We can assume that you already do this if you’re interested in reading this blog for your business. The thing is, any sponsors, properties, rights holders, or brands can better work with their agencies by simply communicating expectations, goals, target market, and their own strategies. Only once you make sure that you have all of that information from them can you better try to help them reach their goals in the ways that they want to.

In order to achieve the best results, you have to have an excellent relationship with your sponsor. Following the five basic guidelines above, you’ll communicate just the right story in order to achieve the most valuable results. Sponsorship activation is achieved with proper management of sponsorship assets, and that must include a better relationship with your sponsor.

Need Sponsorship Planning Advice?

Tandem Partnerships is Your Sponsorship Advisory Resource

We offer strategic planning for the development, growth, and ongoing success of sponsorship programs and other revenue-generating opportunities.  We thoroughly analyze clients’ objectives and interests in order to build the best sponsorship programs for them. Tandem Partnerships brings experience, expertise, and creative insight to every project and client.

Contact us today to know that you’ll be offering the most valuable sponsorship opportunities to your partners, as long-term, and as stress-free as possible.

One More Thing... Tune in Soon for More Ways to Build Better Relationships

Since there really are so many ways to improve either communication or expectations between two parties, this will be part one in a two-part series. Tune in later this month for part two, where we’ll discuss five ways to build a better relationship with your agency.

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