The Fundamentals of Sports Media and Sponsorship Sales: Developing New Accounts
is a tutorial in narrative form that provides practical step-by-step instruction on how to develop new sports sponsors and advertisers. There’s guidance covering the gamut from getting organized, identifying prospects, preparing for the first conversation, commanding the room when presenting a proposal and closing a piece of business.
PricewaterhouseCooper forecasts media rights and sponsorship will grow to $37 billion annually by 2018. In 2009, sponsorship and sports media rights produced just north of $20 billion. In today’s general environment of restrained growth, sports revenue continues to outpace the expansion of many mainstream industries.
Sales are the backbone of support for both these revenue sources. Because of these projections, there will be an accelerated need to find and train best-in-class sports sellers.
But sports sellers don’t have it easy. There are enough emotional challenges to weaken the resolve of even the best salespeople. As such, the text is chock-full of motivational suggestions and stimulating success stories.
The book provides counseling to help sellers maintain their emotional equanimity through the crucibles that they tackle regularly. There are chapters on what sellers can learn from great leaders and many tips and tricks to get through gatekeepers and other obstacles.
There are also interviews with some major marketing and advertising executives who share their views on a variety of subjects including how new sports sponsorship opportunities are best presented to them and what they consider to be both helpful and annoying behavior by sellers. Whether it’s the chief marketing officer of Wal-Mart or the sponsorship head of MasterCard, the guidance they share is precious.
The last chapter covers inspiring cold call successes including the three greatest in sports history; the sale of the naming rights to Barclays for the arena in Brooklyn, the NASCAR sale to Nextel for the naming rights to its cup series and most recently, the multi-million dollar sale by a relative newcomer to the business to Moda Health, covering the naming rights to the Rose Garden in Portland. As a result of this achievement, the seller, Uzma Rawn, was selected to Forbes’ top 30 under 30 in the sports space.
