For the people that haven’t read the previous article I have written perhaps it would be good if you briefly scanned it through right here. My name is once more Steven “dfb” Leunens and I have written an update to my previous article/column. Let’s get started with the next big step, your first contacts! So you have a skilled team, a decent organisation and a good level of dedication and motivation? Great, then you can start the real work right now!
So who should you contact? Everything depends on how far you are with your projects, what experience you have and what you have done in preparation for this. For this article I’ll stick to the basics. Every clan needs a server, comms like ventrilo or teamspeak and maybe some hosting. This article will show you how to approach these possible sponsors and how to ask for sponsorship. Unlike other articles I refuse to give people a clean example of something I wrote. I insist that you do that yourself since that is the best way to learn!
How to start? - Investigate!!!
Investigate yourself
Find out what your assets are, what makes your team/project stand out from the rest and why a sponsor should take you on. Some questions you should pose:
- How good are our team compared to others competitively?
- How can our community and/or website provide customers/advertising for the possible sponsor?
- What could convince someone to sponsor us?
- Do we have any other assets that might be interesting and worth telling?
Find an answer to these basic questions and you will have a basic start for your presentation.
Investigate your competitors
Try finding out how other teams do it and how they got their sponsors. Try asking some experienced manager for tips and hint or asking them to send you some of their stuff. Learn from your competitors since they often already have the edge. Find out what edge they have and use it! Expand it and improve it, make your own edge…
Investigate the sponsors
This is an important part of the sponsorship quest. Don’t start off contacting the first company you come across. Do some researches on companies that are known for their good sponsorship programs that have a good band with eSports or from people you know. Find out what the company does and how you can help improve their income. Compose a list and start off with the most interesting prospects. Take your time and personalize your presentations! This is very important! Having a basis to rely on when contacting is good but we always try to make each and every presentation unique and tuned in into the needs of the company we are contacting!
Investigate the means of the presentation
Should I use a pdf file? An email? A PowerPoint presentation? Shall I build a website for this? Should I perhaps just talk to the owner via msn or email? The answer to this question is simple, there is no answer, each case is again unique. So what is my advice? Experiment, find out what kind of presentation suits what kind of company. Try out different presentations or give the company the choice and ask them what they would prefer.
And then what? - make it happen!!!
Ok so now you done all the investigating, what should you do next? Well the next big step would be actually making it happen. Build up your PowerPoint presentations and rehearse your presentation for irc/msn or even the phone. Make your website unique or practise making the emails. The only real way to learn it is by doing it, not by reading what I have written here. After this article you might think you know how to do it, but you won’t until you have actually done it… over and over and over and over again.
Another issue I would like to bring up is how you should present yourself, perhaps this will be the next item on my column/article list but I would like to add now some notes on how you should present yourself best. Always work top down. This means that when you want to get somewhere you need to convince people that your product or service is what they should chose even before they know what it is! This is a very hard part of presenting yourself but essential. Always aim to explain who you are and what you can do for the sponsor before you ask them to sponsor you. People that receive a lot of emails concerning sponsorship will often not read the things you wrote after you say you want sponsorship. An example: let's say you have VoO playing for you and he is winning every WT stop. If you go on about the fact you want sponsoring in the introduction page many people reading will already disregard what comes next and not even read it! So always put the motivation at the beginning, convince your audience before you ask them what you want.
Ok so now it’s up to you to do it and experiment with the options, the different ways of telling what you want to say and the different ways of showing you can actually mean something for your sponsor. I won’t leave you in the dark though, below you can find some hints and tips that I can just give you.
1. Always try to be polite when talking to someone, “dear mister/madam” and “with kind regards” always make a better impression then “hey there chap” and “I’ll catch you later”.
2. Make mistakes, that is the best way of learning something. By making mistakes you will make sure that next time you will do it right, cause if you trip over the same trap twice…
3. Never underestimate the power of enthusiasm and passion, they will often get you further then facts and figures.
4. If you come across as professional, you have won the first battle.
5. Start with smaller companies and work your way up, don’t go mailing Intel first thing.
6. Prepare yourself well for everything, doing something right often costs less time then doing it wrong.
7. Be unique, create an edge, do it your way. No one can tell you how it’s really done, learn from other but create your own style. By duplicating others you will only repeat others and on the short term it might be a success but it will never work on the long run.
8. You will fail, more then once… You can’t stop it, it will happen. But when it does (and that will be quite often), don’t get scared or lose faith, if you have dedication and motivation you will get there, no matter what.
9. Put yourself in the shoes of the possible sponsor to get a better view on their side of the story. Understanding the people you are talking to and what their motives might be is the best way to run a smooth conversation. This way you can adapt to what they are saying and play in their cards.
10. If you know anyone that works or helps out with a certain company or someone that can help you design a nice logo or presentation then ask them for more info or some help! You cannot do this on your own and asking for help is perfectly natural. You will only achieve you goals faster and make the end product better!
There are ten tips that might be helpful for your first mails or presentations. I hope this will help some people out there that are having difficulties achieving what they want or if you are stuck. I might again make a next article that will go more in depth on an issue or two about management of some kind. If you like it, feel free to comment on the article or start a forum thread. If you have any more questions or just want a chat you can mail me at steven@tek-9.net , contact me on IRC: tek9|dfb or just make a forum thread and I will reply.
With kind regards
Steven “dfb” Leunens
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