Wednesday 15 May 2013

Developing partnerships and sponsorship opportunities



15th May 2013

Developing partnerships and sponsorship opportunities 

The Athlete Life team at High Performance Sport New Zealand works with athletes across a number of areas and one area athletes often raise is how to develop partnerships and sponsorship opportunities.

Workshops in Auckland and Wellington have been held recently to help athletes develop these skills further.

The sponsorship and partnerships workshop 101 was held in Auckland last year, giving athletes an insight into how an organisation perceives partnerships and sponsorships. Recently, it was Wellington’s turn to offer this workshop to athletes and we had a wealth of local experts come in and offer their point of view, including: Steve Walters, General Manager IRB International Sevens series, Brad Monaghan, General Manager of Travel Bug in Trade Me and Shoe Clinic director Hamish French.

The panel’s insights into who and what athletes should be targeting focused on doing research, alignment of values and the need to believe in the product you are looking to gain sponsorship with.

When looking for sponsorship or partnerships there has to be an understanding of what that organisation is trying to achieve, and how an athlete can add value.  Using networks to gain leverage is powerful. “It was really interesting to understand and see where the athletes are at; being able to bounce ideas off others can be beneficial to all,” Brad Monaghan says.


Paralympian Mary Fisher enjoyed being able to bounce ideas off other athletes: “It was helpful to be able to compare and contrast sponsorship ideas with business professionals.” 

“It’s always inspiring to hear successful people speak of how they got to where they are now, and what we can take away from those experiences,” mountain biker Samara Sheppard says.

Auckland athletes have been offered a second workshop, which followed on from the content delivered in the first session.  At this workshop we trialled a livestream video, which meant athletes could be part of the workshop remotely.  A number of rowers, who have been working with Athlete Life Advisor Nathan Twaddle on sponsorship, joined in which meant they could benefit from this professional development opportunity without losing valuable recovery or study time driving to Auckland from Karapiro.

The level two workshop focuses on three key areas:

Elevator Pitch
Key messages you want to portray
Current, potential or possible future partnerships

Most athletes have an idea of what their sponsorship need is (ie $5,000 for airfares, equipment, assistance with campaign costs, etc), and many have ideas around who they would like to approach to see if they can drum up support. 

However, many athletes struggle to have a succinct ‘elevator pitch’ – that short summary that they can give verbally to summarise what they are all about, that is interesting enough to make the listener (ie potential sponsor/partner) want to continue the conversation later.

An elevator pitch usually answers these questions: 
-       What do you want the listener to remember most about you?
-       How could you add value to the listener?
-       What makes you different to someone else?
-       What’s your goal, what are you asking of the listener? (ie coffee meeting later, follow up, etc)

Once athletes have a confident pitch, they can then use this across a number of different mediums to build their opportunities (ie through a written proposal, on their social media sites).  This then helps identify possible new partners because their alignment to your own values and story is more easily recognised.  Many athletes find that this helps further develop their relationships with their current partners, while others identify new partners with potential benefits for both. Timing plays a big part, as developing a new partnership or relationship takes time and athletes need to ensure they allow enough time before needing to secure that valuable support.

After the workshops, athletes were offered a one on one follow up with the Athlete Life Advisors who are specialists in this area so they could further develop their strategies and implementation plans for the work they started in the workshop.

Athletes that attended the workshop were across a range of sports and included gold medallists, Olympians, and up and coming athletes. 

Any carded athlete interested in developing their skills in this area, can contact their Athlete Life Advisor for more information about the support and expertise available.