Get Big Sponsors Even If You’re Just Getting Started – Linda Hollander

➡️Connect with #BertMartinez: Twitter –   / bertmartinez  

Instagram –   / thebertmartinez  

Facebook –   / bertmartinezfans  

➡️ Get a free copy of DominatingYourMind: https://amzn.to/2XuM9Xr While supplies last, limited time.

About the host: Bert Martinez is a successful entrepreneur and best-selling author. Bert is fascinated by business, marketing, and entrepreneurship. One of Bert’s favorite hobbies is to transform the complicated into simple-to-understand lessons so you can apply them to your business and life. Bert is also obsessed with exploring the mindset of the high achievers so you can follow their secrets and strategies.

Bert Martinez:

Today, on the show, we have Linda Hollander. She is, I think, an amazing individual simply because she’s gonna teach you guys how to get corporate sponsorships even if you are unknown and and you’re just getting started. That that is her story. She is, like a lot of solo entrepreneurs, were overwhelmed, underfunded, and she was able to start landing sponsorships and really change the trajectory of her business. I’m excited to have her on the show. Linda, welcome.

Linda Hollander:

Thank you. Great to be here.

Bert Martinez:

Alright. So give us your background. Start us off. Here you are. You’re in business. And how does what business are you in, and how did you go up with this idea of getting a sponsorship?

Linda Hollander:

I’ll tell you the business I was in, and then I’ll tell you about before I started my business also because I think, your listeners would like that. So, the business I was in, was, like, one of my first businesses because I’m a serial entrepreneur. But when the first one was a bag business, but not ladies handbags, promotional shopping bags, the ones that you see at trade shows, the ones that you see at shopping malls. And I started that with my best friend, Cheryl. And Cheryl and I oh, you’ll love this.

Cheryl and I met when we were 13 years old at recess. And, we you you never know who’s gonna be your your business partner because we are standing there with our bobby socks and our lunch pails. And, basically, we became bonded and closer than sisters, and we said, hey. When we grow up, you know, anything that we do together, it’s gonna be phenomenal. So, I collected, shopping bags. I was an art major. And by the way, I never took one business class in college because I I thought business was just boring.

We call I collected, shopping bags, and we started that that business together, the ones with the great graphics because I love graphics and design and all that. And, so, basically, we started that. But before I got into business, I was not in a good place. I was working a dead end job. And even though I was working, I would go down from my little rent control department down to the mailbox. My hand would shake before I open that mailbox. Why do you think I was afraid of my mailbox?

Bert Martinez:

Because there’s gonna be bills there.

Linda Hollander:

You got it. Bills. I could never pay because I wasn’t making enough money at my job. So I borrowed on credit cards and, I mean, that mailbox was a constant reminder of my financial failures. I was in so much debt. I couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. My work situation was toxic. I had an abrasive relationship with my boss.

I work with people I didn’t like. And sometimes at lunchtime, what I would do is I would go down to my car and I would cry because I’m like you. I had the heart. I had the soul. I had the fire of an entrepreneur. My soul is being crushed in that job. Now in my personal life, I was in an abusive relationship with a man. And I stayed in that relationship for years because my self confidence was so low.

I thought, well, this is the best I can do. But, fortunately, one day, I had an epiphany, and I said, I don’t want to be a victim anymore. I want my life to make a difference. So I fired my boss. I dumped the abusive boyfriend, and that’s when I called Cheryl. And I said, hey. Let’s start a business together. And then we started that that bag business, and, that that kinda led me to the sponsorship thing.

But, I’ll pause for a minute just to see if you have any questions.

Bert Martinez:

I just find that fascinating and and a very, in one sense, a kind of a typical story where here’s an individual who’s who’s thinking to themselves, I am meant for more than this. This is not what I had envisioned. And I think it’s also funny because I think this is also, again, very typical of entrepreneurs. They don’t necessarily have a business background. What’s his name? Bill Gates didn’t have a business background. He had a coding background. He had a software background. The same thing with Elon Musk.

And so again, I’m glad you brought that up successful entrepreneurs that I’ve met have had no business background, no college back, no college training or college classes to help them in business, but there’s this weird desire that we have. And, anyway so okay. So you call Cheryl and tell us the rest.

Linda Hollander:

Okay. So, basically, I said, hey. Let’s take the bigger biggest adventure ride of our lives together and start a business. And I guess the sun was shining that day because she said yes. And, I mean, everything in my life that was good started from that point where I decided to strike out on my own. I was able to move out of a little rent controlled apartment. I was able to buy my first home as a single woman. I was able to travel the world.

Bert Martinez:

I have. I have. You know, events look great, but they’re so expensive.

And on average, from the research I’ve done, it takes an average of 3 or 4 events before you can start breaking even or making money. They’re it’s a uphill battle.

Linda Hollander:

It really is. It was so expensive. And then I was out of the bag business at the time. I was at home with my cat, so I didn’t have a fancy office. I had absolutely no experience with events, but I knew it was gonna be expensive. And that’s when I said, hey. What are these things called sponsors? And I found out that sponsors, hey. They’ll fund your event. I’m gonna give your everybody just some things that sponsors will fund.

They’ll fund your event, whether it’s virtual or whether it’s live. They’ll fund your business. They’ll fund you if you want to be a content creator, if you wanna do blogs, if you have a podcast, if you have a radio show, hey. You can get sponsors. If you have a nonprofit, you could get sponsors because the typical scenario for a nonprofit is somebody believes in the cause so much that they reach into their own wallet, and they they self fund the nonprofit.

But, unfortunately, sooner or later, you run out of money. That’s when people call me and say, hey. Help me, please. I’ve got this great nonprofit charity. People are depending on me, and I’m out of money. So I don’t want anybody to be in that position. And then I’ve also worked with weird things like documentary filmmakers, you know, and a lot of times now, parents tell me they say, hey. What you told me is good for my child because if your child’s in an after school program or a sports team, a lot of times parents are asked to contribute to that.

And so those are the kind of things that sponsors will fund. So back to what I want on my story. So I wanted to do this women’s small business expo with no experience in events, and, I think this is important for everybody to know. I had absolutely no following. Nobody knew who the heck I was except for the cat and my brother-in-law. So people think, oh, well, when I get this many followers, when I get this big of a reach, then I’ll get sponsors. No. Don’t wait.

Don’t wait for that. So my very first sponsors before my very first event were Bank of America, Walmart, and IBM. And so I’m gonna contradict what you said because I’ve always made money on my events. I’ve never lost money. My events have been sponsored.

Bert Martinez:

So Okay. So I wanna I wanna slow down a little bit. So okay. So here you are. You’ve never done an event before, number 1. So you have no history, and you have Bank of America, Walmart, and who else? IBM. IBM to sponsor your first event. That’s incredible.

So did you just show up with, I guess, proposals? Walk us through that process.

Linda Hollander:

Okay. I knew I needed 2 things. I needed a really good looking website, and I needed a great sponsor proposal. Those two things are the great equalizers. So I made a website that looked like IBM, you know, even though I was just operating out of, you know, a spare place in my my den. And then, I made also a great sponsor proposal. So if anybody wants to get into this, that’s what they need to do. They need to have a great sponsor proposal, and sponsors will check out your website.

Because if you’re gonna do business with anybody, you’re gonna check out the website. How hard is that? It takes a couple of seconds to do it. So that’s that’s what I had. And let about it. Let’s talk about how to sell people on the concept because I didn’t have anything, like, experience, a track record, nothing, no following, but I researched the heck out of the women’s business market. So here’s what you wanna know. We say that demographics are your destiny in sponsorship. The definition of sponsorship is connecting a company to people who buy stuff.

So I researched women’s business. I found out that women are starting businesses at twice the rate of men. Women in America spend more than 5 countries combined. And the most important thing, and this is what sold my first sponsors, was that women make or influence over 85% of the purchasing decisions in America. And when they saw that, I said, hey. How would you like to connect to the biggest spending block on the planet, which is women? And that’s when they said yes. Even though I didn’t have a whole lot of other things like experience and a fan base and all that.

Bert Martinez:

I love that. So you you said demographics are the destiny?

Linda Hollander:

Demographics are your destiny. Yeah.

Bert Martinez:

I love that. And so you’re basically selling them, the sponsors, on who you’re gonna be attracting and and servicing the this this, market of women. As you mentioned, at this point, they’re opening up twice as many businesses as men. And anybody who’s done any kind of marketing, will definitely attest that women influence have this massive influence because, typically, even if it’s a stay at home mom, she’s doing 80% of the of the of the buying decisions. He’s he’s Absolutely. And so, yeah, this is a a a great, would you call it a a great, idea, a great place to start. You’re not selling them so much on you. It’s here are my customers.

Here’s who we’re going to be promoting you to, and they’re going, okay. That makes sense. That aligns with with who Bank of America wanted to reach. That’s aligned with who wall Walmart wanted to reach. And and and so you spent your money on developing a good website and a good proposal. Now I wanna ask you this. Did you write the proposal, or did you hire somebody?

Linda Hollander:

I hired a company to write the proposal, is a it was that important because I’d never done it before. So I knew it was a good investment to hire a company.

Bert Martinez:

Yeah. And I think this is, again, a great strategy. Sometimes we get stuck on the how. We think we have to do all these different things. And I’m a big believer that in most cases, it’s better to find a who versus trying to figure it figure out the how because just like in your case, you found somebody who was an expert, who already had done a bunch of these, and probably saved you a bunch of time and money and frustration versus trying to figure out yourself how to do it.

Linda Hollander:

Absolutely. And I I’m like you. I totally believe in hiring experts. And they don’t even cost you money. They make you money.

Bert Martinez:

Right. Absolutely. Okay. So here you are. You got your website. You got your proposal. And are you, like, dialing and smiling? How did you get in front of your your sponsors?

Linda Hollander:

Let me give you my first sponsor because I think that’ll let everybody know how they could do this. So, I live in Los Angeles. So, of course, I was in a traffic jam. And, I’m hot. I’m exhausted. I just wanna get home, but I look up and I see the billboard for Bank of America. And then I challenge everybody after this to increase your perception. And if you see a billboard, if you see something while you’re going on the Internet, something pops up.

If you you hear something on the radio, say, hey. Maybe they could be my sponsor because my imagination was ignited. When I saw that billboard for Bank of America, I said, hey. Maybe they could be a sponsor of mine. Now the problem was I just had the idea in in my little brain. And you know what I did? I didn’t go home, and I didn’t call Bank of America. I buried the idea for 2 weeks because, I thought, you know what? They’re they’re not even gonna talk to me. I’m just this short, little, frizzy haired Jewish girl in a kitchen with a cat. I’m wearing a lot of hair products, by the way, right now.

And, you know, if they take my call, I’m gonna make a total fool out of myself, and they’re gonna reject me, and I don’t want any part of it. So I buried it for 2 weeks, and fear is what keeps most people from reaching their big dreams. But I wanted to help people so badly that I did get up the courage, and I did call Bank of America, and I got the guy who could green light the sponsorship. And he said, Linda, come on in. So I I put on my one good suit. I put on my high heels. I took my clunker car to Bank of America.

I had a car where the paint was peeling. The upholstery was shot. And everywhere I went, I had to park it 2 blocks down. But I did I did it. And, you know, then I showed him my sponsor proposal. He hands it back to me, and he says, yes. We’ll sponsor you. And, oh my god, I wanted to scream, but I’m in a fancy bank building.

I had to act like I did it all the time and be very cool about it, but I did have to wipe my hand on the back of my one good suit because it was so sweaty and clammy. And and I shook his hand, and I walked the 2 blocks back to my car. But then when I was in the car, I did the happy dance, and I I waved to all the Bank of America’s on the way home. And by the way, the my first sponsorship was over $10,000.

You know, and then that that’s you know, there’s just nothing like the feeling of getting your first sponsor because it makes all so many things possible. One sponsor leads to another, and, you know, it makes it possible to fund the dreams that you have. And my dream was the Women’s Small Business Expo, and I was able to do it all because of corporate sponsors.

Bert Martinez:

One of the great things, that you just revealed is, first of all, here you are. You’re stuck in traffic. You see this billboard, and you get this idea. And there’s a movie out there called inception, with, what’s his name? DiCaprio. And, anyway, it’s got a big cast of people. And in that movie, he talks about how insidious an idea can be. It starts to grow and grow, and all of a sudden, it becomes an obsession, which is kind of, you know, what happened with you? You had this little idea. And then, again, fear, you push it away.

It’s not for me. I’m not ready for this. But it came back and it kept coming back and you finally took action. This is the probably the thing that as you pointed out,

The thing that kills most of our dreams is this doubt, this fear that we’re not good enough, we’re not ready.

Ladies and gentlemen, what’s the worst that can happen? You call Bank of America, and they said no. It’s another phone call or another email. It’s not gonna kill you. So you reached out to Bank of America.

Was that, like, the only your first and only reach out? And then and then you waited a little bit, and then you came to Walmart. What was the next how was the time frame on that?

Linda Hollander:

I called everybody. So this is what I want people to understand because let’s take the Bank of America example. Most people, when they think of a bank sponsor and I love bank sponsors. It’s one of my favorite categories. And

Everybody out there, go try to get a bank sponsor because that’s where the money is.

Remember they asked Willie Sutton, the the bank robber? They said, why do you rob banks? What did he say?

That’s where the money is. That’s still where the money is. So what go go where the money is. Okay. So let’s let’s talk about the banks because people say, oh, well, I have an account with this bank, so I’ll go to them. You know, I didn’t even have account with Bank of America. I called the bank where I had an account, which I will not name, and they turned me down. So, you know, just because you’re in love with them doesn’t mean they’re gonna love you back.

So call everybody. Everybody. So they were not my first call, but they’re they were the first ones to say yes. And in even in the other categories like, FedEx, You know, I called FedEx. I called UPS. You know, UPS turned me down, so I got FedEx. So, call everybody. Don’t just call a couple of companies because I ask people.

I say because now I work with people to get their sponsorships, and I say, well, how many companies are on your wish list? And they’ll say, oh, 20 companies, and that’s really not the way to be successful. You wanna have 50 to a 100 companies on your wish list.

I’m just saying a lot of people have 20 about 5 to 20 company. They some people only have 5 companies on what we call the sponsor wish list because those are what we call the love marks. Those are the companies they use. Those are the companies they recommend. They have a personal connection to those companies. But like I said, you love that company. They might not love you back. So have enough companies that you’re contacting when you’re you’re prospecting your sponsors.

Bert Martinez:

Also, there’s a timing issue. Back in the day, I used to sell advertising, national advertising. Everybody, has their time frame. And so some people start planning the next year at the end of the current year. Some people start start planning next year in the middle of the year. So after a while, you find out when they start doing their planning, and you can get in front of them so they can look at you for the budget. It does a little bit of timing there. The other thing that I learned from my years of advertising was that there’s 2 types of advertisers.

And one of them is people who are what’s called they’re they’re trying to build their image. They’re they just want name recognition. You might see something like a Bank of America ad that says, hey. We support the community. They’re not asking you to call them. They’re not asking you to go to their website. They’re just throwing that information out there to build their image and and and what’s called name recognition as opposed to the other type of advertisers that they want you to take action.

So Coca Cola might say, hey. Right now, we’re having a sale. Buy one case of coke. Get a second one for free. That they’re looking for results. I’m assuming and you correct me if I’m wrong. I’m assuming that somebody like Bank of America, when they’re doing a sponsorship, they’re not necessarily looking for tons of results. Are you sharing any kind of content with them? Are you, like, saying, hey. I’m gonna give you a list of the attendees.

What happens after they become your sponsors?

Linda Hollander:

Okay. Well, let’s talk about benefits because the best way to find out the the benefits for a sponsor is, guess what, ask them. Ask them what what they’re looking for because some companies, as you mentioned, are just looking for goodwill and brand awareness and community involvement and to show that. Some companies are down and dirty and wanna return on investment. So, when I got FedEx as a sponsor, I said to the guy, I said, well, what are you looking for?

And he said to me something very surprising. He says, well, we don’t want an exhibitor booth. We don’t want signage because everybody thinks they know FedEx. And if we have the exhibitor booth or the vendor booth, they’ll just take the tchotchke. You know what a tchotchke is? You know? For people who don’t know Yiddish, they’ll just take the little premium item, the little gift item that they have on the FedEx table, and they’ll walk away.

So I said, well, what do you want? And he said, well, we wanna rebrand FedEx because we want women business owners, and, you know, we want home businesses. So and people think we’re the expensive white glove shipping company. So what we gave FedEx was we gave them speaking opportunities.

We gave them an award presentation. We gave them all kinds of stuff that could rebrand them, because that’s what they were looking for. And you know what we did? We threw in the exhibitor booth and the signage anyway. Nice. What happened was they were so happy with us that they sponsored us for 5 years, and sponsorship can become recurring revenue, which is wonderful because, first of all, it’s money you don’t have to pay back.

And when it becomes recurring revenue, it’s just really delicious because then you don’t have to keep pounding the pavement and selling. You you’ve got that sponsor locked for a few years.

Bert Martinez:

I love that. And and what an ingenious idea of getting somebody an award and or get allowing them to speak back to, as we talked about earlier, this branding idea, this image. You give somebody an award, it’s gonna be hung on their wall, and most likely, they’re gonna even put out a press release about it. So not only do they get kudos, but so does your event. FedEx just got awarded by the Small Business Women’s Conference this x y z award. And for for our listeners and our viewers, if you don’t think this works, it works. People like the credibility. People like to be be significant.

And if you go to a lawyer’s office, a doctor’s office, a CPA’s office, what’s hanging on their wall? They’re not only their awards, but where they got their degree, went to this university. Look how cool I am. We want to be recognized, and it doesn’t change just because you’re a multibillion dollar company like FedEx. This is a smart move on FedEx’s part because they wanna connect with your people. Once again, they want your demographics.

Linda Hollander:

And I’ll tell you something else about the awards because I really like it. And you get so much mileage for so little investment because it cost me, like, $50 to do an award and a you know, with their logo on it and everything. So with the with Citibank, when we did an award presentation, what they did was they sent an email to their employees and said, check us out. We won. You’re gonna love this, the Making a Difference award. And the employees felt good about working for Citibank, and we all know right now hiring good talent, keeping good employees is really difficult. So employee engagement is a big benefit in corporate sponsorship.

Bert Martinez:

What’s interesting about what you just said, I could see a company like an HR company or some kind of employee bay employee service type company putting on an event on how to keep your your your people more engaged, how to how to hire better talent. It could even be a virtual event on on an employee satisfaction. And you could see a bunch of different companies sponsoring that event, just throwing that out there for for our people. It’s something to think about. It’s again, you see a need, and here’s a way to fill it. Let me ask you this. What do you think are some of the biggest mistakes that people are making when they’re trying to grab some of these sponsorships?

Linda Hollander:

Okay. Well, I do a conference on it’s called the sponsor secret seminar, and we have panelists. And the panelists are our sponsors and sponsor experts. And one of the biggest things they say is people don’t do their homework. They really want you to do a little bit of homework. And, you know, I’d say doing homework and people thinking, that’s that’s a lot of work. It takes you maybe 3 minutes to do your homework. You wanna make sure that your audience is a match for theirs.

What you do is aligned with what they want to accomplish.

And, one of my sponsors, I’ll tell you, was Paul Mitchell Hair Care, and they’ve always been cruelty free. So, a a rodeo approaches them and says, you know, can you sponsor us? And it was obviously a mismatch, because rodeo’s cruelty free, not not a match at all.

And, youknow, they just don’t like their time being wasted. So and, obviously, if they went on their website and saw, well, we’re we’re cruelty free, there’s even in one of their ads a woman holding a dove. You know? So, first, do really do your homework, and it could be, like, 2 minutes looking at their website and and maybe their socials.

Another thing is not asking for enough money. If you ask for too little money, you’re gonna hurt yourself of corporate sponsorship because they’re gonna say, well, you know, what you you don’t really have anything of value to offer me, and it’s not worth it my time. Now sponsorship is a team sport. So, usually, the the it’s decided in a team. So somebody has to sell it internally.

You may have what’s called a champion in a company, but they have to sell it to their team and their colleagues and their boss. And what if their boss says, well, what’s this about? You have to have have them communicate it well with a lot of value. Now just to give you an example of what you can make, most of our clients get between 10,000 even up to a $100,000 from each sponsor, And you can have many sponsors, so it could be quite lucrative. You could do your 5 figure, 6 figure, 7 figure deals.

You just put together a few different sponsors. So don’t you know, and I I’ve seen people price their sponsorship at a $100, and it’s just not worth it for the sponsor. If a sponsor sees something like that, they’re gonna say, oh, well, this person is a is an amateur. They don’t know what they’re doing.

So those are the 2 big mistakes that people make. And I’ll add another one, such I’m such an advocate of the proposal, not having a good proposal, not really having a crystal clear offering with great benefits for that sponsor.

Bert Martinez:

Yeah. I love that. And and it’s it is a call it a psychological trick. It’s human nature. If something is too cheap, it makes us suspicious. That’s why you there are hand bags out there for a 1000, 5000, 10000, even $20,000 for a handbag. It’s  interesting. It’s there’s a lot of psychology to it.

And the more something is valued, the more people want it.

And and I also wanna point out this. If you guys ever go to a conference and you can ask for the sponsorship information, they’ll gladly give it to you. And to your point, you can see where, hey. Here’s the entry level. It might be $10,000, and it tells you what the benefits are. And then the next level might be 20 1,000. It tells you what the benefits are, and then it’s so on and so on.

Again, the $100,000 diamond level might give you all sorts of bells and whistles and and and things of that nature. So I love this idea of not asking for too little money. Makes a lot of sense. And then, again, take a few minutes, 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes to do your whole work. Nothing worse. I love that rodeo, example there that here’s a company again, nothing wrong with the rodeo, but if you are a cruelty free company like, John Paul Mitchell, then it may not be aligned with them. Alright. So I’ve done my homework.

I figured out that I’m my I’m aligned with this, with the sponsor that I want. I’ve got my website. I’ve got my proposal. How do I approach these guys? Do I just call them up?

Linda Hollander:

You could, but it’s a little different than when I first got started. I I cold called, and I got some sponsors. It’s it’s a lot harder to reach people now. I’m sure you’ve experienced that in your working life. So the best way to introduce yourself to a sponsor is email. That’s what really what they want. And another way that we found kind of effective is LinkedIn. Give them a direct message on LinkedIn because as you could imagine, sponsors get slimed with email requests.

But if you contact them through LinkedIn, they don’t get as many of those. Send them a direct message or a DM on on LinkedIn, and this is called the pitch letter. And the pitch letter has to have certain languaging in it so it gets the deals done. So the pitch letter, make it short, make it chock full of benefits. And what you wanna do with the pitch letter is have a sponsor say in their head, you wanna have them say, tell me more because you’re not gonna send sell them with a pitch letter. You’re gonna sell get them into a conversation. Remember conversation? Yeah. You need to have conversations in order to make your sponsorships work because sponsorship is a relationship business.

So even if you send them an email and they start emailing you back and saying, oh, great. I had some questions. Say, oh, your questions are great. Let’s let’s get on for a quick chat on the phone, on a Zoom call, or you could even meet your sponsors in person. Move it into a personal conversation as quickly as you can.

Bert Martinez:

Great tips. And I want to, start time on the pitch letter. Like you mentioned, make it short. What’s really kind of ironic, I have it sometimes takes longer to make a short, precise, compelling message than a long one, but it’s worth the time because it’s like an hors d’oeuvre. You just you try to create some curiosity. To your point, there’s nothing better than somebody saying, hey. Well, tell me more. Okay.

Now at least they’ve shown a little bit of interest. They’ve raised their hand. You start that conversation, and you have to nurture it. I love the idea of LinkedIn. Speak speaking of sponsors, one of our sponsors is RocketReach. And RocketReach is who we use when we’re trying to identify somebody’s email. And you can find out more about them at rocketreach.com. But I love the idea.

People over overlook LinkedIn. Not only is it great because you’re you can meet with these people, you can connect with these people on LinkedIn, but you can also write content about your demographics on LinkedIn. They they allow people to, you know, to publish articles. So, again, it’s a great way for somebody to not only go to your profile on LinkedIn, but if you have an article that’s pop that that’s talking about maybe what you’re doing or or who you serve, that might be something that could be part of that pitch. It could be part of your profile so people can look you up and do their own homework as they will.

So I love the idea. And and again, to your point of having a conversation, I think there’s so many people that are afraid to have a conversation. They they they wanna do everything by text and email, and you can do that, but it’s it doesn’t build a solid foundation. It doesn’t create the bond that you need to get a check.

Linda Hollander:

Absolutely. And remember when I said, the example I gave with FedEx, I had to be there in a conversation to ascertain, hey. What are you looking for, and how can we provide that to you? You know, I had to talk to him to get that.

Never assume what a sponsor is looking for. You gotta ask them.

Bert Martinez:

Yeah. I think that’s great. What do you put in your sponsor package when you’re working with these people?

Linda Hollander:

I love this. Okay. So this is a writer downer.

First thing you put is a description of what you do and make it very short, very easy to understand. Then you put your benefits, your sponsor benefits, and the right compelling benefits. Then you put your demographics, the description of your audience.

After that, you put your marketing because, as you know,

Marketing can make you or break you.

I’ve seen so many and we’re talking a lot about events today.

But remember, you don’t have to have events to get sponsors, but I’ll give an event example because I’ve seen a lot of people, you know, do events, but they don’t market the event. So there’s, like, maybe 5 people in the room and a lot a lot of empty chairs. And, boy, if you’ve got a sponsored event that’s very lightly attended like that, you’re you’re done. You’re toast. That sponsor will never ever come back to you. So marketing will make or break your business, your non even your nonprofit because the best nonprofits operate with strict business principles. Think of St. Jude. Think of the Make A Wish Foundation. You still need sales and marketing in your nonprofit.

So your marketing plan and then the last thing you put in your sponsor proposal is storytelling. So it could either be your story or it could be the story of somebody that you’ve helped with the work that you do. Don’t just put what we call the pretty bio. Your education and your experience and all that. I put in my sponsor proposal that I was in the poverty trap, that I was in an abusive relationship. It’s gotten me sponsors because you want to create an emotional connection.

You want to show the humanity of what you do because your relationship, it’s not with a faceless corporation. It’s with a human being. So put some storytelling in there. That’s so important.

Bert Martinez:

I could not have said that any better. One of my favorite places to go is, places like GoFundMe or Kickstarter. These crowdfunding places, the one that you see that get huge money, and in in a lot of cases, you see that they get overfunded, it’s because they’ve crafted a story that compels people. And who cannot identify with a single a single lady who is, stuck in in the poverty trap and and and getting out an abusive relationship. These are things that with the right sponsorship, they’re gonna go, yeah. This is the person that we wanna connect with. She’s gonna bring the kind of people that we want to target.

And you have to be willing to share your story because, ultimately, the story is what counts. FedEx has a great story. If you ever read the FedEx story, it’s really compelling. So everything that, anything big has a story. Tesla has a great story. A story. I love this idea of a story. So alright.

So we have description, benefits, demographics, marketing, super important, and the strong, the the storytelling. Again, super important. Yes. I  wanna visit this idea of marketing because to your point, nothing worse. If you’re the sponsor, you show up to the event, and it’s it’s unsuccessful, there’s nobody there, makes it that much harder to grow that event because you really only get that one chance.

Linda Hollander:

Yeah. Well, I’ll tell you one of my failures. We’ve heard my successes. One of my failures is IKEA because I wanted to get them as a sponsor. So my local IKEA has a little room, a community room, a meeting room, and they set it up so cute with, really nice gifts for women in business. And, I came there, and you know what? There was one lady there. One lady. I was mortified.

I was wishing there were the the the the floor would open up so I could just sink into the floor. But I got through it, because, I did my little meeting at 9 o’clock. The store opened at 10. And at that time, I was doing the women’s small business expo. And I imagine this big room of people, and and I would sell them. So, basically, I just kind of found out what her business was, answered some questions. I gave her a little discount for coming to the big event, and, of course, I never got IKEA as a sponsor. And the what I learned is never rely on somebody else to promote for you because I was maybe lazy.

I was afraid to promote. So I just thought, well, IKEA is a big company. They’re gonna promote for me. And after that, I never ever relied on another person or entity to promote because they’re not everybody’s good at it. Do your own promotions.

Bert Martinez:

Yeah. Again, that that is another rider downer. That’s very important. And one of the reasons because look, if you’re a business person, maybe IKEA is not who you’re thinking about that’s going to be involved in business. When I think of IKEA, I think of of, furniture. Not only that, I think of of furniture that I have to put together.

Linda Hollander:

But they would have been a great sponsor because they have home office furniture. You know? But that you know,

You always learn more from your failures.

Right? So I just wanted to share that with you because you you don’t wanna be in that situation.

Bert Martinez:

That brings me up to back to another research question. How can we research or how do we use research to strengthen that sponsor offering? Because, obviously, I didn’t even think about IKEA being having office furniture. That makes total sense now that you’ve said that. So, again, you did some research. You figured that out. Today, do you have any specific tools that you like to do when you’re trying to do some research to to get a sponsorship offer ready?

Linda Hollander:

Yeah. Well, Google is absolutely your best friend. It really is. So, and now AI maybe. So, if you’re okay. Let’s see if you’re prospecting for sponsors and you have a a company on your wish list. Write, write news and then the company name, and you’ll get all kinds of articles. And the articles are great because you see how they message themselves and what they’re offering.

When you go to the website of a sponsor that you’re looking for, go to their press room and all and see their articles. Go to investor relations. Always go to the about page, to see. Another thing that you could do is order their annual report. There, if it’s a public company, they have an annual report. And then the last thing is order the media kit. A lot of companies have media kits. So, you know, you could, say, hey.

So okay. Let’s say my demographic is entrepreneurs. Right? So what do entrepreneurs read? They read Inc Magazine and they read Entrepreneur Magazine. So what I would do is I would go online and I would get the media kit for ink and entrepreneur because the media kit, I found amazing information. How often people buy a new cell phone, how often they buy a new computer. Those kind of things are in the media kit. And guess what? They had to pay a market research company, Boku Bucks, to get that done, and you could get it for free

Bert Martinez:

That’s a great idea. I love that. I love the idea of of using somebody else’s media kit. Not only have they done the research, but now it’s also gonna give you ideas of other possible sponsorships.

So okay. Real quick. I wanna talk about your book real quick. Again, the book is corporate sponsorships in 3 easy steps. Even if you’re just getting started, it’s available on Amazon. I’m gonna put a link here in the show notes. And so let me ask you this, Linda. Somebody is, again, thinking, hey. This sounds great. I don’t necessarily wanna do all this work. So if I wanna get in touch with Linda and have her help me, where do they go?

Linda Hollander:

Okay. Go to success with sponsors dot com. And at success with sponsors dot com, I even have a free gift for you. I have the number one secret to getting corporate sponsors there. And when you go to success with sponsors.com, you could request a free sponsor strategy session. I still do free sponsor strategy sessions. When you and I do a strategy session together, it is absolutely magic. I show you the quality and the value that you have to offer a sponsor so you could hold your head up high when you’re talking to sponsors, and I help you find money in ways you never even thought of.

So just go to successwithsponsors.com.

Bert Martinez:

What is so amazing about this strategy of getting sponsorships is that, again, just like you’ve already mentioned, you were working out of your home with your cat. You invested money wisely in having a good website and and having a good sponsor, proposal, which, again, makes sense, and it’s fairly easy to do nowadays. Again, you’re out there dialing and smiling. You’re you’re reaching out.

This to me is a great way to not only do a an event like you did, but, you mentioned virtual events. You know, I recall years ago, there was a gentleman who had just graduated college, and he got a sponsorship. He had written a a book, a leadership book, and this guy wasn’t known by anybody. He got a corporate sponsor, and not only did they help him write write his book or publish his book, I’m sorry, but they actually got him on a couple of big talk shows because they were advertisers on these big channels, so they were able to pull some strings. And to the whole point of your book is that you can get a sponsor even if you’re just getting started. And correct me if I’m wrong, the only thing stopping you is fear.

Linda Hollander:

That’s the only thing stopping you. And the reason that I wrote the book is because I would go to these sponsorship conferences, and I would feel totally out of place because they wanted to work with Coachella and big NFL teams. And there was really nothing out there for the person who was just getting started with an idea. Maybe the mom who’s working in a little corner of their kid’s bedroom who’s just getting started. And so that’s why I wrote the book, and most of the clients that we work with are the emerging sponsor seekers. They’re either never work with a sponsor before or they work with 1 or 2 and they see what sponsors could do for you, and now they want more. So that’s Yeah. I

Bert Martinez:

Yeah. I love that. And, again, ladies and gentlemen, success with sponsor successwithsponsors.com. Or you can check out Linda’s book on Amazon. Linda, thank you so much for stopping by. I would love to have you back again and talk some more. I just appreciate today’s conversation so much.

Linda Hollander:

Thank you so much. You’re wonderful for giving me this opportunity.