Just imagine for a moment on your next launch or project or event having all of
your expenses taken care of before you even begin such as your airfare, your
rental car at no cost, your hotel paid for, your meals on the house, and oh my
goodness so much more. All of that is possible and today's topic is so much
fun because there is a huge untapped source of revenue available for
entrepreneurs and it's called corporate sponsorship.
Hey there i'm Nafissa Shireen, Success Coach and business strategist for
entrepreneurs and welcome to living forward TV where we help you to create a
thriving business you absolutely love all around your personal freedom. Today
we have a very special guest, Charmaine Hammond, and she's an expert in
securing corporate sponsorships and she travels the world teaching the stuff and
oh my goodness I'm so excited that she's here on Living Forward TV for
you. You're gonna want to watch today's episode right till the end because she's
going to be sharing with you all of the behind the scenes and insider secrets of
getting corporate sponsorship dollars for your business for your next project
or book launch it's going to be absolutely amazing. If getting free money
is exciting to you then give us a thumbs up and share this video with your
community because other entrepreneurs really need to know about this. What
she's gonna share is gonna have you looking at your business and the
possibilities that are open to you in a whole new way. Charmaine has developed
relationships with more than 40 sponsors and 60 business partners and she helps
her clients secure all kinds of cash and in-kind sponsorships for their business
through the power of relationships and collaboration. Buckle up,
today's episode is going to be a game changer for you. Charmaine welcome to
Living Forward TV. -Thank you, glad to be here. -No no thank you this is such a privilege to have you on our
episode. I would love it if you would maybe before we dive into the topic,
because I know everybody wants to get there, but I'd like them to know a little
bit more about you and how you came to be doing this. -Hmm it was an interesting
story, I started out in jail and let me preface that, I was a correctional
officer. So had a government job, was loving the whole security of the government
job and when I moved to Alberta from Ontario there was no jail where I where
I moved to so I had to get another job and I went back to school, got a master's
degree in conflict analysis and management, and opened up my own dispute
resolution company. That was 23 years ago and obviously I've rebranded a
little bit since then but it was when I took another job as a executive director
of a nonprofit organization that my job became finding money through grants,
through donors, and sponsorship, and the sponsorship bug bit
me then and it was sort of my mission beyond then to figure out how to do this
and how to incorporate this in my business. -Wow that's just really
incredible and I can't wait to dive in because you I know you have the
behind-the-scenes from both perspectives right from being someone who was
awarding sponsorship dollars and being someone who can secure sponsorship
dollars so I mean this is like the real whole picture here and you don't get
this very often. But before we do that I'm gonna back up a little bit because
this is Living Forward TV and I love to ask all our guests and I think your
story does definitely fall in line with us having made changes from original
career and that is, what does living forward mean to you? -Hmm that is such a
rich question. I think living forward to me is about looking forward to your
goals and taking action every day even if it's imperfect, even if it's not the
right step and I also think when I think of living forward it's about standing
tall, brushing off your knees, and moving forward when we have those hurdles to
get through in business when things fall off the tracks we make a mistake so it's
about movement and momentum. -I love that. And that's that's what we're all about
here right, it's just you know cuz we're entrepreneurs, stuff happens. We just have
to keep pushing through that and if we keep doing that we'll get to our goals
right, and and that's what we're all about here and I know that one of the
big obstacles for entrepreneurs and a lot of things that that they do come up
against is having the money to fund their projects so that's why I was just
really really excited to have you here because I've heard you speak, I know how
much you talk about sponsorship and some of my colleagues have been through some
of your training programs and that sounds really interesting I'm like ooh I
missed out there and I thought well if I get you to come and talk to our viewers
then I think they're gonna have so much value. So you say that sponsorship is an
untapped revenue source for entrepreneurs, can you tell me what that
means? -That a sponsorship really is a marketing relationship. So if you think
about a company like big brands it's actually a great exercise for everyone
to do is to walk around their home in their office and look at
what are the products and services that they use who is their cell phone
provider their bank their insurance provider all of those brands those
companies has people inside them that make decisions on how sponsorship
dollars or marketing dollars they're going to be used so when we think about
sponsorship it's really about a marketing relationship and it's a way of
infusing cash and in-kind products and services into your business. -And so what
exactly is sponsorship now you talked about the in-kind and you talked about
the cash so I kind of get you know yeah a rough idea but for somebody who's just
sitting there in the you know trying to get that next step in their business and
they're and they're struggling and they've got a great idea could you tell
them you know what a sponsorship is and how it would work for them or how it
could work for them? -Great so sponsorship with these companies that
have marketing dollars to give really a company could give their marketing
dollars to say Facebook Ads or solo mail outs they could do in the old days
yellow page advertiser I'm dating myself here, so when we think about marketing
how sponsorship works is a company provides an entrepreneur or a non-profit
group with a product, service or cash to be able to integrate into a project. So
what I mean by that is that when sponsors give in-kind products or
services or cash to your dream to your project they're also expecting some kind
of ROI a return on investment so it's not sort of like I'm just gonna give you
money and go at it have fun. And this is why I love sponsorship because it is a
relationship, so when you're building that powerful relationship with the
business with a brand and they're invested in your dream in your project
and your launch they're gonna commit to helping you make sure it's successful.
-okay -It's not just about writing a check and and letting you go off on your way,
it's really about them investing in many ways and that's why at Raise a Dream we
really teach people how to build great relationships first.
-So it's I mean in it so that it's win-win everybody's business benefits so
what kind of things can you get sponsored? I mean when I read your bio
and I looked at all the things that you had sponsored I was like okay this this
is like from soup to nuts I wouldn't even have thought some of these things
and again I go back to the dog food and dog food bags- I have a lot of animals.
Okay that's that's really cool and interesting and so I mean how would you
even know what to ask for or what kind of projects or events to sponsor?
-That's a great question and one of the ways we can figure out what we could
first get sponsored let me answer that one first is to actually walk around
your office sit in your car think about the events that you go to or that you
host yourself and look at every item that you spend money on so for example
with your show what are the things that you spend money on what are the things
that you need to have you've got equipment here you've got cameras so
you've got lights you've got great furniture beautiful backdrop all of
those are things that could actually be sponsored. -That's really fascinating -Yeah
so you could have multiple backdrops that are all sponsored where you didn't
have to pay for for the backdrop items for people who host events I know you've
got listeners on your show viewers on your show that hold events, hold retreats
everything from the venue to the marketing to the social media to the
swag to the decor to the hand and the band. -Events are expensive to put on
I've hosted live events and they're not cheap like even the coffee, that's more than Starbucks
right? And so wow I mean you can have all that sponsored. -Right and here's what I
love about sponsorship for me it's a chance for my creativity come out. So we
have a tendency as entrepreneurs if we need say printing let's say an
entrepreneur wants to have all their handouts and their flyers sponsored by
somebody else our tendency is that our brain would go to oh I should go to a
print shop well so is everybody else who wants printing my very first printing
sponsor was it was a safety company. What they did what they
did is my friend Al Head who has a company called Safety Ahead
he said "Char we've got a great photocopier here, we've got a great
printer let me be your printing sponsor" I would have never have thought to ask
Al in a million years. -Really creative -Really creative and here's the thing, every one
of your viewing audience has relationships with people just like I
did with Al that wanna help. They just don't simply see where they
could fit in. -Okay and that kind of brings me to my next question then so
you know you talked about it being a marketing relationship but I still
would love for our viewers to understand you know the why behind it. like why
would it a big business or even a small business wanna partner and sponsor an
entrepreneur like what it what are they actually getting out of it? -Yeah that that is
such an important question and this is why we have to really as entrepreneurs
look at our mindset sometimes we actually don't think we have a lot of
value to offer a sponsor and the number one reason sponsors have said yes to me
is that they're interested in my audience now I have several audiences.
I speak corporately so I'm in front of business and corporate people and then
entrepreneurs so number one reason is that sponsors will often get behind your
project or invest in your project because they want to be able to interact,
know, or meet the people that you have. So for example if you had a sponsor who
wants to sponsor your technology for your show they may be doing that not so
much to promote the services and just have their name out there but they
really want to connect somehow with the people who watch your show because
perhaps that's their audience that's the number one thing they want but the other
key is to find out from them what they need and want we often make assumptions
I have done this so many times it's I won't even tell you the number of times
I've done this. We assume that we know what a sponsor needs from us we assume
maybe they want sales or they want to get their product into a new audience
sometimes sponsors want what's called sampling so I'm gonna go to the poop
bags. -okay, let's go to the poop bags.
-For example the original poop bags came onboard to my million acts of kindness
tour sponsored a number of things. -And can I ask you maybe tell us a bit about
that tour cuz we sure okay we could get the whole context in it - yeah.
The Million Acts of Kindness tour was a fourteen thousand kilometer, that's ten
thousand miles for those of you who are in the miles, across North America and we
had a Motorhome sponsored from Fraser Way RV 32-foot never driven a Motorhome by
the way until that day and it was a tour that I created around my speaking and my
books and we wrapped it around a mission to change the world through kindness, so
it was over a six-week period and we had sponsors from the Motorhome sponsor
Fraser Way RV, to Telus a Telecom communications company, to Pet Land Canada
and then everything in between. And the poop bag sponsors, the original poop bags
who, by the way I met at a trade show okay so there's a little tip don't ever
go to an event and bypass the trade show area because god I've met so many
speakers our sort sorry so many sponsors there but Paul when I met him he said
the way that he gets his poop bags in front of the world and the way that
would be most valuable for him would be for people to try them now how do I do
that at a speaking event short of having things to pick up with a poop bag. So it was important for him that
people could put their hands in the poop bag could see that they don't smell
weird they had to sample the bags just like food products will often want you
to sample so we actually used the poop bags as bookmarks, we've wrapped at our
books in the poop bags. -Oh, that is cool -And we gave them to people to take home and try -And pet lovers
would love it right you're always looking in a pocket for one. That's a great idea.
-So sometimes they want sampling they want the opportunity for a new audience to
try their product. -And I wanted to back up to something you said that I think is
really important and I hope you're paying attention to this where you said
not to bypass the trade show area because these are people that are paying
to be there they're already sponsoring so you know that this is part of their
business model right and that's a very good mind shift to make to
go you know it's not just about looking at what I can buy although you kind of
want to see what they have to offer obviously because they're there to show
their products and services and they're also companies that are interested in
getting to other markets absolutely and for anyone who's listening that's a
speaker I see this all the time where speakers will go to event they show up a
couple of hours they come down just before they speak so they don't meet the
audience they don't meet the exhibitors and the sponsors and then they speak and
they leave and I have made it a mission to get there early meet the audience
spend time with the sponsors it's amazing all that you know I mean and
that's that's a big pet peeve of mine you know cuz I mean I am not a
professional speaker but I do a lot of speaking in my business and it's amazing
to me when speakers don't take advantage of that opportunity because it's it's
speaking is all about connecting and it starts before you get on the
stage and taking it one step further to meet the sponsors is just brilliant
-Absolutely because you can meet them face to face
you see that you can build a relationship with them you learn about
their business and the other thing is is sometimes at a trade show it's not the
sponsorship decision maker that's there often it's someone from their marketing
team or from their communications team their events team but when you meet them
and spend time with them and show interest in their product in their
exhibit they're very very happy to connect you personally to the person you
need to know -Yes -So they shortcut months off this whole process of finding the right
person -Because you're getting in through the back door a little bit right
Now you said that they'd be really interested in you know our audiences in
getting to our audiences and I remember when I heard you speak the first time
you gave a tip sheet and a suggestion that really changed how I looked at my
business too and that's about our you know social collateral. So can you talk a
little bit about how important it is to track those numbers and metrics ? -It's so
critical to track your metrics in fact it's one of the reasons why sponsors may
say yes to you because influence and relationship capital is critical for
companies it's one thing for a company to go on the stage,
or on TV or you know on a radio show and say we are the best company in the
world and you should buy our product because we brought nobody would buy the
product but it's another thing if you went on TV yeah and said I love this
product and let me tell you why. So one of the reasons that sponsors are
interested in your social capital in your metrics around your social media
reach is that they see that you have a following. Now I do want to preface,
number and size is not everything in this case okay so a lot of people say
well I only have a Facebook following of 1,500 people and I just started on
Twitter and I don't even have a big database I've had sponsors tell me over
and over again that for them it's not the number that matters as much as how
you're engaging with them so we have a metric sheet and I think you did that
exercise at one of my workshops where we actually it's about a four page
document that raised a dream has and you track all of your numbers around
Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest and you do not need to be on them all. I want
to say if your audience is not on snapchat I mean I don't even know how to
use it, no offence if that's your game but for some people it is their thing right
and I don't do Pinterest however I had a sponsor who Pinterest was one of their
primary places that they connect with people and so we said would it be a
value for us to get a Pinterest account and start building it so that we can
help support you there and they said no we've got Pinterest covered we really
need help with Twitter and Instagram because we're new at that so when you
know all your following and how engaged you are with people you track it every
month or even every two weeks. If a sponsor were to say to you you know how
many people are following you? You would have that you wouldn't have to say well
got 5,000 in this account and 1,000 here you would say my collective reach is any
given number but here's the juice, many of your viewing audience belong to
things like chambers of commerce or women's groups or networking groups or
clubs the membership and their collective audience can also count in
that so imagine you being the sponsor for a minute and I and you said
Charmaine, you know what is the reach of raise a dream and Charmaine Hammond's
company and I was to say you know our social media reach is this and I belong
to several organizations who collectively their reach is a hundred
and forty seven million that's pretty huge right and they say wow and who were
these people and they would start to be very interested because they understand
the fact that if I was to promote them in social media someway do a video do a
meme about then it has massive exposure for them into new audiences -And I love
that because I think it's really easy to forget the assets we do have and we just
discounted to well I'm just a member of this organization or whatever and not
realizing that you know we have reach in it and especially if you're a speaker at
some of those organizations your reach is actually really big because if you're
in their speaker profile and you've spoken there in addition to being a
member we we all have so many touch points and I know when I did that
exercise that you gave us because I thought oh well you know what's my reach
it's a reasonable size however when I did the exercise and listed it all yeah
there's a lot of reach there even surprised myself so taking a moment to
do that I think is really really important. -It is that well it really
shows you how much value you have and I think that's one of the mindsets
especially for women a lot of women in business struggle with the value that
they bring to the world and then once they get their value then they struggle
to articulate it and talk about it so if you do these metric exercises it kind of
makes it really nuts and bolts for you and if you can't argue with that that
you have this reach and it's and it's not just the reach it's the impact right
you have impact especially they've got the engagement and you're connecting
with people now are there mistakes though that people make when they go
after sponsorship dollars? -Oh, how much time do you have?
I've made every one of them at least three times because I'm a slow learner but here's the
number one mistake and these are coming right from the sponsors. Rebecca and I
Raise a Dream we've actually interviewed sponsors and we've asked
them what drives you crazy and the number one was people using what they call
old-school sponsorship methodology which is things like
creating tiers like boxes or levels gold silver bronze we see that a lot because
it's a way of differentiating the value that one sponsors bringing to an event
versus other sponsors but they really like customized conversations and
customized proposals so customizing is really important another mistake is that
people leave it to the very last minute. So I've got a retreat in six weeks and
we need sponsors and some of these bigger brands they are budgeting a year
out in advance so it's about a six to a nine month process for them for them to
say yes so that's mistake number two. Mistake number three is asking for money
before you have a relationship. So it just doesn't fly with them it and and
here's the thing many sponsors are getting hundreds if not thousands of
proposals a year for their marketing dollars for their sponsorship dollars
and if we don't make the mistakes that lots of other people are making we will
stand out and if we take time to build a relationship or really get to know their
company you know research them check them out follow them online we will
again stand out and when it does come time to picking up the phone and having
that conversation or meeting them at a tradeshow booth taking the time to
really understand their brand and asking them questions will help you stand out
and that's the the one one sponsor that I interviewed her comment has just
resonated so much she said Charmaine, I want people to know that at the end of
the day even though we wear the title or the Hat of sponsorship decision-maker in
our company we have children we have pets we have hobbies at the end of the
day we're people this is a job for us and so when you can show up and treat us
like a human and take time to know things about us we are much more likely
to be interested in your project and figure out a way to fit into it and
that's what's really really cool and I know you've also said too that there's
even though they have some of these applications and you want to stand out
they also have the other problem where they actually have to spend those
dollars right there under pressure for that I did that job I can't tell you how
much pressure no we think giving away millions of dollars can be stressful but
there's billions and billions of dollars available right now in corporate
sponsorship dollars and you hear that yeah millions in North America and
that's just from the big big companies that's not our local coffee shops and
our you know the the boutique hotels and the grocery stores we go to those are
the bigger companies and so when you factor in all these small to
medium-sized enterprises it's a lot of money that's out there yeah I mean it's
a stressful job for them to give it away because when they say let's say they say
yes to your project and they say we're gonna give you $15,000 for this project
and here's the return on investment we want to see they want to make sure at
the end of the day that when your projects done that was actually
fulfilled so whatever those goals were that you agreed to with them it happened
and of course you're gonna knock their socks off you were gonna go above and
beyond so that they are left saying anything she says about an invitation to
participate with living forward we are a heck yes
got it got it so what I'm hearing so far then is you know we want to make sure
that we're tracking our metrics and our numbers that we take advantage of
meeting people at tradeshows cultivating relationships and really focusing on
that relationship and getting creative not just thinking about money but
thinking about all the things that we use in our business that could have an
impact on our audience yes to approach those sponsors and I know this is what
you do for your clients and I am so curious as to how you've helped them and
would you be willing to share some examples of some of the things you've
gotten sponsored for your clients sure well well I love we're gonna talk about
a mutual friend of ours Joe Dibley who has the best-kept secret to success so
one of the so Joe does a lot of events for women and one of the things right
out of the gate she was able to achieve was Nygaard
actually becoming her clothing sponsor so all of Joe Joe's clothing is provided
to her by i guard one of her other clients she
attended I love this story because she attended a one-hour workshop and at the
end of the workshop I gave them homework and the homework was to go make one call
and that could be cheer hairstylist to the place he go for coffee to your bank
and so she happened to be walking past her hairstylist and stopped him and told
them about a retreat she was doing for women and the hairstylist actually came
on as a cash bond sir and sponsored a couple of people to go to this retreat
but then she also got the product suppliers I think it was redkin I could
be wrong so the product that she sells they came on board as a sponsor then she
went to the Home Hardware or Home Depot whichever was they sponsored some house
it's right so all of a sudden in a very short period of time she had many of the
things that she needed for her event sponsored but what was I think most
important to her was people who couldn't afford to come were able to come because
of the kindness and generosity of these businesses who saw that link who saw
them so there's a real good balance on that one between in-kind and cash and I
think you know you can't overlook the value of in-kind oh yeah because it's
not just what you get I mean when someone's giving you a service like that
or taking care of it they're actually there's some logistics there taken care
of for you too and I mean the value of that is priceless when they show up and
do that and you know when you talk about airfare and meals and all of that
Compton it adds up when you're on a speaking tour right I know you you once
spoke about a book launch that you did right where you had everything comped
everything covered absolutely and you know what it's like you start an event
and you got these great ideas and all of a sudden surprising mr. pricing it and
wondering who's gonna pay for this and and that was my first real test was in
2010 when my first book on Toby's terms came out and it the cool thing about
that example is all 40 sponsors we're all in kind there was no money exchanged
but their sponsorship in that year saved me 39 thousand dollars that didn't have
to come out of my personal bank account or my business so everything like
my hair - my clothing - my jewelry my printing the venue for the launch
I even had companies my hair stylist and my financial advisor who bought boxes
and boxes of my books to give out to their clients to give out to schools so
all of that was in kind sponsorship but I think the best outcome for me in all
honesty was the fact that I now had 40 businesses who were so invested in what
we were doing that they were out there telling their clients ok then their
pardon well and that was huge so I mean it's really reciprocal I mean you think
about the sponsors are wanting to get the the publicity for themselves however
if they're gonna publicize you and sometimes they have bigger dollars to do
that that's that's even better than the sponsorship sometimes I think for your
business that is so amazing and there are connections I mean think about how
connected they are the people that you do business with yes they all have
people that they do business with so it solves our relationship so I hope you're
hearing this because when we talk about untapped revenue this really is a
potential income source I mean $39,000 is big what could you do if you could
save thirty nine thousand dollars in your business when you're trying to
promote it it's just phenomenal right what could happen
so I mean what I'm curious and I'm sure a lot of our viewers would love to know
because I'm sure at this point they're just like salivating or I like to say
chomping at the bit first person to find out how they can get sponsorship money
in their business how do you work with people they wanted to know great
questions so we have an online program that's called the big dream primer
program that's seven weeks and it's awesome because it takes you through our
whole seven step model and I think one of the best outcomes that people get
from that if they understand how sponsorship works where it fits them for
them but ultimately they see their value and they see what they could bring to
sponsors and know how to build that confidence to be able to pick up the
phone and talk to a stranger we actually have talking to strange our
homework in the program because you do have to talk to strangers about how
amazing your project is and not feel salesy and build a relationship and we
put a link to that low cuz you definitely want to check
that out I know you do live workshops so much like the one you were at so live
workshops and then we have several retreats through the year and then we do
some one-to-one mentoring for people who really need that hands-on with them and
their team for us to train their team and take their whole organisation yeah
if they're looking for some really big dollars so it's oh its sponsorship
sounds like something that would really help you in your business I really
encourage you to get in touch with Charmaine and and hear what she has to
say and watch this episode again because there is so much that is available to
you that can really make the difference and give you just that edge that can
take your business to the next level I just think it's such a cool thing and
I'm so glad that you were able to be here with us today Charmaine now before
we conclude I'm just wondering if there's just if you could give our
viewers just like one tip like what's the first thing they can do today to
help them get on the road to tapping into this source of revenue okay here it
is I'm gonna get everybody out I'm gonna get everybody out there and here is the
tip I want you all to grab a notepad or a clipboard piece of paper and you're
gonna divide it into half into half down top down line and on the left-hand side
you're going to write all the things that would be super cool to have
sponsored so walking around your house and figure it out all the products and
services that you need personally and in your business what would be cool to have
sponsored meaning what would be cool if that you didn't have to pay for it and
then the second side of the page you're then going to write down all of the
things all of the people that you know and do business with right from your
hairstylist to who pumps gas into your car I guess we probably do that now
because there's no fill up stations but where do you get your guests where do
you buy your groceries who's your insurance company so you've got both of
those lists because what you're going to start to see is where some of these
needs could be met to repair for relationships that's I think with
starting point and I really believe that if you take action today and just start
with homework you are so much closer than other entrepreneurs out there that
have not even thought of this because now you've got it in your awareness yeah
and and then click the link below to check out this online course because it
will help you take it to the next level for sure so I'm really hoping we brought
some great ideas today well I'm not hoping I know we did this was just such
a fun episode and they really appreciate it if this helped you please give us a
thumbs up leave a comment below and tell us what you found most helpful where
you're gonna plan to use sponsorships in your business and what I would love if
you have done that list like Charmaine has suggested that you leave it in the
comments below what came up for you when you were doing that list and make sure
to share this video with your friends and someone who needs it and don't
forget to subscribe to my channel I would love to have you here and if you
have more questions or you need more help then I'd love to invite you to join
the Living Forward free Facebook community that's where I come to you
live each and every week on after the episode and I answer your questions it's
also a great place for you to network build your business get daily
inspiration and motivation to join all you have to do is go to living forward
livingforwardcommunity.com, click the join Now button, and I'll see you on the inside
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