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Chapter Thirteen continued...

HOW TO MAKE A CLIENT A HERO

Whenever we sold a sponsorship while I was at the New Jersey Nets, I felt that the decision maker was sticking his or her neck out. The sponsor was taking a leap of faith that we would do what we said we would do. We couldn't allow that neck to stick out into a noose or a guillotine.

Buying a sponsorship with the Nets seemed to be a far riskier thing to do than what Al Neish had done when he bought a sponsorship with the Portland Trail Blazers. The decision maker's neck would be stuck out because of the past decade's hapless performance of the Nets. The Nets identity was loser. It would be far less riskier to buy a sponsorship with the New York Knicks or New York Giants or the New York Yankees. Sticking your neck out for an established loser could be risky indeed.

There are naysayers in any company. Some of these naysayers want to climb ahead even by causing somebody else to fall. I'm sure that when a decision maker in a company bought a sponsorship with the Nets that it caught the attention of the naysayers in the executive ranks. With the decision maker's neck stuck out, a naysayer might even help tie the noose or grease up the guillotine.

So, as in the case with Al in Portland, whoever bought a sponsorship with the Nets, we were going to make our decision maker a hero.

There was one way to do it:

We weren't going to prove it to the decision maker's boss by just calling up on the phone and saying, "Joe did a great job in deciding to buy our product." We were first going to prove it to the decision maker. With the proof that we provided, the decision maker could use it as a tool to fend off any naysayers and to prove it to his boss what a great decision it was. Proving it to the decision maker was a three step process.

1. Do a terrific job. At the Portland Trail Blazers or the New Jersey Nets, we had a philosophy with sponsors that we would live by. Do whatever it takes to make the sponsorship successful.

Remember, we weren't like the radio station whose commitment was to run a company's commercial. That was the radio station's measure of success—playing the commercial. Our commitment was to make the sponsorship successful.

There are many different ways that a team can make a sponsorship successful. Whichever way it was, our mandate to ourselves was Do whatever it takes to make the sponsorship successful. When a company has that mind-set, your people get very creative in making it work. They can't blame the client for failure; they could only blame themselves.



2. Provide an "annual report." A lot of elements go into a sponsorship of a pro sports team. The decision maker wouldn't, of course, experience all of those elements. In many cases, the decision maker would see just a few of the elements. Our Annual Report covered all of the elements for that particular sponsorship and how the sponsor benefited.

Inside the Annual Report were the following sections:



A. Executive Summary. This was in the form of a cover letter. The letter outlined the tangible benefits of the sponsorship. Along with my signature and title, everybody that worked on the sponsorship would sign the letter. In some cases this would mean that nine or ten people would sign the letter.



B. Summary points of each element of the sponsorship. Each element of the sponsorship was clearly defined as to the purpose and value to the sponsor.



C. Promotional support details. When a sponsor had a consumer promotion, we told the sponsor that we would take care of all the details involved in promoting it to our fans. We had a lot of weapons on hand. For instance, we could have our announcers talk about the special promotion on radio and TV games. We would feature the promotion in a mailing to our ticketholders. We would advertise the promotion in the newspaper. In this section, we detailed each promotional step we took and the value of those steps.



D. Samples of each element of the sponsorship. Each major sponsor received items that included season tickets, advertising on the backs of tickets for at least one game, a full-page ad in our media guide, etc. In this section, we featured one item per page with a brief description of that item.

In some cases, the Annual Report was an inch thick full documentation of the sponsorship. It had colorful samples; there wasn't any phony hype on its pages; it was professionally bound. On the spine of the report was the sponsor's name and team's name like Safeway's Sponsorship of the Portland Trail Blazers, 1984-85.

This book was designed to be displayed by the client. It could be a "coffee table" type book that was placed in an executive seating area in the client's personal office. Or it could easily sit on the client's credenza shelf.



3. Hyping the client: If I sent you one of our Sponsorship Annual Reports, you would be able to:

a) Easily read through it.
b) Understand the key components of the sponsorship.
c) Come to the conclusion that the company really benefited from the sponsorship.
d) That whoever bought the sponsorship was a bright and shrewd person.
e) That person should be given a raise.
f) That person should be promoted.

That was the real purpose of the Annual Report: to help make the client look good because of our sponsorship. We wanted to make the client the hero.

We gave each client at least four copies of their Annual Report. If the client wanted more, we provided more. We could assume that one copy made it to the client's boss. We knew that a second copy would make it to the client's boss because we sent one to the boss with a short note from me.

HOW YOUR OWN STAFF BENEFITS FROM AN ANNUAL REPORT

When we started to do the Annual Reports, our staff started to get better. Much better. I was stunned at our extreme attention to even the smallest detail in executing each sponsorship. That was great! As we know, there is always a devilish small detail that can drive you crazy. My rule of thumb on small details is:

We no longer had those small details jump up and become a monster. And even when one of the small details did somehow evade scrutiny, we were far better equipped to quickly solve the problem before the small detail started to take on a life of its own. I attribute much of the improvement of our execution to our Annual Reports.

You can probably picture it. Picture a staff putting together an Annual Report that's purpose is to make the client a hero. The staff is pouring over the details. "Oh-oh," one staff member says, "We really didn't do a very good job on this portion. This won't make anybody a hero. In fact, it could make somebody a goat—including us."

To prevent getting The Goat Status, staffers started to anticipate better. What could go wrong? That might sound like pessimistic thinking—what could go wrong—but it was great mental preparation in executing the sponsorships. Many of the little details that could spring up and bite you were anticipated and solved before they could come to life.

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