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In Part 1, we looked at why a sponsor might be the perfect way to save a gig that is almost lost. Now, let’s look at the specific steps you’ll need to find a sponsor and how to connect them with your client.

Your client’s budget is just shy of the minimum you’d need to speak…

So, you suggest a sponsor who can cover the difference.

Win for you… win for the client… and win for the sponsor!

But, how do you find a sponsor who is right for an event?  And what is the actual process you should use to broker this deal?  

Mess this up and your last minute punt to save the gig could land way off target.  Let’s look at the entire process from beginning to end…

Starting – of course – with a prerequisite!

Fractal Matters

In order for this whole magical deal to work, you’ll need to use a fractal focused approach.  As you may recall, a fractal is a smaller subset of a larger industry.  For instance, you might focus on the solar energy fractal or the vacation rental property fractal.

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→ Need a refresher on fractals? Check out this article to see how fractals make up the branches of your referral tree.

Chances are, you’ve probably started to penetrate a specific fractal where you are winning most of your gigs.  At these events, you’ll start to learn about sponsors who align well with this specific audience.  

For instance, if you speak at a HR events, the sponsors are going to be HR software companies and HR agencies.  If you speak for destination marketing organizations, the sponsors will be marketing agencies or marketing software companies.

Suggesting a sponsor to an event organizer doesn’t work well if you attend a diverse set of events across many different fractals.  You can only suggest sponsors to event organizers if their fractals align.

As an example:

Back in 2015, I wrote a book called Town, Inc which explored how towns and cities can stake a claim to power their marketing.  As a result, I’ve built very deep event and sponsor relationships in the destination marketing organization fractal.  In fact, that’s the only fractal where I’ve tried to make this sponsorship/event organizer partnership work!

Once you’re confident in the fractal focused approach, you’re ready to tackle four main steps to build this partnership.  Here goes!

STEP 1: Identify Some Great Sponsors

The first thing you have to do as you’re penetrating your fractal, is to identify sponsors that you see fairly often.  Here are a few keys to make sure they’re a good fit.

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