Sales Case Study: TV Show Sponsorship

This is a tale of someone with a bright idea. Of someone wanting to make a real change. Of grit in the face of harsh reality, of unachieved expectations, and of almost-heartache.

I am not going to be sharing it on my blog. Not yet. I want a few more numbers first. But here, I'll share it here because we've reached and passed the critical point where it is useful to YOU.

Because I want to show you what happens when you keep going after you want to give up.

It takes time to start a new business. Especially when your business is based around an unvalidated idea. Like this TV show.

A TV show without advertising sponsors is an unvalidated idea.

My videographer came to me and asked for my involvement in resurrecting his show. He had a producer partner I'd never met.

Now you may know I have done absolutely zilch locally in the past four years. That's because the people in my town don't want to grow their businesses. It's a strange market here. I'd rather be dealing with folks in Tampa or San Diego, who want to explode their operations. But I know this guy, my videographer. He's not from here. Neither is the other producer...who also owns a business here.

I met with them to check Fit. Did I really want to commit myself to their project?

This is the first thing you must check with yourself. Are you committed? If not, if you're not 100% on board, don't get involved. Pass. Apologize, say it's just not a fit right now. This goes for your own business ideas as well. If you're not totally committed, go do something else.

Turns out both of them are action-takers. And the cost of getting the show on air was surprisingly low. They have all the equipment needed and the expertise, so that was easy, too.

So I don't have to worry about fulfillment. It's going to be a good product. The first three episodes of thirteen are done and ready to go.

One sponsor, the title sponsor, would pay for making the show. Not cover every cost with this low four-figure investment, but everything necessary to get it on air. So one win was all we needed. Achievable? Yes. But it was late May, and the show was to begin airing in early July. Actually, this would work to our advantage: prospects would have to decide quickly. As a big bonus, the producers would make a full commercial for the sponsors in HD, that would be owned by the sponsor and that they could use anywhere--online, on another TV show spot, anywhere.

Another tick mark.

Now my profit on being involved...it was not going to pay off in dollars. But I found I wanted the challenge. Could I do anything in this weird marketplace? A market in which we look at other people's business models and activity levels and say, "How the hell are you still in business?!"

Tick. Skin in the game.

Now I want you to think about what I say next very carefully:

You touch it, you own it.

The slightest level of involvement...if you're in on the sales side...you are somehow responsible for the performance of the entire project.

Before you hop into anything, remember this and consider it deeply. If it's a failure, what is the effect on you and your relationships going to be?

Now in this case I trusted the guys. I trusted the product. I knew the goal was achievable.

In my gut, I had a nice, quiet feeling of certainty about it. I knew it was going to work--before we started.

Take note of this. Because it's my experience that your expectation is what leads to your result, more than anything else.

Now the deal was: I had my own business to run, and would not be making calls myself. I could not tie up all my time on a non-moneymaker (for me)...but I did want to give the project my best effort. So when it came time to visit prospects at booked appointments, I would go along with the producers to qualify and close.

My videographer faded into the background with his own projects. I ended up working closely with the other producer, who's a smart guy and I get along with well. First thing he did was take two hours of training from me and actually start making dials.

In six dials he booked an appointment.

We bought this prospect lunch and got a lot of valuable feedback.

My main strategy was to match up our viewing audience with the target market of the prospect business. If it wasn't a fit, that was fine and we'd move on. This is what we'd discover in the prospecting call. If there was a match, we'd go for the meeting.

We also focused on the positive, local programming the show created. The TV station really liked this, too, as they were tired of running Seinfeld and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

After a couple days, I walked into the second producer's business and he was freaking out. Too much time was being tied up promoting the show, and it was taking him away from this operation. I smiled, because this was the problem I had anticipated with my own involvement.

What we needed was a phone prospector.

Well I don't know if you've ever tried to find one, a good one, but the process is never easy and quick. No way were we going to put up a Craigslist ad and get someone good in time. Remember, we had a four-week window to find, meet with, filter and close our sponsor(s). If two were eaten up with the effort of finding someone, that would kill our chances.

We called a couple established marketers (one runs a magazine, the other a consultancy) in town to find out their experience and if they knew of any good sources of phone people. Nope. After many experiences and many years of frustration, these guys did the calling themselves.

OK. There was one other choice. Temp agencies. This was, in my mind, a long shot--how the heck is a temp agency supposed to know what makes a good phone prospector? and don't they focus on admin people? But we quickly found an agency who sent us some surprisingly decent candidates.

We met with one. He looked and sounded good. Except he didn't really want to do the job, so even though we offered him the role and he accepted, later that afternoon he told the agency he wasn't interested. Why can't people tell the truth? So we interviewed a young lady and she was focused on prop work in the film industry (a good one around here, until now at least). She was coachable, so we offered her the role and she accepted. After two days, though, in spite of the fact that her last act on Day 2 was to book her first appointment, she decided it wasn't for her and quit.

You just never know what people are thinking. It was late in the week, and we wouldn't get a replacement until the following week.

This turned out to be a blessing in disguise. You have to understand that we were disappointed and shaking our heads now. The numbers I'd calculated were:

15 dials/hour x 4 hours/day x 5 days/week = 300 dials a week ...

Of those 300 dials, 3/4 would not reach a decision maker able to speak with us today ...

That means 75 dials would reach a decision maker we could have a conversation with ...

Out of those conversations, 1 in 10 would be somewhat qualified and interested in meeting ...

That would be 7 or 8 meetings.

If I couldn't close 1 in 7 qualified prospects, something would be pretty wrong, wouldn't you say?

The temp agency charged $16/hour and the caller earned $11. So it came out at $320 a week, or about a dollar a dial.

We had a couple "list books" for the town, but exhausted those quickly. So the callers had to do some web research, too...we wanted to stay away from small, starving businesses and go for bigger ones with money like hotels, car dealerships, grocery chains and so on.

I trained each caller for 1-2 hours depending on what they needed, and provided a script that made it easy for them to reach the right person (though more often than not, it would be voicemail--and we know this, on average 3/4 of the dials you'll make cold calling won't reach a decision maker who can talk to you today.) I gave each the expectations, the numbers and the fact that every dial was worth a dollar, so they understood the importance of their effort.

The following week we were very lucky as the agency sent us a lady with considerable phone experience. She was used to nasty B2C calls, so friendly B2B conversations were like a godsend.

And she came into the role with a comfort zone of 1-2 appointments set a day.

Note this, because it echos what I said above about expectations.

Thanks to her, we started getting one or two appointments booked a day.

But the early July deadline was looming.

And we went to visit these prospects...to discover one of two situations:

ONE - the business, for example a kids fun park that hosts birthdays and events, was non-profit and just didn't have the money...though they could see the value we were bringing to the table

TWO - the business, for example a hotel, wasn't used to marketing on TV and stuck to online PPC...they had the money but their response was, "Oh, isn't that cute...we like the feel-good association...if we do it, it'll be because of that" and in spite of the business case I helped them build, they wouldn't go ahead. The meetings were 10 minutes or less.

Nobody wanted to be First.

The idea was unvalidated.

Remember that, when you're starting up your own business or working with a client in that position. You are pushing a boulder uphill.

Another unhelpful thing was the demographic information from the station. There wasn't much. Just data about our town that anyone could have gotten. Not specific viewing time data at all. The station had just switched to digital, so this data will be collected and available going forward. I used this as the "damning omission" with prospects and the funny thing was, it didn't seem to be a deal-killer.

Seven meetings went by. Lots of friendly talk. No sponsor. Ten meetings.

What the heck was wrong with my sales process? What was wrong with this market?!

The first episode aired. The producers filled the advertising spots with commercials for their own businesses.

Monday morning, I walked in to the second producer's business and found him on the phone. He was very agitated. I listened and found he was trying to get out of the deal with the station. He was about to give up.

I really did smile to myself. I still had that quiet, confident feeling in my gut.

We had an appointment in 20 minutes.

When he hung up, I said, "We need to go to this meeting."

"Why bother?" the producer replied. "Let's just cancel."

I said, "No, you're going to screw your head back on straight and we're going to go to this meeting, and we're not going to give a damn what the result is one way or the other. But we're going to show up and do our thing."

He had nothing to lose. We went.

Booked our title sponsor.

After all the struggling, what happened was what I knew would happen sooner or later: this sale was easy. No pushing. No persuading. Easy. We walked out with a check.

I stopped him from trying to high-five me in the parking lot. Some of the sponsor's employees were out in the parking lot and you never want them to see you celebrating.

In the truck driving back to his shop, I asked, "What's the difference between an hour ago and now?"

It wasn't the show.

It wasn't the idea.

It was the validation.

He had needed the idea validated. I had not. My expectation had been that it was going to work, and it did.

An hour before, he had been ready to give up.

I had not.

And now he had a check in hand and the world was coming up roses.

I was not that excited. Sure, it was great to get the sale. But not a surprise.

And it happened after the producers, the originators of the idea, were ready to flat-out QUIT. Run away with their tails between their legs and say, legitimately, "Well, we tried."

Let this be a lesson to you.

The next day we went to the last of the appointments our phone prospector had set for us, with a local sports team. They signed up, too.

When we received their logo by email, that was the real payment. Name association. Full validity. The ability to announce our show in the stadium to home crowds of thousands of fans.

Now that they're not going to be First, others have come on board.

But I won't forget how tenuous it was. How these producers nearly dropped everything and didn't go for that one last meeting. It would have been very easy for them to have said they tried everything...they got a phone prospector...they got appointments...they went to the meetings. "But it just didn't work." Riiiiight.

You know what's more important than any of that? The quiet feeling in your gut that this is going to work. That will MAKE you take the actions you need to take to win.

We didn't even have a website. I made one since then. But at the time all we had was a glossy info card with the show on one side and our contact info on the back. And a couple write-ups of the title and caption sponsor spots. Nothing fancy at all.

You don't need fancy. You need to get in front of qualified prospects.

Now there are a bazillion startups out there who would LOVE to be validated and profitable in five weeks or less. For starting up a business, my usual commitment has been three or four MONTHS to get known as the person to talk to about whatever it is, and get it going. So if you're in this position, and you think you're ready to give up after just a couple weeks or even months...you are nowhere near that decision point yet.

We had a good idea. Competent fulfillment. Able sales methods. Good help. And STILL it took five weeks and "overtime" to get the job done. If you are in a lesser position, how can you expect success is going to be instant for you?

I since went back and closed the title sponsor for copywriting and online marketing help...and walked out with a bigger check than we had for the TV sponsorship heh heh.

The question I want you to ask yourself is that one about your gut: do you have that quiet feeling of "Yes, this is going to work" assuredly warming your belly? Because that's really all you need. The rest is just stick-to-it-iveness.

I hope you got something out of this case study, which is a surprise write-up for me...I popped in here and thought, well, why not. And here we are an hour later.