|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Activities
Nor'easter News
Car Care
Membership
Other Cool Stuff
Sponsors & Advertisers
|
Porsche
Club of America
Pit
Pass
|
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||
There is a simple equation in racing the faster you want to go the more money you have to spend ($$ = speed). As regular readers of this column will remember in John Ktistes and my recent article on getting started in PCA Club Racing, we spent quite a bit of time discussing selecting a race class to fit your personal budget. Now the only way I know to augment your personal budget is sponsorship, so that is my topic for this month The primary goal a sponsor is trying to achieve by becoming involved with a race team is to promote increased sales of their goods and services. Promotional value is directly proportional to the number of people that race team involvement will expose the sponsor to. So the basic reality PCA club racers must deal with is we get no television exposure and the likelihood of photos of our cars appearing in national magazines like Road & Track or Car and Driver are nil. That’s right no millions of TV viewers and no magazines with tens of thousands of subscribers, so what is the poor Club Racer to do? All is not lost but we need to have reasonable expectations. We do have a couple of hole cards and if we play them smartly we can get sponsorship; provide them with a real value and save ourselves a few bucks. The strong things we have going for us is the disposable income of our fellow club racers, and the club members that view our races, the growing popularity of our races where some tracks are now charging admission and perhaps most of all the rolling billboards we tow to the track past thousands of people. As exposure is the key to sponsorship I learned early on the best opportunities were with vendors who sell to my fellow club racers. My oldest sponsor is Leaf Racewear. Over the years our relationship has grown from getting a discount on products to getting all my safety and crew gear at no charge. They have been so happy with our relationship that they even solicited Bell Helmets on my behalf. Now we need to get one thing straight right now. Taking the money and sticking a decal on your car will not cut it. You need to have a marketing plan for your sponsor as part of your proposal and you need to stick too it. That means I keep literature and hand it out at every opportunity. I talk up the company and their products. I also try to wear their comfortable and good looking suits to drivers meetings and around the paddock when ever I can. What can a long term relationship like this mean to a club racer? Well I would estimate the retail value of the gear I have had available for my use over my career as exceeding eight thousand dollars so far. Now of course I really did not need new race suits every two years but this does tie into another factor. If you want someone to give you money to represent them you better look pretty sharp. That is the whole package, personal/team appearance, speaking both in person and in print, on track performance and reputation. Your overall image has to be one that the company feels comfortable with. To get down to brass tack here are some general conclusions. You are best to approach vendors whose goods and services you use, who will make you go faster and who want to increase their sales in the PCA. Be happy with discounts or barter type deals. Start small and prove your worth then ask for more. Leave room on the car and in you deal for growth. And finally work hard to uphold your end of the deal. After you start to get the hang of it you will want to go after bigger game. At this point you will need to prepare a good looking proposal. Mine is five pages with lots of quality of people and team information, pictures, facts and figures. Spend some real time on this. You need to have 85% of the information organized so it is applicable to all sponsors you present to. Then have one section that you can tailor to the firm in question. This is where you make your pitch. It does not hurt to offer different levels of support. Below is my current sponsor list (from the document index) notice the room for growth and for existing sponsors to increase their involvement. Listing you sponsors also projects strength and avoids potential conflicts. Synopsis’s of current sponsors: Primary, Major & Associate * Primary sponsor, (available) Virtually every firm I have approached has wanted a written proposal. By designing your document so 85% of it is reusable you will save yourself a lot of labor and you can get quite a few out in a reasonable amount of time. One other tip, make sure your resample and compress your proposal photos so they don’t take up a lot of computer memory. I use a word document and even with the twelve photos it is less than 1MB and easily sent as an e-mail attachment. Use your contacts to find out about firms you want to approach. Find out who the decision maker is and what there need or goals are. It helps if the business owner is a race fan. I try to get an introduction and permission to send a proposal before I hit the guy/gal’s inbox. There is no doubt having a salesman’s extrovert personality helps in this type of venture. It also helps if you can deal with rejection. Don’t get discouraged.. It takes time to learn to recognize opportunity and the ins and outs of sponsorship salesmanship. The good news is PCA club racing is growing in size and respect all the time. As this happens, exposure and thus sponsorship opportunities are going to grow in my opinion. I’ll try to share a little more on this subject as this season gets underway. I’d be remiss not to stress the point out that our race team has the Primary and 1st Major sponsor positions open. If you would like to receive a proposal tailored to your firms or organizations needs please give me a call at Baker Tractor Corp. Swansea MA. As February approaches we have had all the body work and paint freshened and new decals will be installed shortly. We are looking forward to our 2006 season kick off representing our sponsors at Sebring. It looks like the largest field of GT-1R cars (13) I have ever heard of will be there. It is time for this old dog to get away from dozing in front of the wood stove and stretch his legs! Have you heard the old saw about where you want to be in a pack of dogs for the best view? |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright
1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005,
2006 PCA/NER
Year 2000 Web Site Design by www.sitesofboston.com |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
