Raj Patel

The importance of sponsorships was well known by me by working for long in the Hospitality industry. I have an idea of the functionality of the sponsorship and its process from the viewpoint of the Rights- Holder or Property.

With the second half of Sales and Sponsorship of my class, I gained more ideas and knowledge about the process from the side of the Property and the Sponsor or Band. With this, we had a chance to look at TIFF for the inventory Report, along with Sponsorship Pitch, and Discovery Session. Through this not only I had how much sponsorships play an important role in the event industry but also have a deep knowledge of the sponsorships, its procedures and different ways to use them. Its importance between Brands and Properties had a more clear understanding of this.

The successful sponsorship stories are those when the partners and their ideas are mission go hand in hand. Brands have their own ways of getting involved in the public. Sometimes it's because of the public awareness, sometimes to create their name whereas sometimes regarding their product awareness. Sometimes brands play an important role in social cause and public awareness is useful in sending a public message directly.

Properties not always need financial backbone from the Brands they want to make sure that the company they are involved with is the perfect match for their cause and perfectly meets the requirements and when seen with the associated brand in the market it can create an impact on the society.

Strategy, Planning, Execution, and Review are the same process for both brands and Properties but they have different driving forces when it comes to partnership. Securing sponsors needs to understand a lot of things like their stakeholders, their interests, the process that they follow, motivations, goals, etc for both the parties to make sure that they achieve the goals and the level of expectations of both parties are fulfilled to the core.

This blog is a part of an assignment and contains theory and practical information about the things that I learned in the sales class at Humber College, Toronto. I would appreciate it if you take out some time out to read it and provide some useful feedback and suggestions that would be a great help.

I would like to start by introducing my professor. Her name is Ms. Sadaf Virji who currently works at ten thousand coffees and is a part-time instructor of sales and sponsorship in the event management program at Humber College, lakeshore. According to my, she's one of the best professors I have come across. I have never missed attending any of her classes because of this reason.

Some of the key points which I learned in the class are stated below:

1. Sales are mostly about building relationships with your clients as well as the company, the management and the people that you deal with regularly.

2. There are various characteristics that a person must develop to become a good salesperson like problem-solving, creativeness in the idea for sales, knowledge of the interest of the buyers, negotiation skills which are best suited for both buyer and seller.

3. One should be focused and should always try to work beyond his/her comfort zone to achieve the desired target.

4. It is very important to be familiar with the process of prospecting which helps in identifying the sources of prospects and will also decrease the percent of churn rates in sales.

5. One of the most important parts of the success of the salesperson is his/her elevator pitch.

Ms. Virji believes in the concept that both practical and theoretical knowledge is important. Because of this we also got an exposure to the practical dealings which were as follows:

We had a great guest speaker Ms. Sharon Shapcott who is a senior customer success manager at LinkedIn. She imparted knowledge about how to build relationships with clients, how important it is to maintain our LinkedIn profile. Guided us in how to use the platform of LinkedIn for searching jobs, creating contacts and building connections from the industry.

We had a situational behavioral questionnaire where different aspects of the personality of a person during normal as well as stressful conditions. After this class, I started analyzing my personality during both situations which in turn proved helpful to me.

We also have an amazing opportunity coming up where we are supposed to sell Toronto Marlies tickets for different matches at a mere price of $25 from this we donate $5 towards Camp Oochigeas which is a camp for children with cancer. So we are contributing towards a good cause and also learning the process of sales.

Overall, I enjoyed all my classes. They are fun-loving, informative and always something new to learn with each lesson. Before the concept of sales was limited to me but now I am convinced that there are many processes and career opportunities attached to sales.