15 Minutes Today Could Mean a Sponsorship Tomorrow.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how being busy gets in the way of racers advocating for themselves. We experience it, and I know you do, too. I’ve seen it firsthand. Before I go in-depth, I want to be clear that I’m not calling this racer out as a “gotcha.” I truly think this could be a learning experience for a lot of folks who don’t know better.

Before we launched Racer on Demand, I got a Facebook message from a racer to our business page. The message was succinct, introduced a little about the racer, what class and series they raced in, and said they were looking for sponsors to run this year. They asked if we’d be interested in sponsoring them and offered to send over a sponsorship proposal.

Now, there’s a lot of reasons I cringed when I saw this, but the one that I’m not sure most people think about is this.

They had only liked our page 4 hours prior.

Our friend Alex Striler equates approaching a company with a sponsorship proposal to approaching your partner with a marriage proposal. Could you imagine proposing marriage to someone you just met four hours prior?

This racer was prepared to propose to us without a clue about who we are, what we do, who we’re trying to reach, or what our business strategies are. They had never interacted with our content, never commented on our posts, and never shared our stories. They’d likely never visited our website and probably didn’t know how big or small our business is. There’s no way they were prepared with any ideas for helping us meet our business goals. We were as much a stranger to them as they were to us.

And that's a huge turn-off for any potential sponsor.

Here’s your sign.

I know you’re busy and you probably don’t take the time you should to do your homework before putting on your “seeking sponsors” hat. So here’s your sign to take the next 15 minutes to invest some time on it, now. It won’t take you long. Go follow the pages of the businesses that you think might be a good fit. Do it right now. Then, next time you’re scrolling, interact with those businesses, learn about them, consider their target audience when you see a post, and watch for their values to show up in what they say and do. Think of this like getting to know someone before you decide if you’d want to date them.

When it is time for you to put on that “seeking sponsors” hat, only reach out to those companies whose brand and values align with yours.

And please, for the love of God, don’t do it over a Facebook message.