“You must remember,” my mother told me yesterday before dinner, “that all sales begin with a no. Every single person on this planet doesn’t like being solicited for money. It’s your job to turn their no into a yes.”

Having experienced first-hand that day exactly what my mother was talking about, I could agree. Although I was raising money for a charity, it was nonetheless soliciting for money. Almost no one likes to give away money.

Perhaps it is my luck I have been gifted with the opportunity to attempt to find sponsors for a school-related project a team and I have been working on so feverishly. It is crucial that sponsors be found.

It is a terrific thing, I believe, to be able to experience failure. My father oft tells me that a man is not complete without failure. It takes a true man to be able to understand the faults of themselves, acknowledge them, and move on. Not recognizing them is fatal, and it is best to make mistakes young.

I have searched for and received no replies yet for around eight companies and businesses in the local area. It takes more than spunk and a good project to achieve sponsors, sales, or any type of financial gain.

Through my experiences of searching for sponsors in the local area for a school-event, I can state the following as information I will keep with me forever, whenever I need to market or sell something:

For local events and projects, don’t search for funding
through chains or large businesses.

As a school-related project, I believed that teenage clothing sellers would be interested in sponsoring the project, since their target customers are teenagers. How wrong I was to think such an idea.

National and international clothing chains like Abercrombie & Fitch, Hollister, and American Eagle are very hard to solicit funds from. They operate as a corporate bureaucracy. One individual store cannot sponsor anything. Everything must be done through their “corporate headquarters”.

To me, the entire corporate headquarter idea should be a joke, perhaps a prank some people pull on the occasional annoying marketer. The complicated automated phone systems are so complex and confusing it is like navigating a maze. It is very hard to find someone willing to speak to you.

In one case, a janitor picked up. Hardly able to speak English, she answered “no” to any question I asked her. She was relieved when I finally told her good-bye.

In another case, I learned that apparently the marketing and advertising phone lines for the company closed earlier. The customer support line was fine. When I asked the customer support representative if I could speak to someone authorized for marketing, I was transferred, waited for thirty-five minutes, before their phone line hung up. Accidental or deliberate, I will never know.

Charity and non-profit projects should be marketed as such.

Again, marketing for the school-related project, I frequently got hasty and failed to mention it was a charity or non-profit project, assuming they would automatically understand. They didn’t, nor do I expect anyone to, for that matter.

The truth is that faced with a financial decision of any sport a person becomes incredibly close-minded. It is a natural human instinct, and, as if they are being attacked (for their money), they will immediately go onto the defense.

With others, I tried to be more obvious by mentioning the moral benefits of sponsoring a school project I considered to be obvious. I, however, was working on the project and knew much about it. They were not.

Saying things like “supporting the next generation of America’s workers” would seem largely pointless to anyone working on our team. They would probably laugh. Yet with the (potential) sponsors, telling them they were helping to move forward the next generation made them cock their heads. It really did help.

The sponsor should always be rewarded, morally or with physical items.

It was very important, when my dad and I discussed possible ways of soliciting money, to reward any sponsors. A person’s good feeling of helping someone is priceless. My dad recommended that I gift any sponsors with certificates or even things like school performance tickets or just the entire team coming to their offices to say thank you.

People love to have something hanging on their walls that say “look what I did” to anyone walking by. This is evidenced by the walls of certificates doctors and lawyers hang in their offices and by my own wall of certificates, covering an entire wall of my room.

These certificates (and the trophies and medals I place on a table below them) are my honors: they are what others have given me to congratulate me. I feel invigorated whenever I see my awards. They are a sign of what I’ve done.

Similarly, sponsors feel the same way whenever they hold a certificate or other tangible item. First rewarding them morally by telling them what good they’ve done and then giving them a certificate that says “Thanks for sponsoring our school. We appreciate it!” Now that’s amazing.

Always leave yourself a back door.

In the case a sponsor denies you, points to the “No soliciting” sign on the front, tells you to get out, or any other form of denial, it is important to remain civilized and always leave yourself a back door.

If a sponsor says no to a potential sponsorship, consider lowering the advertisement or sponsorship price. Consider asking him or her if it’s okay to come back the next week with the entire team (compelling them to agree when they see 15 “puppy-dog” eyes).

These are things that all ensure a back door. And in the case they deny you completely? Remain calm, remain happy, and smile. These people are not your enemy, they simply do not wish to give up their money. That’s okay. Move on.

In conclusion: enjoy it.

So finally, it’s important to enjoy what you’re doing. Finding sponsorships or advertisements shouldn’t be treated like a death penalty. Treat it like fun. It’s great to me because I tell myself I’m practicing. So what if someone denies me? They aren’t the only dentist or doctor or store in town. I’ve got plenty others.

Finding sponsorships has taught me more than I could ever learn from a single book. Although I’ve lately been reading Bob Gilbreath’s (of Bridge Worldwide) book The Next Evolution of Marketing, where he mentions that the marketing world is changing, I believe it is only a mixture of study and real-world experience that can truly prepare.