The First-Timer Mistakes Sponsors Keep Seeing

At a recent PRI Show seminar I tried something different. Instead of talking for 45 minutes, I invited the people who actually approve sponsorships at oil companies, fuel companies, suspension makers, sanctioning bodies and event promoters to come up one at a time and tell a room full of racers what they wish those racers knew. They didn't coordinate. They still ended up describing the same handful of mistakes, and nearly all of them happen before a sponsor ever looks at your results.

Mistake one: pitching a brand you haven't studied

Julian Gill, CEO of Eibach, gave the room one word: knowledge. He watches racers skip that step at his own booth all week. They walk up and open with some version of, in his words, "Oh, I'm a racer. I'm looking for sponsorship. What do you do?" His verdict: "You know instantly that's a no-no." Eibach is not only a spring company, and it does work outside racing that a smart racer could connect to. "Know who we are, what we do, what we produce and how you can use it," he said.

He added a warning that's new: "Please do not generate a proposal with AI yet. Use it to get the basics, but make it original." ▶ Watch Julian Gill's advice

On the positive side, Gill noticed something that has improved: young racers presenting themselves instead of letting a parent do the talking. "How many young people can present themselves. Very impressive." ▶ See the full answer

Mistake two: sending it to the wrong desk

The VP Racing Fuels executive on the panel said his company receives a thousand or more requests a month, so the first fix is simply routing. "Find the right person to give a proposal. Sending it to the CEO of a company is not the answer." VP has regional offices for regional racers. And a decal, he said, is "really irrelevant for the most part" to a company everybody in the room already buys from. What moves VP is help putting consumer products on store shelves and business-to-business introductions. ▶ Watch the VP Racing answer

Mistake three: making the sponsor do your homework

This one sounds trivial, and it gets more applications thrown out than anything else. A representative of Autofluencer, a startup that helps brands manage and measure sponsorships, described reviewing a brand's application forms where the question asked for a Facebook link and racers typed in their name, their wife's name, or nothing useful. "If they ask for a link, put in the link. If they ask for a handle, put in the handle," she said. Otherwise, "you're going to get skipped in a lot of those applications." ▶ Watch the clip

Mark Beatty, brand director at Red Line Oil, confirmed it was his company's application being described. "We had 600 people apply just in the last two months," he said. "I'm a one-man band." He reads the form as a test of interest: "If you don't want to spend the time to give us the information we need, it's tough for us to take you serious that you really want sponsorship." ▶ Watch Mark Beatty on applications

The Autofluencer representative's other point is the question almost no racer asks: "How are you measuring me?" ▶ See the full answer Put it on the application. If the brand doesn't answer, measure yourself and send the report anyway.

Mistake four: being the flavor of the week

Beatty's bigger frustration is the racer who shows up as a customer only on application day. "I look for people that use our product first," he said. He sees the same names apply to a different oil brand every season, and the pattern is obvious. "This year they were brand X. This year they were brand Y ... And now all of a sudden they've applied for us. We just feel like the flavor of the week."

He also clicks through to every applicant's social media and scrolls it, and one thing stands out. "The people that are having fun out there, it shows in your social media, and that's the type of person I want on Team Red Line." ▶ Watch Mark Beatty on what Red Line looks for

Mistake five: forgetting that someone is always watching

Jason Smith, president of USAC, looks for sponsors himself, and his checklist for his own teams starts with being sponsorable. "If our trailer is dirty when we show up at a track, that's not being sponsorable," he said. "I've known people that said, I'll give you money not to put my name on your car because it looks that bad."

His next point is the one first-timers underestimate: "Someone is always watching. In our group, I can tell you at least five people that have gotten sponsorships because the guy sitting in the grandstand liked what he saw out on the track. They didn't argue, they didn't yell at officials. They were nice, polite. Their stuff was clean." And once the deal is signed: "Never over promise and under deliver." ▶ Watch Jason Smith's checklist

Mistake six: selling only yourself

Tristan Mundin, strategic marketing manager at RhinoUSA, said the pitches that win at his company are rarely about the racer at all. "It's not always about selling yourself. It's about selling your network." He described paying for a pre-race van program only after learning it would put 20 influencers with big followings behind the wheel. The same logic applies if you happen to know the owner of a retail chain the brand wants to get into. "Sell us on your network," he said. "Who do you know? What value do you bring outside of yourself?" ▶ Watch Tristan Mundin explain

A first-timer's network may be small, but it's rarely empty. The shop owner you buy from, the school you speak at, the business your family runs all count.

Mistake seven: treating a no as the end

Another brand marketer on the panel opened with something every new racer should hear: "You are on a job interview when you're talking to a sponsor." She once got a reply to one of her offers that read, "Bro, comma, I thought this would be free." The professional response, she said, is to thank them, explain the budget doesn't work this year, and ask to talk again in six months, because "this industry is incredibly small" and brands ask each other what racers are like to work with. She also reminded the room that a discount on a part you were going to buy anyway is a real start, and a phenomenal season can bump it up the following year. ▶ Watch the clip

Marty Fiolka, who has built Crandon's big partnerships, closed with patience. "It took one, two, three, four years to get those people to come on board," he said of Crandon's long-running partners. Sometimes the timing is wrong, and sometimes the fit is wrong: "If it feels like it's not going to fit, it's likely not going to work." His first step costs nothing but showing up, because "a lot of people hide behind emails" while the person they want to meet is standing at the show with time to talk. ▶ Watch Marty Fiolka on patience

The takeaway

• Research before you approach. Know what the brand makes, who buys it and what else it does.
• Route it correctly to the regional office or the marketing person, not the CEO, and fill out every application field exactly as asked.
• Be a customer before you're an applicant, and stay loyal long enough that it shows.
• Keep your trailer, gear and behavior sponsor-ready at every race. Somebody in the stands is deciding.
• Treat every no as a future yes: answer politely, take the small deal, and plan on years, not weeks.

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