When to Send a Deck, and When to Send a Proposal

A good deck sent to a stranger gets deleted. A good proposal sent after the budget is locked gets filed for next year, if you're lucky. Most racers who get no response did nothing wrong with the documents. They sent them at the wrong time.

Every sponsorship pitch runs on two clocks. One is the relationship: how well the person on the other end knows you. The other is the budget: when the company decides where next year's marketing money goes. The deck belongs to the first clock. The proposal has to beat the second.

Send the deck when they know your name

My own rule is simple. I try to get to know somebody well enough that when they see my face, they know my name. That's when I hand them a deck. Once they understand what I do and what I could do for them, that's when I send a proposal. If they look at me and don't know who I am, it's not time yet.

When I shared that rule at my Motocross Sponsorship Summit, Chris Meyer, senior marketing specialist at Maxxis, agreed. "Yeah, I'd say that's a great rule of thumb. If you trust yourself in reading people... if we're interested, you'll see it on our face." ▶ Watch the Decks & Proposals session

Megan Meyer, the two-time NHRA world champion who co-hosts my Summits, says the deck should come after a real conversation, not before. "The best time to send a deck is after you have had that first meeting with a company, and that could be with the marketing director, it could be with their social media manager, it could be with someone in the creative department, just anybody there," she said. Use that meeting to learn the company's goals, then build the deck around them. ▶ Watch Megan Meyer on this

Have it ready when they ask

The flip side is being ready the moment a brand says yes to seeing more. Chris Meyer described the best timing he knows: after a real conversation, when he has said "send me a deck." "That's your time. Send me your deck," he said. "When that opportunity strikes, you have to have a deck ready. You have to know you came to talk to me, what products you want to run from me, those types of things. And then you go home, you switch out your logos and your deck and you send me an awesome email." ▶ Watch Chris Meyer explain this

That means building your deck before the season of meetings starts, not the night after you finally get a yes.

Learn each company's budget calendar

The budget clock is different for every sponsor, and you have to ask. Dave Gowland, vice president of motorsports at Monster Energy, told racers to find out "when are their budgets," because they vary by company. "Japanese manufacturers, their budgets come out in June or July," he said. "You should try and understand when they're getting new money." ▶ Watch Dave Gowland on this

Gowland worked at Kawasaki before Monster, and he described how early those deals were set. "Everything happened in the fall. Yes, we got our budget. I knew what it was. August came around when we were speaking to people at Loretta Lynn's. And so I knew how much money I was spending." ▶ See the full session

Peter Calhoun of BFGoodrich Racing and Michelin Motorsports gave the same warning about fiscal years. Michelin plans on the calendar year, but "if you're ever pitching a Japanese company, it's not uncommon that Japanese companies' fiscal starts on April 1." And late in the year, even calendar-year companies stop taking new ideas: "By the time people get in October and November, they're really getting into the nuts and the bolts of their activations and executions and how they're going to spend their budget, or presenting their budget to their management team." ▶ Watch Peter Calhoun on timing

James Ort, who works in BRP's sponsorship department, puts the pitch window even earlier. "Timing is everything. I would recommend pitching in June, July, August for the following year," he said at the Off-Road Sponsorship Summit. "That's typically, from my experience, when budgets are being decided." ▶ Watch James Ort on this

Get the proposal in before plans lock

Ben Dolan, VP of marketing at VP Racing Fuels, sees what happens when racers wait for the trade shows. "A lot of people wait till SEMA or PRI, particularly PRI, and they will inundate the salespeople in the booth or myself. And I'll go hours without a break of just going from one person to the next. And it's really hard to differentiate yourself there," he said. ▶ Watch the Decks & Proposals session

His timeline works backward from when VP's plan is final. Build the relationship before fall, then use the deck to tee up "conversations probably in October, November, so that you're getting a proposal over by November," Dolan said. "We already know what we're doing in December or January. We've got things pretty buttoned down." ▶ See the full session

Don't swing too far the other way, though. Tony Yorkman, senior partnership manager at K&N Engineering, takes decks year-round but reads proposals in the fourth quarter, when K&N builds its plan for the next year. He also warned that an early proposal can hurt you. "You definitely don't want to give out a proposal too soon either, because you may not be able to offer those same kind of things, and you may disappoint somebody," he said. "But at the same time, you might have something additional that you can offer that you didn't have in June, because your program's evolved." ▶ Watch Tony Yorkman on this

Watch for launches and openings

Fiscal years aren't the only clock. Joe Bowman, marketing director at Slime, said a new product can move a racer to the front of the line. "We're always innovating new products. So early next year, we're gonna have a line of emergency roadside kit and products," he said, and "a sponsor that can really help us with that angle would rise to the top. Fall is when we technically are budgeting for next year." When you see a brand about to launch something, that's when it has money and a reason to spend it. ▶ Watch the session

Some companies don't run on a fixed calendar at all. Gowland said Monster works from a guideline rather than a strict budget, so "timing is almost year round." "If you're looking to kind of send stuff into Monster, we take it all year long," he said. "It may be halfway through a season already, but we look at it, and then we can follow you and see what kind of results that you are getting. And then we can come back to you when it's time, like in the fall or at the beginning of the season, depending on what discipline you're actually in." ▶ See the full session

That's another reason to send the deck early. It starts the clock on a brand watching you.

The takeaway

• Hand someone a deck once they know your name. Send a proposal once they understand what you can do for them.
• Build your deck before the meetings start, so you can send it the day a brand asks.
• Ask every target sponsor when its fiscal year starts and when next year's budget is decided. Japanese manufacturers often plan months ahead of everyone else.
• Plan to pitch in summer and have proposals in by early fall. Don't wait for SEMA or PRI.
• Watch for product launches. A brand with something new to sell has a reason to spend.