Discovery call

A short conversation, fifteen minutes and no deck, in which you ask a prospective sponsor what they are trying to achieve before you send them a tier sheet. It sits between contacted and proposal in the pipeline, and it is the stage most first-time organizers skip, because a brand saying “send us the packages” feels like permission to send the packages. What the call produces is the sponsor’s own objective in their own words, which then becomes the ROO you write into their row and design the activation around. Two brands can want completely different things from the same booth, and their website will not tell you which. The register of the call matters as much as the questions. You are not persuading a stranger, you are finding out whether there is a fit, and saying so honestly when there isn’t.

Source: Standard consultative-sales practice, applied here to event sponsorship. The clearest statement of why it comes first is from a Whova organizer panel: “you really have to find out what their goal is for being at your event,” because “the data that you put in front of them is only going to be valuable if it’s the value they’re looking for,” alongside the same panelist’s stated number one rule, “don’t be salesy. It’s really about building that relationship, getting to know them” (Whova, Event Planning Tips 26). TEDx builds the equivalent step into its outreach sequence, where a letter and a brief lead to a phone call before any in-person presentation, and instructs organizers to hold a meeting with the sponsor to discuss creative options for engaging guests (TEDx Organizer Guide, approaching sponsors).

First used in: 2.4 · Sponsorship II: selling and activation.