Dealing with rejection on a motorsport sponsorship pitch

There’s only one thing worse than getting rejected by a potential sponsor; getting no reply at all.

In this article, I want to talk about how you can quickly pick yourself up after a ‘no’ and even start thinking of rejection as a good thing. Now, this might sound a bit strange, but if you get rejected by a sponsor, it means you don’t have to waste time chasing them or hoping that they’re going to give you some money. A firm no means that you can focus your attention elsewhere, giving you back some of your precious time.

On the other hand, it can be frustrating when you don’t get a reply because you don’t know where you stand. If you send a cold email and you instantly get a no back, you don’t have to worry about endless follow-ups. You can move on to more lucrative prospects.

In this article, we’ll look at some of the ways that you can deal with rejection on a motorsport sponsorship pitch, but just bear in mind that getting a firm no is often better than getting zero response at all.

A no means that they’ve been interested enough to read your whole email.

Make getting a reply your goal

When pitching to racing sponsors, you need to craft a pitch email that grabs their attention. If it doesn’t, they won’t reply to you. If it does, but they’re not in a position to sponsor, that’s when they’ll get back to you with a no.

Of course, your pitch should be focused on getting a yes. But if you aim for, at the very least, a reply, you’ll be steps ahead of complete silence.

This means you need to focus on your value to the business and what they’ll get from working with you. Take a look at our big guide to motorsport sponsorship for more details.

Move on straight away

There’s no point dwelling over the nos because you’re going to get a lot of them (sorry!).

You can’t always know exactly what a business is doing (but good research can help). So when you get a rejection, pick yourself up straight away and mark that potential sponsor off on your spreadsheet. Then move on to the next one, don’t dwell on the rejection.

This isn’t necessarily something that comes easily, and rejection is never nice, but the more you can do to pick up yourself up and move on, the better.

So from now on, every time that you get a rejection email, make sure you send out a new pitch the same day, or follow up on an existing pitch that you have out there.

Research, research, research

You can also minimise the number of rejections you get with proper pitching and researching. I’ve found over the years that the more I research a potential sponsor, the more likely I am to get a reply that’s positive.

I’ve been doing a really big pitching push lately and of all the people that I’ve emailed, maybe only one has come back and given me a firm no. The rest are all in progress (that’s a huge success rate!). So doing the proper research is really, really, really important.

Those of you who have read Get Paid To Race or are enrolled in one of the Get Paid To Race: Six Weeks to Success courses, you’ll know this and you’ll already, hopefully, be putting this into practice. Proper research will really minimise your nos. So while it’s good to get used to rejection — because it’s a part of any sales process (and this is a sales process) — if you can minimise it, then it’s going to be much easier on you as well.

Don’t blanket email companies

Don’t just find a listing of the companies in your local area and email every single person there. This is when you’ll get rejected, and usually only after a really lengthy follow-up process. This is a huge waste of your time.

Instead, pinpoint the companies that you are approaching much more directly because if you can find the businesses that will genuinely find value in what you’re offering, they’re going to be way more likely to say yes. This, of course, increases your success rate and minimizes the number of rejections you get.

Turn rejection into a re-pitch

I have one client who turned around a firm no from a business by doing some research and re-pitching. The business gave them £50,000.

They turned that rejection into something massive that funded almost their entire season!

If you’ve been having a really good conversation with someone, then it could just be a case of tweaking what you’re offering to fit their needs/budget. If you get a no from a cold approach or one or two emails, then maybe you need to have a bigger discussion with them to find out what their goals are, or do some more research and go in with a counter pitch.

Following the rejection, you could re-pitch straight away or you could leave it a couple of months depending on the position you’re in, the research you do, and the findings that you get from it, but it is possible to turn a no into a yes.

Note: Balance this with just moving on to the next prospect. If you think there’s real potential between you and the business, it’s worth pursuing. If they were just part of a mass email out (before you knew any better…) then it’s probably time to move on.

Don’t give up

Just because that one business doesn’t want to sponsor you, doesn’t mean someone else won’t. Often, you can’t account for business circumstances, especially in the current climate.

Even if you’ve done all of your research and identified a business as a great potential sponsor, it might just be that the business isn’t in a great financial position or they’ve just spent their money launching a new product.

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If you have any questions on this or you are struggling with rejection, post in the Racing Mentor Sponsorship Community on Facebook. It’s a friendly group of people who are more than happy to give you a little motivation or inspiration when you’re feeling stuck.

Pitching for sponsorship does take time and you will have to send multiple pitches (tens, not hundreds) in order to get a good response rate. Keep going. You’ve got this.

How to deal with rejection on a sponsorship pitch