SDH165: How to Stop Getting Ready to Get Ready and Just Start with Shayna Rattler

As a growing business, it goes without saying that need funds to do so. But how do you gain sponsors? Better yet, how do gain corporate sponsors? Is your business even attractive to corporate sponsors? What does that entail? Well Shayna Rattler has the answers to all of those questions with her business, Corporate Attraction, where she coaches businesses on how to land corporate sponsors and teaches business owners how to be productive, effective, and efficient. When Corporate Attraction started in 2009, her clientele consisted of individual buyers and small businesses. Unfortunately, she found that her services and products weren't in their price range. This caused her business to start sinking and she found herself on the verge of foreclosure on her home and almost having to file bankruptcy. However, Shayna didn't consider quitting her business as an option and instead shifted her customer base. She decided to market towards management and corporations because they had the money to pay her. The only problem was that there was no one to tell her how to take on such a task; but Shayna figured it out on her own through trial and error. She developed a three step system to attracting corporate sponsors: Position, Package and Pitch. The first step has to do with determining your company and brand's position in the marketplace. If your presence isn't known, a corporation won't care about your proposal or sales script. She evaluates your position and determines your company's package through a 360 Degree Activation assessment. This consists of finding all the ways online and offline you're engaging your target market throughout the year, and how you are able to package these platforms for a corporation's access and profitability. If you are able to show corporations how many ways you are able to market their business, and your status in those platforms, you are seen as a more attractive candidate. If you want to reach out to a corporation, she suggests you find the person in charge of the department that correlates to the direction of your business and reach out to them. In that initial contact, you should let them know you have noticed the audience they've been trying to reach, you have access to that audience and their trust, and you connect with them in unique and successful ways.  Then simply suggest that you should "support one another" and leave discussion of a partnership for when it's been decided that this is a fruitful collaboration. This aspect is extremely powerful because Influencer Marketing has become the best way to advertise and reach consumers in this new generation. If you show that you have access to their target audience and that the audience trusts what you tell them it let's corporations know that consumer is more likely to buy from them based on your recommendation. Also, you can give them direct access and engagement to this audience. Get comfortable and soak up as much as Shayna Rattler has to say about obtaining corporate dollars in today's episode! In this episode you will... Know if changing your target customer will change the success of your business Learn how to establish yourself in a marketplace to create a notable presence Figure out how to increase the visibility of your brand in order to appear more attractive to corporate sponsors Find a price point that reflects your quality of service and demands that your business be taken seriously Understand how to build a personal relationship with someone in a corporation you'd like to sponsor your business Know how to make your clients feel special and set your business to a higher standard INSIGHTS "I really just became committed to how [I would] teach other small business owners, especially women, [on] how to change the trajectory of their businesses in their lives by going after those big boys who have those big checks." -Shayna Rattler "You can actually reach out to people that are in your backyard tomorrow...that's still going to be a revenue stream that you didn't have access to and give you the confidence and the past performance to go after the Coca-Colas in six to nine months" -Shayna Rattler "Don't worry about your proposal and your deck until you know that this is a sound business case to be made...stop proposing products and services and solutions until people tell you what they want and need" -Shayna Rattler "As women we need to stop telling ourselves that we're too small...that we haven't been in business long enough, we don't have it all figured out. So what, just start. Stop getting ready to get ready and just start." -Shayna Rattler "The biggest thing I have learned in my eight years is that I have to keep going even when I don't feel like it and even though what I know I've been promised and what I know is possible is not actually evidence that I see right now." -Shayna Rattler RESOURCES Corporate Attraction's Website Corporate Attraction Facebook SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham