Let's End the Chess Game

By Jake

My post today is going to be very short and to the point. I was in a meeting yesterday with a potential client and we were discussing all the fun stuff when negotiating a partnership: mainly what is going to be executed and what the investment level is going to be. Because I have a great relationship with this person we finally got to a point in the discussion where I said, "can we just end this chess game?" The chess game that I am referring to is the one between the property and the partner and the evaluation of the give (what the sponsor receives in the form of exposure) and the get (what the property receives in value for the exposure).

In order to move partnership/sponsorships forward we need need to realize the amount of time both sides spend on this game is ultimately lost value that could have been better directed into the partnership. Obviously neither side wants to be overworked or pay for something where they are not realizing the proposed value, but there is a better process that we can adopt that will ultimately lead to partners with higher investment levels and longer commitments.

The way to end this game and maximize the value of the partnership is to first get a hard dollar that the partner would be willing to spend and then the property builds to that level. This process allows the partner to clearly lay out all expectations and expected goals and it allows the property to build a partnership that maximizes the value proposition but also achieves the revenue goals (we are not selling partnership to make $0, but that is for another post).

Think about it in terms of building a house. As the buyer, you pick out a neighborhood, plot of land, and even a style of house. The next step is the most important, you would hire an architect to construct a blueprint of exactly what your house will look like inside and out. If you approve the blueprint, the house is built and hopefully you have received exactly what you were expecting at the amount you predetermined was acceptable.

All too often we are in the position of skipping the blueprint process and we jump straight to building something and we do not necessarily even know if this is what the buyer is looking for or expecting. As properties we have to push the potential partners to give us a dollar amount that they would be comfortable investing before we build their product, otherwise we are guessing or worse playing a "Chess Game"!