Three Simple Formats for Sponsor Summits That Work

Let me start by saying that I hate the term “sponsor summit.” When people hear it they think of a hugely expensive, over the top, highly formal, high-pressure sales event. Sponsor summits are NEVER high-pressure sales events and they are only as formal as you want them to be. You can hold any type of summit that fits your brand and your partners…as long as you hold it at least once a year, every year. No exceptions.

Some common reactions and excuses I hear from clients about the summit are:

• No budget: This has a simple solution. Divide the cost of a summit across all of your sponsorship opportunities and bill your sponsors!
• No time: Then do less of something else. The summit will actually save you time because it helps you sell your sponsorship packages a full year in advance.
• My sponsors will see it as useless/wasteful/extravagant: First, make sure you make is useful, don’t go over the top and don’t make it extravagant. Second, have one and at the end of the event ask your sponsors if they think it was a waste of time.
• Not sure how: This is the easiest solution of them all! Read this blog post or hire someone to run it for you.

Broadly speaking, there are three types of summits: Small, medium and large. Highly technical stuff, I know.

Let’s dive in and look at all three styles in detail:

The Full-On Summit: The Beast

This is the type of event everyone thinks of when they hear the words “sponsor summit.” These events are exclusive, invite only, typically involve a keynote speaker (or two), are almost always off-site in a swanky location and can last more than one day. The entire cost of the event is on you, the organizer, including travel expenses.

 

These are a blend of professional development, recognition, high-level networking and research/market testing your sponsorship assets. Throughout the event, there is a combination of structured programming and one-on-one meetings with your leadership and your sponsors.

To be honest, if you should be running one of these events…you already are! Or you are running a mid-sized event and want to upgrade. These types of summits are challenging and complicated to run and require significant skill to balance between valuable programming, thought leadership and market testing.

Choose this type of summit if:

• You are a sports team, major national charity, major building or facility
• You sell six and seven-figure sponsorship packages
• You want to be seen as cutting edge and keeping up with (or bypassing) your competition

Large-Scale Sponsor Summit Ideas 

Go Gourmet

Since large-scale sponsor summits are all about an element of glitz and glamor, especially compared to summits of other sizes, your menu should reflect the same.

Don’t offer guests watered-down, bland coffee. Put a pep in their step with gourmet blends that have flavorful and rich notes of authentic vanilla bean, luxurious caramel, or delicious chocolate.

Serve small but delectable bites so guests can fill their stomachs without having their mouths full for so long that they can’t talk.

If your sponsor summit is an all-day affair, then consider a more extensive meal menu, as you don’t want to starve people. However, you also don’t want to spend too much time on eating, as that’s not the crux of the event. It’s a nice bonus.

Try Different Conference Room Layouts

Larger summits typically attract equally big crowds. That means giving special consideration to how and where your guests will sit.

You have plenty of options, with choices catered to how you want to connect with attendees. For example, try a U-shape arrangement if you’re interested in an intimate, close-knit vibe. Presenters and speakers can enter the center section of the U and speak to a crowd.

A classroom style, where a presenter speaks in front of a group of sitting attendees, ensures everyone can see and hear the presentation, maximizing their absorption of the sponsor summit materials.

If your event is even bigger still, you’ll need to upgrade to auditorium style seating. This is the least intimate but does well for large-scale summits.

Make It a Big-City Gathering 

Sometimes, the locale of the summit is as important as its contents. You can set the vibe by moving your event to a large city. Skip Spokane or Stockton and upgrade straight to major cities like Seattle, Los Angeles, New York City, Austin, or Sacramento.

I recommend checking what other kinds of events will take place in the big city on the week of your sponsor summit. You don’t want there to be any major conflicts, nor commitments that could impact attendance.

The Mid-Sized Summit: Formal Enough, Simple Enough…Good Enough

Don’t let the title fool you, this is not a consolation prize. This summit is right for all sorts of organizations. If you are running millions in sponsorship, have a widely recognized brand and have CEOs in your Rolodex (does anyone use a Rolodex anymore?) don’t run this type of summit. If you are everybody else, this is the one for you (unless the third option makes more sense, that is).

This type of summit is somewhere between two to four hours, typically has one speaker of note, who is likely well known in your industry of focus only (and totally unrecognizable outside of the industry). These events are a combination of food, networking, group work, Q&A and thought leadership.

This is your chance to show your most important prospects and sponsors that you value them as insiders. Give them information that nobody else gets until it’s released to the public and give them access to your leadership in a group format. This is a great option if you run a major conference or event that attracts all of your sponsors (or at least, your most important sponsors) and attracts your leadership. The event costs are on you but travel is not, since you are tacking onto an event that they plan to attend anyway.

Choose this type of summit if:

• You sell sponsorship at the five and six-figure level
• You have a major event bringing sponsors and leadership together
• You’ve never done a summit before and you want to try out the concept in a fairly low-risk environment

Mid-Sized Sponsor Summit Ideas

Select a Special Venue

Although a smaller sponsor summit might not bring in as many guests as one that’s larger-scale, you can still impress sponsors by hosting the event at a unique venue. Pass on the hotel ballrooms and think bigger and more unique, such as museums, schools, pubs, theaters, aquariums, or even warehouses.

That said, don’t spend too much time trying to secure an amazing venue. The quality of the summit is more important than where it happens.

Offer a Fireside Chat

How about a way to jazz up your average mid-sized sponsor summit? You can create a more intimate environment by switching out the standard speeches for a fireside chat. Popularized by FDR (you know, the US President), a fireside chat should have a moderator, a guest, and attendees.

The guest can speak frankly about their experiences in a semi-informal setting. There’s no need for notes or keynote speech talking points. It’s just an open, enjoyable conversation that invites participation. You can even add couches to the area to make it cozier.

Make It More Than a Talk 

There’s no need to exclusively equate sponsor summits with long, boring speeches or discussions. You can make the entire thing fun by incorporating different activities into the conversation, such as scheduling time for a movie (complete with popcorn) or even an afternoon stretch session with some yoga.

The Summit Over Easy: Small, Simple and Effective Breakfast Summit

It should be clear at this point that I am making up the names of each type of sponsor summit! This one is so named because it lends itself perfectly to a low-key breakfast event. You can run several of these in key geographies across the country, or world, depending on where your sponsors are located.

They can be small focus groups of five or they can max out at 30 people. You can invite local people of note or run these events yourself. Share some insider knowledge and invite feedback and brainstorming from the group about your sponsorship offerings and ideas they have seen work for others.

These events are a breeze to run, cost a few hundred dollars and are a goldmine of information. I worked with a client and rewrote their entire sponsorship strategy based on one event just like this. The result was an increase of $150,000 in revenue. In exchange for a $1,200 breakfast? I would call that a result!

Choose this type of summit if:

• You sell sponsorship. That’s right, everybody should be doing these events. Even if you offer the giant sponsor summit, your sponsors will love a few of these sprinkled through the year.
• You don’t have a signature event or conference that attracts all of your sponsors and leadership.

Small Sponsor Summit Ideas

Make It a Mystery

There’s a reason everyone is obsessed with true crime these days. Whodunnits capture people’s imagination. Bearing that in mind, why not set up a sponsor summit with mystery elements, escape room-style?

You can get everyone’s mental gears turning so a conversation between you and your team will be more productive.

Add a Theme

Even if you keep your sponsor summit small and simple, you can increase the interest and engagement exponentially by incorporating a theme. For example, you could go with seasons, holidays, or other special occasions.

Using themes like Mardi Gras can make up for the fact that you can’t host your sponsorship summit in New Orleans. You can bring New Orleans to you instead.

Sponsor Summit Best Practices

Sponsors love these events and you should make sure that you are open and clear about who gets invited and use it as a bargaining tool. Maybe you will choose to invite only the top 20% of your sponsors, maybe you will only invite the top 5%. The choice is yours but make sure you use it! I have personally upgraded sponsors by $10,000 just so that they could come to the sponsor summit. Access to your leadership and to other high-level sponsors is priceless and you should treat it as such.

When you run events like this, you are not trying to sell anything. This is all about recognition, access and information gathering. If your sponsors make the time to attend, open up about their marketing goals and take the time to tell you want they like and don’t like, you have to deliver. Make sure you’re ready to make the changes they request.

For the highest level sponsors, offer them a private meeting, behind closed doors with your most senior leadership and thought leaders in your community. A chance to talk about trends and best practices without any competitors in the room. When you offer this kind of access, going way beyond simple logo placement, your sponsors will think long and hard about walking away from a partnership with your organization.

Make sure everyone has a role

A sponsor summit only has a finite period, so you have to use each second to the fullest. You don’t want to scramble among your team to determine who’s going to moderate versus handle other tasks. It looks unprofessional and your summit disorganized.

Instead, assign roles long before the summit, then triple-check before the summit begins that everyone knows what they’re supposed to be doing. This will help the sponsor summit go off without a hitch.

Be flexible

You might have had a 60-minute segment planned, but if you can see that people are losing interest, there’s no reason to make it an entire hour. Maybe you can halve the time.

In the same vein, if people are enjoying themselves and you had a short activity planned, you can expand it and cut something else or reduce its time. Build flexibility into the schedule so the sponsor summit is relaxed and informational.

Keep it short 

As a whole, a sponsor summit should only be as long as required. Maybe it is a multi-day event, especially for the bigger summits, but if it’s just a few hours on a Wednesday afternoon, that’s also fine.

Trust me, people care more about the quality of the information they’re getting. Prioritize that.

Get input

If you think your first sponsor summit went well enough, make sure to solicit feedback from your guests to see what they thought about it. You can issue a short survey through email to everyone who attended.

Use the feedback to make your next sponsor summit even better.

FAQs

Should you plan to close a deal during a sponsor summit? 

Nope, you shouldn’t, even if you have several prospective sponsors there. Like the discovery session isn’t a sales meeting, the same goes for a sponsor summit.

Then what is the point of a sponsor summit?

It’s largely informational, providing a chance for your business or organization to sit down with potential sponsors and have an open, two-way conversation. It’s like a discovery session on steroids.

Wrapping Up 

It’s time to rethink your opinion of sponsor summits. They can provide an ample opportunity to showcase value to your sponsor but not if you treat them like a sales meeting. Instead, let your summit be its own event, and give it the care you would any other event. You just may be surprised how well it turns out!