Well, this is just the tip of the iceburg... but go in armed with some literature:

(1) race resume. Include this year's results, last year's highlights. Any awards ["all american" by SlowTwitch], etc. State your short term & long term goals in the sport in 2-3 sentences.

(2) race schedule. Races targeted this season. Don't have to list "Small town USA's poppy seed festival 5km"... just the more important focus races.

(3) photos. Organize some digital photos nicely on a page & print it out. Sponsors like photos.

It is a presentation [the "it" being applying for sponsorship as well as being a sponsored athlete]. Be professional & honest. Give your sponsor monthly or quarterly updates. Offer to help out somehow. Make sure they know what they get for sponsoring you; and make sure they know what you expect of them. Honor your word.

Good Luck!

Having a good resume of race results is just part of the piece. The other two key components is knowing the right people at the right businesess( Hey, it's always about who you know) and having the type of outgoing personality to really help get the sponsors message across.

The big thing these days is "grass-roots sponsorship" - this is what many of the supplier companies in the sporting goods business are looking for. Essentially, they are looking for high profile local heros or characters who will act as good will ambasadors for their products.

Note that this is not the best time of year to go after this kind of stuff. Budgets are set aside or spent already. Best time is in the fall starting in September through to December. That's when budgets and reasources are allocated for the following year.

Having worked both sides of the fence on this topic, you will get way more "no's" than "yes's".

Goodluck!

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

I totally agree with the idea of approaching companies with a proposal based on how you can help them in exchange for product/money/discount. I see hundreds of grass roots proposals every year and many are really well done and professional in appearance. The big pitch most age groupers make is way off base, though. Telling me you place consistently in your age group or overall and that alone will help me sell alot of wheels, doesnt work. We get all the results and exposure we need from the pros we pay to ride our wheels. I want to know what else you, the age grouper, can do to help me market and sell my product. Do you coach athletes? Do you belong to a club? Do you lead group rides? Do you organize events? One of my favorite programs we run through our dealers involves initially offering the athlete/team/club product at a discount with a chance to earn their money back. Since everyone says they will increase sales due to the sponsorship, we make that the carrot. For every "x" number of wheelsets your dealer sells this season, we will reimburse the club/athlete for 1 set. If the club/athlete is as influential as they say or as good a salesperson, then the sponsorship works. Spinergy sells more wheels to the dealer, the dealer sell more to the sponsorship influenced consumers and the club/athlete gets free product to race and train on. Anyone interested in this program, feel free to contact me

Paul Cusick

paul@spinergy.com

I would highly recommend investing the $6 and buying Brad Kearns guide on "How to get sponsors." It's succinct, easy reading with some very insightful comments. www.bradventures.com

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TriDi

No offense, but if you can actually get this potential sponsor to pony up almost 1K a year to cover your coaching, I will be completely astonished, and instantly hail you as the greatest BS artist to ever write a puff-piece sponsorship proposal.

Sponsorship is not a mystery, and can be summed up very easily: $ in for $ back. Before you approach a sponsor, ask yourself these questions: "what service am I going to provide my potential sponsor?" "what monetary value can I reasonably attach to the service I provide my sponsor?" The correct answer to these questions, for the vast majority of people is nothing, and 0$.

You have a bit of a resume, so you may be able to provide some alternative advertising service, but how much is that really worth? 75$ a month can buy a fair bit of advertising - or more to the point, 100 presta tubes at wholesale - my favorite bike shop item for this kind of illustration. You are, in essence, saying to the shop - "Hey - give me 100 tubes a month to ride for you." Would this be a reasonable request to make? Do you really think you would be a better investment than those tubes? Maybe so, but if not, you need to scale down your expectations.

(How many tubes a month is Steve Larsen worth, Gerard?)

Just as an example:

A jersey logo for my road team typically sells for $500-5000 a year. Size of payment determines size of logo. That gets the sponsor: placement on 18 Cat 1/2 riders, 35 lower Cat riders, an affiliation with a large junior program (parents have money...) a web page link, an average of 3-5 newspaper pictures a year, several hundred web site "mentions"/pictures, a monthly "whatthe team did" update, and advertising at the race we sponsor. Oh Yeah - also an average of 15-20 wins per season, several state championships, and the stars and stripes jersey I won last weekend with their name on it (I'm pretty happy about that one, actually :o). This is still a labor of love, money losing proposition for most sponsors.

Back when I was handling sponsorship for a component manufacturer, the first thing I looked for was the reasonableness of a proposal. Whether it was the fat Cat. 4 downhill clown who wanted free cranks, or the new division 3 team that hit me up for the same amount of gear we gave to our French division 1 team, if the proposal was outlandish, it got round-filed

Some other points:

custom sublimated tops (which almost any cash sponsor will expect) typically run $50+ a piece, with minimum orders of 25+. Most bike/tri teams spend all of the money they receive in cash sponsorship on clothing, and still wind up having to pay more out of pocket.

If the bike shop pays out in this manner, they will likely look to write it off as an advertising expense. You are now a Pro, and will need to declare this income (be very careful if you are a young athlete looking to maintain NCAA eligibility.)

If you already ride for a shops club team, why in the world would they want to offer you additional sponsorship? They've already got you... (i, personally, have been on both sides of that...)

This is absolutely the worst time of the year to hit someone up for sponsorship. The year is half over, you've already won those races without the sponsors name attached, and outdoor industry bills all come due right about now, since everybody orders with may dating at the trade show(s)...

Even after all that, Good luck - I hope you can squeeze some money out of them.



MH

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Tech writer/support on this here site. FIST school instructor and certified bike fitter. Formerly at Diamondback Bikes, LeMond Fitness, FSA, TiCycles, etc.
Coaching and bike fit - http://source-e.net/ Cyclocross blog - https://crosssports.net/ BJJ instruction - https://ballardbjj.com/

Here's my advice: enter as many races as possible this year, record everything you have done, come up with a comprehensive list of what your goals will be and talk to them between the months of Oct-Dec. You could even think of approaching it in September for next season. Also, work on becoming the nicest guy any one could ever meet, as this is extremely important.

What the running store will more than likely propose is a discount programme. You may get a co-op with a manufacturer through the running store. The only way to get your coaching costs defrayed is through the coach him/herself.

Approaching companies requires research and a killer resume. Get inside the corporate philosophy, know what their history is, show them how you can fit in with their image. You may only get equipment at a discount, and you may even get to try new things. In many cases, you do not get to keep what you receive if it you don't buy it.

As the other posters have mentioned, you will need to show the potential sponsors what you can do for them. I do not need to rehash what the others have said, but it is important to show them what you can do for them.

I was sponsored at one time. It is not easy, and you end up giving a lot more than you will see in return, as it IS another job in addition to what you're already doing. You have a lot of responsibility, and you are a representative of them and their ambassador to the public (which they take seriously- I know this for a fact). But the defrayment in cost makes racing a lot cheaper for you to do. Don't ask for money, as it becomes a headache tax-wise.

In summation: gather your results, do the research on the companies in question, give them a resume and professional photo, and sell yourself for next season.

Perhaps you should talk to both your shop and your coach and see if you could get sponsored by both of them... a possible proposal could run something like the coach knocks half of his fee in and the shop kicks in the other half, in return you put your logos over everything in cluding your car and you do a couple tri seminars for the shop and help your coach out with any seminars he might do... I agree with Bunnyman that the best time to approach this would be after the season. I don't know much about professional biking but I used to work in the inline skate industry and know a lot about what things worked for sponsorship there...

There is a guy in the 50-55 yr. AG in our area who wins AG every single sprint/oly tri he enters by a long ways. He's so fast that he always finishes near the top over all. The local tri store just asked him if they could be his sponsor.

I don't know if this approach would work, but as a business owner this is what I would do.

I would talk to the owner of the store right now and be honest with him by telling him that in the future, you would like him to sponsor you. I would make is absolutely clear that you are not asking him to do it right now, because you first want to prove to him that the $75 per month he has to pay you will absolutely be the best check he writes every month.

Then I would buy all (not most...ALL) of my stuff from him. I would tell all of my friends to shop there, or better yet, when my friends needed something, I would meet them at the store and introduce them to the owner. (Don't try to make the sale, let the owner do his job. Just make sure the owner knows you brought in the sale.)

I would find out when the shop is having their promotions and sales and I would go and work at the sales for free. Even if you just stand around and tell all of the customers that you are a local racer that helps out that store because they are so great. And if the store sponsors any kind of group activities, I would go participate in them also.

If everything goes well, after a while, I would bet that the owner would start to help you out, either by sharing some of the free stuff he gets, or by passing along some great buys he gets, or maybe even paying for some of your stuff. But don't try to rush this process.

By the way, if you add up all the time and energy you will have to put into this, you may just want to go to Mcdonalds and flip hamburgers for a couple of hours per month instead.

Hope this helps.

Jeff

Thats great advice! I wish more athletes understood that concept. We have teams contact us all the time looking for product. We always ask them to go to a local dealer who they have a good relationship with. That way we can get the dealer in the loop and see if he feels it is worthwhile. We had a team a couple years ago tell us that they had a great relationship with the local shop and couldnt figure out why he didnt want us to sponsor them. When I spoke to the shop owner he said he knew the guys and had asked them to help out at his local time trial and lead the group ride. He went on to say that they would show up at the TT just in time to start their runs, expect comp entry, and then pack up right after leaving he and his staff to clean up. Then they would show up on the group ride and turn it into a race. While he tried to teach group riding techniques, they would bomb up the other side of the road and ride off into the distance only to meet up at the finish and tell war stories about their "victory" He wanted to know how they thought they were helping out his business?

As the others have said, it takes lots more than winning races to get sponsored. Companies are looking for athletes who will represent them in the most positive and productive way.......this really has very little to do with winning.

At this time, I am lucky enough to have 3 sponsors, my local health club, a gel manufacturer and a national tri stuff store. In order to convince them to take me on, I had to show them what I could do to bring $$$ into their businesses.

For the health club, I run a beginner triathlete program to prepare newbies for the local sprint tri. I also train a small number of athletes who are required to work out at the facility. For this, I receive a comp yearly membership ($400 value).

I sent the gel people a sponsorship proposal packet including my resume and race results, my race schedule and goals for the coming season and an explanation of how I would promote their product, i.e. through my training groups, coached athletes, involvement with the local tri, AND visibilty at races of all levels including national, regional and local. Their sponsorship is in the form of discount pricing of their product.

The tri store is far and away my most financially rewarding sponsorship involving some $$, discounts and gear. I sent them a proposal packet and encouraged the athletes I work with to purchase supplies from them and tell them that I had sent them. I made an effort to be extra friendly when visiting their booth at expos and kept them up to date on how my season was going. They saw me interact with people at races and actually encouraged me to apply for sponsorship.

Now that I have the sponsorships, I work hard to represent my sponsors well. I have a responsibility to live up to my end of the bargain. I promote them at any reasonable opportunity, keep them updated about my race results, let them know how much I value their sponsorship AND train like a demon so I can get on the podium!

It's not all free stuff and big money. It only works when both sides are getting good value. Good luck!

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It's a little like wrestling a gorilla.........you don't stop when you're tired.........you stop when the gorilla is tired.