How to Land Partnerships With Major Brands With Jessica Chinyelu
Show Notes:
Jessica Chinyelu is the creator of the Sponsored and Secured, a program that helps organizations grow their sponsorship revenue in a systematic and reliable way. She teaches you how to craft win-win relationships through her proven methods that have transformed the way global influencers and organizations increase cash flow.
Her desire to teach people corporate sponsorship and activation strategies began with creating the annual sold out, Woman of Purpose Conferences. She secured over six-figures in sponsorship to host these events. This led to numerous influencers and event curators seeking her expert advice and knowledge on how they could do the same.
An in-demand Sponsorship Consultant, Coach, Influencer Income Strategist, and Speaker, Jessica has worked with companies such as H&R Block, Herbal Essences, Kroger, Wal-Mart, Reebok, Methodist Health Systems, and Brinker International to name a few.
Her clients and students have been sponsored by Cricket Wireless, Toyota, Origin Bank, Compassion International, Microsoft and many more.
Jessica has been featured on BuzzFeed, DailyMail UK, Cosmopolitan, ABC News, Good Morning Texas, XONecole and many more media outlets.
Links: http://www.thesponsorshiplady.com/training
Episode Transcription:
Lindsay: [00:00:00] Welcome back to The Book Your Dream Clients podcast. We have Jessica Chinyelu with us today, The Sponsorship Lady, and she is chatting all about how you can secure sponsorships and brand partnerships with other companies. This is a great way to up-level your business. So stay tuned. You're going to have tons of ideas, and you're going to love this episode.
Sit back, relax and enjoy. Jessica, thank you so much for being on The Book Your Dream Clients podcast. I'm so excited to have you on today.
Jessica: [00:00:45] Yes. Thank you so much Lindsay for having me. I'm so excited to chat with you today as well.
Lindsay: [00:00:52] This is a special episode because we haven't had anybody come on to talk about brand sponsorships and things like that. Things that seem way out of our level. And that's why I am excited to have you on Jessica, so you can talk about this more and show us how to do it and why it's important. So go ahead and take the stage and tell us about what you do.
Jessica: [00:01:15] Yes! Well, thank you so much Lindsay, for having me, I'm so excited for this. But those of you who don't know who I am, I am a corporate sponsorship strategist consultant. And what that means is I teach people how to land the brand partnerships of their dreams. So if you are an expert in your field, if you are a consultant, if you are an influencer or a non-profit founder, or an entrepreneur that loves to work with brands, then I am that person to help you learn how to start reaching out to brands, pitch those brands and land partnerships with them.
So it's a phenomenal collaboration where you can get paid some pretty good money. When you partner with these brands. I got into this Lindsay years ago, I've been doing this for a little over a decade. Now I used to be a club promoter, and then through club promoting transformed into event management, wedding planning, and being a professional meeting planner for different large chain hotels like the Hilton and Marriott.
And through those experiences I gained so much knowledge on how to work with meeting planners, how to connect with sponsors, hosted my own conference through my non-profit,(a faith based nonprofit), and it led into securing over six figures in event sponsorships for my conference. And so after I took a pause from hosting my conference, people just started asking me, hey, how did you do this?
Can you teach me how to do it? So coffee dates, lunch dates. And one day my husband, he finally told me, he said, look, you're spending a lot of time with people, teaching them how to do this. You need to transform this into a business. And it clicked for me. I was like, you know what? I do need to turn this into a business.
So I hopped on an Instagram live with a girlfriend where she interviewed me all about sponsorships. We were on Instagram live for about two and a half hours, and that was before Instagram allowed you to go on an IG live for three hours. And people hopped back on. I tested out a little e-book product and people responded so well to it.
I made a little over $4,500 in that first Instagram live. And I couldn't believe it that people were really interested in this. And that's how I got started. Now, here I am. I've helped my students and my clients land a little over $850,000 in corporate sponsorships in the last two years. So it's been very, very exciting teaching people how to do this.
Lindsay: [00:03:53] Wow. That's so impressive. I love your story, how you started and it evolved into something like this. So we have a bunch of coaches who listened to this show and they're probably thinking that's interesting, but my first thought is, aren’t sponsorships and brand partnerships for people who have maybe like beauty businesses or health businesses? How can I fit into this?
Jessica: [00:04:15] Oh man. Yeah, that's a really good question. I think there's a lot of misconceptions out there about brand partnerships or sponsorships. You're really helping them solve a problem. So you are a solution to their problems. And when you think about you as a podcast or as an entrepreneur, I tell my entrepreneurs...Think about everything that you use on a daily basis to run your business six and seven figure online entrepreneurs. Now for someone who caters to six and seven figure online entrepreneurs, she serves as their accountant and has a podcast that talks all about those things...when she positioned herself in front of American Express business, they were like, you have our target audience.
So we would love for you to be an ambassador for our product. Not only talk about it on your online platform, but talk about this to your email list as well as talk about our product on your podcast. So there's opportunity for you as a podcaster, or to think about your audience, their behaviors, the products that they use on a daily basis or the products that you love that they could really benefit from that don't necessarily have to be beauty products or something that's in healthcare. So that was a wonderful example of someone who's a CPA who could work with brands or businesses like American Express business, or even work with a program like Asana.
How do busy entrepreneurs who may own multiple businesses or have teams stay on track? So that's what you have to think about as an entrepreneur is, what makes the most sense for a brand partnership? And there are millions of businesses just in the United States alone that have budgets to work with individuals like yourself.
So we have to just stop thinking that business, the millions of businesses that are in the United States are just focused on beauty and healthcare. There's also businesses out there that support or solve a problem or meet a need for entrepreneurs like us that are totally outside of beauty. So what I would recommend entrepreneurs do is create a prospect list, a healthy prospect list of brands that align with what you do and the audience that you serve.
And if it aligns with what you do in the audience that you serve, then you now go and find brands that align with your overall mission and the people that you serve. And those are the best partnerships. And honestly they're very valuable and also very lucrative. That's why you shouldn't just work with any brand. It has to be a good match.
Lindsay: [00:06:52] Okay, that's awesome. I'm sure everyone's wheels are turning and then they might slow down a little bit when they think, okay, but I don't have a huge following. Don't these brands and businesses want these massive followings?
Jessica: [00:07:05] No, man. That's another big misconception. Yeah, I'll use myself as an example, so I've done partnerships with Pottery Barn Kids and Pottery Barn, as well as the Container Store. And many of these brands, even Asana, a lot of these brands that I pitched myself to, when you look at the typical influencer that they're working with, they do have thousands of followers, but if you present a really good idea to them, cause you have to think about it, a lot of times - again, they're looking for the awareness. Or the market being - there's a problem that you're going to help them solve. And so during the pandemic, I studied these brands so well. I studied their Instagram pages. I studied their websites and I said, hm, here's something that I see that they're not advertising very well. And one of them was, they have free interior design services at Pottery Barn.
And I'm like, you have nothing on your page that talks about this. So I presented an entire pitch that was all centered around their services and how I'm going to highlight the service over a six month campaign. And the reason why I made it a six month campaign is because I wanted to tell a little story.
Brands are pitching to brands. You never want to do like a one-time deal. Why? Because you want this brand to eventually become family and longer period contracts are more money. And so I wanted to create this story. I created my own timeline using a product or service that they were offering and communicating that to my audience. And it performed so well that I've done three additional campaigns with Pottery Barn. And it's a beautiful thing, but I don't have a large following at all, but they were still willing to work with me because I pitched a really good idea. So if you've got an amazing idea and a super small following, I will tell you a brand - I had a meeting with them one day and they said we would much rather work with the individual that has an engaged following or raving fans. And they've only got 2,000 followers versus a million followers and their fans are not engaged at all. Conversion is key. So we think that sometimes just because someone has a million followers or a hundred thousand followers that they're converting. But you'll find that micro-influencers, brands love working with them. If you're a micro entrepreneur, pitch those brands. I have a client right now. She emails me like every other day, because she's really putting in the work. She does - she helps people with grants. She's an expert when it comes to landing grants for nonprofits. And it's so crazy because every day I get these emails saying, hey, I just connected with this brand.
She connects, she finds time. Have to connect with at least 10 different brands every day through LinkedIn outreach, likely she's probably going to go into paid partnerships with them and that's just in one week of outreach on LinkedIn. She has a very small following, super small following - smaller than mine. So it's possible. It definitely is possible.
Lindsay: [00:10:25] Wow. That's, that's incredible to think of the possibilities besides, you know, I think everyone goes to business tools right away and they don't even think about the big, huge companies like Pottery Barn or things like that. How has this influenced your business? Not financially, but otherwise, what other perks does it mean for your business by having sponsorships like this?
Jessica: [00:10:50] Yeah, yeah. It's really good to have these types of sponsorships because it's another stream of revenue. And I don't think that people realize that you don't even have to do a lot. I have clients that are extremely busy CEO’s and yes, they make great money in their business.
But when they see a contract come through for $50,000 and they're like, oh, okay. And you know, this is just for my event - that's super helpful. And so I always tell people, you know, don't leave this out. You know, you're leaving money on the table. If you are an expert in your field, and you're not partnering with brands, it gives you loads more exposure.
It doesn’t take a lot of time. Especially if it's a brand that you love. So if you're already organically talking about a product that you love or a brand that you love, it makes perfect sense to at least pitch them and see what kind of partnership opportunity that you can have. Now, another thing that you could do is,
They could pay you to provide a service to them. And that's another way that you could go about it. So there's so many opportunities and working with brands and pitching yourself to brands. You shouldn't always just wait until those things come to you. There are many opportunities that are out there and I'm a strong believer in knock on doors. And you never know what door is going to open up to you.
Lindsay: [00:12:22] It reminds me of when I had my health blog ten, eleven years ago. And there was this opportunity for these bloggers. They were looking for bloggers in different states. And it's funny because when we got on the call, Jessica said, you're the first person I ever met in North Dakota.
So at that time, I was the only person only blogger in North Dakota that knew about this opportunity with Home Depot. And it was so funny because I had never made any money in my business blogging. I think my mom had read my blog, you know, here and there. And so I applied to be a part of this and I got it and I got paid $750 to show a picture of my patio and how I would rearrange my patio furniture.
And I thought this does not have anything to do with my bills. But it was extra. It was extra money to my dream, but it gave me some clout. It made me feel like I was connected with the outside world as an entrepreneur who works from home. So it's kind of surprising what can come up once you open up those doors.
So what's your suggestion to the coach who's like, okay, I see where she's going here. I see how this can be helpful and make me feel like I'm up-leveling myself, which is very important for our mindset. What are some things that they can do today to take some action?
Jessica: [00:13:40] Yes. Great question Lindsay. And kudos to you on that partnership with Home Depot. I love Home Depot and I'm likely going to pitch them to get my patio done in the near future. So I’ll go check out your partnership with them. But some actionable steps that you guys can take to get started, I'm going to say the first thing that you really want to do is ensure that before you start pitching to grants,
That you've got all of your assets together. So how does your Instagram page look? What does your LinkedIn look like? Cause I think so many of us, we think about our Instagram pages, but we don't even think about LinkedIn. And let me tell you, LinkedIn is where the money is. Like those are the people, those that's where the decision makers are.
That's where they spend a great deal of their time. So is your LinkedIn and your Instagram set up to where, when they go view your page, when you send them that pitch email, and they research you and check you out, it attracts them? You're attracting your ideal brand partners because that's the first thing I would tell you.
Clean that up, clean up that website, clean up that Instagram page and clean up that LinkedIn. So if you are an expert or a podcaster that's looking to partner with brands, it's communicated somewhere on your LinkedIn page or on your website, like, ‘hey, for brand partnerships, shoot us an email here,’ or ‘this is how I've worked with partners in the past.’
So make sure those assets are there. The second thing I would say is do your research. I think too many times people think about big brands and I always get people who tell me, oh, I want to partner with Target or, oh, I want to partner with Walmart or, oh, I want to partner with Coca-Cola and I’m like, why? And what is going to be the story that you're going to tell here?
And that's mainly for event partnerships, but still, what's the story that you're going to tell, and what's the problem that you're going to help them solve? And if you can't communicate that to me, then it's probably not going to be a good fit and they're likely not going to respond to you. So I want you to think about at least fifty to a hundred brands, and these are fifty to one hundred brands that you're going to pitch to over time, because I have a huge list of brands that I'd love to work with, but I always pitch - I start with at least ten to fifteen on the list when I first start pitching, not all of them at once.
But fifty to a hundred solid brands that truly align with what you do. And you know that if you reach out to them that they are your target audience is going to be a good match for them. Now, when you have that healthy prospect list, there should be a list of small, medium sized businesses and large businesses, because everyone's brand is going to have a different budget.
You don't know where they are. Research at least ten to fifteen of those brands. When I say research, I mean, go in and find out who are like the top decision makers that you need to speak with about this opportunity. Do you need to be communicating with someone in HR, in the sales department, or in the marketing department?
Who do you need to communicate with and study those people. Begin to make genuine connections with them. Because I believe before you make an ask, you need to have at least had a touch point with that individual three to five times. And what does that touch point look like? That touch point is if they have an article that's been written about them, or maybe they wrote an article or there's a unique post that they made about the brand on LinkedIn, you're commenting on that.
You're sending them a message maybe through LinkedIn sales navigator and in InMail to say, oh my God, this was great, so excited to see this for your company. Little things like that. And then shoot over an email or shoot an InMail on LinkedIn. You also want to keep up with what the company is doing. Do they have any new products that they're launching, and you can create some kind of custom proposal around this new product that they're launching.
You always want to have an amazing idea in mind, and how you're going to help them reach a goal or, again, solve a problem. But you won't know the problems that you need to solve until you have done your research and understand how you can position yourself successfully in front of these brands. Those are two things that I would say you need to do before you start pitching.
Once you've done that, come and see me and get inside of my course. And we're going to talk about the rest. But there's, those are the two things that you guys need to do. And I see people just want to get in there and start pitching right away. And I'm like, don't do that to yourself. Make sure you've got your stuff together.
Now I can go on about some additional things too. Like when you actually do start pitching, what does that look like? Setting up discovery calls. If they're the third thing that I would say, if you're already, if you already have these things together that I've just mentioned to you, don't just go for the big ask right away.
Your first ask is, ‘hey, can we hop on a call and make sure that this is even going to be a good fit?’ And that's your opportunity to listen to them, not just sell your big idea, but listen to them. Because by listening to them and learning from them, they're going to tell you exactly what they want. Exactly what they're working on.
And that's your chance to now create an even more custom proposal based on everything that they've told you from that discovery call meeting. So those are the top three things that I would say you could be working on right now to help you begin landing corporate partnerships.
Lindsay: [00:19:10] Wow. So I can see the excitement of making the list of all of the partnerships that are possible for you. And then when it comes to pitching and doing all these things, it's like maybe that sounds really scary. And so people probably stop in their tracks with this. I can see that that's the reason why they come to you because they've made the list and now they're frustrated or overwhelmed, right?
Jessica: [00:19:32] Oh yeah. I hear it all the time, but people are frustrated and overwhelmed and I always tell them, like, when I asked that - so a couple of questions that I typically ask people when they come to me is, all right, how many brands have you reached out to? Usually when they tell me, oh, I've only reached out to like three brands.
I'm like, that's a problem right there. My next question to them is how many times did you follow up? And it's usually like, oh, I shot one email and then two emails. So my first initial pitch email, and then one follow-up email and I didn't hear anything back so I stopped. Well, top sales professionals, they follow up anywhere from five to seven times.
So you have eight per 8% of salespeople who will do that, which means that the 8% are the ones that really get the best results. They follow up and they follow up five to seven times with one person. And then if they're not getting anything out of that one person within the company, they now go and reach out to a second person within that company.
You need to have multiple touch points whenever you are pitching to different brands. I had someone tell me a story the other day. She said, I pitched a brand. And she said I was on the eighth email. And she said, they finally responded back. And the person said, man, I just responded back because you were so persistent.
Like, I was just appreciative of the fact that you continued to follow up. And let me tell you that is how I was able to land one of my largest contracts with someone. And it was so exciting because the brand, actually, the contact told me, she said, I just want to say, I appreciate your follow-up.
She said, we really want to do this. I've been extremely busy, but she said, you made sure that we made this happen. And she said that is really good and your client should be very happy to have someone like you on their team. And I was - that's what it takes. Follow through is everything in this line of work.
And so, yes, are there going to be times when you are discouraged, unmotivated? Absolutely. But for every no that you hear, there's always going to be at least two brands that's going to tell you yes. You just got to keep going. And trust me, once you get three or four brands that absolutely love you...And you get those long-term contracts with them, you probably aren't even going to need to work with any other brand. You may not have the time because of what you do in your business. So you might feel very comfortable with just working with four brands per year, and you have multiple deliverables within that one contract.
So you, you - to get there, it doesn't take much. That's why it's so important in the beginning stages when you're doing your research to find brands, identify brands that you know for sure are going to be a good match. A wonderful match.
Lindsay: [00:22:25] Is this something that you help clients do Jessica? Finding matches - if they just don't even know where to start?
Jessica: [00:22:29] Yeah. So instead of my program, there's my eight week program sponsored and secured. It's a coaching program where we connect for eight weeks through group coaching. You also - there's content inside of the course that's prerecorded, but each week in our group, coaching calls always say, oh guys, it's only going to be sixty minutes and I will spend sometimes two hours on that, on those calls. I bring in brands to help with pitches. I will also, if someone says who's a brand that I should be pitching to, we talk about that, but then you have some others who are like, I just really want to do a VIP day with you. And in those VIP days, oh girl, I go all out.
Like, if this is me saying, let me build this out for you. Let me help you build out your custom proposal. Let me help you with building out your pitch emails, build your whole entire sales system. It's really amazing. And then of course, there's my ‘done for you’ service, but right now, like, man, we are maxed to capacity.
I can't even take on new ‘done for you’ clients until November of this year. So it's... it's so much fun. I love teaching people this because I think people either were making it more challenging than what it really is, or some people really just don't know how to position themselves in front of the right brands.
And it's crazy. Cause you would think I worked with some phenomenal CEO’s and my first phone call with them, like our first initial onboarding, the question I always ask is, okay. Tell me your wish list of brands. and they'll name. Like you said, the beauty brands, the fashion brands, and I'll say, okay, let me ask you this again.
Tell me who do you bank with? Who do you use every day?
Because they're so like what, I got to think of fifty to a hundred brands that, I mean, I'd like to work with and I'm like, yeah, but we did that exercise when I take them through it and in like five minutes, we've already got seventy brands. Just based on what they're using on a daily basis. So one chick I saw, I was like, I spoke at the Thinkific conference.
I said, how much do they pay you for that? And so she tells me how much they paid. And I said, you know, we could do a partnership with them, right. What do you think we did? We converted her over - or she migrated over and to think of using Thinkific and now she's done a two-year partnership with them. These are the things that I think entrepreneurs don't think about enough.
If you use Teachable to host your online course, if you're using Thinkific or Kajabi, those are brands that you could partner with and they would pay you to advertise or be an expert on their platform or be a speaker for their conferences. You probably have a gazillion things that you touch on a daily basis that you love, and you could be paid by those brands to promote them.
Something else that I think Lindsay, that many entrepreneurs completely just leaving so much money on the tables at affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is another great way to start a partnership with a brand. So if you reach out to a brand and you pitch to them and you, you go to them, hey, I've been an affiliate partner with you for the past six months.
Look at my numbers and see how well I've done. That right there is - you presented them with data to let them know this is how much I've made from you just through affiliate partnerships. Imagine how much better this could be if we actually did a partnership where I became a face of your brand. See how now you’ve...provided data or some stats to help you make an even more successful partnership beyond just affiliate marketing. So if you have products that you're using for your business, and you're not an affiliate of that brand, or actively selling that to your email list or to your audience, I highly recommend that you start doing that now.
So if you're using Dubsado for your CRM, if you're using Monday, if you're using any of those platforms, become an affiliate and start talking to your audience about it. Record a podcast about it, or make a YouTube video about it, or create some Instagram content around that. And what that's going to do is you're now asking people to sign up for a free trial.
And what if they absolutely love it and they begin to become a paid subscriber of those platforms? Now you've got some data on how well you've been able to convert your audience into using their product. So that's just another way of building a partnership with the brand. Now I've said a lot, so I'm pretty sure you have, like, you want to say I talk a lot.
Lindsay: [00:27:10] No, I love it. I'm just like soaking up everything and thinking, okay, it's funny when I mentioned Flodesk on a podcast episode and put my link in there, there's random people signing up and those little drops in the bucket might not seem like much at first, but once you really start building up on those, and like she said, though, that's actual data that you can give the company, then they can see...oh yeah, I can tell whenever she talks about this, we get, you know, so-and-so many customers or whatever. So I think thinking too big is not possible. There's so many things there's so much potential out there for you. So thank you for bringing that to our attention. I think that's so important and it probably has generated tons of light bulb moments for everybody.
Jessica: [00:27:57] Oh, yeah, I'm so happy. That's my job. And that's my goal is to get those, get those wheels turning and, you know, the light bulb goes off when you're like, oh my goodness, why didn't I think about that? That's, that's the goal. That is the goal. And I'm very happy that everyone listening is probably having those.
Lindsay: [00:28:16] So now, now what should they do? Where should they go to find out more about you and your program and all the services you want?
Jessica: [00:28:22] Yes, yes. So the best thing you can do is follow me on Instagram @jessicachinyelu. So I want you guys to do that right now. The other thing that you could do is I have a wonderful, wonderful training where it's about two hours long.
I know that's a long time and these days people don't have the longest attention spans, but I promise you will be blown away at the amount of information that's shared and what you will learn. In this training, if you want to get access to it, it's completely free. You go to: https://thesponsorshiplady.com/training.
Again, that's https://thesponsorshiplady.com/training. There you can sign up for it. You'll get access to the training, immediately watch that training. And then at the end, it's going to tell you how you can sign up for my program. Now, if you're like, I don't even want to watch the training, I just want to sign up for your course, just visit my website, https://thesponsorshiplady.com and you'll see all the wonderful ways that you can work with me. But I'm so excited to connect with each one of you. And please, please shoot me a DM if you ever have any questions, I send voice notes all the time, and I'm pretty good about responding back to DM’s. I do. I'm one of those that actually responds back. So you'll, you'll get to hear my voice again if you send me a note.
Lindsay: [00:29:39] Good. We're going to put all those resources in the show notes so you guys can go learn, but it sounds like a fantastic training, and I'm glad you gave us the link to just join your program as well. So go follow her, go learn all the things. Her Instagram account is beautiful.
Go spend time with Jessica. She's brilliant. Thank you so much for spending time with us, Jessica. So grateful for all of the knowledge you just gave us. And I can't wait for everyone to soak up more.
Jessica: [00:30:06] Oh, thank you so much, Lindsay. And thank you guys for listening and tuning in.
Lindsay: [00:30:12] Before you go, I want to invite you to join my free Facebook group for coaches. Simply type ‘Dream Client Community.com’ in your browser, request access, and we will happily let you in. We have amazing coaches in there just like you who are starting and scaling their business and we would love to see you there.