Guidance Document for calling companies
This guide has originally been prepared by Jakob Berg Jespersen (jakob@iscb.org) - Finance Chair 2015 & 2016
Return to Finance Committee
Getting sponsors is not always easy, and even with multiple emails and good personal/professional connections, it can be hard to get a deal.
Meeting in person with a representative is a great way to get in touch with the right people inside a company.
This is thought to be a support document to help the process of calling out companies, which can be great as we dont need to wait for a confrence to tak place, and it offers a more personal interaction than an email.
A call can either be made with or without having sent an email beforehand.
Contents
Before Calling
Thing to have handy
Having a document with this years sponsor offers is great, and knowing which other companies have purchased sponsorships may be a great card on your hand in the conversation.
Make sure you have a pen and a piece of paper to jot down the name on everybody you meet in the phone queue.
you may be forwarded through a couple of people along the journey, so being able to namedrop who forwarded you can potentially ease people down a bit.
Make sure you have familiarized yourself with the sponsor offerings and have an understanding of how the sponsorship will be carried out on the day itself. Each sponsorship should prefferably be walked throug together with the symposium committee, to avoid any misunderstandings.
A Travel Fellowship may for example be sold for USD 400 and go to a student. Often the company would like to know the name and affiliation of that student. If we are able to take a photo of the student at the conference itself this is a very nice gesture to the company. Things like theese are what keeps them comming back year after year to sponsor our event.
a different example is the option for a company to give a session for the entire crowd. This could eg be a workshop lasting 45 mins. This is a popular sponsorship, and should delicately be placed in the program agenda. Chances are that there is not time in the agenda for more than a single type of this sponsorship, as we usually have a lot on the schedule.
During the Call
Don't constrain yourself to sitting down, your voice changes with your body lanuage.
Be Polite and Professional, give them a smile (body language again)
Make sure you correctly hear the name of whom you are talking to, and what their title/function is. WRITE IT DOWN. If you didnt hear it, just ask and make sure you understand.
Tell them your name and which organization you are calling from. ISCB Student Council, avoid any internal abbreviations.
Get to the point fast, eg hypothetical call:
Them hello this is -- how may I help you
YOU Hi this is _____ from the ISCB Student Council.
Them ...
YOU sorry I didnt get your name
Them XYZ
YOU As you may know we are a part of the International Sociecy for Computational Biology, a non profit organization
Them ...
YOU We are doing a symposium attracting some of the most ambitious young researchers in Bioinformatics. We have some sponsorships that we think you could find interesting, would you happen to know whom in the company I should ask?
Them I can forward you to ZYX from Marketing one moment
Lovely waiting mucic Have a sip of water ;)
ZYX ZYX, Marketing
repeat your intro, to make them know what you are up to, Remember to let them know why it is a good idea form them to sponsor.
Them Sounds good
YOU We have some predefined sponsorship options that you could take a look at if you are interested. In general, we make sure that all of our sponsors get a lot of exposure, and we would make sure to put your logo on a dedicated website, show your logo on a big slide at the event itself, and we can even do a twitter post with you if you like.
Make sure you got the correct email address, and send them the sponsor material if they dont allready have it.
After the Call
Have a shared google drive spreadsheet or similar where all volunteers helping out can add a note of the current status for the given company.
- which of the volunteers made the call
- who was the relevant person to speak with: Name, Affiliation, Phone, Email, other notes. When was the phone call made, when was the email sent, when should a followup be done. (if they havent explicitly said not it is okay to follow up, just always be pollite and professional, and dont make them feel you are waisting their time. If you are in doubt, it is better to give them an additional call.)
If they agree
Make sure they get their logo on their website, send an email to web@iscbsc.org
If something needs to be arranged, make sure to pass along the responsibility to the relevant committee in ISCB SC, we are a lot of volunteers.
Send an email to the right person in the symposium committee for outreach, and make sure they are ready to take over the email convertation. The person in the company may may also include someone else in the reply.
Same for T-shirt sponorship, Twitter Post, etc. Make sure you forward them to the right person from either Symposium committee or ISCB SC Executive Team. If you dont know, write first a direct email to the chair to know who you should forward to.
Make sure they get an Invoice. You should coordinate with the Chair of the ISCB SC finance committee, who reaches out for this.
Diane is the Executive Director of ISCB now (2016) she can help with this, but may forward you to another person. At this time, that person is "Steven Leard" <steven@marketwhys.ca>, If you send request for an invoice, please cc: finance@iscbsc.org The information needed for an invoice is:
- Sponsorship Amount
- Contact Person (Ask the person who said they would sponsor, to whom you should send the invoice)
- Physical Address for this company
- email address for this person (the invoice will be sent as a pdf file)
