Richard Woodward

Strategic Planning Facilitator, Business Development & Sponsorship Training

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Your trusted advisor in attracting and retaining the right sponsors and partners

Sponsors and partners can be invaluable to your organisation. The right sponsors and partners can deliver long term sustainable revenue for your organisation, propel your brand and help you deliver your mission.

If your organisation has no strategy in place for attracting and retaining corporate partners and you’re not satisfied with the results from your business development team, then it’s time you engaged an experienced practitioner to get you results.

Richard WoodwardRichard Woodward has expert knowledge of, and experience in, sponsorship and business development. As a seasoned facilitator, speaker, trainer, author and consultant, Richard specialises in helping organisations to attract and retain corporate partners.

Since his first experience managing a bowls sponsorship 37 years ago, Richard has worked in senior roles in leading organisations on both sides of sponsorship; on the corporate side as National Sponsorship Manager at Commonwealth Bank and Marketing Manager at KPMG and on the rights holder side as Sponsorship Manager at Sydney Opera House and Marketing Manager at Stadium Australia. These roles saw him managing sponsorships ranging from cricket and netball to ballet, festivals and community events.

Over the last 21 years, Richard has developed strategies and provided training and coaching to every sector that seeks sponsorship. He has worked with leading players in the worlds of arts, culture, sports, charities, events, music, environment, health and education as well as national and multinational corporations.

Richard is also a certified and highly experienced trainer presenting in-house workshops as well as public workshops across Australia. His workshops How to Attract and Retain Sponsors and Partners and Business Development That Works and books of the same name showcase a repeatable method and clear process that has been developed and refined through years of business experience across a variety of sectors.

His expertise has been widely recognised and he’s a popular speaker on sponsorships and partnerships, being asked to speak at events again and again, including at the Australian Sponsorship Marketing Association/Sponsorship Australasia conference on seven occasions, the Fundraising Institute of Australia (FIA) Conference on five occasions, the Big 4 Fundraising and Philanthropy Conference on four occasions, the Fundraising Institute of New Zealand (FINZ) Conference on three occasions, plus the Culture Business Conference in Sydney and Melbourne, Communicating the Museum in Paris, Audi Marketing & Corporate Communications Conference, Sponsorship News Conference, The Business of Events Conference, Associations Forum National Conference, International Not for Profit Convention & Exhibition (INCE), Professional Conference Organisers Association Conference, Asia Pacific Association Executives Congress (APAEC),  Australian Business Events Expo (ABEE), Australian Events Symposium, Meetings & Events Australia (MEA) National Conference, Exhibitions and Events Association (EEA) Annual Conference and Events Queensland Regional Events Conference.

During his time at the Commonwealth Bank, the Bank won the Australian Financial Review National Sponsorship Awards in the sport category.

Richard's book How to Attract & Retain Sponsors & Partners was published in October 2017.

A robust approach to attracting and retaining sponsors and partners

To develop sustainable revenue from corporate sponsors for your organisation, you need the right strategy with a business development team that is equipped with the skills, tools, techniques and attitude to implement it.

Are you confident that your people have the specialist knowledge and insight to pursue corporate partners in a way which is methodical, repeatable, efficient and – most importantly – effective?

If your organisation has no clear plan in place to secure and retain corporate partners, you’re not clear on the value your organisation can offer a corporate partner, your team struggles to secure first meetings, your conversion rate is unsatisfactory and your existing corporate partners are demanding too much and not renewing, Richard can help.

Richard has developed a clear, robust and repeatable process to attracting and approaching prospects as well as retaining these relationships so that partners renew. Consulting with Richard is a highly personal, tailored experience that’s dependent on the particular needs and capacities of your organisation.

In this short video Richard discusses the key stages of the process for attracting and retaining sponsors and partners

What’s involved

Richard begins with a thorough briefing process so that he can understand your current approach to attracting and retaining corporates. This includes looking at what, if any strategy you already have in place, what’s working well, your organisation’s challenges and barriers to higher conversion rates, your team and their competencies, your current partners, plus a review of the sales materials you’re using to attract partners.

Richard will work with you to:

  • Develop an effective strategy through facilitating workshops with key members of your organisation to engage and inspire them to reimagine what’s possible
  • Help key members of your organisation understand exactly what the organisation has to offer corporate partners and who would most likely be attracted to partnering with your organisation
  • Train and equip your team with the practical tools, techniques and skills of business development to implement the strategy
  • Develop your sales materials to successfully engage prospects such as key facts documents, opportunity documents and proposals
  • Provide ongoing coaching including invaluable feedback, brainstorming and reviewing of opportunities as they occur
  • Run regular review sessions that bring your team together monthly, quarterly and/or annually, to share learning and provide additional coaching
  • Be a recruitment panel member, to help ensure you recruit the right people to develop your organisation
  • Facilitate corporate partners workshops as part of your partnership retention strategy as undertaken for Museum of Contemporary Art, Cerebral Palsy Alliance, Landcare Australia, Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Queensland Symphony Orchestra, Queensland Ballet, West Australian Ballet, Redkite, Bond University, Screen Producers Australia, Learning Links and Royal Botanic Gardens.

As every client is different, there’s no ‘one size fits all’ approach. Some clients get immense value from a one-day in-house workshop version of Richard’s ‘How to attract and retain sponsors and partners’ public workshop, while others re-engage Richard year after year, as a trusted advisor and confidant.

Richard is well-regarded for his thorough approach to research and preparation, so the more background materials you can provide Richard before the first session, the better. Resources to send include strategy papers, proposals and evaluation reports.

Who should be involved?

Organisations that are most successful in attracting and retaining the right partners and sponsors involve the whole of organisation, particularly the program, marketing, and executive teams. By educating and engaging these teams about what’s required, the organisation will get a far better result.

Outcomes

Engaging Richard’s highly specialised sponsorship services means your organisation will have:

  • Absolute clarity on what your organisation has to offer corporates
  • A deep understanding on the types of corporations most likely to be attracted to what your organisation offers
  • A unifying sponsorship plan that everyone in the organisation has bought into
  • A repeatable process for use by everyone at your organisation at any time
  • A business development team which has the competencies to execute your strategy
  • Highly effective sales materials to successfully persuade corporates to partner with you
  • A copy of How to Attract and Retain Sponsors and Partners for each team member
  • Sponsors that want to stay and grow with your organisation year after year.

Richard has delivered enormous benefit to our organisation by imparting his expertise and experience to Landcare Australia’s corporate partnerships team. He has used his skills to develop our fledgling team into a professional outfit, including assisting us in recruiting high performers. The team now have greater clarity of our proposition to corporates and we have implemented a strategic approach to growing our number of corporate partners and enhancing client relations. We have secured new, quality corporate partners as a result and implemented programs such as a corporate partners’ workshop to enhance our relationships with existing partners. 

Tessa Matykiewicz, CEO Landcare Australia

Over the last ten years I have attended courses and planning sessions run by Richard, he has provided sage advice on a number of significant projects which has resulted in establishing many successful partnerships for the organisations for which I have worked.

Richard is highly professional has a thorough understanding of the corporate sector. Success is achieved through his methodical and practical approach to developing partnerships for organisations, including writing partnership proposals and creating action plans to achieve results.

Annalisa Millar, Head of Development, National Museum of Australia

Richard has been an integral part of shaping our partnership strategy for the last three years.  Key to this has been our annual Corporate Partners Workshop, which brings together MCA partners in a unique environment where they are able to share successes, ideas and challenges of their partnerships. It’s proven a great way to ensure we are on the same page as our partners and working towards the same goals and objectives.

Each year, the most popular part of the day is that when partners are given the time and opportunity to collaborate and develop B2B relationships with each other. In the last three years this has seen several of our partners develop strategic and commercial opportunities with each other, outside of the MCA. This is a really important and unique 'value add' that we are able to offer our partners. Having sat on both sides of the fence as a sponsor and as a rights holder, Richard is the perfect facilitator for this event and able to identify areas of opportunity for both the MCA and our partners. He makes the planning the event a seamless process and always delivers a successful and engaging workshop. I’d recommend him in a heartbeat.

Ashlyn Jones, Museum of Contemporary Art

Richard's business development and corporate partnering training is outstanding. He provides one with much to consider, skills and practical know how which is life changing and makes a huge difference in how one operates.

 Christopher Wainwright, Adelaide Youth Orchestra 

Richard's sponsorship sales training helps you focus on the real needs of potential partners. No matter what level you are at, he brings great insight and will lift you to a new level. It's made a real dollar difference to our business.

Sean Pickwell, Waterfront Entertainment

Richard ran three sessions at our national conference in October 2018: on developing local partnerships, articulating our elevator pitch to attract supporters and facilitated a strategy session with our partners and Board. The sessions received excellent feedback and were relevant and on topic to our members. The Board strategy session to follow helped us to focus on outcomes and our goals, leaving us with key focus areas to work on. Richard is an excellent facilitator, was easy to work with and knew what we were wanting to achieve.

Eleanor Cater, Executive Officer, Community Foundations of New Zealand

Learning Links benefited enormously from the training Richard provided. As a not for profit and charitable organisation with limited corporate partnership exposure, our team was unsure how to approach corporates and did not fully understand where we were positioned in the broader charity market. Richard worked with our team to help us understand our products and what we had to offer a potential corporate partner. We are now equipped with a strategic and systematic approach and we feel comfortable in our pitch. After just 6 months of hard work it's already starting to pay off. Thank you to Richard for his excellent knowledge and guidance in this area.

Birgitte Maibom CEO, Learning Links

Cerebral Palsy Alliance (CPA) engaged Richard Woodward to facilitate workshops with our corporate partners in 2015 and again in 2016. The workshops were well structured, professional and engaging. They have deepened our relationships with our corporate partners and helped our partners to maximise the benefit they receive from partnering with CPA.

The workshops have helped CPA learn more about the needs of our partners and what’s important to them. They have enabled CPA’s partners to network with each other and share their experiences about what makes a successful charity partnership. Importantly the workshops have given CPA the opportunity to ‘give something back’ to our partners which ultimately helps us to develop more meaningful, sustainable and mutually beneficial partnerships. I would certainly recommend the workshops to any organisation looking to increase engagement and benefit from corporate partnerships.

Lucy Jacka, Cerebral Palsy Alliance

I would like to personally thank Richard for the training we undertook at Diversified last month. In my ten years in sales this sponsorship training stood out as the most professional and beneficial training myself and the team have ever had. We have seen our sponsorship lift to record levels and the team are using all the skills we were taught and enjoying the success – thank you Richard.

 Claire Back, Diversified Exhibitions 

The day was tailored and structured towards my new business teams' specific requirements. The content was relevant, engaging and my team has used what they learned across the day to great effect. Restructuring our business presentations, listening to our clients more effectively and changing our business pipeline management. Richard is an engaging and incredibly knowledgeable industry expert.

Richard Notman-Watt, Fairfax Events

Get in touch

If you’re ready to secure the revenue your organisation needs to deliver its mission, services programs and events then inquire now about Richard’s suitability or availability by calling 0414 886 018, or fill out the form below.

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About Me

Richard is a business development strategist, trainer, speaker and author who has worked with leading organisations since 2004 to help them attract and retain new business.

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Richard Woodward & Associates Pty Ltd PO Box 908 Bondi Junction 1355 Sydney, Australia

Phone: + 61 2 8964 4350
Mobile/cell: 0414 886 018

Email: richard@richardwoodward.com.au

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