COVER LETTER:

Ask yourself the following to make for an impressive cover letter.

1. What does the prospective sponsor need? Which skills, results, past sponsors, past efforts etc would be an asset in the company you are targeting.

2. What are your objectives for your race career? Are you looking for a little support for your racing hobby or are you a full dedicated rider who as aspirations of making it into the bigger leagues.  Companies will sponsor both types but it's nice to give them a heads up.

3. What are some qualities that you would bring to the company? What can you do to help the company with promotional and marketing efforts.  What have you done in the past? and what creative ideas do you have now?

4.Why do you want to be sponsored by that company?

5. What kind of exposure can you offer

Now lets write...

The opening:

This is where you tell the company who you are and why you are writing

The Sales Pitch

It's best to get right to the point.. include why the rep should see you as a sponsored rider.

The Kiss

This is where the "why them" comes in. It's where you flatter the rep and says something about the comapny.  Sponsors like to know why you have chosen them over their competition. Don't be sappy!

Further Action

The closing, a wrap up thank the rep and how you would like to go from here.. I look forward to speaking with you and being a aprt of your companies future.. stuff like that.

Everyone seems to stumble when it comes to writing your resume and getting it out.  Why is that?

Well for starters everyone is uncomfortable asking for money and some just don't know their own value that would warrant such sponsorship.

Below you will find the basic steps in completed your resume to be mailed out.  Note that everyone's resume looks the same on paper so you will have to throw a creative twist so that the person that views them first will pass them on to the next person.

Don't try to save money by writing your resume on a piece of loose-leaf paper you scratched on in school or at work.  Check for grammatical errors. Don’t make silly mistakes and misspell the name of the company or the contact person. Use the spell-check feature on your computer to ensure no mistakes were made prior to submitting an application to a company.

Don't lie about your results, years in competition or past sponsors on your profile to hide the fact that you aren’t as good as you’d like to be or that you lose your sponsors frequently because you treat them poorly. If a prospective sponsor conducts a simple background check like calling your local event promoter and discovers that you lied, you can kiss that sponsor good-bye and the word will get out.

CHECK SPONSORSHIP REQUIREMENTS FOR EACH COMPANY

 Read them carefully prior to submitting a resume. Don’t send resumes when they aren’t accepting resumes, don’t follow up until they ask you to, and follow each company’s instructions because they are all slightly different. This will ensure you are following their basic requirements, which is the first step to getting sponsored.

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE LATELY?

Don't include every single result you've ever had in your competitive career. Sponsor Reps are most interested in your experience from this season and the past 2 years, so focus on your most recent and most relevant results and work backwards. Call up who you have to for correct results for each event. Include full results for this season and 3-5 highlights for each of the past 2 year’s (overall rankings, large events or championships).

SEND SPONSORSHIP REQUESTS TO SPECIFIC COMPANIES OF INTEREST

Choose companies whose products or services you use and believe in. Of course, pursue a backup sponsor that you will be happy with as well, but be specific. Always thank people if you decide to turn down sponsorship opportunities. Send a follow-up that you can include a reason for not taking their offer. This is a nice touch to leave the door open for future years.

If you contacted a company and they specifically asked for a book on your life in competition, then go ahead and create a resume that reflects the full range of your experience and accomplishments complete with photo albums. We’ve worked with sponsor reps from leading companies over the past year to create a formatted resume that they want.

a. Resume/Bio

b. Stats

c. Photos

d. News

e. Schedule of events

f. Your value ( what you can do to grow their business)

g. ASK WHAT YOU WOULD LIKE

H. each resume needs a COVER LETTER