I was recently asked to sign off on some corporate tickets for the upcoming Rugby World Cup. The sales teams are all keen to have another reason to talk to their customers, but the finance teams want to know the return on the not insubstantial investment. Where’s the balance?

It’s my view that Deeper Customer Relationships Matter and that sports events are often a very good way for account mangers to grow closer to their customers by bonding over a shared interest. This bond is strengthened more so because the commonality falls outside of business.

Typically events works best if the relationship is already established. It is NOT the environment to try to make a sale or to introduce new product.

As a consequence it’s almost impossible to offer a ROI for any particular event activity, but when seen in the context of building deeper and more trusted relationships I think that (alongside customer advisory boards, product trials, white papers, customer events, and great account management) sports events play an important role in sales and marketing.

I’m sure you’ve seen yourself that when invited to golf, rugby, soccer, Olympics, World Cup it’s most engaging when hosted by a passionate individual within the organisation who can evangelise about the event and start to build that common interest. So don’t send me to the boxing, and don’t send other skiing, but if you’ve got tickets to the Masters, I’m a customer forever!

I approved the tickets because more than ever relationships matter.