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Unread 18-06-2011, 16:34
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Letter vs e-mail vs phone

What are the pros and cons of contacting companies by phone vs email vs letter; any of these approaches would be followed up by an in-person presentation.

Last edited by lemiant : 18-06-2011 at 18:38.
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Unread 18-06-2011, 17:35
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Re: Letter vs e-mail vs phone

Honestly, the best option is an in person meet. Phone can be confusing for both sides if the individuals aren't good communicators.

Letter and email are pretty well a no go for me because you can throw them out/ignore them pretty easily. I recommend getting students right to the sponsors.
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Unread 18-06-2011, 18:23
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Re: Letter vs e-mail vs phone

Every year we visit our sponsors to meet with them, thank them and give a commemorative plaque. We find that the sponsors really enjoy a visit and often a robot demonstration. Sometimes as we walk through their building we see how they have displayed our previous plaques. So I would second the idea that personal contact is best. Unfortunately, for one of our sponsors (SAIC) we couldn't meet with them in person. We wrote several letters that summarized our grateful sentiments and mail those with our plaque.
Year around, as we communicate with our sponsors about our progress and inviting them to places like our regional, we do so through email. In fact, three times a year we email out a newsletter. We find that email is good for quick communication but when it comes to important meetings, we prefer to visit or send a letter.
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Unread 18-06-2011, 19:35
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Re: Letter vs e-mail vs phone

All of them can be good, but you have to use them effectively. That's the challenge.

In person is the best; however, it can be difficult to just walk in without any introduction in some cases. This is what you'd want to use for a small business in your town; a larger company would probably need an appointment to get in in person.

By phone can be hard to ignore; you ignore a ringing phone once! However, it can also be easy to forget what was talked about, on both ends. Make sure that you take notes--who you talked to, and what was discussed. Also make sure that you call the right person--calling HR when you need PR could get pretty interesting, in a bad way.

By email can get attention, and it's easy to bounce to the appropriate person inside the company. For this, you want to use the company's contact information (from their website) unless you have contact information within the company for someone in particular. You need to make the title look like something they want to read (hint: "We would like your money" might be a bad idea; "Local robotics team would like to talk about sponsorship" might be better). Then you want to write the email like you would a letter.

By letter is similar to by email, but in this case you need to make certain that the letter is addressed to the right person.

Personally, I would go with an email or letter, followed up by an in-person contact. Telephone can be used effectively, but email or letter are more effective in my experience (then include your contact telephone so that they can call back if they prefer that method).

Also, a couple general pointers: Be polite and professional should go without saying. Usually, you want to indicate that you'd like the dialog to continue (either a second talk about sponsorship, or your contacting them with results, or something similar).
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Unread 18-06-2011, 22:47
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Re: Letter vs e-mail vs phone

I highly suggest visiting sponsors in person as everyone has said.

We have over 100+ sponsors now. We visit each one and give them:

-Plaques (ranging from small to big)
-Offseason Event BBQ Tickets for 2 people
-Robot Demo
-On School Letterhead a Thank You letter

Before we leave, we give them a self addressed envelope with a card asking if they'd liked to:

-Sponsor Donation
-Material Donation
-Machine Time Donation
-Come visit later in the year
-Do Not Wish To Sponsor

We tried the return card last year and it worked amazingly well.

-RC
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Unread 19-06-2011, 18:08
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Re: Letter vs e-mail vs phone

For our team we use a combination of the three.

Before we ever contact a company we always do a fair amount of research about the company in order to get a feel for what they do, but more importantly to get a feel for how we should pitch the team to the company. We generally look for: names, bios, and contact info for the executives; what the company makes; competitors; and current outreach of the company. We will also use any other information that helps us to better show the company how sponsoring our team is beneficial to them.

We generally initiate contact with a company using a written letter/package. This letter package contains a letter written to the individual we are contacting, a powerpoint presentation about our team and/or a team video, and sometimes additional marketing materials. In our letter we make it clear that we intend to call the person in the following weeks (we usually give a specific date).

We then call the company (I mean the person we contacted) and then from there we give them our spiel, ask them about the letter, and so on. we then try to schedule further correspondence with the company. Depending on the company we may offer to visit their site and run a robot demo or something of the sort.

If this correspondence is continued, we usually do it via email or telephone, whichever the person chooses.

The key to it is to appear official and to always follow through with whatever you say you will do. There are many things you need to pay attention to when approaching sponsors, and as such it needs to be planned out.

It really doesn't compare the 3 but it shows how we contact them. Any of the medium can be shut down as easily as the others, including in person. Your best bet is to be as official as possible and of course, use whatever resources you have at your disposal.
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