Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Intro
You're listening to the Motorsport Prospects Podcast.
Hey, it's Mark from Motorsport Prospects and welcome to the Motorsport Prospects podcast. This is where we dive into the world of motorsport with the people who live and breathe it. From driver coaches and sponsorship experts to team owners, pro drivers and more. You'll hear real stories, practical advice and insights you can actually use, whether you're just starting out or already chasing success on the track.
Now, I've been asked why I started Motorsport Prospects and the main reason I started Motorsport Prospects and the new Verified by Motorsport Prospects designation is I would often be asked the same question, whether it be by aspiring drivers, independent drivers, their families, their advisors, and that was always, who can I trust?
It's very difficult in motorsport sometimes to find the people that you can trust, both with your money and your career.
So I created Motorsport Prospects to help them make informed decisions. The professionals I feature on this podcast represent that trust. So that's important if you're working with drivers or racing teams because building trust is one of the most important things you can do.
Over the years I found that being clear about what you offer, following through in your promises and genuinely caring about your clients goals makes all the difference.
So what I've done is I've put together some practical advice in my free white paper, the three Essentials for Motorsport Business Owners, which shares simple ways to strengthen relationships, attract the right clients and grow your motorsport business. Naturally, you can find it in the show notes of this podcast or over@motorsport prospects.com so let's get started.
My guest today is Brian McRae. Brian is a competitive sim racer who broke into real world motorsports by helping race teams build sustainable sponsorship revenue. As Partner Marketing Manager for Gradient Racing, he combines three decades of corporate experience with a clear roadmap for turning racing passion into funding at the track.
Welcome to the Most Part Prospects podcast. Brian. Thanks a lot for being on the show.
[00:02:26] Brian McRae: Thanks for having me Mark. Really excited to be here. Looking forward to telling you guys some stories.
[00:02:30] Mark Boudreau: Excellent. We love motorsport stories. And so to start things off the easiest way is like I always tell everybody, I have one question based on your experience and expertise as a motorsport professional, what. What would be the one most important piece of advice you could offer a race driver? Whether that be a current driver, independent, aspiring, just a race driver who's looking for advice.
[00:02:58] Brian McRae: I. I'm a little biased here because I do have a corporate background. I have an extensive corporate sales background and so 20 plus years in corporate sales. And the thing about corporate sales is corporate sales functions at the Tip of the sphere of commerce, which means I spent my days asking for the business.
And so my ability to sell is the thing that got me into racing. It's the thing. It's the relentless skill that gets me to. Yes, with sponsors and as a racing driver, you're competing not only against other racing drivers, but you're competing against other. Other dollars, other projects for the dollars that you're trying to get a hold of.
So it's really easy, and I see this all the time, is we get so caught up in chasing checks to make it to the next race that our entire sponsorship business model revolves those checks, rather than acting like a professional salesperson. And a professional salesperson. Mark, you spoke to this earlier. It's really about creating relationships and, you know, creating trust. And that's why I love the idea of this network, because that's really where you have to start. And then those relationships have to be formed and they've got to be taken care of over time. And then there is an art to asking for the business. There's an art to asking a sponsor to, you know, to. To fund your racing. There's a way to do that that helps your sponsors say, and those are all professional selling skills that anybody can learn and that you will use for your entire racing career, you know, and that.
[00:04:30] Mark Boudreau: That's a great point, because people are often uncomfortable selling, first of all.
And I think. And I certainly wouldn't consider myself to be a salesperson by any means, but a lot of times the. What I've heard is that people will make the approach, will make the pitch, but will not actually ask for the sale.
Is this. Is this something that. It's a common problem?
[00:05:00] Brian McRae: It is not only a common problem in racing, but it's a very common problem in professional sales in general. So, you know, you make the phone call, and the first thing you want to do is to try to convince this person. So you vomit out all the things that you do, whether it's your software, whether it's your racing, or whatever that is, and you don't offer the relationship a chance to germinate. More importantly. Importantly, you're not finding out what's important to the sponsor, right? What's the sponsor's business? You know, what are they trying to do? And if you can focus the conversation on them by asking an intelligent question like how do you appropriate your marketing dollars for these types of events? You're asking a how question that requires some expansion, and that response is going to develop some trust and also give you some Information.
So there's very much an art to not only just overcoming the, the reluctance of making that phone call. That's a very real thing. People hate call asking for money. I do too. It's part of what I do have to get over. But then there is, once you make that connection over the phone, overcoming the reluctance of that person to talk to a stranger, there's that, that initial connection that you have to make. And so it's very much a process. And I think we do get lost on making our pitches and then hoping that the client will get back to us or maybe we follow up with them a couple of weeks later and ask them, what did you think? But we really haven't delivered any value because we haven't made the connection between our racing activities and your sponsor's business. And that's really what we're trying do. We're trying to establish some sort of commercial connection in addition to developing a trusted relationship with this person, because they're about to write you a big check, right?
[00:06:31] Mark Boudreau: And, and like I always say, honestly, businesses don't care about your racing dream.
They don't care that you want to go out and race Ferraris because that's what you've always wanted to do. They care about solving a particular business problem that they have. And I think it's all about research, you know, is finding out, like you said, what they do, how they do it, where are their challenges, asking them, showing them you understand that. And that follows through, I think. And this is another big issue I've always had that follows through once you actually do land that sponsor. You know, you talk about relationships. If you want to build a trusting, solid relationship that will hopefully, hopefully extend beyond that year, you really need to know what they do and you need to be able to explain that to people that ask you. Because I've seen so many times where a driver, you know, the widget 1, 2, 3 car went really well. Oh, that's really cool. That's great. And what does widget 1 2, 3 do? And they're like, I don't know, sell widgets.
I mean, I think isn't that something that's really critical is that research understanding your, your, your, your potential sponsors business problem and what they do?
[00:07:46] Brian McRae: It is, it's crucial. And you tapped on an interesting problem that I think we as race teams, because I do the same thing. I'm calling people trying to find money to fund our race team, just like a racing driver's trying to fund their racing career.
So the costs of racing as you know, are astronomical. And they're getting higher. So our sponsorship asks are getting higher as well.
And the traditional means that we use to deliver value, like, hey, come to the track, we'll host an event, you'll get some great social media content with our decal on our race car. That value do is great, but it's not enough to move the needle. It's there. There's not enough financial ROI typically for that to be the sole reason for me as a marketing, as a marketer to make that decision.
So there has to be something else tied to it, whether it's the depth of the relationship, whether it's the tie to the product.
And that does two things that's actually, that are actually very beneficial. If you can make it about the relationship, either the personal relationship or the commercial relationship between the product you're representing and the racing activities, you've created an an for a longer term relationship. And you've kind of released yourself from this transactional, oh my gosh, I've got to chase the sponsor every season.
And that's a, you know, that's an epidemic for all of us in professional racing, even at this level is the season ends and the sponsorships, you know, are over and we get to start the clock at zero again the following season.
And so one of the biggest things that I'm trying to do to, to move past that is to find a way to make our racing activities directly relevant to the sponsor's business so that if we can find a for racing itself to deliver some sort of value, whether it's some sort of study, some research study based on the athleticism of the drivers or how the product is integrated into the process, some way for the racing activities themselves to deliver some commercial value that helps build that anchor, it helps build that trust. But to your earlier question, in order to even have permission to do those things, you have to have trust, you have to have the relationship first. And that, I think is the hardest part. We go straight to asking for the money without taking the time to build the bridge and build that trust first.
[00:09:55] Mark Boudreau: Right. And I mean, look, and that takes a lot of work with, I think, which I think again is something that people underestimate.
You know, a lot of people tell ME racing is 80, 80% business, 20% racing on the track.
And that 80%, you know, takes a lot of work. You mentioned the art of selling. For somebody listening, what kind of suggestions would you have for perhaps learning the art of selling, whether it's a book, whether it's a course or you know what, what could they do to help them with that, with that, to learn that art?
[00:10:30] Brian McRae: There are, unfortunately, there are tons of great resources out there and some that are not so great.
The first one that comes to mind, there's a guy named Josh Braun and his last name is spelled B R A U N. You can find him on LinkedIn. In terms of developing the sales vocabulary, he's the best because he translates these conversations in very simple.
He teaches you how to structure questions in a non threatening way. And the tactics that he teaches are operational. Anyone can do them. And so he offers videos, he's got training classes. That's probably, I think if you were looking for one single source that'll move the needle the fastest, that's probably your guy.
I visit his LinkedIn page every day to get inspiration, learn how to ask better questions.
[00:11:19] Mark Boudreau: Perfect. And now, you know, these are the kind of things that I'll be putting on in the show notes. So if anybody is, you know, wanting to find out a little bit more about Josh, you know, the link will be in there.
Tell me a little bit about what you're doing with gradient racing. You're the partnership manager. How does that work and what series does gradient racing race in?
[00:11:41] Brian McRae: So gradient racing, we're a sports car racing team. We race in the IMSA WeatherTech Sports Car Championship.
So we're a GTD team. So the GT Daytona class, that's the GT cars, but with a combination of professional and amateur drivers.
This is the top tier of sports car racing in the United States. We race against all the factory teams. Roger Penske has his Porsches out there. So this is the best of the best of the best. But it's not the same tier as Formula 1 or NASCAR. Doesn't quite have that same visibility.
But that's changing. You know, we're seeing record crowds at the track, record ratings on television. So there's become a lot of interest and a lot of attraction to sports car racing. And so it's created this really interesting problem because for us, you know, we're a GTD GT Daytona team. So typically back at the grid we do, you know, we contended for a Class 1 at Sebring, so but this team has been on the grid for nine years. Highly professional, highly dedicated, fantastic reputation. In the paddock we race the Ford Mustang GT3.
It's the same multimatic car that Ford racing races in imsa. And Ford has done a great job of committing massive resources, both financially and people, people to this platform. And it's their GT platform worldwide. And so our team, despite the fact that we're independent, we have two Ford engineers on staff on race day, and we share data with the factory teams. And so we're all trying to bring this car, you know, basically bring it up to speed and make it something elite out there. And so the problem that it creates is that even though we're on television and even though we're racing, you know, the best sports cars in the world, even though we're racing with the best racing drivers in the world, the sponsorship value is difficult because we don't have the reach of NASCAR and Formula one.
[00:13:26] Mark Boudreau: Okay?
[00:13:26] Brian McRae: And so it's created this weird niche where it's just as expensive for us to race over the course of the season as, say, a NASCAR Xfinity team, but we don't have the same level of access to sponsors. So building that bridge is a lot harder because it generally requires some education. I've got to teach you about sports car racing, teach you about imsa, and have you come to a race to see the show for yourself before you really, as a marketer, start to understand the true marketing opportunity. And so that's been the biggest challenge for me, is despite the fact that we are very much a professional race team racing against the best race car drivers in the world, it's a lot harder for me to get those marketers to take my phone calls because they don't know who we are.
And so that's been my biggest objective over this first year, is I've built out a LinkedIn presence. As you know, Mark, that's how you and I met. I would also recommend that for motorsports networking. I'm very pleasantly surprised at how robust the motorsports marketing network is, is out there on LinkedIn.
[00:14:25] Mark Boudreau: Absolutely.
[00:14:26] Brian McRae: So I'm building a presence there to try to build some expertise, build some knowledge about how to go and be creative, find creative ways to find these sponsors. But ultimately, really, it comes down to answering this question of, hey, how can I, as a partner, marketing manager, as the person who will be responsible for ultimately delivering that value to you, how can I create ROI that goes beyond exposure? Because that's the only way. If I can create some sort of concrete ROI for you, the sponsor, that's probably the only way you're going to get the budget approved, if we're honest.
So that's been the biggest challenge, I think, for me, just in addition to just coming up to speed, you know, in professional racing, it's also building that bridge.
[00:15:04] Mark Boudreau: Right. And for anybody listening, I will. I will put up if you don't mind I'll put up your LinkedIn because following Brian actually is quite informative. He posts a lot of great content and the nice thing about it is it's not theoretical. It's from somebody actually working in the industry trying to you know get sponsors selling, you know so that's, I always find that's I love when it's from. I always say it's the same thing. I love hearing from people who don't just talk the talk. Right. So highly recommended. Again I'll put that link in the show notes.
So any, any really anything else that you find. For example do you usually aim for more B2B business to business or is it business to consumer? Is that a combination of both? Where do you tend to focus your, your selling efforts?
[00:16:07] Brian McRae: That's a really good question. And honestly so there's a thing in our in professional sales is called your ideal client profile. And so if I'm working for a software company I'm going to build out I'm looking for this new marketing organization, you know CMO this make building out an exact profile of the role that I'm looking for and then I'm going to go find you know several hundred of that same role. So it's the best way to ensure your success is to understand your ideal client profile. Well for this there really isn't one. And so that's one of the things I'm trying to learn by almost by you know, trial by fire.
But what I've settled on is first of all company size.
The company needs to be over about 50 million annually in revenue in order to have enough to be able to justify a six figure marketing spend. And so and then once a company gets over about 500 million then they get so big that it's hard to get anything approved. So that's kind of my first marker is companies that have an annual revenue of 100 million to 500 million if I can somehow make them racing adjacent that's ideal. So that's why consumer, you know, consumer packaged goods are one of the things that I'm working on. I'm working with a hydration packet company right now. Those little electrolyte packets, there's a billion of them but I'm working with one to develop a hydration protocol that will install on our team to be able to measure success. So that's a situation where the product is directly relevant to the racing. And so that's, I'm trying to find other examples of products that kind of fit that. But there's this interesting niche that I just uncovered that might be really interesting because the companies are smaller. So a lot of these companies, especially in consumer packaged goods, they have to secure their retail channels. So they're trying to find shelf space at Walmart, shelf space at Walgreens, the bigger store chains. And they have to pay a significant amount of money to do that. And so to justify that space, they've got to sell a lot of product.
And so you have a lot of these companies that if you look, if you research them, they don't have any revenue. They've got very little revenue because they're venture capital backed or they're backed by a private equity equity fund who is trying to grow.
And so companies like that are making big bets. They're making million dollar bets on sponsoring a Formula one team response like this in order to gain expansion fast.
And so that's a new niche that I just uncovered is, hey, there's, you know, there's thousands of companies that are, you know, pre, sort of pre revenue that don't have the results, but that are backed by all this VC funding that are specifically designed to make these type of more high leverage marketing bets. And so that's the other great thing about those companies is they're smaller. And so you can almost always get in touch with the founder or get in touch with the leadership a whole lot easier.
[00:18:46] Mark Boudreau: And that's a really key point that you just mentioned.
If you're not talking to somebody who can make a decision, in some ways it's almost wasted time.
[00:18:56] Brian McRae: Agree 100%, you have to be talking
[00:18:58] Mark Boudreau: to the person who can say yes, yeah, absolutely. Okay. As we end things, I just have the one final question, a fun one.
Favorite racetrack? Current or historical? What would that be?
[00:19:13] Brian McRae: You know, there are so many, I'm sure everybody says that there's so many that I've just been to, but I have to go to my very first NASCAR race and that was at Texas Motor Speedway. It's my home track. I live in Austin, it's in Dallas. And I had the opportunity to bear in mind this was my first ever NASCAR race. And so I had the opportunity to go sit on Austin Dillon's pit box as a guest of the team. And so my very first experience was behind the scenes, you know, on pit wall while those cars are ripping by at 190 miles an hour, listening to me on the radio to the pits. And it was an immersive experience that I will never forget. And that day was the day that I decided somehow, some way, I'm going to find my way into the sport. Because it was magical.
[00:19:56] Mark Boudreau: Yeah. Being there in person can never be replicated. I don't care how amazing VR might be, you just have to be. You just have to be at the track. That's really cool. I would love to see. I have not seen a NASCAR race and I want to see one at a super speedway. Texas. Would be. Would be an absolute. That would. Yeah, that would be an absolute blast.
So, interesting choice. Interesting choice.
Well, Brian, I really appreciate you spending time with me and chatting about motorsport sponsorship, which is probably the number one question everybody has about when they're talking motorsport.
But it's been really great talking to you and thanks for the inside insight.
[00:20:43] Brian McRae: Thank you for having me, Mark. Really appreciate you being here. This is a great conversation.
[00:20:46] Mark Boudreau: Great. Thanks a lot. Well, that's it for this week. This is Mark from Motorsport Prospects, reminding you to stay fast, stay focused and keep chasing that checkered flag.
Thanks for listening to the Motorsport Prospect Prospects podcast. For insights, advice and the latest news racers can use, visit Motorsport Prospects.com.
