Plato's secrets of sponsorship

Sponsorship has been utterly crucial to my career. Ducking, diving, selling and marketing basically got me the opportunity to do the business in Renault Spiders.

At various stages through my professional career, when things have gone tits up - like when SEAT pulled out and there were no other seats around - I've had to get my arse in gear and put deals together.

It's the differentiator between the great and the good, in the sense that you see things go pear-shaped for paid drivers and they don't get involved in trying to make things happen. I've never been like that; I've always been trying to make myself central to all the marketing, a) because I enjoy it and b) because I think it's key.

I like trying to work out how to get a company involved, after the research we've done. What can we come up with that will be the hook? I really enjoy it.

I don't think drivers underestimate sponsorship because they know money is needed, but in my experience 99.999 per cent of drivers under-deliver in this area and don't work hard enough.

It's partly what the KX Akademy is about. I'm quite fortunate in a way. I've always really enjoyed that side of it. I'm like my dad - my dad's a salesman, and I'm the same. And there are things I've learned along the way, strategies on how you sell.

DOING YOUR HOMEWORK

Plato put together the Tesco-MG-Triple Eight BTCC deal © LAT

Whenever we target anyone, the research that goes into making sure they're the right target is quite sophisticated. If you go at it like a blunderbuss, you'll just waste time.

We've found that if you don't do your research, people still want to speak to you because it's exciting. It's only when you get to the nitty-gritty you realise you've just wasted your time and their time because you're not in the right market and there's no synergy. You can't just go out and canvass and write letters. You've got to go at it 
in a corporate and commercial way.

The penny dropped for me in 1996. My single-seater career went pear-shaped because I didn't have the money. I started working in racing schools and got pissed off, demotivated and a bit bitter and twisted as I saw wealthy lads getting on.

Then Renault came along and I'd just found a new sponsor - Swan National Leasing - at the Silverstone racing school. I thought, 'This is my last chance - if this doesn't work, forget it, I've had enough'. I gave it everything and really learned to promote myself around the paddocks.

I made a lot of mistakes, but the most important thing was I had to bolt it all together - getting Swan National Leasing into Renault Fleet for example - and I thought, 'There's something in all this, getting all the people working together'. It's not the sticker on the 
car, it's the networking and dealing.

PROFILE, AND GETTING INVOLVED

SEAT drive allowed Plato to get involved in marketing © LAT

Another lesson was profile. After the Renault BTCC test [before the 1997 season] I was told I wasn't going to get the seat because they wanted a driver with profile, an ex-Formula 1 driver. I thought, 'I can't let this happen'. I started doing TV and when I got the seat I realised I could have lost it so easily, so I wanted to sort it out.

If you've got two drivers in the running who are both quick, which one are you going to choose, the one with profile or the one without?

All the way through my formative years it wasn't about being in the car: what opens the doors is the commerce and business. I lived in Williams GP's marketing department.

When an opportunity came along with SEAT's new BTCC programme, I saw that I could make myself the epicentre of everything. I was in the marketing department all the time, trying to position myself to be central to everything that went on. I had to put the hours in: voiceovers; presenting corporate events; coming up with ideas; trying to do contra deals.

I did one with TalkSPORT, which was a genius deal, because I got myself on prime-time radio every Thursday night for four minutes, I got SEAT a load of free exposure, and I got TalkSPORT a bit of earning. Everybody in that circle was happy.

SEAT were brilliant with me because they allowed me to get in the middle of it all and be creative, and I learned more. It just becomes what you do.

GIVE THEM WHAT THEY WANT

Commercial tie-ins are Plato's bread and butter © LAT

For the MG-Tesco BTCC deal, the Tesco part was done first - I'd had an involvement with them since 2005. We'd been talking about what to do for 2012 and there was a deal on the table with RML, who I'd been with, and for me that commercial deal wasn't productive enough. So off we went.

Things got really tricky and I went to Triple Eight and we sat down with the board and MG and hammered out a deal. We - my business partner Heidi Johnson-Cash is integral to a lot of this - found levers to pull and mechanisms to make it work financially for MG, make it work for everyone in the programme.

We don't have glossy brochures, we arrange meetings and we talk, and post-meeting we build a package based upon what they've told us and what we've learned. It could be a small package or an enormous one, but you don't know until you've done your research.

The meetings are also research. The meeting isn't so much the selling - it is a bit, kind of guiding - but it's more about what they want to achieve. At measurable points along the way we want to deliver those.

From the very onset, there will be targets, a 30-day plan, a 90-day plan, and a 150-day plan to achieve certain things. We don't want to sell something to someone that they don't need because at some point the bean counters will ask, 'What are we doing that for?' It's much easier to keep a sponsor than find a new one.

And never piss a sponsor off. Always try to over-deliver. If an agreement terminates, you always keep in contact.

The ultimate thing, surrounding it all, is hard work. It's getting up at five in the morning with a brainwave. Simply just bloody hard work!

PLATO'S TOP SPONSOR TIPS

Work smart
Do your research, don't send out a little flyer. You've got to meet people. Every racing driver should be a member of a golf club.

Listen
We've got one mouth and two ears, but most people use them the wrong way round when they are doing a commercial deal.

Mix with clever people
Find someone that works well with you. Treat people the way you'd want to be treated yourself. It's people skills.

Work hard, then work harder
The moment you get a deal, that's when you really have to start working. Most people think, 'That's done now', forget their sponsor and don't deliver.