The challenge

Transaid has a very successful Corporate Membership scheme, with 37 committed corporate partners from across the UK transport and logistics industry, each sharing Transaid’s belief in the power of safe available and sustainable transport, and its ability to transform lives.

The challenge for Transaid’s corporate partnerships team was how to package one of their core programmes – their international road safety and driver training initiative – to potential corporate supporters, in a way that was more emotive and engaging.

Transaid also wanted to improve how they captured the attention of prospects from the word go, highlighting the potential benefits they could deliver for the company, and making them ‘the heart’ of the approach.

The solution

Jade Ashby-Rozier, Corporate Partnerships Officer decided to attend our Corporate Partnerships Masterclass. Throughout the course, she learned the steps to create a major corporate partnership – from identifying top prospects to securing meetings, from forming partnership ideas to making the company the hero of the partnership.

The hands-on learning was the standout feature of the masterclass for Jade. The two-day course culminated in delivering a practice pitch in front of her peers to prepare her for the same experience with corporate partners. This was the opportunity for her to put everything she’d learned into action. By delivering the pitch she proved to herself that she was not only capable of taking this new approach, but also that it worked for her audience.

Inspired by what she’d learnt, Jade was able to secure a meeting with one of her top prospects. First she met the CEO for a coffee, where she shared her story, partnership ideas and benefits for the company. At the end of that meeting they agreed that the next stage was for Transaid to present to the CEO and his colleagues. This is where the magic really happened.

In their pitch Transaid reframed how they spoke about their driver training work, by telling the story of Mr Mwansa, a long-distance truck driver in Zambia. They spoke about a journey taken by Mr Mwansa in which he encountered a near-miss with a bus approaching him at speed, but explained that he was able to get home safely to his family that day thanks to the top-quality driver training he had received. Transaid then revealed that this isn’t always what happens. They detailed the consequences of a real-life crash involving a collision between a truck and a bus, and the loss of life that it had caused. By using this ‘sliding doors’ approach learnt on the course, Transaid were able to make the company feel the pain and consequences that they fight to prevent.

Then they put the company at the heart of the solution. They spoke about how a partnership with Transaid would enable them to reach more people like Mr Mwansa, would deliver big benefits for the company and build stronger relationships with their customers.

Finally, with a bit of creativity, a model truck and the help of a Pritt Stick, Jade showed them what a partnership could look like. She’d prepared a mock-up of one of the company’s trucks with the big partnership idea on the side, creating a memorable moment and demonstrating to them that their partnership could be extraordinary.

The key benefits

This meeting led to Transaid forming one of their most exciting partnerships to date and enhanced Jade’s confidence as a corporate partnerships specialist.

Now she and her colleagues are even more equipped to place the prospect at the heart of their proposal, with new and creative approaches, and to talk about their cause in emotive ways.
Using this learning is helping the team unlock further value from their existing partners and secure bigger and better prospects moving forwards.