Jan Menneken, the International Tennis Federation's Executive Commercial Director, was originally a door-to-door salesman for Bertelsmann's Book Club. Now, he's turned a fascination with television and sport into a hugely successful sports marketing career.
WHAT I BELIEVE...
Emotion is powerful stuff. Emotion drives the excitement of on-site spectators, a TV audience and sponsors. In tennis, it's much easier to sell emotionally driven events such as the Davis Cup. At Wimbledon, people clap politely - but in the Davis Cup the opposition double-faults and the crowd goes wild.
Quality is important. You should never go for the lowest common denominator. My Japanese wife taught me this.
Live each day as if it were your last. Even if I've made lots of money on a certain day, I still consider it a bad day if I haven't done something new or had fun. One of my aims is to return to university and study history.
Sell with a conscience. Selling book clubs door to door, as I did years ago, teaches you the importance of needing to believe that buyers will also benefit.
Be flexible. In the space of one day, I have to deal with a wide spectrum of nationalities and cultures, with people ranging from amateur tennis players to TV executives and sponsorship agencies. The variety makes it fascinating.
Don't take yourself too seriously. The English are good at that. I'm half-Dutch, half-German.
WHAT I'VE LEARNT...
You should always be respectful to your opponents. That's a lesson you can learn from sportspeople. On one day in 1995, I flew from the Masters tournament at Augusta to North Carolina to watch the Ultimate Fighting Championship [no-rule cage-fighting]. It's the biggest sporting contrast you can get - but in both events they were all respectful to each other.
Contact between sponsors and sporting organisations will become more direct in the future. Agents will be less independent and closer to one side or the other.
Don't just follow commercial reasoning; you risk sucking the lifeblood from an event. I campaigned for two years to shorten Davis Cup matches because their unpredictable length was difficult for broadcasters. After talking to competitors I realised that this would diminish the 'Crown of Tennis' for them. The solution was to make players' breaks within matches more compact, and to attract enough of an audience to convince broadcasters to open their schedules.
Sport sponsorship has a vibrant future. Sport will continue to be relevant for large live audiences across all kinds of visual electronic media. Government-inspired policies encouraging exercise also bring a positive transfer from sport to company sponsor.
