On April 18, Kendall Ryan of TIBCO-SVB narrowly averted disaster at the USA Cycling Professional Criterium Championships in Greenville, South Carolina, when she darted out of the way of a crash that happened just 300 meters from the finish line—and then sprinted on to take the win.

Winning the national title was a dream come true for the 22-year-old, but there’s a second success story behind the day. In its eleventh consecutive season of racing, her team, TIBCO-SVB is the longest-standing women’s pro cycling squad in North America. Obtaining sponsorship money and resources is an ongoing challenge for most women’s teams. But the longevity of TIBCO-SVB shows that it is possible for women’s cycling to not only attract title sponsorships, but also maintain them.

BICYCLING caught up with team founder and owner Linda Jackson, a former Olympian and multiple-time Canadian national champion, at the Sea Otter Cycling Classic. Jackson had just secured yet another sponsorship for the team—with Verve Cycling, the makers of the InfoCrank power meter. We settle in at the InfoCrank booth to talk about how TIBCO-SVB has kept the sponsorship dollars rolling in through the years.

Start small, then grow.

I started working with a local bike shop team, the Palo Alto Bicycles women’s team, in 2003-2004. In 2005, I started looking for additional sponsorship so that the team could start going to some NRC races. In the fall of that year, a couple of my riders went for a ride with Vivek Ranadive, who’s the founder of TIBCO and the owner of the Sacramento Kings, and Roger Craig, who’s a 49er football Hall of Famer. The guys didn’t know much about cycling. They didn’t know how to pump up their tires, what pressure to put in them; they were new to wearing cycling shoes, etc. These two women were fantastic ambassadors. They really helped them, and they rode with them. I got a phone call afterward from one of the riders: “Linda, Linda, I think we found you a sponsor!” I say, “Okay, who is it?” And the rider says, “TIBCO! I told them $5,000!” I’m like, “Oh, God!” [laughs] But I did talk the company up to $17,000 that first year.

I couldn’t use numbers to justify a significant sponsorship at that time. But what I have been successful at doing is growing TIBCO, and also Silicon Valley Bank, to bigger sponsor positions. They both started very small. SVB started as $5,000. I’ve grown them both substantially by finding out what they wanted from the partnership and delivering on those objectives. For women’s cycling, that’s what it’s going to be all about.

Focus on ROI.

Before I went to the Olympics, I was an investment banker. [Jackson gave up her banking career to train for the 1996 Games.] So, I knew that return on investment was an important metric for any business deal, including partners/sponsors.

Companies don’t give teams money just to have you in races. They are looking for something. I’m always telling my riders this: “Ladies, it’s not just about winning or racing your bike. You’ve got to understand what the sponsor wants to get out of it, and you need to deliver on that metric or you’re going to lose your sponsorship.”

As the team owner, that’s what I’ve been able to do successfully for the last 11 years: Find out what TIBCO wants, what SVB wants, then deliver on it. They’re both very different in terms of what they’re looking for. With TIBCO, we help to generate sales leads for them at their trade-shows here in the US. We also do several customer events for them in Europe; last year one of these customers later signed a several-million-dollar software deal. And when it comes to renewing the sponsorship each year, they look at that stuff. It’s all about what we did for them that year with their customers/potential customers.

That’s always on my mind all season long: “What am I doing for my sponsors?” It isn’t about whether the ladies won a race or not. Yes, we have to win, but we also need to deliver on all of our sponsors’ metrics, big or small.

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Get creative.

It’s very hard to show standard ROI for women’s cycling, because you don’t have the media exposure. You don’t have the TV exposure. At least not until we get up to the World Tour level, but that’s not going to happen for a few years. So if you’re looking for sponsorship right now, you’ve got to figure out non-traditional ways to generate that return on investment.

With TIBCO for example, it’s all about engaging with potential and existing customers. We go to numerous trade shows each year with their field marketing staff and help increase activity at their booths. TIBCO developed the “Team TIBCO Challenge” which uses TIBCO’s proprietary software to capture, analyze and display real-time results of trade-show attendees competing against our riders on a Kurt Kinetic trainer. It’s a really neat way to demonstrate their software to trade-show attendees and use the riders to generate interest at the sales booth.

Communicate…constantly.

I think the biggest mistake that teams make, is thinking that it’s all about the racing and all about the results, but it isn’t. It’s all about the relationships, and meeting your partners’ objectives. I like to think of them as partners, not sponsors, because they really are partners.

The biggest thing I’ve learned is that you have to be in constant contact with your partners. And in 11 seasons, guess what, there’s been a lot of turnover at some of our partners. I’ve worked with probably a dozen different people, and if I hadn’t been on top of these changes, we wouldn’t be around today. As soon as there’s some turnover with one of your partners, you’ve got to be in touch with them. Staying current with our partners is very time-consuming, but also very critical.

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Kendall Ryan, 22, won the US crit championship for TIBCO-SVB on April 18.

Be a great ambassador.

I always tell the girls, “You’ve got our partners’ logos all over your jersey. When you put that jersey on and go out on the road, you are representing the team.” We had an example where a new partner—who wasn’t a partner at the time—was riding down the Pacific Coast Highway and saw one of our riders. He started chatting with this rider, and noticed that she didn’t have that category of sponsorship on her jersey, so he was very intrigued. But this rider was, let’s just say, not very interested in conversing on the bike.

This new sponsor, who was the CEO, called me, and said, “Hey, very interested in working with you. But I’m going to try to make your rider smile next time.” So there’s an example where we were lucky to have survived, even though this person was not the greatest ambassador. Guess what story I told at camp?

When you’ve got that jersey on, you represent the team, and you’re a good ambassador all the time. It’s so important. Even things like waving to people. Even—seriously—stopping at stop signs. You have to be a model cyclist. You never know who you’re going to meet. Some people have a tendency to dismiss somebody that’s in Lycra and isn’t a pro. Well guess what, they’re the CEO of this company or the president of this company. There are a lot of people out there that ride bikes. It’s good in general in life to be nice to people of course, but when you’ve got your kit on, it’s imperative that you treat everybody well.

Seize the moment.

I think that women’s cycling is on the cusp of growth. We’ve been there for a while, but I like what I’m seeing. I hope that things like the women’s Tour de France actually evolve into what they used to be—I did the Tour when it was ten or twelve days.

It’s a little bit of a chicken and an egg with sponsorship and events and that kind of thing. But I do think it’s a huge opportunity, and I will tell you that all of the companies I’ve talked to recognize that women are a better investment than men. It’s cost-effective, meaning obviously that partnering with a women’s team doesn’t cost as much, but the benefits you get out of it are a lot greater, too. Women are great ambassadors for the brand. They’re approachable. A lot of the pro men, you wouldn’t get them to sit down and invest this amount of time with you. You just wouldn’t see it. Women do that. It’s their nature, and they understand the benefits. So I think you will see women’s cycling develop. I’m not sure if it’s going to be in the next couple years, or longer than that, but I do think we’re on the right track.