200% Partnership Revenue Growth, Backed by Better Conversation Data for Lincoln City FC
A League One club that has realised its Championship ambitions needed its commercial operation to match. This is how they built it.
About Lincoln City Football Club
Lincoln City FC have built a reputation for outperforming larger clubs through disciplined execution and a systemic focus on efficiency.
Over the past three seasons, they have consistently delivered more performance per pound spent than almost any club in the English football system, reflecting a data-led operating model rather than short-term success.
When Bobby Copping joined as Head of Commercial, he was tasked with scaling sponsorship revenue and building a more predictable commercial function. Promotion to the EFL Championship has made commercial performance more critical, increasing the need for accurate forecasting and predictable revenue growth.
The Challenge
Success on the pitch increased the pressure off it as Lincoln City needed to grow commercial revenue quickly and expand sponsorship partnerships but a lack of a consistent commercial system around each conversation meant that account context became harder to manage at the level the commercial team required. What had worked for a smaller operation became more difficult to sustain as outreach expanded and the club needed a clear view of what had been said, to whom, and how each opportunity was progressing.
As Head of Commercial, Bobby had built on the club’s commercial foundations with more disciplined prospecting, clearer targeting, and a broader outbound strategy aimed at businesses across Lincolnshire, the UK, and internationally. But the club’s tools did not yet support that way of working.
Lincoln City had already invested in Microsoft Teams and HubSpot, like many ambitious organisations, they were not getting the full value from either. Calls could not be tracked properly, conversations were not being captured back into CRM, and valuable detail was at risk of being lost. As the team scaled up, they needed a system that brought Teams, HubSpot, and outbound calling into one workflow, without adding complexity or forcing people into new ways of working.
The Solution
Solgari for Microsoft Teams gave Lincoln City a more structured commercial operating model by connecting conversations directly to CRM. The team kept using the tools they already trusted while prospect lists and campaigns stayed in HubSpot.
Solgari added click-to-dial calling inside Teams, with the contact record and CRM history visible in one view, meaning every call was captured automatically, transcribed, summarised, and written back into the HubSpot timeline, transforming the quality of commercial data available to the club. HubSpot’s AI could then reason over a much better set of structured conversation data to surface account priorities and support better decisions.
For net-new acquisition, the commercial team could improve prospect targeting to focus effort where it was most likely to convert. For existing partners, the same conversation history created better continuity, making it easier to spot upsell opportunities and manage relationships with more context and consistency.
Call recordings and transcripts became practical coaching tools where real conversations are used to sharpen the team’s approach, and build consistency.
Lincoln City kept the systems they already owned. Solgari made those systems commercially useful.
The Benefits
The impact was commercial, operational, and immediate:
- Outreach expanded to 7,000 accounts
- Partnership revenue increased by 200%
- The portfolio of commercial partners continues to grow
- Every commercial conversation was captured back into CRM
- The team could see what was working and focus on better-fit prospects
- Previous interaction history improved upsell and expansion opportunities with existing partners
Beyond the headline numbers, the team no longer had to rely on memory, scattered notes, or inconsistent follow-up. Because every touchpoint was logged, their CRM held richer, cleaner data and became the system of record for commercial conversations, enabling Lincoln City to build a stronger base for AI-driven insight and day-to-day sales execution.
The club began turning conversations into structured commercial intelligence.
Summary
Lincoln City have shown there is another route to better commercial discipline, stronger use of familiar tools, and a clearer way to turn day-to-day conversations into revenue intelligence than big budgets.
By connecting Teams, outbound calling, and HubSpot through Solgari, Lincoln City created a commercial workflow that could scale, resulting in more activity, better data, sharper targeting, improved conversion, stronger partner growth, and a 200% increase in partnership revenue.
It is a clear example of how progress on the pitch can be supported by operational discipline and smarter commercial execution off it.