The derby selling class we had was a ton of fun for me. By far the best class we’ve had, and probably the best I had all semester. Getting the chance to sell with a group of people with a time constraint was great because we had to strategize what the best approach was to get the most sales. We decided to go to where the money was and that was the older adults on campus. As broke students, we know college students don’t have a lot going on financially most times so they would buy one or two ducks. Adults were willing to give more, resulting in bigger sales to help support breast cancer treatment and they ended up buying a lot more ducks at once. The other thing we had to figure out was what are we selling because we knew buying a duck for a prize wasn’t solving anyone’s problem. We reframed our questioning to asking if they wanted to help us support breast cancer treatment and saying it isn’t about the ducks or the prize, but about the cause. We started getting much bigger donations then because it wasn’t about a $3.00 duck anymore. As soon as we would say $3.00, we would get 3 or 6 bucks max. When it became about a greater cause and the story behind why they do the duck race every year people were more willing to give. We also started throwing in things like if you want to beat the top donation of $20. We got the last lady to give $21 dollars by doing this just to encourage people to give more, but not in a forceful just gently giving the opportunity to give more. I had a ton of fun trying to sell these ducks and I think it was a great opportunity to learn how to sell in groups.

4 thoughts on “Duck Derby”
  1. Congrats on the dub. That was a great way to go about the competition. Approach professsors who have more disposable income was a great way to get larger donations. Presenting it as an opportunity to give a much as possible was a much better way to approach the contest, because as soon as you ask for 3 bucks then that’s all they’re going to give.

  2. Great Job! I like your reframing, I can tell the competition encouraged a lot of sales! It was very interesting to hear how different groups strategized in class, and I can see the effort you put into this!

  3. I love that the limited time we had helped push you all to strategize and go straight to the target audience that you believed would be most likely to earn you sales. It’s also amazing how through your persistent encouragement, people were willing to give much more in support of breast cancer awareness. Great work and congratulations on the win!

  4. I loved doing this because this pushed me out of my comfort zone. I do better with the traditional type of selling where we are sitting down at a desk and talking but being on the move made it a lot more exciting and fun!

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