Ducky Derby

Professor Sweet came to class one day with the idea that his students would go out into the real world and sell some rubber ducks for a fundraiser. The sorority Alpha Beta Tau and the fraternity Omicron Xi were selling the ducks for the annual Ducky Derby. All of the money goes to a foundation that supports breast cancer awareness. Professor Sweet held a competition seeing which group in the class would be able to sell the most amount of ducks to different people. Although my group did not win, we still learned a few tricks through the competition.

Our group began by going around campus to the more populated areas. We started by going to the student union and asking anyone around if they were interested in buying a duck. We were able to sell a few here and there but not too many. We then tried to sell it in the library and it was the same thing, just a few students would buy one or two ducks. We realized that most college students don’t have the money to buy a lot of ducks. We resorted to calling people we knew, who also had more money. We set up a little area where we could do some cold calling and it ended up helping us sell more ducks. Most of the people that we were calling were family members, but they were eager to help the cause.

I learned a couple things from this competition. The first thing was to share the message of the cause rather than trying to sell the ducks individually. I would try to tell the potential buyers that the money would go to a good cause and that if their duck won, then they could win some cool prizes. Another thing that I learned was how beneficial cold calling can really be. Once my group decided to call people that we knew, the sales of ducks went up drastically.