The Selling Experience

The overall idea was to essentially go to local businesses to get gift cards, or anything they would donate and then “raffle” them off in the Student Union as a suggested donation to raise money for The Soarway Foundation.  We split our group up into two smaller groups.  Grace Meakem and I were one team, and Lindsey Mason and Mackenzie Klinvex were the other team.  Lindsey and Mackenzie went to the local businesses first to talk to them Face-to-Face.  Most of them told them to come back again in a couple days to receive the donation.  After Grace and I talked to Lindsey and Mackenzie about their experience going Face-to-Face to gather any donations, we made a different decision to try something new.

Grace and I decided to call.  COLD CALL.  We knew that this would ultimately save time calling first rather than driving everywhere and have to come back later.   To be honest, I was a little nervous at first, mostly because I have only COLD CALLED once before in my internship last year and I got completely rejected.  We narrowed down the businesses we wanted to call and then began the process.  Before actually calling, Grace and I communicated to each other the way we wanted to present the Foundation, and note our purpose in calling.  From there, the calling began. Most places that I called told me to just stop down to the store with a letter of intent and they will be able to give me a gift card.  What I gathered from that information was that I was most definitely talking to the decision maker.  The only place that I definitely didn’t get the decision maker was Cofarro’s.

Cofarro’s made it extremely clear that they weren’t sure at all if they were allowed to do that.  They said that I could stop down when the owner was there, but they weren’t even sure when that would happen.  It was not discouraging, but it was actually interesting to see that these people didn’t know what was happening, and whether Cofarro’s would actually be able to donate.  So… Grace and I gathered more information and decided that we would go to every local business that gave us the “YES” for a donation and then do some drop ins.

When we dropped in to Cofarro’s I had the opportunity to explain what we were doing, what we were raising money for, and the purpose in gather donations to raffle off at the  college.  Immediately, the man there didn’t even really question what we were doing, he just asked for a letter of intent and handed us a gift card for $25.

Overall, I really enjoyed doing this project.  It actually allowed us to go out and try to use our selling techniques that we have been learning in class on the individuals that we were talking about to support The Soarway Foundation.