February 22, 2008 - 2:04am
Marketing students at Malaspina University-College raised a record-breaking $5,555 for charity in a recent sales contest.
“It’s a new record for our students,” said professor Duane Weaver, who teaches a professional selling class called Marketing 362.
"We had 68 students raise over $5,500 in one hour and 20 minutes. That's a 36 percent improvement over last year."
Each year, Weaver uses the contest to teach students in the Bachelor of Business Administration program about the basic sales cycle, value-added selling and how to build rapport with customers. Students form sales teams and must sell the same product on the Nanaimo campus for a specific period of time. Profits go to the charity of their choice.
This year, the product was bottled water but students didn’t find out what they were selling until moments before the contest began. “Teams had to figure out in advance how to add value to their product without knowing what it was," Weaver explained.
"Some teams used their creativity and solicited donations from local businesses ahead of time to add value to their product and increase sales. For example, the team raising funds for the Heart and Stroke Foundation approached Home Depot and received packages containing wooden children’s toys. On the day of the contest, anyone who bought bottled water from the team also received a toy for their child."
Another team collected over $2,000 in product donations from local businesses to support their sales project to raise funds for BC Children's Hospital.
Weaver said Pepsi also donated some of the bottled water for this year's contest. "We appreciate the support our students receive from the business community," he said.
Proceeds from this year's professional selling contest will be distributed to the following charities:
Heart and Stroke Foundation - $1,740
Nanaimo SPCA - $1,480
Haven Society - $785
BC Children’s Hospital - $740
Nanaimo SPCA - $570
BCSPCA - $240.
Tags: In the Community
