2-8 September 2013

This week we have been on holiday, therefore we have shifted our focus to selling. Sarah has gone to Johannesburg for the week and so she has taken about 10 of our backpacks back with her to try and sell them to friends and family back in Johannesburg. Kim has gone back to Durban where she has also taken about 10 backpacks with her to sell there. The rest of us have stayed in Cape Town for the week and we have been pushing our Cape Town sales. So far we have all done really well, we have sold about 8 this week, which we are all really proud of. Overall, we feel that this week has been a week of learning. Since the beginning of the year we haven’t had the chance to purely focus on selling, we have had lectures, projects etc. but now we have been on holiday for a week and we have used this time to focus only on selling, and this proved to be more challenging than we though.

We have learnt that people want good value for their money, they are not just going to purchase something without knowing the value that they are receiving from the product, therefore we have put a value proposition together that we pitch to our customers explaining all the value they receive from Thrift backpacks in order to encourage them to purchase our product, because once they know that they are donating to charity for example, they are more than likely going to want to purchase our backpacks because there is great value in purchasing a Thrift backpack.

We have also learnt how important good customer service is, we have constantly been keeping in contact with our potential customers and have been meeting them where it is convenient for them etc. this good customer service makes it easier for the customer to actually purchase our backpacks, which will encourage a sale. If we had bad customer service and made them meet us 40 minutes away from where they live, they would not purchase a Thrift backpack because we have made it challenging for them to do so.

Over this past week we have also learnt a lot about our target market, we have come to realise the type of backpacks that our customers love and the types of backpacks they do not like so much. For example we have noticed that our target market prefer plain material on their backpacks as opposed to patterned material, therefore in future we are going to make sure we have more “plain” backpacks as opposed to “patterned” backpacks.

We have also learnt how important it is to be committed to the sale, a lot of people say no they are not interested initially but if you encourage them to stay they end up buying a backpack. If you are not committed to the sale, the potential customer will just walk away, but if you are committed and give them reason to stay to hear your “pitch” about Thrift backpacks, they are more than likely to purchase a backpack. It is just so important to stay committed and not get discouraged if their first initial reaction is negative. ALWAYS BE CLOSING!