Sales and marketing
We don’t know why but very few social entrepreneurs seem to come from a sales and marketing background. Maybe it’s because those kind of people tend to be more financially motivated, maybe it’s because they are more trapped by their income or maybe it’s because hardly any social enterprises have a dedicated sales or marketing department. Anyway, it does seem to be a real weak area for most social enterprises and yet all of them need to do sales. Anytime someone gives you money for a service it is sales, whether we call it commissioning, tendering, contracting, grants etc and there are some practical tools which can make you better at this. Think of it as getting better at getting money out of people (without mugging them) and getting people to think of you the way you wan’t them to (rather than those strange people who live near the organic vegan café down the road).
Some of our most recent additions are:
You may also find Podcast 5 useful which covers:
- The problems with being grant-funded
- Moving from a "dependent needs-based mentality" to an "independent strengths-based mentality"
- How to start the process
- Developing contacts among commissioners
- Generating income from several different types of customers and organisations
- Turning creativity into enterprise and business solutions
- Why there is no shortage of money (but often a shortage of good ideas!)
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If you have suggestions for new content, resources or information, then please pop it in our suggestion box. The current most popular suggestions for this section are:
- Sales in an ethical context
- Marketing in an ethical context
- How to generate your sales leads through your network
- How to waste thousands on pointless marketing