How To Triple Your Candy Fundraiser Results Candy fundraising is incredibly popular with youth sports groups, school clubs, and church youth activities. What most groups need a little help with is how to maximize their profits.
Candy fundraisers are great, but because its a small dollar item, you need to have a well thought out plan to boost your results. The basics are simple - buy your candy at the best possible price, properly prepare your sales team, and execute a winning strategy.
Candy fundraising has three basic profit boosters:
1 - Buying your fundraising candy at the best price
2 - Properly prepare and equip your sales force
3 - Executing your candy fundraiser sales strategy
Candy Fundraisers - Buy at the best price
Many groups overlook these fundamentals:
1 - Locate the lowest cost candy suppliers that support fundraisers
2 - Use our handy list of candy fundraising companies
3 - Select the type of candy youll be selling
4 - Prepare a one-page RFQ (Request For Quotation) and get faxed quotes
5 - Call back the top three companies for "best and final" pricing
6 - Ask this question: "Is that the best you can do?"
Remember to seek a cash discount for prepayment. Youll need to pay by check or money order because using credit cards adds 3% of the total amount in processing charges.
You should be able to save 5% to 10% off the regular quoted price by shopping around. That discount will be a big boost to your bottom line.
Candy Fundraising - Prepare and equip your sales force To maximize your profits, your sales force needs to know what to say. They should always have a sales flyer and their candy merchandise in hand.
Heres what they need to do to prepare:
1 - Make a sales volume commitment in front of their peer group.
2 - Make a prospect list of family, friends, and neighbors to call on.
3 - Rehearse their sales pitch: a short, two-sentence value proposition
Heres what they need to do to sell more:
1 - Smile, use their name in greeting, and introduce yourself
2 - Use the power of "because"
3 - Ask for their help (ask for the order) while making eye contact and suggest an amount
Example sales pitch: (Keep it short & sweet)
Hi, Mrs. Johnson! (Smile and make eye contact) Im Jimmy Roberts from down the street. (Hand over sales flyer with large bold print)
Our sports team is doing a candy fundraiser because we need new uniforms.
Can you help us out with a $5 contribution? That gets you three of our big $2 candy bars!
(Pause and wait for response)
The important points are to smile, use a sales flyer, use the word because, ask for their help, and suggest an order size, then wait for a response.
Each prospect has a potential dollar value to your organization. Dont waste prospects by not being prepared. Make sure all your sellers know what to say and how to say it.
Candy Fundraising - Execute your sales strategy To double or triple your results, youll need to do more than buy right and have a well-prepared, committed sales force calling on family, friends, and neighbors.
Youll need to do two more things:
1 - Leverage the power of selling to complete strangers.
2 - Offer a higher-priced, higher profit option - a discount card.
Arrange to sell your candy at several high-traffic spots such as outside grocery stores, mass merchants, home improvement stores, etc. You can easily raise $1,500 in one Saturday at one good location. With the right additional product line, you can easily double that.
Include a separate offering for a $10 discount card. They only cost $1 to $2, so selling one is a huge profit boost. They are available for pizza chains, fast food burgers, Subway, etc.
I dont have enough space here in the candy fundraising article to do these sales booster concepts justice.
Read these two articles found here: Location, Location, Location and Fundraising Discount Cards for complete details on these ultimate candy fundraising profit boosters.