How I learnt how to sell to corporates as a social entrepreneur
When I started as a Social Entrepreneur, back in 2013, I had absolutely no experience of selling and in truth IT TERRIFIED ME.
I had spent the previous six years working in the third sector, generating income for my job role and the projects I was working on by applying for grant funding.
But when Jen (my best friend & business partner) and I were given an incredible opportunity to take over an education programme (being run at the time as a not-for-profit, which was struggling to secure grants and sponsorship) and transform it in to a viable social enterprise, with a trading income, we jumped at the chance.
We were passionate about the programme and excited to bring life back in to this inspiring organisation, which brought 11-14 year olds and employees of big businesses together to create entrepreneurial solutions for sustainability challenges. (You can find out more about what we do here).
We had designed our business model, for Solutions for the Planet, around generating income from corporate clients because we were SO OVER asking for sponsorship and donations. We wanted to approach this business as a business and learn how to sell services in order to enable us to deliver our social impact initiative.
So in order to do generate income from trading we had to learn everything we could about finding, connecting and selling to people in corporates.
But there was no manual.
It’s not like this is something anyone was teaching at the time, or anyone had any success at either. But over time we developed a process that helped us successfully sell something most “experts” didn’t believe was “sellable” to multiple corporate clients at over £10k per year, per client.
The problem was we were focused on telling people how amazing the programme was for students and teachers. This is what we were confident in and comfortable in communicating. It was obvious when we invited people to participate in the programme and see for themselves too. However this wasn’t enough of a reason, on it’s own, for a corporate to partner or spend money with us.
They needed to see a benefit or results for them as a business, an employer or for their employees.
This is where we had to step out of our comfort zone, to dig deeper and really understand what our target customers wanted or needed from an organisation like ours.
It took us a little bit of time but after many conversations, asking lots of questions and listening deeply to what our target customers were saying we started to see some trends and common denominators around what they were really looking for.
The interesting thing is you can’t just ask people in corporates what their business wants and needs you have to find a connection, build a rapport, understand what they do and explore where they might need support, input, ideas and expertise.
We discovered pretty quickly that when we approached our meetings without an intention to sell but with a consultancy approach of just asking lots of questions (around some core areas which we thought might be of interest / concern to them) we unpacked so much more than if we’d just gone in to pitch cold.
With this new information (sometimes in the meeting) we were able to adapt our offer to align with their specific needs and use the language they’d used to explain their understanding of the problem / issue.
Before this we knew we had something of value to offer, we just weren’t quite sure how to offer it in a way that was compelling to them.
But this was the key, adapting what our programme delivered for schools and understanding it in a way that could benefit corporates - to meet the specific needs they raised with us. It was exactly the same programme but communicated in a way that they both understood and provided solutions for things they said they needed or struggled with.
In our first year we set up sales calls and went to do a lot of pitches but never got beyond “…that’s all very nice but it doesn’t connect with our business.” Once we started adapting our offer to meet their specific needs, expressed our understanding of their challenges and desires, plus demonstrated our expertise in doing what we did we started to get “Yes, we’re in”.
And that’s how I learnt how to sell to corporates, “on the coal-face” as they say, day in day out through trial and error, reaching out to prospective customers and building an understanding of what they uniquely needed; creating a process for managing new leads and building rapport with them; creating ways for potential clients to see our porgramme in action and hear from other corporate colleagues who were already involved and could share their experience with them.
Looking back now I can’t believe how far we came in such a short space of time but as with all things when you’re in it, it feels like an uphill struggle.
What kept us going in the difficult times was a strong belief in what we were doing and knowing we could connect with a handful of individuals who also got what we were about, and could see the value we could bring to their organisation too, we just had to get skilled in communicating our unique offer to them in a way that resonated to where they were at and what they wanted.
In time we successfully grew Solutions for the Planet with a trading income from corporate clients. Attracting clients who paid and continue to pay us over £10,000/year each to be involved in our award-winning programme which now reaches over 4000 teenagers a year across the UK.
If you’re looking to sell to corporate clients but aren’t sure where to start, what you could sell, how you’d go about selling, or even get noticed or approach cold leads in corporate settings I’ve just launched my course sharing the exact system my (social entrepreneurs) clients and I have used to attract thousands of pounds of additional income to our social enterprises even when we were just starting out and without even knowing anyone in corporate.
Find out more and join the course: Sell to Corporates as a Social Entrepreneur here.
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