Session 4: Sales, Finance and Pricing
‣ Preparations for the Mentor:
1. Read this session and draft a plan so you know how to lead it.
2. Prepare notes on what you expect the participants to have achieved since Session 3. This will help you to evaluate their marketing implementation since Session 3. 3. Some of the content in this session will be complex so you may wish to invite a guest speaker to give a presentation on finance documentation and calculations. 4. If you have access to a computer, try the EXCEL dynamic cashflow to see how it works, and adjust this to be relevant to your social start up. 5. Practise the financial tools and their examples to ensure you understand their logic, and so that you can illustrate these and discuss them clearly in the session. 6. Ensure that participants understand that they need to begin actioning their financial documentation soon after this session.
Changing the mindset from:‘ asking for money’ to‘ earning / making money’
‣ Beginning the Session:
Explain to the participants that the purpose of this session is threefold: a. Firstly, to explore sales / membership planning b. Secondly, to prepare the financial documentation required c. Finally, to monitor and follow up on the social start up process and the participants ‟ involvement
1. Ask participants to present to you an update about their marketing implementation since the last session. 2. Provide feedback re the social start up name, logo, values, vision and mission. 3. Provide feedback on the marketing materials and implementation.
‣ Sales / Membership Planning:
Please remember that sales ‟ targets are critical to success. Therefore, ensure that your sales targets are measurable, realistic and specific. Most importantly, ensure that they are
SMART. That is:
Specific Measurable Achievable Realistic Time-defined As you ‟ ll see on the Sales Target Review table below, there is a variety of targets available however, not all of these will be relevant to your social start up. Therefore, choose the ones that are relevant, erase the rest, and include any others that are not currently included in the table. Completing the Sales Target Review table will help the participants to identify the targets and to track their performance towards achieving them.
For the next six months of the social start up process, ask the participants to insert the targeted number per sales target category at the beginning of the month on the table below. Follow this up at the end of the month with the actual number per target category. Remember, the Sales Target Review table below will not be fully completed until the end of the mentoring programme.
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