Increase School Fundraising Sales One Student at a Time

Most of the time elementary school fundraising coordinators or PTA boards focus on ways to increase overall sales or seller participation. What is often not discussed however is how to increase the number of individual sales made per seller. In other words, how can we make those who already participate in your fundraiser even more productive? If you can find ways to increase the productivity of those who are already selling, your sales results would increase significantly. After all, it is always easier to affect those who have already bought into your fundraiser then to try to persuade those who haven’t.

There are several things that you can do to increase seller productivity. There are things that you can advise sellers to do when they are at home as well as things that you can promote and do when they are at school:

Help Students Realize Their Long-Term Goal
At your kickoff it is a good idea to ask the question, “Raise your hand if you think you can be the top seller in the school?” This will start to get the students into the mindset of what it might take to be the top seller. Often times at the end of a kickoff assembly, students will come up and ask how much they have to sell to be the top seller. Clearly, no one knows how much the top seller will end up selling but at least they walk away with the understanding that any amount that they may be thinking about may or may not be enough. This hopefully will inspire them to work harder on the sale. Obviously there will only be one top seller in the end but a lot of students will, at least for the moment, believe that they themselves can be that person.

Another statement that you will want to make to your students at your kickoff assembly is, “When you get home tonight, make sure and sit down with your parents and look over the prize brochure. Decide tonight which prize you want to win and are willing to work for.” By deciding on their prize they have set their overall goal and therefore now know how many items they will have to sell to reach that goal. A lot of students may not reach their goal; however they will probably sell more than they would have even if they fall short. Remind them during your daily announcements about their own personal goals so that they can remain focused on them.

Help Them Break the Fundraiser Down into Short-Term Goals
If a student knows that they will need to sell 60 items to win the prize that they have selected as their fundraising goal, that number can seem overwhelming at first. On the other hand, if they are able to break that number down into daily goals, 60 items becomes very obtainable. Since most sales will last for 2 weeks if they are committed to selling a minimum of 4-5 items per day, they would reach, and even exceed, their overall goal in the end.

Make Sure Students Can Get Other People to Help Them
The most successful sellers in every school fundraiser are those who are able to recruit other people to help them sell. Students themselves can talk to neighbors, family and family friends but that can only go so far. At you kickoff you will want to ask for a show of hands from those who plan to go home tonight and talk to mom and dad about taking their school fundraising brochure to work. By raising their hands they are making a pledge to attempt to get other family members involved. In addition, you will want to ask how many other people they may be able to recruit to help them as well. For example they can ask, aunts and uncles, grand parents and older brothers and sisters to help sell. Just think if each student was successful in getting more people to talk to those that they make contact with each day as well, their sales would increase dramatically. Perhaps mom could take the brochure to work one day, dad the next day and then grandma the following day etc. This way the work is being shared.

Provide Incentives That Sellers can Win during the Sale
It is one thing to reward sellers with prizes for selling after the fundraiser is over. In this case, nothing can be done to further increase sales after the fact. However, what if you were able to reward sellers with prizes and special privileges while the fundraiser was still going on? Wouldn’t the prize winners, as well as those who witnessed the prize winners receiving their awards want to sell more if they knew that they still had a chance to keep winning? This is where the concept of daily prize winners comes into play. You can use prize drawing coupons to announce multiple winners each and every day of your sale. This will inspire more students to continue to work harder on the school fundraiser while they can still make their fundraising sales.