My first experience of Proakatemia Sales days was eventful and thought evoking. Many things went well and made us proud of our teammates of Tremia. I will go threw my thoughts about sales days both in the positive and the improvements. Special thanks to the amazing organizers of the Sales days, it really was a valuable learning experience for me, and I gained something from it!

My experience

The one thing that stands out beyond others is working as a team. Sales days really made that happen. Threw chaos of course, but we found ourselves out of it in my opinion is the most important thing. Unexpected events, people missing, and technical difficulties really created a disaster in the first day morning. Couldn’t it been avoided by planning on our plan not going according to plan? Sure, but we wouldn’t have learned anything that way, only avoided the issues from happening in the first place. I feel like those kinds of situations are necessary for people to evolve, to see their own behaviour and change it for next time. So, what went wrong? We were missing structure, ability to stay calm and ask for assistance. Quite quickly people were stressed and in panic mode, because of the lack of structure in our actions as a team. In my team we were selling coffee packets B2C, and we were provided with the bow of coffee in the morning. Someone had already opened the box and some B2C sellers took packets. We hadn’t counted how many packets was there to begin with and unsure of how many packets did members who already left take. The iZettle card payment link was not working, and people started to panic since our plan depended on it working.
We fixed the card payment system and went to sell the coffee around Tampere. We were successfully doing sales. Both to close family and friends and strangers. The mood however was tense for the whole first day of sales days. I myself was losing money during sales days because I was operating with my own car and paying parking and gas for the days driving. It could also be discussed with our company that how is that kind of situations handled.
The first day was filled with tension and misunderstandings.
The second day went a lot better because we realized that we needed more structure in our actions. We had some Tredu students passed to us by surprise, but the B2B team handled the situation very well. We kept making sales both B2B and B2C on the second day.
B2C, we had a stall in Tullintori, which was arranged by our konttori. It was a nice chance to try selling face to face and promote our product in person. My shift at the stall was really nice and I feel like I got more out of that, than the hectic first day, even if I made less sales there. I still feel that with the stall I missed out on the opportunity of searching for a place to have a stall and making a contract. That would have been better experience when you think about it in the long run. This also spiked an idea in me for the future of the sales days. I would like to have a chance to work as singular teams and our goal would be to figure out how to reserve, manage and operate a stall in our chosen location. We could take it as a project sure, but I feel like it being a part of sales days and teams racing each other in purely stall format would be interesting. Everyone could be given a month beforehand to get their team a stall location and a set date and time for selling. I would really enjoy that learning experience together with our team!
Back to the sales days, by the end of the second day, I could really see people’s energy and motivation go down. Now could this have been because of the absolute chaos of a fist day. Maybe, but I still believe it was mostly because the whole experience was new and drained more energy than we were expecting it to.
What I picked up also during this day, was that some companies are not a big fan of Proakatemia sales days according to their feedback when being called. Feedback was given of too many calls and don’t call us again. I saw this feedback concerning. Especially when it was stated in the sales days opening speech that “lets get our name out there”, in this case I see the recognition more negative than positive, and I think this should be taken seriously. Since we are studying to be entrepreneurs here in Tampere, it would be sad if a part of entrepreneurs in Tampere would have a negative image of us. Ways to develop positive reputation and co-operation with the local businesses should be a priority for us. It has gone so far that some businesses have stated that we are not allowed to contact them in the future, since the contacting in the past has been excessive disturbance (with many people calling) rather than moderate co-operation requesting. When all the Proakatemia companies are put against each other in a “who sells more in any ways possible” setting, this is likely to happen. And its no one to fault, but somethings can be done to change this.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, my first experience with Proakatemia Sales days was fruitful. While there were moments of pride in our team’s accomplishments, there were also areas that clearly need improvement. In Sales days despite the challenges, we managed to adapt and improve as a team. I am grateful for the valuable learning experience provided by Sales days and look forward to seeing how much our team will improve to the next years event.

REFERENCES:
– Proakatemia Sales days.