Ice Cream Cool

Salespeople I know tend to like business reality shows as they often revolve around selling situations. The Apprentice is probably the daddy, with Dragons’ Den not far behind. It is from this latter stable that I came across a winner’s story as documented in The Telegraph.

I think most sales people love to hear of entrepreneurial success, especially when it’s an against-the-odds tale. Can there be more of such an example than a young single Mum going into to the pudding trade? The fact that she started out on her kitchen table with apparatus costing only around forty quid makes it even tastier.

Before the Dragon boost, she secured £20,000 of funds and sold 12,000 units through health shops. Taking knowledge from her parents in that marketplace, one delicious quote runs,

she had no qualms about knocking on doors. “I think it’s my drive and my passion. I have not had any knock-backs yet, touch wood. Although it has been hard and I am no good at sales”

I wonder precisely what she would term a “set-back”?

No good at sales, yet surely her list of selling achievements pre-Dragons is impressive:

• £6,000 government funding awarded
• local manufacturer took up her cause
• regional buying event take-up from largest chain
• contract signed with Europe’s largest ice-cream maker

And all this whilst raising her son and continuing her part-time bar job.

From a strategy point of view, she reckoned that going after the distributors was what helped her quicken results. And the most telling characteristic was revealed when one of the investors put down success to her “steeling determination“. Let’s hope that none of us misplace ours.

If any sellers are feeling down on their luck right now, perhaps the final paragraph will provide a pleasant push,

Ms Henshaw said the state of the economy has not figured at all in her thinking. “I don’t really follow the economy. I just went for it,” she said.

“When I had this idea I had nothing to lose. I didn’t own my own home, I am a single mum, and I had saved up that money and thought I would just go for it.”