GROW Nebraska Women’s Business Center recently had several of its Snap and Boost participants work with UNO College of Business students in Professor Heather Nelson’s Entrepreneurial Selling class, which uses the Service Learning Academy model of instruction, where students work on real projects impacting the community to augment their in class learning. Nelson is a GNWBC Advisory Member and called upon Director Eden Butler to help build a Sales Partnership Program along with the Nebraska Enterprise Fund and the Metro Omaha Women’s Business Center; where each organization identified early-stage entrepreneurs to match with student teams.
The semester long course brought together the small business owners and students across three workshops lead by each of the partner organizations and Nelson on topics to include: Sales Strategy Planning, Prospect Pitching and Branding using the Challenger Sales methodology. Each small business partner received a customized Sales Strategy Plan with Slide Deck and Call Scripts, all created by their student teams. But this advanced elective course didn’t conclude there. Rather, each small business owner took immediate steps to implement the new sales strategy by holding a live prospect call with an identified target market where the UNO students were able to observe, furthering their course learning and seeing their work put into action. Successful outcomes achieved from these calls included new partner relationships created, new retail channels identified and selling more product directly impacting revenue.
GROW Nebraska Women’s Business Center sent in a few different businesses, Black Bottom Biscotti being one of them. Owner of Black Bottom Biscotti, Sophia Jordan’s favorite takeaway was working with young people who could see something in a different perspective. For instance, coffee martinis could be an in for biscotti. “I knew wine went with biscotti but Coffee Martinis, that’s thinking outside of my box. I wanted to expand my wholesale cliental list and their proposal focused on that.”
This program seemed to be a success and very resourceful in connecting students to the community, Heather Nelson says, “The students had a good experience being able to work with their small business partner. I also heard very good feedback from the nonprofit directors.”
Sophia Jordan was happy with her takeaway and the students. She says, “I don’t think we would have met outside of this program, and I believe they learned from me also as I learned from them.”
GROW Nebraska Women’s Business Center is proud to be a part of such a staple program in the community.
For more information, please visit the website!
About the GROW Nebraska® Women’s Business Center
The Grow Nebraska® Women’s Business Center’s mission since 2021 is to serve all Women, Cultures and Communities in achieving their Educational, Professional and Entrepreneurial goals. We believe in the potential of Women, Minorities, Immigrants and Families and choose to Educate, Train and help them obtain successful business ownership and employment.
