Sales professionals have a world of opportunity to sharpen key skills for their career. Along with the satisfaction of making a difference to the lives of others, volunteering can help you develop vital interpersonal skills, which will in turn, improve your job prospects and make you sparkle in the eyes of recruiters.
A recent survey by CSV, the UK’s leading volunteering and training charity, shows that giving up between four to 12 months of your time for the community improves much needed skills. Key findings include 91% of former volunteers say the experience boosts job prospects, 84% say it increases employability and 96% say it develops skills. Volunteering also widens your social network and new contacts always lead to new opportunities.
Head of sales and marketing at Raleigh International, Rachel Collinson took a career break early on in her career and volunteered in Ecuador to work with homeless and orphaned children. “As a result, I had so many new doors opened to me, and I’ve never looked back,” said Rachel. “It does change you as a person in terms of inspiring you, giving you confidence and a huge variety of skills. Getting out there, meeting new people and exploring new cultures has stood me in better stead, and it really does help you to stand out from the crowd.”
Community fundraising is just one area that a vast range of sales skills can be applied to. At Barnardo’s, for example, volunteers undertake activities such as promotion in schools and getting children fundraising, or organising activities in the community like a sponsored walk.
“All those tasks require project management, organising, PR and marketing skills, and leading and managing others. Financial management is also a key skill to develop in making a healthy profit from the event being organised. So from a sales perspective, it’s particularly relevant,” says Carole Milligan, Assistant Director of Fundraising at Barnardo’s.
With so many volunteering opportunities on offer, it’s important to find the best experience for you. “Know what you would really like to get out of your volunteering project, whether that’s wanting to develop leadership skills, public speaking skills or if it is about applying some of the people skills you have in a different context,” advises Carole.
“Setting up an event and chairing a committee, would draw on skills such as marketing, conflict resolution and people management, because it’s about leading a team, working with others, recruiting others to support the endeavour and join the fundraising committee. And a lot of those skills really come into play when you are helping many individuals to work together to achieve a common end.”
It also shows employers initiative and drive and working to tight deadlines. “Bringing a high-quality event to fruition on time by coordinating a big team of people who need to be integrated to reach your mile stones is a massive achievement,” says Carole.
Volunteers can dedicate as little as a couple of hours a week, or undertake a project full-time as a valuable stop gap between jobs. There are many short-term and longer-term volunteering programmes on offer, from supporting local community projects, to organising a fundraising event, to building infrastructure abroad and helping the environment. You can work on your own initiative or join a group activity, all of which puts you in a unique position to gain skills relevant to a sales environment.
Raleigh runs expeditions and volunteer projects abroad, comprising of four to ten-week community, environmental and adventure projects. They take on 17-24 year-olds as venturers, and over 25 year-olds help run the expeditions onsite or in field-based roles. The team management roles, which include a two-week training programme, are particularly relevant to professionals with their eye on management roles and leading sales teams.
The Department for Business Innovation & Skills recently awarded Raleigh funding to take 183 unemployed graduates out on expeditions to help them with their employability skills. “Raleigh is very much recognised as a training ground to help people of all ages really learn and develop interpersonal skills, leadership skills, mental resilience, communication and negotiation skills,” says Rachel. “You’re constantly having to understand people’s strength and weaknesses and their motivations, to really pull together as a team.”
Volunteers work alongside the communities to carry out challenging infrastructure-based projects in the community, like building water systems, kindergartens and tribal housing. “You’re working with people in your group who are from a wide variety of life stages, nationalities, backgrounds and also with the local communities who have very different ways of working, so it’s very much about exchange of cultures and constantly understanding the need of others to achieve the project aims.”
Raleigh also works with companies like Costain, Norwich Union and CapGemini, who send their staff on volunteering projects to learn skills they can take back to the workplace. This is testament to the value of volunteering in developing key skills that employers look for, and top of the list are communication, teamwork and adaptability.
Be sure to highlight your skills to prospective employers in applications and interviews in order to maximise your job opportunities. Arron Taylor at Pareto, who trains and recruits sales professionals, says employers are very impressed with volunteering on a CV. “The first skill you can prove without a shadow of a doubt is dealing with people and other personalities. Being thrown into a different social mix is very good in imbedding people skills and empowering people to converse on whole different levels,” says Arron.
This is critical in a sales environment where you never know the type of personality you are going to be dealing with when you set up a meeting. “Volunteering is useful in aiding; you work out what makes the other person tick, see their point of view – you have to mirror them effectively to engage with them and build a better rapport,” says Arron.
“In the world of sales, people buy people. You could be the best company with the best brand and products in the world, but if the sales person doesn’t engage with their audience, strike a rapport and have an element of trust and integrity, then they’re not going to sell. So if somebody has been involved in charitable work or volunteering, that goes a long way in showing they have what it takes to succeed in sales.”
To search for volunteering opportunities, visit Do-it.
