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Hit It Out of the Park!

Did I mention that my favorite season is baseball season? Well, in keeping with that theme, let’s take a look at how you can hit it out of the park this spring in your Direct Sales business.

Following are the “starting 9” cures for slumps in direct sales. Just as awareness of the causes of a slump can help a baseball player take actions to cure it, so will knowing the causes of direct sales slumps help you take actions to cure them.

Starting 9 Causes of Direct Sales Slumps:

Errors – making mistakes in the basics, like forgetting to mention the booking opportunity at your shows, or not making follow-up calls to last night’s guests.

Lack of goals – without specific, written goals for your business, you will strike out repeatedly.

Lost purpose – are you clear on why you do what you do as a direct seller with your company? Do you know the purpose, value of what you do?

Poor initial training – those without a strong training foundation to get their business started well as a rookie will find their business suffering as a veteran.

Not staying current – do you stay up to date with the newest products, the newest training, the newest incentives, the newest technology to keep your business fresh – or does your business look the same as it did 5 years ago?

Not seeking support – no baseball player can play on their own – it takes 9 players on the field to play ball successfully, to count on one another. Whom do you count on for support – and whom are you supporting?

Lack of networking – few of your hostesses and clients will be “season ticket holders” in your business – certainly not enough to fill a calendar or keep your business going for 15-20 years. You need new faces in new places daily.

Neglecting daily business activity – no baseball player can be successful if he only gets off the bench once a month. So don’t bench yourself – get off the bench daily and work your business daily – phone calls, emails, training, events, action!

Procrastination – a baseball player cannot afford to procrastinate at the plate when the pitch is thrown – he has to step up and start swinging. Stop procrastinating those phone calls, events, emails, packets in your business – step up to the plate and start swinging!

So now that you know the “Starting 9” causes for slumps, check out the “Starting 9” cures for slumps. Then get busy – the game has begun!

Starting 9 Cures for Direct Sales Slumps:

Correct the errors – get back to the basics in your business with daily calls to clients, planting booking and recruiting seeds three times during your shows, inviting 3 new people every day to check out your website or catalog. Do the basics daily.

Reconnect with your purpose – be sure you have, in writing, a clear statement of your purpose for your business. Be clear about why you do what you do, who it benefits, the value it brings to you, your family, your customers, your team and others. Clarity of purpose keeps you motivated and moving forward.

Track your progress – keep score of how you are doing daily, weekly, monthly in key areas of your business so you can see the areas of strength and the areas that need improvement. Keep a scorecard for your daily # of calls, show average, total weekly/monthly sales, recruit leads per show, bookings per show, and monthly paycheck. That which is measured, improves!

Schedule daily actions – get off the bench daily, put it on your daily planner for 1 hour or more to make calls, hostess coach, connect with a recruit lead, review training tips, plan an event, etc.
Review daily progress – as you work hard each day focus on revenue generating activities, so that your actions are productive, not just busy-work. Strive for new sales, new bookings and new recruits each day.

Attend meetings, workshops, tele-classes – keep your head in the game by always being present for your team meetings, workshops and tele-classes where you learn how to sharpen your skills and improve your “swing.”

Observe the shows of others – no matter if you are a rookie or a veteran, make it a habit to observe 1-2 shows of others each season to keep your skills fresh and to stay current.

Pick an accountability partner – find a team member with similar goals to be your accountability partner – connect with each other weekly for about 10 minutes to share your top 3 goals for the week and your progress toward accomplishing them. Encourage and support each other.

Network – purposely look for new places to share your business – exposure events, business expos, networking groups, social media – where you will meet new faces with whom you can connect and share.

These starting 9 Cures will help you hit it out of the park this Spring!

Get Jazzed!

Are you ready for 2012? Well, ready or not, January is just a few weeks away! Now is the time to take action so you can jump into January and get jazzed with a strong start! Check out the following 12 steps for a January to get excited about:

1. Schedule the first 12 of 2012. Focus your efforts on booking the first 12 days of 2012. Send your January calendar to customers, past hostesses, friends – highlight the first 12 days and invite them to pick a date to be the first to kick off the new year with a fun party. If you will focus on filling the first 12 days of January, the rest of the month will fill in. Start strong – challenge your friends to see who will host on January 1st! Offer a special thank you gift for those who step up to kick off the new year!

2. Contact January hostesses. Now is the time to contact those who have already booked in January to request their guest lists be sent to you by December 20th, so you can mail the invitations for them just after Christmas. This way your hostesses won’t get overwhelmed by the holidays and then decide to postpone their January party. You may also want to suggest a fun January theme to help keep her guests excited – like a “Soup and Slippers” theme where the guests bring their cozy slippers to slip into and the hostess serves an easy soup. Or suggest a “White Out” party in snowy areas, where guests are encouraged to wear white, the hostess serves “white” desserts (white chocolate dip – yum!) and you incorporate white into your product display.

3. Get serious about a written plan for 2012. A famous study at UCLA found that those who set goals earn on average TWICE AS MUCH PER MONTH as those who do not set goals. Decide this is the year you will stop wasting your valuable time just drifting daily. Get serious and specific in the following areas:

- Monthly paycheck/commissions
- Sales per month
- #of parties per month
- Party average
- New bookings per party
- Recruit leads per party
- Signed new recruits per month
- Company/upline incentives to earn
- # of hostess/customer calls per day
- Team productivity – sales, recruits, bookings, etc.

4. Get serious about your 2012 schedule. Turn your plan/goals into action steps, then schedule each step into your daily, weekly, monthly planner for 2012. You will be jazzed to see your progress!
5. Contact 12 for 2012. Start strong in 2012 by contacting 12 people you would love to have join your team. Meet with each to show how starting with your company in January can make a significant impact on them and their families in 2012.

6. Contact your cupids. Though Valentine’s Day isn’t until mid-February, you will want to contact all your “cupids” – the hubbies of your hostesses, customers, friends, family – to let the know you know just the right item from your product line that their loved one would like to receive for Valentine’s Day. Gather the “wish lists” from your hostesses, etc. first along with their hubbies’ email and call numbers. Then email, call and take their orders. Offer to gift wrap, etc.

7. Develop a fresh list of 60. Start the new year strong by developing a fresh list of 60 new leads – those who have not yet been a hostess. Check your customer files, and also consider co-workers, friends, neighbors, Bible Study friends, networking colleagues, club members, moms you know through your kids’ activities, etc. Keep your list growing to at least 60 names.

8. Email your 60 list. Once your list has been developed, email each along with your January calendar and January hostess benefits. Let them know you would love to kick off the new year with a fun girls’ night out and treat them to your hostess program.

9. Call your 60 list. Yes, you must call each person on your 60 list. An email alone will not produce results. Two days after you have sent your email, call them. Refer to the email and say, “Let’s pick a date for a fun girls’ night out!” Your goal is to get 6 new dates – 10% of your 60 list. Those who say no or do not respond, keep them on your list and stay in touch.

10. Register for events. Check out the exposure events, craft shows, bridal fairs coming to your area in January and register to participate in al least one event. Focus on meeting new people and securing new bookings.

11. Commit to tracking. Track your daily progress on your action steps. Each day assess did you take the actions that moved you closer to or further from your goals?

12. Be accountable. You cannot do this by yourself. You need someone who will help keep you on track and cheer you on. Ask a team member, peer or friend to be your accountability partner that you will check-in with weekly for just 10 minutes to share each others’ progress toward your goals.

Direct Sales Priorities that Produce

It will soon be time to organize your child’s back-to-school schedule and your back-to-business direct sales schedule for fall. If you’ve ever struggled with successful scheduling, you are not alone! The key is to begin by clarifying your priorities – what are the most important areas of your life? Once identified, then you schedule your priorities and protect your priorities. That is what makes a successful schedule. Easy? Not always – but it is doable with a few basic steps and pre-planning:

A. Identify your priorities – begin with what is most important to you – in most cases it is your family. Next most important is probably your full-time job outside your home. Following close behind will be your direct sales business. Family covers a large area and a large amount of time that you, hubby and kids need to discuss and decide together how it will be spent. Your job (if applicable) will require a set amount of time and focus. Your direct sales business priorities are for you to establish – with the help of hubby and your upline leader. A few questions to consider to identify your direct sales priorities:

1. Is this (goals, actions) going to help me become the best consultant I can be?
2. Is this (goals, actions) going to help my family and my finances?
3. Am I willing to do it?

A “yes” answer to each is an indication of a high priority – such as attending monthly team meetings, scheduling an open house, participating in an exposure event. The first step to successful scheduling is to identify your priorities.

B. Schedule your priorities – once you have identified your priorities, then put them into your schedule, with the following steps:

1. Priorities become goals. A well-known study found that those who set goals earn an average of twice as much per month as those who do not set goals.
2. Goals become actions. Set your goal (ex: $750 show average) and then identify the actions that will help you reach that goal (ex: hostess coaching, outside orders, grouping products, multiple uses of products.)

3. Actions scheduled daily. Take each action and plug it into your schedule so that you are working on positive goal-achievement a little each day – a much better use of your time.

Well-intended priorities can fall apart if they aren’t turned into goals with the scheduled action steps. The second step to successful scheduling is to schedule your priorities.

C. Protect your priorities – the best-laid plans will crumble if you do not protect your schedule from these common time-wasters:

1. Interruptions – control them with these:
a. focused workspace, not the kitchen table
b. use signs for when you need “QUIET” or “STOP”
c. save-ups – use a note pad next to your elbow to jot down all those things you think of (defrost the chicken for dinner) instead of jumping up to do it immediately. Check your list each hour and do them then.

2. Phone calls – use them wisely:
a. agenda/notes=save time, focus
b. timer /clock – know how long you are talking
c. group like calls together – all hostess calls consecutively, etc.
d. stand vs. sit – 8 minutes per call when you stand; 12 minutes per call when you are seated.

3. Say “no, thank you.” – you cannot do everything, so say no graciously.
a. “Thank you for asking. My volunteer time is already spoken for.”
b. “Thank you for asking. I’m going to say no this time.”

c. “I am available to provide cookies. I am not available to be the room mother.”

11 Steps to Tackle Cancellations

It’s frustrating – you have a great month of shows scheduled and then…wham!…cancellations eat away at what would have been a great month like termites on wet lumber. It is indeed frustrating! Can anything be done to eliminate cancellations? Well, you can’t eliminate cancellations, but you can greatly reduce them with good planning and preparation. The 11 steps below will help reduce cancellations:

1. Pick the right date and time. As your hostess is considering her date, ask her if there are any other events in her family, workplace, church or neighborhood two weeks prior or two weeks after that could interfere with the date she is considering. A family wedding or workplace project could be a cautionary sign to pick a different date. Also be sure to ask your hostess if more of her family, friends and co-workers would be available daytime or evening, in order to select the best time for the most guests to attend. The right date means she will rarely cancel.

2. Book close. The “ABC” of direct sales booking is Always Book Close -meaning always pick the next closest date you have available to begin the booking conversation with your hostess. The closer she books her show, the more excited she will be about it. Excited hostesses rarely cancel.

3. Sign her name in your datebook. Once your hostess picks her date, give her your pen and have her write her name on that date in your datebook. There is a level of commitment that accompanies signing your name. Committed hostesses rarely cancel.

4. Check her motivation. Sometimes hostesses book as a favor to their friend, or maybe even after some serious arm-twisting by the original hostess. Be sure your new hostess has her own motivation for booking, by asking her what excites her most about hosting a show, or ask what she is looking forward to most at her show. That way she is committed beyond a favor or arm-twisting, and will rarely cancel.

5. Begin the guest list. The moment your hostess selects her date, begin the discussion of whom to invite. Suggest FRANK (Friends, Relatives Acquaintances, Neighbors, Kid’s associations) to begin the discussion, and even have a FRANK list sheet she can begin to fill out. The sooner she sees how quickly her list begins to grow, the more confident she is that she will have a full house of guests at her show. Confident hostesses rarely cancel.

6. Email to save the date. The day your new hostess selects her date, send her a “save the date” email (with the date, time and place of her show) and ask her to forward it immediately to her family and friends. It does not take the place of an invitation, but it does help boost attendance by giving her friends plenty of advance notice. It is the first layer of a multi-layer invitation approach that will boost attendance for the show. When the hostess is confident her friends will attend, she rarely cancels.

7. Mail a note/postcard to your new hostess. The day after your new hostess picks her date, send her a note card or a postcard thanking her for scheduling her show with you, and confirming her date/time. Remember to include a note such as, “Thank you for your commitment to this date. It is a night of work for me, and I look forward to seeing you and your friends.” This will remind the hostess that, even though shows are a lot of fun, they are also your job. When she understands, she rarely cancels.

8. Layer the guest invitation. Guest attendance will increase when you partner with your hostess to “layer” the guest invitation. We all lead busy lives, so we benefit from several reminders, or “layers,” when it comes to extending the invitation to her show. The first layer is mentioned above in point #6 with the “save the date” email. The second layer you might suggest to your hostess is to post her show date to her family and friends on her Facebook page. The third layer could be an e-invite that you develop (or your company may already provide) and then send to your hostess to forward to her guest list. But by far, the #1 most-important invitation layer even in this high-tech world, is mailing an actual invitation to each invited guest. Attendance increases significantly when guests receive an invitation in the mail. And to ensure the invitations are mailed, offer to mail them for your hostess. Layering increases attendance, and therefore hostesses rarely cancel.

9. Make reminder calls. Partner with your hostess on making reminder calls to each guest a few days prior to the show. Many hostesses find themselves so busy that they would be more than happy for you to make these calls. Reminder calls take relatively little time (80% of calls go to voicemail, so leave a quick, 10-second message) so you can complete an entire guest list of calls in 15 minutes. Reminder calls help boost attendance and therefore hostesses rarely cancel.

10. Stay in touch weekly. Keep in touch with your hostess weekly prior to her show – emails, notes, calls, texts. You will be building a friendship with her and developing a trust. Trusting friends rarely cancel.

11. Cancellations are rare, but not extinct. When you follow the steps above, you will find your cancellations will be reduced greatly. But, there will be occasions when a hostess needs to cancel – so what to do then:

- Turn her show into a book show
- Reschedule her for your next available date
- Ask if a friend can step in for her on that same date
- Offer to host in your home if you are local

- Contact the original hostess if this hostess does not followthrough, to see if she knows of someone who could step in.

Introduce New Products with a Fable

The best salespeople know that selling is a lot like telling a story. You could even say that introducing a new product can be done by telling a “fable.” Here’s how:

F Features. Describe the features of the new product – what does it look like, how is it made

A Advantages. Describe how it works, what it does, what is its purpose or function.

B Benefits. Describe what this product can do for the customer.

L Leverage. Describe what other satisfied customers have said about the product, provide facts or
statistics, proof of quality.

E Emotions. Describe how the customer will feel using or owning the new product.

The next time you’re stuck on how to put some fresh thoughts together to describe a new product, remember to tell a “F.A.B.L.E.”!

Follow-Up Makes the Difference

One of the most frightening statistics of training is that 80% of training is lost or forgotten within 30 days if not reinforced or applied. That’s why Spirit of Success is making a commitment to enhanced follow-up as a part of all of our workshops beginning in 2000. We want you and your attendees to remember and apply the new skills you learn at each of our workshops so that your day of training carries on for months (and years!). We’ll be sending follow-up suggestions and tools to our workshop coordinators after their training has been held, such as:

* Suggested discussion topics for future meetings to enhance application.

* Crossword puzzles and word search hunts customized to the topic to enhance retention.

* Charts to track action steps taken by attendees to measure the actual behavior changes as a result of the workshop.

* Bulk-rate discount prices for the workshop training on audio tape to enhance retention and application of skills.

We want each training workshop to make a difference for you and your attendees, so you can measure the value of training through observable results and behavior change. Training does impact your bottom line, and it does impact life, both of which can be measured and enhanced through our new follow-up steps.

We believe these new steps, in addition to the unique topic customization and excellence in workshop delivery we already provide, will help you continue to feel confident in Spirit of Success as the complete answer to all your training needs. Long after the workshop good-byes have been said, Spirit of Success training continues to work for you. What other training company provides such value. We want to be your choice for training excellence!

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