5 Things to do for Your Direct Sales Business in December

Most direct sales companies have their holiday shipping guaranteed cut-off date around December 10-15th. Many consultants think that means they can just take the rest of the month off, but that really couldn't be farther from the truth. There ARE ways you can turn those last few weeks of the year into productive time, so let's take a look at a few ideas.

1. Sell. Hold an inventory sale from products you have on hand. Many of us have items that have retired that we still have from our displays - these can be someone's great last minute gift all the way up until Christmas. Host a stop and shop in your home, and offer gift wrapping (or gift bagging) so that people can leave your home with their gifts ready to roll.
2. Book. Work on filling your January calendar! If your last few November and December parties didn't fully book you up for January, NOW is the time to reach out to past January hostesses, potential hostesses who haven't nailed down a date yet, or just anyone who has shown interest in booking. You do not want to roll into the new year without your January calendar solid, so do the work now.
3. Inventory. Take an inventory of your business supplies and figure out what you need to order to start the year off right. Do you have all the catalogs, order forms, hostess goodies, etc. that you are going to need? Many companies change catalogs over in January, and thus make the new book available for consultants to order in December. If this is you, or if you have a couple more months left in your winter book and you aren't going to have enough to get you through til the end, get your order placed. Because remember point 2, you're going to be booking up your January and you're going to need to have those hostess packets ready to mail to all of your excited January hostesses.
4. Marketing. Revamp your marketing plan for the new year if it needs it, or if your marketing plan is solid, make sure you have your necessities stocked. I have a lot of solid systems in my business, such as Hostess Happy Mail and my Customer Follow-Up System, and now is the perfect time of year to make sure that I have all I need from Vistaprint and my back office. If you don't personally have systems in your business that are working for you, now is a great time to start some. The new year is always something of a clean slate, and honestly is when almost every system of mine got it's start, one year or another. 
5. Mastermind. Do you have someone you work closely with in your business? Set aside time to mastermind with them on what you both want from your businesses in the coming year. I have two people I work closely with - Mariekan, from the same direct sales company, who I have partnered with to train our teams together, and Jessica, who is a friend from another company who is my go-to girl to bounce ideas off of. Each December, I have planning meetings with each of these people. With Mariekan, we get together for four days straight and plan out our entire year of team trainings, our schedule for calls, zooms, topics, etc. Yes, it's a lot, but you can't imagine how organized we feel heading into a new year with a solid map for what is to come. With Jessica, we do an overnight, and lay out our goals for our personal businesses in the coming year, talk strategy and marketing, and create vision boards to help keep us on task. Both of these masterminds are crucial to my success, and I highly recommend you do something similar. 

So, what will YOU do with the final few weeks of the year? I suggest you figure it out...and then be on the lookout for another post coming soon about the top 10 things you want to implement in your business next year...