Three Ideas for Your Direct Sales Business This Spring

Spring is here in the direct sales world, and recently on Successfully Social's page we heard from our members that they wanted to know how to run their businesses in spring. In fact, it was such a popular inquiry that we made it the topic of our Facebook LIVE series this week. So, that said, here are some ideas you can use for your direct sales business right NOW while spring is in full bloom.

But before I get started, let me preface this by saying that both Kelly and I believe that you need to be full steam ahead with your business all year long...not on again off again with the changing of the seasons. Remember that the actions you take in your business right now will have long reaching consequences in the months to come. If you don't believe me, take a look at your calendar...if you took a month off around mid-December to mid-January, are you still feeling the pain of that 75-90 days later? Trust me, give it your all year round and you won't hit that bookings slump that many of your direct selling sisters fall into a couple times a year. Okay, enough with the PSA, let's get to our topic.

1. Go get those Mother's Day orders. Aside from the December holidays, Mother's Day is one of the biggest shopping occasions of the year. And what completely rocks about that is that just about all of our direct sales companies have things that mama would love! From skin care to jewelry to purses to cookware to candles and more, direct sales is an industry geared primarily towards women (and let's face it, women are also the ones most likely to be shopping for mother's day - for their own mom, their mother-in-law, sister-in-law, their grown daughters, etc.) So how can you capitalize on that? Well, I suggest creating three product bundles at three different price points, maybe a $40ish, $75ish and $120ish. Make some cute graphics showcasing these bundles and put them in your Facebook VIP group. Then take those same images and create a printable PDF or printable image with each of the bundles and a little checkbox next to each of the three images. Put on all of your contact information/how to order information and give it a big fun title at the top like "I'm Making Mother's Day Easy For You This Year" and let all those mamas in your VIP group know they can print that out, check off the one they want, and give it to their hubby - you'll take care of the rest. You get some extra sales from the dads, and mom gets what she wants for a change. Win-win!

2. Get out! Outside, that is. Host a Sip and Shop or Spring BBQ for your customers and previous hostesses. For many of us, the weather is starting to get gorgeous and people are ready to get out and about. If you haven't hosted your own spring launch yet to show off new items your company has come out with, now is the time! You can do this poolside, in the backyard under the trees, or even at the playground and let them bring the kids. Do it as a mystery hostess and offer up tickets towards winning the host rewards for anyone that orders.

3. Spring Clean. If you didn't take my advice in the post about turning your retired inventory into bookings, you might be sitting on a bunch of retired items that you're no longer using. Maybe it's time to let some of them go - you could use the idea from that post I just referenced, or you could do something quick like snapping pics of them and selling them off auction style in your VIP group. Then take that cold hard cash and reinvest it in yourself and new products you don't have yet in your display. And side note, think mid to high price range items when you're adding to your party display - people will buy a $10 or $15 item sight unseen, but when it comes to the $90 stuff, they want to be able to see before they buy. And who can blame them?!

Will you try any of these ideas? What else are you doing to make your spring spectacular? Share below.

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...

Direct Sellers: Stop Sending Christmas Cards!

No, I am not going all bah humbug on you, just hear me out. If you are in the habit of sending Christmas cards to your customers, here's why I want you to stop:

1. Everyone else is doing it, and in my book that means it's NOT the way to go, because it's not showing your individuality or setting you apart.
2. Think about how many Christmas cards you get from about the last week of November til the end of December. I'd wager it's a lot. Your customers are swimming in them, too. Therefore a card at this time of the year is getting a lot less attention than a card at say, I don't know, ANY other time of the year. Sure, it'll get hung up with the rest of them, or put in the ever-growing pile, and they might think "oh, that was sweet" but then when the next batch arrives tomorrow, it's forgotten. 

I personally think if you're going to spend the money to buy (or design, or make) a card for your direct sales customers, and then spend the money to mail them all out, you want it to get more than ten seconds of attention. So, rather than jumping in with the masses and sending a Christmas card, here's a few other ideas to choose from that you could implement into your marketing plan (and budget) instead.

• Send a New Year's card - wish them the best for 2018, just wait to do it until at least a week or so after the year starts, because by then they are more likely to have already trashed the Christmas cards.
• Send a card for your business anniversary. Are you celebrating a year, or 3 or 14 or whatever with your company? Send a card announcing that and thanking them for supporting your business. 
• Choose a random holiday to send a card for. Personally, I have a marketing plan this year around Groundhog's Day (yes, I'm serious) and I'll be sending cards for that in 2018.
• Choose any other big holiday (Easter, St. Patrick's Day, 4th of July, etc.) and use that as an occasion to send cards out to your customers. 
• Are you Facebook friends with your customers? Send them a birthday card for their birthday instead. You can see all the birthdays coming up in the next month, and while it's a little more work for you to keep up with, as adults we don't tend to get a whole lot of birthday happy mail, so this would probably get noticed and be appreciated.

Pick your fave, and give it a whirl for 2018. And look for a future blog post coming soon on 10 other things I am going to encourage you to do for your business in 2018!