Promotion is defined as the act of furthering the growth or development of something. Under that definition just about every action you take for your business is a promotion. However, the word promotion implies something greater – a concentrated effort to bring awareness to a product, service, or campaign.

As a direct sales professional you can promote a product, an event like recruitment fair, or a promotion your company is offering. Regardless of what you’re promoting there are key ingredients to a successful promotion.

1. Know Your Destination
   What do you want to accomplish with your promotion? What are your goals and objectives? This is the very first essential step to any successful promotion. There is any number of potential goals. They can be monetary, for example $1000 in sales. Your goal might be to attract X number of ezine subscribers. Or you may want 100 people to attend your recruiting fair with the additional goal of recruiting 5% of them.
2. Action Plan
   Outline exactly what you need to do to achieve your goals. For example, if you want to attract 100 people to a recruiting event you might decide to publish an ad in your local newspaper and to email everyone on your email list and ask them to come and bring a friend.
3. Scarcity, Urgency, and Your Call to Action
   When you implement an element of scarcity or urgency your promotion will gather more attention. For example, if you’re promoting a new product you might offer a coupon for the new product. The coupon will have an expiration date. If you’re hosting a recruiting event you might say that it’s limited to the first 100 people. Studies have shown that these tactics produce results.
4. Integration
   When creating your promotion action plan be sure to integrate it into all of your existing marketing tactics. For example, market it in your email messages, on your blog and/or website, on your social networking profile and anywhere else you market your business.
5. Testing and Analytics
   Each promotion is an opportunity to learn. Use this opportunity to learn about what your customers and prospects respond to. Learn about what they want, need and desire and how you can best service them. Test your marketing tactics for results. Which tactics work best? Measure sales, clicks, and visits to your website and examine the data. Each promotion will offer you with an abundance of information to help you improve your business and your next promotion.

Embrace these keys and you’ll enjoy success time and time again.

Image courtesy of SixRevisions on Flickr

Getting ready to launch an advertising campaign? Want to recruit a few new top producing team members? Are you hoping to draw attention to your direct sales company and all that you have to offer? Before you place an advertisement take some time to create your advertising and listing strategy.

Step One: What Do You Want To Accomplish?

In order to achieve advertising success it’s important to first know what you want to accomplish. What are your goals? For example, do you want to recruit three new top performing recruits?

Step Two: Define The Offer.

It’s also very important to know who you’re looking for or what you’re offering. What are the characteristics of top performing recruits? How will you appeal to your audience? What benefits can you highlight? How can you solve their problems?

Advertising is about capturing your prospect’s attention and motivating them to take action. In the case of recruiting new teammates the desired action may be to click through to your recruiting page. Decide exactly who you’re advertising to and what you have to offer.

Step Three: Researching Advertising and Listing Options

Now it’s time to decide where you’re going to advertise or list your business. Take some time and research your options. For example, you might advertise or list on Craigslist. You might also create a Facebook ad or list your business opportunity on a Direct Sales Company directory.

Step Four: What’s Your Budget?

Once you have an idea about your advertising or listing options, it’s time to begin comparing them. You’ll of course compare them based on how they fit your goals and your target audience. You’ll also want to evaluate them in terms of cost. Which options best fit your budget?

Step Five: Optimize Your Advertising and Listing Strategy.

At this point you likely have your goals, your ad or listing created and you have chosen a site or sites to focus on first. The next step is to integrate y our advertisement of listing into your overall marketing strategy. For example, if you publish a new advertisement on Craigslist you might link to that ad from your Facebook page. Integrating your marketing and business building tactics helps draw more attention to them. It makes them more effective.

Finally, consider sending prospects to a landing page for each specific goal you identify. This will help you test and track your results. You’ll learn what your prospects respond to and which listings or ads generated the most interest and results. Also consider tackling one ad or listing at a time. Tackling too much at once often results in incomplete efforts. Focus on one tactic, perfect it, and then add more.

Image courtesy of deanmeyersnet on Flickr

Customer loyalty is an essential success ingredient for any business. It’s particularly important for Direct Sales success. Every customer who becomes a regular buyer helps you generate predictable income. It makes it much easier to manage your cash flow. And you know what they say about the cost of a new customer – it costs ten times more to get a new customer than to keep the ones you have.

 
So how do you build customer loyalty? A few offline and online tactics can help you take great care of your customers.

Exceptional Customer Service
Customer service is about more than simply offering contact information or a FAQ page. Customer service is about going out of your way to make sure your customers feel appreciated. It’s about addressing their problems and concerns immediately and with great concern. It’s about taking measures to provide the best products and services possible so there aren’t any customer complaints or concerns. Exceptional customer service makes your customer want to buy from you again.

Consistent, Frequent, Communication (but not too frequent)
Okay, so you probably don’t want to email or connect with your customers every day. However, frequent interactions help keep your company at the front of their mind. When they have a need, they’ll remember to turn to you. You might consider communicating with your customers via a monthly email newsletter, on social networking sites and occasionally by mail.

Personality Marketing
Your personality is one of your strongest assets as an entrepreneur and a Direct Sales consultant. People buy from people they like. Share your personality with your customers and give them your best.

Giveaways, Promotions and Freebies
Who doesn’t like getting something for free? Help your customers become engaged with your company and excited about your products by occasionally offering giveaways, freebies and special promotions or offers. Generate excitement!

Easy To Use Website
Make sure connecting with you and/or making a purchase from your website is as easy as possible. If you’re unsure, ask your existing customers what you can do better. Then follow their guidance.

Get Your Customers Involved!
Contests, quizzes, and questionnaires – ask for your customer’s opinions and get them interacting with you and your company. Interaction breeds community. People gain a sense of belonging. Also when you ask their opinion they feel appreciated and valued – great for customer loyalty!

Create a customer loyalty strategy and integrate it into your overall business plan. Each of the above tactics can be implemented and integrated into your existing customer service, marketing and communication strategies. It’s an extremely valuable step to take. Customer loyalty makes growing your business easier and more enjoyable.

Facebook offers advertising benefits to business owners from all industries. Yet for direct sales consultants, it may be particularly effective. Why? Because Direct Sales is all about connecting with your audience and prospects – it’s social networking. Facebook of course is a social networking tool. You can use Facebook to build your business and recruit new teammates. Let’s take a look at how to advertise with Facebook.

             Image courtesy of David Berkowitz

Step One: What Do You Want To Accomplish?

It’s very important with any advertising strategy to create a goal for your ad. An example might be that you want to recruit five new teammates. Once you have your goal you can then create an ad and a plan to achieve it. The goal comes first.

Step Two: Register for Your Account

If you don’t have a Facebook account you’ll want to get one. Registration is free and you can get a Facebook page up in a few hours. Once you have your account you can then move forward and create your ad.

Step Three: Create Your Ad

Facebook is incredibly user friendly. It actually walks you through the step process of creating your advertisement. Initially, you’ll be asked to:

• Create a title for your ad
• Prepare the text for the body of the ad
• Upload an image for the ad
• And provide the web address of the page that users will click through to – where will you send your prospects? An example might be a contact us page or an opt-in page.

There are a few specs to pay attention to when creating your ad. For example,

• You have 25 characters (including spaces) for the headline of your advertisement.
• You have 135 characters for the body of the ad.
• Your ad image must be no larger than 110 pixels wide x 80 pixels tall – it should have an aspect ratio of 4:3 or 16:9. (The Facebook interface will attempt to resize it automatically).

One of the wonderful user friendly features a Facebook ad provides is the ability to view your ad as you create it. This helps you make minor tweaks as you go and generate your ideal advertisement.

As you’re creating your advertisement make sure the ad copy, including the headline and call to action in your body copy support your goal. You’ll also want to follow basis advertising guidelines – namely, capture attention and tell your prospect what they have to gain by clicking on your ad.

Step Four: Target Your Audience

The next step is to target your advertisement. You can target:

• Location
• Age range
• Gender
• Education level
• Where your prospect’s work
• Their relationship status
• And the language they speak.

Step Five: What’s Your Budget?

Your final step is to decide on your advertising budget. Start small and consider initially creating one ad rather than several. This will help you fine tune the results and make sure your ad is generating the desired results. Once you’re achieving Facebook advertising success you can then branch out and create several advertisements.

Have you tried Facebook advertising and if so, were you happy with your results? Comment below to tell us about your experience or to ask any questions you have about social media advertising and marketing

There are many ways to grow a direct sales business. You can of course sell more products and earn more commissions. You can also grow your team of recruits and earn commissions from their sales success. In fact, for many direct sales consultants growing a team of successful consultants is the single biggest profit generator. It can mean going from a few hundred dollars a month in commissions to a few thousand.

Of course the challenge to growing your team of consultants is connecting with the right people. While this is usually an ongoing process you can boost your numbers by launching an advertising campaign. There are many effective direct sales advertising options to consider:

1. Classified Ad Sites – The majority of classified ad sites are free. This is of course one of the benefits to using a site like this. Additionally, you can generate some very good leads for your direct sales team. They can also generate links to your website which can of course increase sales and recruits. One of the most popular classified ad sites is Yahoo Classifieds.
2. Craigslist Advertising – Craigslist is a unique type of classified ad site and therefore deserves its own category. Craigslist gives you the power to control what region to advertise to. For example, if you only want to advertise to your city or region you can do that or you can advertise to multiple states and metropolitan cities.
3. Facebook Ads – Facebook advertisements give you the ability to target a specific prospect based on gender, age, location and much more. Facebook reaches millions of users daily. While it does cost money it can generate targeted results.
4. Text Ads on Directory Sites – Direct sales directory sites provide a unique opportunity to appeal to people who are likely already considering a career in direct sales. They’re visiting the directory site for a reason – to research opportunities. Your advertisement can help attract your ideal recruits.
5. Ezine Advertising – An ezine is a newsletter that targets a specific audience. For example, a website owner may have a parenting ezine or a work at home ezine. Placing advertisements in these ezines can help you reach a motivated and potentially profitable crowd.
6. Website/Blog Paid Advertising – You can buy ad space on a niche website or blog. For example, if you’re interested in recruiting single moms you might buy advertising space on a blog or website dedicated to that audience.
7. PPC Advertising – Google is just one of the search engines that provides PPC advertising opportunities to motivated business owners. Creating targeted, keyword specific ads, help you achieve success.

There are multiple options when it comes to advertising your direct sales business. Before you choose any particular option make sure to establish goals for your ad. What do you want the advertisement to achieve? Then create a plan to make it happen. Consider your budget, what link you’ll include in the advertisement (for example you might send prospects to a landing page designed to recruit new direct sales team members) and finally decide how you are going to track your results. Then choose your advertising medium and launch your campaign.

Image courtesty of swanksalot on Flickr

Training your team members helps them feel more confident, which will increase their success. That in turn motivates them to work harder and sell more.

Team training should cover every aspect of direct sales success you can think of. This might include business promotion, building their own sales team, telephone tips, turning “no” into “yes” and more.

There are a variety of ways to present team training. Consider weekly emails, conference calls, local meetings in a business office or restaurant, online chats, tip sheets, or even one-on-one. All of these approaches will work in different circumstances, so try them out and choose the ones that are most effective for you and your team.

Encourage your team to attend company conferences together or take your team to a sales training conference or seminar. In addition to the training your team will get, attending together builds team unity and creates an opportunity for team members to bond.

If your local team is large enough, you could invite a guest speaker to one of your team meetings. There are a number of professionals who offer this service for a fee, or ask your upline director or a company executive. Often, if they’re free, these people are glad to share their knowledge and insight to help newer reps build their businesses.

Subscribe to a direct sales magazine or organization for your team members. Possibilities include Direct Selling News or the Direct Selling Association. You might even consider a subscription as a prize for top sellers during the month.

Create and use a simple training system for new team members. This might involve a few sessions where you meet in person, talk via the telephone, or chat via the Internet. Each session can provide a separate training theme such as booking the first show, getting past family and friends, how to deal with rejection, and other tips for getting started. Set up a sessions in a clearly defined order with specific topics you’ll cover in each one. Then use your beginners training session with every new recruit you sign on.

You can also create a more advanced training system, or an on-going one, that you use for team members who stick with the company. These sessions could involve more advanced sales techniques, building a profitable website, finding the first recruit, and more. These ongoing sessions can be sent via email using an autoresponder service or provided by teleseminar or webinar.

In addition to improving skills and confidence, team training is a highly effective strategy for motivating your team.

As your recruiting campaigns begin resulting in more prospects and team members as a result of your recruiting campaigns, you’ll be thinking, “great, my efforts are paying off.” And you’ll be motivated to continue using all the same recruiting methods. But if you aren’t tracking your results, you don’t know what’s working and what isn’t. Tracking your recruiting efforts will help you focus on the most successful and profitable strategies and allow you to stop wasting resources on the methods that aren’t working.

What kind of tracking system should you use? There are many ways to track your recruiting efforts from sophisticated programs to simple paper and pencil notes. The system isn’t all that important. What’s important is that you use it consistently to track your efforts and results.

One way you can track results from online methods is to use a different website link or email address for each promotion. You will then know exactly how many responses you get to an ad or posting and how many team members join as a result. If you are using a giveaway promotion you can use coupon codes in the same way. You can even track mail-in responses by assigning an attention line or suite number to your address for each promotion.

A lot of things happen when you track your direct sales recruiting efforts. To begin, tracking lets you see a realistic picture of how many prospecting conversations you have every week. It’s easy to say, “I talked to a lot of people about my business this week,” when in reality, you may have talked to a lot fewer than you think.

When you write down the details of your prospecting conversations you will see exactly how many people you spoke with, how many you planned to speak to, or how many you called that you never connected with. Now, you have a clear picture of what you intended to do versus what actually got done.

Tracking gives you a visual reminder of your accomplishments. You know when you create a to-do list and check off items done, you feel like you’ve accomplished more in a day. Tracking your recruiting results works the same way. You know exactly how much you’ve accomplished and whether or not it’s enough to help you reach your goals.

In addition, tracking is a tremendous tool to help ensure you follow up with every contact made. Relying on your memory can fail you, but having contacts listed with follow-up dates recorded in black and white will let you see at a glance who you need to follow-up with.

At the beginning of each week, or month, set a goal of how many recruits you would like to join your team for that period. If you figure you have to talk to ten people for every one who joins, and your goal is five new recruits every month, then you know you need to talk to at least fifty people each month to reach your goal. Your tracking system will help you focus so you can reach that number more easily.

Using a tracking system allows you to make better use of your time and helps ensure you are meeting your goals and growing your business. It doesn’t have to be a complex system; a simple system that you consistently follow will help you succeed.

Free Resources:

• You can track clicks to your website using the free URL shortening service Bit.ly.
  (Note: your data will be publicly available)
• Adapt these free forms from Entrepreneur.com and DocStoc.com:

Client/Prospect Contact Log –

Client-Prospect Call Log –

prospecting sheet Free Office Form Template –

Post image courtesy of goh-wz.livejournal.com

Strong leadership, great incentive trips, and the company’s commitment to helping women are a few the reasons Julie Mansfield joined Private Quarters, the only linen direct sales company in the United States. Here is what she told me about the company and her party plan business, and how she can help you start yours.

Briefly describe the company and opportunity.
Private Quarters is a new, six-year old direct selling company focused on high quality linens and comfortwear for the bed and bath. It is the only direct selling linen company in the United States. There is huge opportunity across the country to get in on the ground floor. This is a party plan company, offering personal shopping experiences for hosts and guests and it offers incentives to host parties that are out of this world. It only costs $199 to become a comfort consultant, and each new consultant has a coach to help them be successful. There are no territories, so you can sell anywhere in the United States!

How long have you been with the company? How long have you been in direct sales?
I have been with Private Quarters since June of 2010. I left an executive level career of 25 years in corporate America so that I could have a life and be in control of my own destiny. I have never been in direct sales before, but anyone with a desire to have their own business can do this regardless of a lack of sales experience. The products are so beautiful, they practically sell themselves.

What is your title or rank with the company and how long did it take you to achieve that rank?
I am a Group Leader with Private Quarters and attained that level in five short, fun months. Group Leaders have three people on their teams and help coach them to be successful. I have seven people on my team. Some are full time Comfort Consultants, others are Interior Designers, while others are stay-at-home moms and grandmothers. Each person brings something unique to the business. Group Leaders are the first level of leadership, and there are seven levels of leadership.

Besides commissions and cash bonuses, what’s your favorite benefit or perk?
I have always loved to travel, and if you meet the objectives of the incentive trips, you will go to beautiful places and can take your spouse or a guest. We had a trip to La Quinta Resort in Palm Springs in January, and I qualified for it. It was an all expense paid trip, and it was wonderful. The next one is in June, and it is to Kauai, Hawaii. Talk about fabulous travel!! I can’t wait to take my husband and have him enjoy the fruits of my business while playing golf in Poipu.

What’s your best selling or favorite product?
We have two best selling products which are also my favorites as they are life changing: the deluxe mattress pad combined with the deluxe featherbed. If you have ever been to a five-star resort and wondered why the bed is so divine, wonder no more. Private Quarters can turn your bed into the lap of luxury which will help provide the much needed sleep so many people are deprived of.

What support and/or training do you provide to lead your team members to success?
Comfort Consultants are offered a weekly coaching call, one-on-one coaching, and are given assistance and training with their launch party with their Sponsor. Private Quarters as a company provides you with your own personal web site and marketing newsletters, along with a first-in-class training manual called “The PQ Way”. Tons and tons of online training is available as well as and conference calls with the stars and trainers. This is the best training I have ever seen in my career.

Which one or two sales methods do you primarily use and teach?
We primarily teach home parties which we call “personal shopping experiences” as they involve the bedrooms and bathrooms of your homes. I also sell quite a bit to individuals I meet one-on-one. Each Comfort Consultant is provided with a starter kit which contains samples that people can touch and feel.

What would you say is the key to success with this company?
The key to success with this company lies in its management. Private Quarters offers incentives to Consultants, Hosts and Guests that make it easy to be successful. This company shares the wealth with its sales force. The leaders are genuine, kind and caring.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Private Quarters believes in helping women. They support the domestic violence awareness project, and each year they give a half a million dollars worth of bed and bath linens to battered and homeless women’s shelters across the nation. They have a campaign each April called “Share the Comfort”, and through this campaign and the efforts of Comfort Consultants, PQ is able to donate product while making communities more aware of domestic violence.

Contact Julie to start your own home business selling linens by visiting her Private Quarters information page in the InternetBasedMoms.com direct sales directory.

Earlier this month (February 2011) the direct sales party plan company Thirty One Gifts instituted a consultant recruiting freeze. While consultants may continue to market the opportunity, there is essentially a waiting list for new consultants to join at a later date.

The company reportedly added 6000 new consultants in January, 2011 and put the freeze in place to avoid severe back-orders and shipping delays that might result from continued expansion at that pace. The freeze will also give the company time to expand its physical plant, technology, and staff needed to handle this growth.

Most of the online buzz I’ve seen about the freeze has been positive. Consultants are excited about the company’s growth and future potential. I suppose the only potential negative is that prospects may be anxious to get started in direct sales and will therefore look for a different company so they don’t have to wait. But I would think that those who did wait might be more committed to the product line.

If you are a Thirty One consultant, how has the freeze affected you? If you are with another company that temporarily halted recruiting, was the outcome positive for you? Please leave your comments.

Click the link to get information about the company and find a Thirty One Gifts direct sales consultant who will help you start your home business.

Image courtesy of dominiqs.

Bershelle Jones recently took time out of her Diva schedule to tell me about her skincare business. She sees tremendous potential with Beauty Society and wants to help you share in this opportunity.

Briefly describe the company and opportunity.
Founded in 2004 Beauty Society began as a quest to bring the very highest quality anti-aging skincare at affordable prices to all women. We have since grown into the most sought after skincare and cosmetics line with the hottest and incredibly lucrative business opportunity for women in the US! The company offers the highest personal and team commission in the industry and enjoys an epically high reorder rate. The products are paraben free and sulfate free, cruelty free, and made in the USA. The skincare products come with a 12 month money back guarantee.

How long have you been in direct sales?
4 years. I made the switch to Beauty Society because I see the potential the company has to offer, I fell in love with the products, and they truly care, and treat their divas with respect.

Besides commissions and cash bonuses, what’s your favorite benefit or perk?
The connections I have with other divas, they are amazing women (and men), I am growing everyday and I truly believe and know I am helping others; whether that be feeling better, looking younger, or adding an income. They also have diva retreats, and have contests for free products and trips, all very attainable for all consultants regardless of title.

What’s your best selling or favorite product?
Youth accelerator – it is one of the products that uses apple stem cell technology. Simply amazing.

What support and/or training do you provide to lead your team members to success?
We have company calls, private team calls, and also you can call and talk to the founder if you need to. I am available to my team anytime, they will have my home, cell, and email…. I am never out of reach.

Which sales methods do you primarily use and teach?
Online, home parties, and one-on-one. This is the key to the business, selling is the foundation to running a direct sales business. If you master the products and care for your customers you will be successful.

What would you say is the key to success with this company?
To be passionate, know what you have to offer, and then share it. I do not force this on others I simply share the products and the business and that is all it takes.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?
You can get started for $129.Your success has no limit with hard work and dedication.
If you are looking for an opportunity to earn extra money, meet new friends or simply love the skincare and would like the discount for yourself, Beauty Society is the perfect business for you. This is simply and best of fun. Call or email me today!!

Contact Bershelle today to find out how to start your own skincare business.