Time Saving Tips For Your Direct Sales Business

By Guest Blogger Heather Price

You’re booking! You’re selling! You’re recruiting! But you also have laundry to do, a husband who needs attention, bills that are overdue, kids carpools to drive, dinner to make….the list goes on and on. Your life is great and you wouldn’t have it any other way, but if you’re a wife and/or a mother, and/or you have a job outside of your direct sales business, your life is already super full even without your business. But because of financial need or because you want a hobby or because you just love what you do, your direct sales business needs to be a priority. How do you sell $200.00 worth of products on a day that you are driving four carpools? How do you book a party when your kids are home from school? How do you spend two hours at Walmart meeting new people when you don’t have ten minutes to spare? You need time saving tips!

Here are my top five time saving tips for your direct sales business:

1. Be prepared while you’re out and about. In a day you hadn’t even been planning to book, sell, or recruit, you’re taking your kids to school or you’re going grocery shopping, or you’re stopping at the bank. If you look your best and you have business cards, pens, catalogs, and samples with you, you’re much more likely to open your mouth to the friendly checkout clerk about your business. If you don’t have anything with you, and you’re not wearing makeup, you might not even mention your business. You never know where you might meet your next wonderful client or team member.
    
2. I like to call this the "call, mail, call" method. When you have a list of leads you haven’t yet contacted (perhaps you did a bridal show recently, or your upline passed some leads to you, or you’ve been letting website hits collect), it’s a good idea to group call them once with a friendly message (use www.postcalls.com) letting them know that a special offer is in the mail for them and they should watch their mailbox. Then group mail the offer either by card or postcard (I use sendoutcards.com), and finally THEN follow up with individual phone calls. The reason this is a time saver is because by the time you call them individually they’ve already decided whether they’re interested in further contact from you. They’ve received a call and card already—you won’t need to spend time explaining your offer individually to each person. You’ll simply be calling to say “remember the postcard I sent you? I’m calling to see when we can schedule our appointment so you can get….” At that point, if they’re not interested, you’re not spending time explaining. If they are interested, they book immediately.
    
3. Partner with local businesses. You’re sure to have many small businesses in your area with a checkout counter and a reason for people to wait for a few minutes. Chinese take out, ice cream stores, dry cleaners, etc. Ask the owners if you can leave a cute little bag on their counter for a couple of weeks as an added service to their customers. Put a sticker on the bag that says “drop in your business card to win a free skin care pampering session and makeover” (if you’re with a skin care company) or “a free session with a kitchen organizer” (if you’re with a cooking tool company) or “a free appointment with a jewelry specialist who can show you the right jewelry for your clothing” (if you’re with a jewelry company). You get the idea— you want people to put in their name and phone number because they’re interested in what you have to offer. Instead of spending the time warm chatting and doing surveys, it’s a huge time saver to place the bags (use sticky stuff on the bottom so the bags don’t fall!) – and then come back and check on them, thanking your contacts at each location with free samples or products. You know what to do— with each phone call, turn each session into a party when possible, letting your client know of the benefits of holding their session as a party.
    
4. Email autoresponders are not yet widely popular with direct sales team leaders, and I’m not sure why. In my opinion, it’s a handy way to communicate with your team because you can set the messages up in advance and you can queue them to go out whenever you’d like. If you’d like your team to hear from you daily, you can spend an hour one day a week queueing up daily messages to be sent throughout the week. Furthermore, you can set up follow up messages so that when a new team member joins your list, she’s getting pre-set messages from you. You can set up autoresponder lists for your hostesses, your clients, your team, your potential clients, and your potential team members. You can have unlimited autoresponder lists for $19 a month with a service such as aweber.com.
    
5. Take advantage of social media! For me, social media is a huge timesaver because often times I find wonderful customers online without having to be dressed, clean my house for a client to come to me, or even pack a bag to go to my client. I send samples to my out of town potential client, I follow up, and voila. Be friendly online— get to know people who have something in common with you. Don’t attack them immediately with your sales pitch. Simply get to know people, join in the conversation, and at an appropriate time, ask them if they’d like to join your email list and/or your snail mail list. Ask them if they’d like product samples. Become an expert in your field so that people online gravitate towards you.

Do you have other time saving tips? Please add them in the comments below!

If you happen to be with a skin care or cosmetics company and would like additional timesaving tips, I’m launching a new program at http://busymomskincarebiz.com/ – it’s an e-course for direct sales skin care business owners who need specific ideas to get the most “bang for their buck” and have the most efficient use of their time with income producing activity. For a small investment, you’ll be enrolled in the e-course which you can take whenever you’d like and you get the e-course in e-book format as well.

Have a great, productive summer everyone!

Heather Price is a mom of AWESOME three year old twins, both with various special needs. While they’re in preschool or sleeping, she is a sales director for Mary Kay Cosmetics and a distributor for Send Out Cards. Heather has ten years of experience in direct sales. You can learn more about Heather at her website: http://heatheramyprice.com/ or on her facebook page: http://facebook.com/heatheramyprice.com

Grab a Cup of Coffee and Join us…

We had such a great time on the free webinar "Direct Sales 101: 4 Keys to Success" we did this past Wednesday. The turnout for the live event was awesome, and the feedback we got after the fact completely made my whole week! I love what I do, and training is my absolute favorite thing to do.

That being said, the recording wasn't perfect from Wednesday and I wanted to give those who couldn't make that event a chance to come join us live, so Nancy and I have decided to do an encore of the event tomorrow (Saturday, Aug. 21st) morning at 9:00 am PT/12:00 noon ET.*

Want to join us? We'd love to share your Saturday morning with you and the information on this webinar is awesome. If you've already signed up for the original webinar, you should have received instructions for attending tomorrow's event. If you didn't sign up for the first event, just click below and get signed up. Even if you can't make the live webinar tomorrow, we'll send you the replay (and I promise, all of you who've been asking about Wednesday's replay, you'll get the replay of tomorrow's event just as soon as we're done. Like I said, it wasn't perfect and I want you to get my best work. I'm petty sure we've fixed the issues for tomorrow's event).

Click here to get signed up.

And if you were on the Wednesday event and want to tell us what you thought below, I'd love that!

Looking forward to "seeing" you on the call tomorrow.

*If you're reading this after the live event, go to the sign up page and enter your information and you'll receive the replay immediately.

Heading To Your Direct Sales National Convention?

It's that time of year again. Many of you are heading for your company's National Convention. What I can promise you is this – you'll come away with your head swimming with fun memories, stories, and enough new ideas to overwhelm even the most organized among you.

Last year I recorded a short audio clip outlining a simple way to organize and implement all of those great ideas. Take a few minutes and give it a listen. And feel free to share it with your upline, downline, and direct sales friends!

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