Archive for November, 2008

Congratulations! You’ve got a strong direct sales downline or are beginning to build one! This is one of the best parts of being a direct sales consultant, – the fact that you can share your passion for your business with others, help them to earn a little extra money and get paid for helping grow your company as well.

Now that you are a leader of a team, you’ll need to build a strong relationship with downline members to not only help them stay strong in their business, but to help your business grow stronger as well. A strong downline relationship will be one that’s mutually helpful and everyone benefits.

But you may be wondering how to insure that downline members feel cared for while still maintaining some type of balance with the rest of your life. Here are 5 easy tips for maintaining a great upline/downline relationship.

1. Start off with a bang. When a new recruit first signs up, it’s vitally important that you communicate often with her. One thing that I have found very helpful here is to develop a series of emails to send to new downline that talks them through those first days “on the job”. It will help them feel like they are connected to the company and to you. Each day while your new recruit is waiting for her kit she should hear from you. This is very easy to do with an autoresponder system, but can also be done by just copying and pasting into an email message every morning.

2. 15 minutes a day. Set aside fifteen minutes of each workday for downline phone calls. Use those minutes to call one to five members of your group for a quick “just checking in” call. Leave a message if you get voicemail. The idea is to let them know that you’re thinking of them and giving them a chance to hear your voice. This is a great time to ask how they’re doing with their non-business life as well and get beyond your direct sales company to show you care about them.

3. A downline website. Creating a simple website for my group has been the best thing, by far that I did to keep communication open and strong with my group. We have weekly topic discussions, contests, upload important files and just have fun with the whole group. Through this many relationships between members of my group have blossomed just because the website allowed them to “break the ice”.

4. Meetings and/or conference calls. This is another great way to foster unity and strong relationships within your group. Many of you probably have downline that are out your area, so have a quarterly conference call with everyone just to touch base. There are many free teleconference services via the internet that make it very easy to do. And if you can, have a face-to-face meeting once in a while as well. Some group leaders have meetings monthly or quarterly. Others do a once a year get together with everyone.

5. Ecards. I love ecards for celebrating birthdays, achievements etc. First of all it’s FREE, which is great, but it’s so convenient and just plain fun. Use one of those Internet calendar functions to keep track of birthdays. Once a month go through the upcoming month and set up the ecard deliveries for the birthdays and company anniversary dates for the next month or more. You can set these up to deliver up to a year in advance! It’s a wonderful thing. There are hundreds of sites for free ecards on the Internet. Have fun searching for ones that suit you!

The key? Communicate in any and every way that you can. You will find that your direct sales team members will stay with your company much longer when you’ve fostered a strong relationship by keeping in touch! Have fun and happy team building!

If you’re already in direct sales, you know that it’s not always easy to keep the priorities straight. Particularly when your business is just starting, but also when you get things going at a good clip in your business, direct sales can take on a life of its own and quickly cross the boundaries of happy home life. Here are 10 quick tips for helping to keep the Mom part of your life at the forefront while still running a successful Direct Sales business.

1. Plan – Sit down with your calendar and write out everything non-direct sales business related first. Decide which of those things are non-negotiable no matter how many people want to do parties on that day. And then keep them non-negotiable! Write in kids events, date nights with hubby, vacations, birthdays and birthday parties and plain old “just because” family time. I personally love THIS SYSTEM for planning my days and my power hour (below).

2. Power Hour – One of my favorite speakers in the direct sales field is Belinda Ellsworth. Her power hour is a tremendous way to manage your business life. It’s simple too! Here’s the quick rundown: Take 4 manila folders. Mark 1 as recruiting, 1 as booking, 1 as customer service and 1 as downline management. Decide on an hour in your day when you are going to work the phones for your business. Take your folders, set a timer and work each folder for 15 minutes only. When the 15 minutes is up, move to the next folder. As you interact with customers, recruits and downline put the information in these folders until the next time you sit down for your power hour. You will be amazed at how much work you can really accomplish when you are focused for that hour of time.

3. Office door – Use it! After you are done with your power hour or email time or whatever, walk out of the room and CLOSE the door! Or if you’re working with the laptop (see below) turn it off and close the laptop.

4. Get a laptop. A laptop with wireless Internet is a great tool for moms. You can get them pretty inexpensively now too. While the kids are doing their homework, pop open the laptop, sit WITH them and do your emails then. When they’re done with the homework, close the laptop and be done with your work as well.

5. Freedom Friday – Decide on one day in each week where you will be “off”. This can be Friday or any day, but decide on it and then actually do it. Commit to it with your kids, put it on your calendar and enjoy it. You’ll love it and the emails can wait! Once your customers and downline understand that this is your day off, they will respect it.

6. Use the “open date card “concept. Determine which days of the weeks you’ll be doing parties and write those down on a separate booking calendar or individual party date cards. When you are at your parties and getting future bookings only book parties on the dates that you set in advance on that calendar or on the cards. If someone needs a different date than you have available, find her another consultant (preferable in your downline!) to take the party.

7. Automate – Use the tools of the Internet to automate as much of your business as you can. Use an auto-responder for your recruit email packets and your downline training. Have a voicemail message available with a 10-minute presentation on your business that potential recruits can call before they call you with questions. Do conference calls with your downline so that you can address issues with the whole group rather than one on one with each of them, etc.

8. Involve your kids – Make your direct sales business a family affair. Employ your children to help with putting labels on catalogs, filing your paperwork, packing up your supplies for your parties, making the bank deposits, etc. As they get older their work responsibilities can increase too. You can even pay them tax-free and write it off as a legitimate business expense. Talk to your accountant about this great home business benefit.

9. Hire a maid. If your business is really on a roll and you need to spend more time on business, don’t take that time away from your family, take it away from other parts of your life, like the housecleaning instead. Hire a maid to do the big housecleaning jobs and use the time you’d normally be doing that to hang with the kids. It’ll be worth every penny.

10. Have fun – remember that your kids are only young once. They need you to be mommy FIRST and businesswoman second, even if your family does need the extra money your Direct Sales business brings in. Work smarter, not harder and enjoy your kids while you can.

Direct Sales and the Hundred Acre Wood
By Annette Yen

When my girls were growing up we absolutely adored reading the Winnie the Pooh books together. In fact, now that they’re 13 and 15, we actually still love the original series (not the Disney remake books) and often will just pick them up for fun.

There is benefit, however, to reading Pooh as a direct seller too. Hang with me here, I’m very serious.

Pooh and his friends from the hundred acre wood provide a metaphor for the people in our lives in general and more specifically to our direct sales teams. So let’s have some fun and explore a bit more about Winnie the Pooh and his friends and see if you have someone on your team or a potential recruit that looks like:

Pooh himself: Pooh is pretty much the eternal optimist. He looks at every opportunity of life as a chance to get more honey and won’t be shy about asking for honey when he sees it nearby and if his tummy is a little rumbly. He cares about his friends, sings while he’s walking and basically is fun to be around. Though not always the brightest bulb in the lamp, what Pooh lacks in street smarts he makes up in caring and optimism.

Direct Sales Poohs – Poohs make great team members because they are pretty teachable. It might take a little bit longer for a Pooh to catch on to the system, but overall they’re so fun to work with because of their cheerfulness and their willingness to try, that you enjoy the interaction and long for more. Poohs will usually see problem issues as bumps in the road and rarely make much of a fuss beyond “oh bother!”

Piglet: Nervous little piggy Piglet thinks he’s smaller than he really is. He has his moments of being brave, but for the most part, prefers to have Pooh hold his hand and lead the way. Though faithful to the core, anything new makes him nervous and he’ll make a point of letting everyone know that he’s a “very small animal.”

Direct Sales Piglets: You can’t miss the Piglets in our business because they’re very needy. Even though they know the answer they don’t trust themselves enough to go with it so they’ll call, email or IM you every time a situation comes up when they’re working the business. Some direct sales Piglets will be too tentative to ever really give the business enough of a chance and will quit, but others could turn out to be your shining stars. They’ll be the ones whose life will be so amazingly altered because of their involvement in direct sales that they’ll be featured in company publications.

Rabbit: Mr. Type A personality through and through, Rabbit is organized and can get things done. Though slightly lacking in the warm and fuzzy department, he’s the go to guy when they need to come up with a plan and actually implement it. Rabbit’s strong personality sometimes scares the other hundred acre wood animals, but they depend on him nonetheless.

Direct Sales Rabbits: Though teeming with potential, direct sales Rabbits sometimes are so focused on being organized, planning and vision that they don’t ever really get their business going, because once they’ve finished organizing their desk or their schedule, there’s not enough time to actually sell the product or the opportunity. Once you can help a Rabbit focus, however, they could well be your powerhouse sellers and recruiters.

Owl: Wise old owl has an answer and a story for everything. He can talk his way out of any situation – either by confusing or boring them to death. Unfortunately many of Owl’s stories are a bit exaggerated – or completely made up. Owl thinks it’s important to look smarter and act like he knows more than he really does.

Direct Sales Owls: The Owls on your team want to be superstars so much that they’ll actually craft stories or embellish what happens in their business appear like the person they hope to be in the future. Owls, too, can turn into superstars if you capture the enthusiasm that drives them to be storytellers and help them to use that skill to share the business with others in an honest and straightforward way.

Eeyore: If Pooh is the eternal optimist, Eeyore is the eternal pessimist. To him, everything that can go wrong will go wrong. And so, unfortunately, Eeyore rarely will even try to do anything at all because there is no hope of it succeeding. If something does happen to go right for him, he’ll somehow dwell on the fact that it’ll probably go wrong somewhere else down the road.

Direct Sales Eeyores: If you’ve made it this far in this article you’ve probably got several names in mind that qualify for Eeyore. Every time this team member calls you it’s to complain about something that probably doesn’t even affect her because she’s not even had a party or placed an order yet and is determined not to until your company makes the situations better. The problem is this person will then have found another problem to complain about. Direct Sales Eeyores are pretty tough to turn around and can often drain your energy. Don’t let them. Encourage them in their positive steps, coach them to action and if nothing helps, be strong and walk away.

This was all in fun, but just like other “personality type” tests and assessments, the Winnie the Pooh list can be helpful in realizing your own Direct Sales style as well as the personality types of your team. Once you can identify certain characteristics of team members you’ll know how to coach and encourage them to success.