Direct Sales Strategies for the “New” Economy

“Mother may have warned you that being easy was a bad thing, but I am telling you that being easy is not only a good thing, it can make you a lot of money, too.” – Sydney Biddle Barrows

This may seem an odd way to open an article about sales strategies – using a quote from the Mayflower Madam. And yet, this is the crux of the “new economy” so many direct sales professionals face today. Simply put, we don’t make it easy for our customers to do business with us. In Direct Sales 104: Advanced Sales Strategies, we’ll be taking a closer look at how to not only draw in more customers, but also, how to make each transaction with a customer more profitable. It’s true that it’s easier to sell more to an existing customer than it is to attract new ones. Here are a few ideas on how to increase sales to your existing customer base:

Direct Sales Leadership: Success Begins With Gratitude

Each year on July 5, I like to take some time to count my blessings.

Why July 5?

First, it’s very near the half-way point of the calendar year, which makes it a good time to reflect on my accomplishments thus far, and ensure I’m on track for my annual goals as well. It’s also right after Independence Day in the United States, so if I’ve been on holiday, I’m back to work. Lastly, it’s my half-birthday, and as I get older, it’s important for me to recognize what’s going right in my life – and to express gratitude for it.

Direct Sales Tips: 3 Must Haves for Successful Events

As a direct sales consultant, I was party to more than my share of horrible events.

You know the kind: five consultants standing around in a mostly empty booth, while the crowds of passersby pass you by.

You look on, longingly hoping that someone, anyone, will enter the booth to talk to you.
But people keep walking by, afraid you’ll all descend like vultures.

Yeah. I’ve been there. Thousands of people, no leads to speak of.

Then I had the opportunity to set up my own booth at a 2-day event, instead of “buying in” to someone else’s.

I had complete control over how things were “supposed” to go (more on that in a minute).

I learned there were three critical factors to a successful event booth:

1. Traffic
2. Leads
3. Buzz

If you do it right, it’s like a circle. Traffic generates leads, which creates buzz, which stimulates traffic.

But you can’t get those three things to work if you haven’t done your homework BEFORE the event. Here are the three MUST HAVES for any successful expo-type vendor event.

1. Know the desired outcome. What is it you’re looking for from this event? More bookings? More recruits? More sales? A combination of the three? Be very clear on what it is you want from the leads that enter your booth.

2. Know the special offer. The best events I’ve ever had included some kind of incentive for creating the desired outcome AT the event. A special incentive for booking your party at the expo, for example.

3. An eye-catching display and sticky collateral. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but it does have to be vertical. Something tall and easy to spot across a crowded expo center, or takeaways that have your visitors advertising for you, are both effective means of generating buzz once people have made it to your booth.

There’s one more thing you need to plan for before the event – time to follow up with leads. If you’re too busy to follow up with contacts you’ve made at the event, don’t bother going. It’s the equivalent of flushing your money down the toilet. Before the big day, block out time in your calendar AFTER the big event to be sure you can reach out to as many of your prospects as possible. If you’ve made a plan for the three must-haves, you’ll need that time after the event to connect and close your leads.

Done properly, these three items are the biggest determining factors of your event success. If you handle yourself well and stick to the plan, you’ll likely come out with more leads than you can handle.

If you opt to do things the old-school way (as did some of the consultants that joined me in my booth), you’ll drive people away.

The proof is in the pudding, as they say. I set up my booth, told the other consultants how we we’re going to handle the event, and left to speak on the main stage at the event. When I returned, two of the consultants were out in the aisles, passing out business cards and begging for bookings.

These two ladies were not on my team, but were part of my leader’s team. They had paid to share the booth with us, so I wanted them to be successful. I politely explained to them that they needed to be in the booth, following the outline we had created to make the event successful for everyone.

“But that’s too distracting. We aren’t talking to as many people that way. Out in the aisle, we’re talking to eveyone that comes by.”

“My point exactly.” I said, as I motioned for my team mate to join us in the aisle.

She was finishing up scheduling a booking on her calendar and I asked her to report out her results.

“I’ve booked a show and scheduled one recruiting appointment, but I’ve only talked to about 15 people since you left.”

I then turned my attention to the ladies in the aisle.

“We’ve passed out about 50 business cards. I’ve got one lady that said she’d come back later to talk about booking a party. She’s a friend of mine from work.”

She did book that party. But at the end of the evening, when we were sorting out the leads, those two women had decidedly fewer leads than my team. They also had fewer booked appointments, and fewer business cards in their hands.

They didn’t come back the next day. On their way out for the evening, they grumbled about how poorly the event fared for them, and how I must have somehow cheated to get nearly twice as many leads for my team.

Ladies! It’s about quality, not quantity. Those women were forcing themselves on anyone that stood still long enough to take a card, instead of getting people to be excited about what they offered, and sharing that excitement with everyone they came in contact with.

Who’s going to keep a business card? Not very many people. Who’s going to wear a sticker that says “I got lucky!” and then tell other people at the event where they can go to get a sticker of their own?

Now you see my point. My team was engaging people in a game and putting the sticker on these people so that we would know who’d already played the game. People were coming to our table to play the game, walking away with a sticker and doing the advertising for us about our booth. We didn’t have to go out into the aisle. They were coming to us.

But playing the game takes about 45 seconds per guest. That means you won’t talk to as many people. BUT the ones you DO talk to are engaged, excited about what you’re offering, and more likely to book, buy, or consider joining your team.

So I guess you could say we cheated. We used the power of the crowd on itself. We created a viral marketing campaign right there in the event. We created buzz, which drew traffic, which generated leads…

…And we had more leads than we could handle at the end of the night – and looked forward to even more on the next day.

© 2010 Lisa Robbin Young.

USE THIS ARTICLE FOR FREE IN PRINT OR ONLINE!

Please do not alter it and include the following information (with active links as appropriate):

Lisa Robbin Young is a certified direct sales marketing coach, teaching direct sellers to grow their business like a real business instead of an expensive hobby. Sign up for her free weekly ezine at http://www.homepartysolution.com/

Longer is Much More Gratifying: Business Relationships That Work

I subscribe to far too many mailing lists.

My assistant creates filters in my gmail account so that I can sort the wheat from the chaff on a regular basis, but even I recognize I’m still on far too many lists. Some lists I’m not even sure how I got there – or they only send me an email once every blue moon, so I forget to unsubscribe before I hit the delete button.

Today, I got an email from one such list. But I shan’t be unsubscribing just yet.

One little sentence saved him from the dung heap.

Normally, I don’t like ezines that force me to click through to read the article. But his title was compelling, revealing the business trend we witnessed in 2009 – how 7 figure companies were fast dwindling into 5 figure companies due to a failue to adapt to change.

The one little sentence that caught my eye (despite the problems with formatting on the page)?

“It takes us longer to convert a lead into a customer but it is much more gratifying in the end.”

Hello! Welcome to the world of marketing your business!

Gone are the days of sticking a business card in your prospect’s face and expecting them to buy a couple hundred dollars worth of your product. In fact, Bob suggests that going after bigger ticket clients is actually a better strategy because they understand the value of your product, and are less likely to shop based solely on price.

The reality of that, however, is that people who shop based on value take a little more time to assess, resolve and decide to make the purchase.

I’ll have a guest that attends 3 or 4 parties before they ever purchase a thing. I’m on the verge of writing this person off as uninterested just as they are whipping out their checkbook to pay for a $300+ order.

I wish I was joking, but I’m not.

See, the flip side to our “instant gratification” world is that there are still people that believe in taking their time, doing things the right way, and NOT rushing into anything. In our rush to service the next in line, we sometimes forget what serving our clients is really all about: finding their needs, and helping them make decisions that will improve their lives.

And sometimes it takes more than four point two seconds to determine if the value of your offering really is better than the other guy. Sometimes value is determined by how much time you actually SPEND WITH the client.

This isn’t just a direct sales application. This is a life application. Our best friends are usually the ones we’ve known the longest – or it at least “feeeeels like we’ve known them foreeeeeeeever”. Longer relationships are much more gratifying.

That’s the dilemma of social media. So many direct sellers have jumped on the SM bandwagon thinking it’s the road to fast riches. NO. Just like eveything else bout direct sales, it’s not get rich quick. It’s get rich by building relationships – on a national platform instead of a local one.

So if someone sold you that bill of goods, my apologies. The strength in any relationship – business or otherwise – lies in the number of genuine, valueable connections you have with that person. Sometimes you can take shortcuts, but you can’t short circuit the entire process.

© 2009 Lisa Robbin Young.

USE THIS ARTICLE FOR FREE IN PRINT OR ONLINE!
Please do not alter it and include the following information (with active links as appropriate):

Lisa Robbin Young is a certified direct sales marketing coach, teaching direct sellers to grow their business like a real business instead of an expensive hobby. Sign up for her free weekly ezine at http://www.homepartysolution.com

Social Media DON’T: LinkedIn Presentation Blunder

File this in the “Oh NO you DIDN’T!” category…

Some of you may know that I’ve had a linkedin profile for a while, but never really used it.

I started making a few connections a couple of months ago, and I’m starting to think it was a bad idea.

From what limited info I have about linkedin, you’re only supposed to “accept” real people that you know. So that’s what I did.

This week, I got a peculiar email from one of my linkedin “contacts”.

In essence this person sent me a slide show to review under the guise of getting my professional opinion. This person said they had “just finished” the presentation and wanted to get my honest feedback on it.

OhhhhhhHHHHhhhhh. I don’t really think they want my honest feedback, so I’m going to share it publicly so that YOU can learn what went wrong and how you can prevent looking like a total flake when you’re using LinkedIn.

1. The presentation was posted over a month ago.
This was not a NEW presentation, which was the first giveaway. If this person reeally wanted help, why wait a whole month to have someone review your presentation?

2. The FIRST Slide was titled “Why is NOW a graet time to join XYZ Co.”
Oh NO you DIDN’T! When I clicked through to the person’s profile, I saw that this presentation was one of the most viewed presntations on LinkedIn… for obvious reasons. This person was capitalizing on the good nature of people to view the presentation, when in reality the goal was either to get people to join the biz, or to push up the popularity of their presentation. Either way, it’s a limy, underhanded tactic, and to use it on smeone in yuor own profession HAD to be one of the most ignorant moves on the planet.

Yep, I’m seething a bit here, but there’s more.

3. It was not a personalized invitation.
Now I’m not one to consider myself arrogant, but this person didn’t use my name ONCE in the email that I recieved to review the presentation. That tells me I’m just another name on the list getting this email. God knows how many other unsuspecting folks have been hit with this same email. This person played the “I know you’re a busy professional, that’s why I want your professional opinion” card. Yes, shame on me for clicking through, but if it saves you a world of grief, my work here is done.

4. The entire presentation was TOO wordy.
Since they really asked for my opinion of the persentation, here’s the long and short of it. The slides had WAY too many words on most of them. Instead of using them as visuals, they were sales pages, loaded with way more content than you could even READ in the micro-sized format that linkedin offers in the preview pane.

Now I’m pretty verbose myself, so if I think it was wordy, it was REALLY horrible. The slide was so full, it sscrolled off the page! I couldn’t even READ the entire story of the company founder – not that I really needed to, or WANTED to. But if I did, I couldn’t. This person needs to brush up on Seth Godin’s ‘Really Bad Powerpoint’ Post before composing another presentation.

5. The final slide was a cheesy graphic of themselves with all their contact info.
Now really, if you weren’t convinced that this person was actually just trying to recruit me, nothing says it more than the final slide. I mean, seriously, if you’re giving a presentation to people that already know you, WHY would you need a whole slide just about you – with contact information too?

Let’s get to the heart of the matter. This person was pitching their product/biz opp to anyone with a puls. Granted, these were at least business professionals, so I applaud their desire to work with business builders, but if you’re wasting your time in LinkedIn or any other venue (online or off) trying to push your presentation on someone, you need your head examined.

Yep. I’m still seething. But I feel a little better now.

But here’s the cherry on top of the sundae: This person is connected to the owners of the direct sales company this person represents.

Everyody say it with me now: TACKY!

Not only is this a horrible reflection on Direct Sellers in general (I’ve ‘dis-connected’ myself from this person), but it also means that the company will get a black eye to boot.

This is exactly why we need more online marketing strategists and social media coaches working with direct sellers. At such a critical time, when companies are FINALLY embracing social media (or as Jennifer Fong pointed out, at least they’re dipping their toe in), we’ve got galactic blunders like this hurtling about cyberspace just TRYING to ruin it for everyone else.

So while I doubt this person will EVER see my review of their “presentation”, let my advice to you be plain: DO NOT BE THIS PERSON!

Lest you incur my wrath as well.

Birthday Parties, Sales, and Saying Goodbye

I don’t normally “do sales”. I certainly don’t broadcast them publicly very often.

I feel like I’m discounting the quality of my products when I “slash prices” and offer incredible savings on my products.

However, I have a very special circumstance that warrants doing something incredible.

My son turns 13 today. The BIG 1-3. But today’s both his birthday party and his going away party.

See Forest has been struggling not only with teenage hormones, but also some emotional problems and mental health issues that have placed him and our family in harm’s way more times than I care to count.

I can share this with you because he has consented to co-author a book with me about this ordeal. For the next couple of years, Forest will be in a camp program for boys with emotional problems. As a mom, this is the toughest thing I’ve ever done. It’s
probably also the smartest thing I could ever do for my son.

You can read the details on my new website.

But here’s the situation: the program costs nearly $24,000 a year – and we found out our insurance doesn’t cover any of it. Big surprise, right?

And he starts December 31, so I have a lot of motvation to do something a little bit drastic.

Here’s the link to get the print edition of Home Party Solution at more than 50% off.

If you want the 3.0 edition at the 1.0 price, you need to act fast. We can deliver as many copies as you can purchase, but the deadline for this “sale” is December 31 – the day Forest goes to camp.

I’m not one to ask for handouts. We don’t have fifty grand just lying around, either. So here’s the best of both worlds.

It may sound a little desperate, but hey, it’s my kid. If it means looking a little foolish in order to save his life, that’s a small price to pay. If it was your kid, what would you do?

If you’ve ever considered buying the book, now’s the absolute best time to do it. You’ll also get a special coupon you can use for a complimentary copy of our book when it’s completed (but that won’t be until after he graduates from the program).

It’s the least I can do to say thanks.

Click here to purchase the book

There’s no limited quantities on this. You can order as few or as many as you’d like. It’s a great book to have in your leadership lending library for your consultants. The book offers step-by-step instruction on building your online presence quickly and effectively. Online marketing isn’t just social media, folks, and this book covers all the basics in an easy to read, step-by-step approach.

So that’s the reason I’ve been kind of incognito for the last month. We’ve been finalizing all the details on his enrollment, and that’s kind of kept me out of the public eye for a bit.

And yes, that means next year will see some big changes for me and my family. I hope you’ll stick around, because even with this ordeal, you’re going to see some pretty incredible stuff coming out of our company!