Direct Sales Success: Existing Customers Are Your “Low Hanging Fruit”

Guest Post by Jen Fitzgerald

I see it all the time. Direct Sellers are always trying to find ways to generate new business and meet new customers. What about the customers that have already bought from you? I used to think like this myself until I had a huge breakthrough…

Here’s my three month experiment: I started paying attention only to my current customers and I didn’t try and go out and get any new ones. I learned about their lives, their families, their hobbies, etc. I became friends with my current customer base and an AMAZING thing happened. I got more business and my sales increased!

I started contacting them when I knew they were going to on vacation to tell them to have a good time or sent them a birthday/anniversary card just because. After a few months of this, I was friends with almost all of my several hundred customers and knew them like my closest friends.

At the end of month two, I sent out an e-mail or letter in the mail and asked them for referrals and any ideas for fundraisers I could do, etc. My following month was the biggest I had EVER had. I had tons of new customers from referrals and I didn’t have to go out and find them anywhere…they came to me!

I know this may sound simple but try it for a month or two. I am not saying you have to stop generating any new business but try to focus your time on becoming friends with your current customer base. Build a relationship with them and then ask them for a referral. Wouldn’t you be more than willing to help a friend out versus someone you just bought a few products from? Trust me when I say you will be more fulfilled in your heart and soul as well from this experiment.

Your assignment: Contact your customers by phone, e-mail or regular mail and get to know them. Truly get to know them. Then when you feel comfortable, ask them for a referral or thoughts on where you might be able to do a fundraiser or set up a booth. I promise your results will be amazing!

Jen Fitzgerald is the owner of The Client Angel, the premier tool for helping Direct Sellers build lasting relationships with their customers. Providing better follow-up causes your businesses to soar! See a demo at: www.theclientangel.com.

Your Direct Sales Business Doesn’t Require A Super Cape!

“I never did anything alone. Whatever was accomplished in this country was accomplished collectively.” ~Golda Meir

Do you ever feel badly about not being able to do it all? I think that as women we have grown up believing that we not only can we “do it all”, but that we must. However, when it comes to your business that doesn’t need to be the case.

Recognizing that you need to delegate a part of your business is not a sign of failure or weakness. Nobody’s gonna come revoke your Wonder Woman costume – quite the opposite. Realizing that you can’t (and shouldn’t) do it all is a sign of leadership and true strength! But you already know this, remember? Let me explain.

If it wasn’t for the help of your hostesses, customers or recruits you wouldn’t have a business at all would you? You had to ask them to help your business in one way or another, either by hosting a party, buying your product or being a part of your team. You couldn’t do all those things by yourself, could you? Well… maybe you could… but you wouldn’t have much of a business if you did, would you?

Delegation is the same sort of thing. There are other parts of your business where you cannot and should not try to “do it all.” Just like any other business, you do not excel at every part of your direct selling business. It’s ok to let go of some of the tasks in your business: it will free you up to give more time and attention to the places where you shine. Can you, for example, delegate birthday cards so you pick up an extra hour every month for booking parties, meeting prospects and selling product? Who does your hostess packets? Are you an awesome blogger with no time to get your articles queued up for readers?

Don’t beat yourself up that you can’t do it all… nobody can! One of the best parts of being a woman, is we have lots of friends to help us out! All you have to do is ask. Even Super Heroes (and She-roes) have sidekicks!

About the Author

Melissa H. Dery is The Golden Rule Virtual Assistant (VA) providing Virtual Business Management to Direct Sales leaders. A former direct sales consultant, Melissa also grew up in a direct selling family. She knows firsthand about the “behind the scenes” work required to help your business grow and prosper.

When Melissa combined more than 20 years of experience as an administrative professional with her desire support those in direct sales and The Golden Rule VA was born. Her mission and her “rule” are the same: to treat your business as if it were her very own, with respect, creativity and professionalism.

Melissa is married to her best friend and lives in New Hampshire with her two boys. She has a Bachelor Degree in Business Management and a “Ducktoratte” Degree from Disney University. She loves coffee, running, and most of all, camping with her family.

Direct Sales Success: Multiple Companies Is Like Chasing Two Rabbits

Visit the Direct Sales Classroom Store to take advantage of the special offer on Direct Sales JUMP Start. The sale ends October 31, and after that, the product will never be available again in any format.

If you’re curious to see what I’m up to that’s causing all these changes, take a look at the Business Action Hero blog for more details on the 90 day Webadventure challenge.

Choosing To Lead

Leadership is not about the number of people in your organization. Leadership is not about the size of your paycheck, or even the fancy “stuff” you possess. Leadership is an in-born quality that we all possess – if we choose to put it into effect.

Leadership means making right choices – even when no one is looking. It means being courageous in the face of your fears. It means choosing to be a leader – and trusting that followers will show up.

Dave Ursillo‘s fascinating book, Lead Without Followers, describes this very thing (you can read my review and win an autographed copy of his book here). Lead Without Followers is an examination of everything wrong with our perception and definition of leadership in today’s world. Using Washington D.C. as a backdrop, Dave illustrates how we as a society have taken to wealth and “power” as what defines a leader, instead of the intrinsic qualities that we all aspire to: trustworthiness, honor, respect, and the ability to do the right thing.

As I was reading the book, I got to thinking about the number of direct sellers I know that are true leaders in their field – not because they have an organization with thousands of people (some of them do, but some do not), but because of how they conduct themselves and their business.

These leaders may only be leading a small army (or an army of one), yet, they are exemplary, compassionate people. They care for their teams, their customers, and their hosts with a servant’s heart. They’re focused on quality, not quantity, and while earning the company incentive trip is a nice feather in their cap, their focus is on helping those they meet make better choices for their lives.

By Dave’s definition, being a leader doesn’t mean you need millions of dollars or millions of followers. Being a leader is a choice – in fact choosing to be a leader must happen before you can ever have followers.

Whether or not you decided to step up into leadership in your company, and nurture a team of consultants, you are still very much a leader. It’s how you conduct yourself and your business. It’s how you treat the people around you. It’s how you build your life and business with integrity.

Leadership is not about the stuff you have, it’s about the stuff you’re made of.

Reconfiguring Life

Today, I’m making a BIG shift in my life.

My baby starts kindergarten.

When I started this business, he wasn’t even a year old, and my Mom had just died. I decided I wanted to build something that could really serve the world, and give me the ability to be home, love on my kids, and be a better person.

And it’s the same concept I teach to all of you. In direct sales, your business is an extension of who you are, and it’s hard to separate you from your business.

That’s as it should be.

A “Catastrophe” Turned Abundant

by Teresa Romain

[Editor's note: This week, our resident prosperity coach returns with an insightful look at how we often miss the opportunities right in front of us because we're too busy focusing on something that's gone wrong. It's a re-print from one of Teresa's recent newsletters, but it was SO good, I had to share it here.]

You probably don’t know that, among other things, my husband Dan is a watch- and clock-maker. He doesn’t really MAKE the watches and clocks. Rather, he repairs and restores them – particularly old, mechanical ones. He gets customers from all sorts of places – and it’s not uncommon for people to mail their watches in for repair from different parts of the country.

I tell you this because the “catastrophe” this letter is about occurred as he was repairing one such pocket watch. When Dan repairs (or overhauls) an old watch – he completely takes it apart and checks all of the tiny pieces that make up the “watch movement”. Tiny jewels, hairsprings, mainsprings, screws, balance wheels – he takes it all apart, cleans them all, fixes what needs fixing and puts it all back together again.

And sometimes in the process of doing that – accidents happen. Like a little tiny spring will go flying or he’ll drop a jewel or small screw. I always know when it happens – because I’ll usually hear a “sound effect” coming from his watch office. If I’m in the nearby kitchen, it’s usually followed with a desperate “Honey – I need your help!” And, if I’m available, I go into search through Dan’s hair, to look on his clothes and under his feet before he moves. If I don’t find it on him, then one or both of us begin the process of combing the floor and his bench for the TINY missing part.

Usually one of us finds it. Sometimes we don’t. Usually, that’s not a big problem – Dan can order a replacement part.

Other times – like when he’s working on a rare pocketwatch – losing a part can be catastrophic. Because replacement parts don’t exist at all or, if they do, they are incredibly difficult to find and, as a result, can be quite expensive.

Having said all that – can you guess what kind of watch he was working on this week when I heard a loud “sound effect” come from his office, followed by an unusually desperate “Honey, can you come here?”

You got it. It was a rare pocket watch and a REALLY important part went flying as he was trying to put it all back together. I looked all over Dan – and didn’t find it. Then we moved our search to the floor – first combing it visually and then using a magnet to cover every inch. No luck. The part had disappeared.

Dan was beside himself. Upset. Sad. Mad at himself. Scared. Really scared. He kept saying, “I HAVE to find that part. I can’t fix the watch without that part. I NEED that part. I’m never going to be able to find a replacement for that part. What am I going to do?”

So he kept looking for it. And the longer he kept looking, the more upset and scared he became. Until, finally, he had to accept that he had lost it and he probably wasn’t going to find it.

Which meant he had to find a replacement for it amidst a bunch of old watches that he has kept on hand to “harvest” their parts. Knowing how rare this particular watch was, he knew he wouldn’t have an EXACT replacement – so he he decided to try a bunch of parts from different watches and see if he could find a substitute that worked. Often, that’s a long process – with no guarantee of success.

This time, howerver, one of the first “substitute parts” he found looked like it might work. He put it in the watch to see what would happen. This time, I head a completely different “sound effect” come from his watch office. I heard….

“Wow! I don’t believe it. It just might work. Wow! It IS working. This is amazing. This part is actually working better than the original. I can’t believe it. This is GREAT!”

And instantly I knew I was going to write about this “catastrophe” in my weekly newsletter.

Because I saw myself in Dan. And I suddenly wondered how often in my life have I worked really hard to find what I THINK I need to make my life work – only to (eventually) discover that I don’t really need it and there might be something that will work better?

How often have I “lost” or “broken” something and spent a ton of energy and time trying to fix it because I thought I needed it back for my life (or business) to work? Again – only to one day realize that there’s actually something even better available to replace the thing I lost or broke?

How often, in these situations, have I acted in panic – trying to get things back the way they were – when what I needed to do was ACCEPT what had happened and open myself to new possibilities and try new things?

How often have I doggedly and determinedly tried to MAKE things happen the way I think they need to happen – because I was afraid to let go and trust that there is a better way or that something better will come along?

These are the questions I’ve been asking myself since Dan’s “catastrophe”. And the answer to all of these questions hias ranged from “Often to all the time”. And the result has, in many ways, been catastrophic in my life.

Because those behaviors – making things happen the way I think they need to happen, trying to hold onto or find what has been lost, trying to fix things so everything is like it once was – well, they actually block my ability to ACCESS and experience Abundance in my life. I can’t TRUST the Flow of Abundance in my life and, at the same time, try to CONTROL it.

That doesn’t mean I don’t do what I can do. It doesn’t mean that Dan doesn’t try to find a part he drops. It’s more about doing what I can do and he can do about the “broken” and “lost” things without the desperation, the attachment and the fear. And it’s about knowing when to let go, try something else and trust in something greater than yourself and what you can see and do by yourself. To trust Abundance.

There IS a pretty funny (and abundant) postscript to this story. Several hours AFTER Dan found this GREAT “substitute” part, he actually found the original one he lost. So now he had two options for fixing this rare watch! Talk about abundance!

Well, there you have it- the catastrophe turned abundant and the realizations it created for me. Now it’s your turn.

Did you recognize yourself in Dan’s story? Did any of the questions it prompted for me offer realizations, insights or AHAs for you? Is there something in your life now that is “broken” or “lost” that you are frantically, desperately or doggedly trying to fix and get back to the way it WAS? Is it time for you to let it go and open yourself to something else – to new actions and possibilities?

Is there any area in your life where you are trying to CONTROL the process and outcome instead of TRUST the process and the Flow of Abundance in your life?

As always, I’d love to hear what (if anything) you got from my story today.
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Teresa Romain is the President & Founder of www.AccessAbundance.com and has trained and coached thousands of individuals around the world access and experience greater freedom, fulfillment, well-being and abundance in their businesses and their lives. Unique in her approach and dynamic and passionate in her style, Teresa is known for making the transformational process of accessing abundance challenging, fun and powerful in its results.