So you’ve booked a party, and you’re all pumped to go. You are ready to have some fun and make some sales. But your host apologizes as she explains that several people haven’t turned up!
She’s disappointed, and so are you. Sales are less than you’d hoped.
You’re wondering what’s wrong with you. Maybe you’re even wondering if you’re in the right industry.
Let me tell you. There’s nothing wrong with you or your host! You’re great, and direct selling is a fantastic industry with plenty of opportunities.
So what can you do? First, you can help your host to increase attendance, so you and her will have a great time!
3 ways to help your host
1. Ensure your host invites contacts from a variety of networks in her life. Help the host use the FRANK worksheet (download below) to develop a list of names. FRANK stands for Friends, Relations, Acquaintances, Neighbors, and Kids’ contacts. Most of you will know it. But the secret to boosting the usefulness of the FRANK list is to use the Friend field to include friends-of-friends. These people are friends with your host’s friends (she may have met them), but she doesn’t know them well enough to invite them directly.
But what she can do is ask her friend to bring this person along: “Don’t you think Lateisha would like this too?” “I think Joanna would enjoy this party too. Why don’t you bring her along?”
This will work much better than saying, “bring a friend.” That is too broad and open comments and too easy to ignore. Admit it. You have ignored it in the past! We all have. However, if your host asks her friend, “why don’t you invite Anna too?” the friend will likely feel obligated to follow through and invite Anna. You want to coach your host to use the FRANK worksheet and name friends-of-friends.
2. Go the extra mile and write out invitations for your host. Make it super easy for the host by printing out pretty invites that already have all the details. Then, they must write in the names and pass them along to their friends. Sending invites via snail mail will work well as that is becoming rare in this era of email.
I recommend the Shuffle by Elify app for digital invites, so the invite goes directly to a contact’s phone. Shuffle allows you to text great-looking invites that grab people’s attention. First, you create the invite with all the details. Then, all the host has to do is text the link to her guests.
3. Get your host to remind her guests close to the date of the party. Shuffle is ideal for this, it’s pretty, it’s easy, and it’s right on a guest’s phone so they can quickly pop it in their calendar if they haven’t done so already. I have also noticed that when I include a link to the catalog in the reminder message, I get more pre-party orders too! But your host can use plain text as well, as long as a reminder does go out.
You can increase the success of your parties by paying a little more attention in the invite phase. This way you’ll make more sales and increase the chances of further bookings and recruits. And it’s more fun for you and the host too.
Please let me know in the comments how you’ve been using FRANK.
