Everyone is busy.
Most direct sellers do it as a side hustle, and they are either working their biz around other work or family commitments. Or both.
Direct sales or party plan business is absolutely ideal as a side hustle because it’s so flexible. It’s one of the reasons I love it so much!
But, because it’s not your main hustle, you don’t have time to waste! So you must ensure you’re investing your time wisely, not just spinning your wheels but moving forward.
This means that how you spend your business time is vital. Have you ever heard of the Pareto Principle? This principle states that 80% of the results come from 20% of the efforts. This means that 80% of your efforts are not doing much for you!
When I first learned about this, I was excited to work out which 20% of my tasks were producing the results because it would mean I could reduce the amount of time I spent on my business while at the same time growing it!
Things to stop doing in your direct sales biz
- I stopped investing massive amounts of time studying the products. I decided that if a guest or customer wanted to know more than I could tell them, I learned how to find out. I always got back to them, which became another opportunity to continue that relationship with the customer.
- I also stopped investing lots of time in team members who were less active or less engaged. Instead, I used my team to focus on my eager ‘rising stars‘ and get new team members off to a great start.
- I focused my activities on getting parties (online or in-home) rather than chasing individual orders. It’s much more time efficient to see a group of people at once and gather a bunch of orders in one go. I used to feel like I was constantly chasing orders.
If you need some ideas on how to get bookings, check this article so you can get off the individual order treadmill too.
- I focused more of my time on finding new team members and supporting them in getting their own businesses started. I realized that team growth would significantly impact my long-term income and that the faster I recruited, the faster my business would grow.
- I started scheduling my social media posts in advance. I would sit down monthly to plan and schedule content for my business page, customer group, and team group. I found those monthly sessions were super productive, and my content became more thought out and better planned.
This change stopped me running around through the week madly, trying to think of something to post on Facebook. I love using Cinchshare for my scheduling, but you can use Facebook too.
I found that once I cut out ‘busy work’ – the tasks I used to do that didn’t add to my bottom line – I could do more to grow my business. For example, I spent hours preparing folders with product information or color-coding my customer files. So now, I focus my time on the 20% of tasks that build my business.
Another key to working smarter, not harder, is consistency. Your business won’t progress if you only work on it randomly. Of course, you don’t have to dedicate much time (I hope that much is clear now), but it does help to be consistent for people to trust you with their business.
