Using the ‘Friends’ Contact List

Working with your host to make sure you both have a great party (usually called ‘host coaching‘) makes a big difference in the outcome in terms of attendance, sales, bookings and even recruits.

I think of my hosts as business partners. They want a fun party with friends and freebies and I want to grow my business.

The more people who attend the party from a variety of networks in the host’s life, the better it will be for both of you! When there’s a variety of people, you’re more likely to get bookings. A well attended party is usually also better in terms of sales – and thus host rewards – and you’re more likely to pick up a new team member.

Host coaching is not the icing on the cake, it’s the cake!

Use a worksheet

A great tool you can use with your hosts to help them plan who to invite, is the FRIENDS Contact List (download below). The worksheet helps them to think ‘outside the box’ of their usual go-to friends.

FRIENDS stands for Friends, Relations, In-Laws, Employment, Neighbors, Different Area, and Social. On the worksheet there are examples listed with each section and there’s room to write names. It helps people to think of all the different networks in their life.

When I don’t use a list like this, the hosts tend to invite just from one group of contacts within their network, for example their Tuesday tennis group or the school moms. When I do encourage them to use the worksheet they’ll invite the tennis group, the school moms, their hairdresser they’ve known for 13 years and their sister.

The FRIENDS worksheet will help you and the host to have a well attended and therefore more successful party. And it’s just as important to use this for online events as it is for in-home parties.

I always follow-up with my host before the party to make sure they’ve used it. I like to give it to them on paper, I post it with a thank-you card to anyone who books an online party and personally hand it to everyone who books from an in-home party.

I tend to print it on colored paper, just to make it stand out and it makes it easy when talking in the follow-up to ask how they’re going with the ‘pink FRIENDS list’ and they’ll instantly know what I’m talking about.

If you haven’t used a tool like this before, try it out for your next few parties and see the difference it makes!

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Host Coaching for Online Parties

Host Coaching for Online Direct Sales Parties

So many direct sellers and party plan consultants promote their virtual event as the ‘easy‘ option. They say their hosts ‘don’t have to do anything‘ to host a party online.

Uhhhhmmm…..No.

They do have to do something.

Sure, they don’t have to tidy up before the party, they don’t have to buy snacks and drinks and that does make it easier to have an online party.

However, they do have to be your partner in helping to make the online party a success, perhaps even more so than with an in-home party.

Below you’ll find my host coaching tips to have fabulous direct sales parties.

I’ve also put them together on a checklist that will make it easy for you to plan your online party and check where you are up to in the host coaching process – that’s especially handy if you have a few party bookings at the same time. I’ve also included the ‘Gold Star Gift’ incentive in a few different varieties, ready to send to your hostess.

Host Coaching Tips for a Successful Online Direct Sales Party

Thank the Host
Immediately after the host books a party with you, send a thank-you card in the mail. Yep, the old fashioned ‘snail mail’. We don’t get many cards or letters in the mail anymore (these days all I get in the mailbox is bills), so you’ll definitely stand out.

The thank-you card also acts as a reminder of the date and time and the reason they wanted the party in the first place (to relax, to celebrate, to get together, etc.) and the theme. This will make the whole experience with you memorable and will help you build a relationship with the host.

Create an Invitation
Use Canva or Picmonkey to create a nice invitation image that your host can easily forward to her friends with all the details about the party. If you’re using a Facebook Group to party, this can also act as the first ‘warning’ that the host will be inviting them to the group. It’s the first step in getting guests to attend.

Host coaching for online parties with free downloadables.

Host Incentive
There are several ways you can incentivize your host to help you make the party a great success. The ‘Gold Star Gift‘ (download below) includes 5 activities that will benefit the party and if the host completes all 5, she receives a special gift from you. For the gifts I use products I’ve qualified for cheaply or free in my business. If the host isn’t local I make sure it’s easy to send in the mail, but do make sure it’s a desirable gift that your host wants to work for.

Do The Actual Coaching
Many direct sellers are so caught up in sending their host invitations and host incentives, that they forget to actually talk to their host and explain how they can help and why they want to do that.

You can do the ‘coaching’ bit in several ways, you can have a chat on the phone or via video call. Don’t make it too long or make it all sound like a lot of work for her, just a quick and positive chat that helps her to understand what you want and builds some excitement.

Another option is to create a short video that highlights the important bits she needs to do (personal invites, invite people from different networks, reminders, participate and be very present in the party). Once you’ve created the video you can easily use it again and again. You can host the video on YouTube and make it ‘unlisted’ and then send the host the link so you don’t have to transmit large video files.

The least desirable option is an email or message in which you explain her part in the success of the party. Most people don’t read or only skim read emails and messages – I’m just as guilty of that as anybody else.
And as a summary, you can send the ‘Hostess Tips for Online Parties‘ printable that you can download along with the checklist and the Gold Star Gift images.

Use FRANK
Using the FRANK worksheet, you can help the host to invite people from different areas of her life. Check the article on ‘Host Coaching Helpers‘ to learn how to use FRANK and why you want this. It’s just as important in virtual parties as it is with in-home parties.

Always keep in mind that the more you engage the host, the more successful your parties will be. Not to mention, building a relationship with your host and having a great party makes it more likely she’ll book again at a later date.

How to double your bookings

Bookings, bookings, bookings! In direct sales or party plan it’s all about the bookings. So, would you like to double your bookings? Of course you would!

You can seriously increase your bookings by starting a ‘Host Club’. Even if you already run a club or group for customers, add a Host Club to your tool box as well.

What is a ‘Host Club’?

The Host Club is for people who book a number of parties with you throughout the year. How many parties someone needs to book before they’re invited to the host club is up to you.

It depends on how many catalogs per year your company launches and on what your average party value is. So you need to carefully think this through but for most consultants 2 parties in a year is a good number.

Why does a host want to be in a Host Club?

To make people want to join your Host Club, you have to make it extra special for them to be a club member.

Here are some ideas to get you thinking:

Invite them to a special function at the end of the year.
Offer awards such as “Host of the Quarter” or “Host of the Year” or “Host with Highest Party Sales” or most “Host with Most Outside Orders”. You can create a “Hall of Fame” for your hosts!
They are the first to know about special offers, new products, new catalogs, or discounts.
They are given the first opportunity to book with you for special releases or seasonal dates.
Offer a special gift when they book a second and third party in the year. Depending on what you sell you could offer them to collect a range of products that go together.
Offer ‘party points’ to hosts. Points could be awarded for number of parties, sales, bookings, outside orders, etc. At the end of the year you can announce the top three and give them some special prize.

The investment of your time will pay off massively if you make them love your host club with all the special opportunities and recognition.

Shout it from the roof tops

Make sure you ‘advertise’ the existence of your host club. Mention it in any newsletter that you send out, in your customer group on Facebook and mention it at your in-home parties.

When you call past hosts make sure you mention that they could join the host club if they book another party with you.

The better you look after your hosts, the stronger your business will be and you’ll easily double the number of parties you’re holding.

Kick start January with your Host Club

PIN: Double your bookings with a host club

To kick start your year in January, heavily ‘advertise’ your host club in the peak trade season before Christmas. Give everybody who parties with you during that time an opportunity to join the host club if they also book a party in January – even if that means lowering your requirements a bit. It’ll be worth it to start your year with a full diary.

I’m curious to hear from those of you that already run a host club! Let us know in the comments what you do and what you offer in the club.

How to capitalize on Easter for your direct sales business

Do you want to have an eggcelent Easter this year? (sorry, couldn’t resist a cheesy pun)

In this article I have 5 ideas for you to capitalize on Easter in your direct sales or party plan biz.

1. Booking Incentives

Create an Easter-themed booking incentive by adding some brightly colored Easter eggs with a product and/or a bottle of wine. Wrap this all up with a pretty ribbon and some cellophane. The trick to making booking incentives like this work for you is to make them look beautiful and enticing.

Offer these incentives to guests who book a party in April or in the week before Easter – whatever dates you want to highlight in your calendar. Adding some cute Easter eggs really adds to the visual appeal of your incentive and strengthens your seasonal theme.

Promote your Easter theme at parties and your social media.

2. Guessing Competition

This is a great little game that you can play in-home or online (or both).

Fill a jar with mini Easter eggs to create a guessing competition where people guess the number of eggs in the jar.

You can use this an icebreaker at your in-home parties by taking it along and putting it on your display. Also take a good photo of the jar and post it on your social media for an online competition in your customer group or on your business page.

You’ll need a prize for the winners and you can also give away the jar itself as a prize at your last in-home party (or online) before Easter.

3. Chocolate Games

How to make the most of Easter in your direct sales business. Read the 5 quick and easy tips!

Easter is a great opportunity to use a Chocolate theme in your parties. As you know I love themes – themes really help your parties to stand out and it will help you to get more bookings.

I have a fun chocolate game you can download here but I’ve also got a host coaching trick and chocolate game combination called “Chocolate Extravaganza” that you can read about here.

4. Facebook Tiles

If you’re running any Facebook parties in April, you’ll want to add some Easter-themed games to your parties. Also add some tiles to your business page and customer groups to add some seasonal fun and engagement.

Read this article on how to increase interaction and grab the free Easter-themed Facebook games.

5. Customer Love

Our aim with our direct sales businesses should be to be remarkable. And little things like having a bowl of Easter eggs at the ‘check-out’ at your parties makes you stand out.

I also like to pop in a few mini Easter eggs with my deliveries in the weeks leading up to Easter. Small thoughtful gestures like these make you remarkable!

Are you looking for more games to add to your stash? Check out the Ultimate Games Bundle for Direct Sellers. It comes with 26 done-for-you games for in-home and Facebook parties. Check it out now!

How to get more pre-party orders

This simple strategy will help you to power-up the results from your direct sales parties or demonstrations:

Give every host a sample box.

If you sell products such as skin care, make-up, candles, melts, food, or supplements you can easily put together a sample box.

(And if you sell other products, keep reading I have a tip for you too!)

In your sample box, you provide a trial size selection of your top 5 to 7 products for the host to pass around before the party.

You can buy inexpensive sample containers online and put together samples. Make sure you’ve labeled them appropriately and put them in a nice box or basket. There you go: you’ve created yourself a sample box!

If you sell products such as jewelry, clothing, cook ware or similar you can still make this strategy work for you.

Simply provide 3 to 5 of your top selling items to the host to show her friends before the party and collect them back at the party.

Set the expectation

When you give your host the sample box, set the expectation by saying something like: “My hosts love my sample baskets. On average they use it to gather 5 or 6 pre-party orders to give their party a big boost. Having something you can feel/try/smell really helps…you’ll be amazed how many orders you’ll get.”

This way the host understands the aim of the sample box and will try to achieve the average of several pre-party orders. And this will make the party more worthwhile for her and for you!

It’s helpful to provide the host with some ideas of where to take her sample basket. She could take it to her work, kids’ activities, her gym, send it with her partner to his work, etc. Also suggest that she meets with invited friends who can’t make it to the party so they can have a look at the sample box as well.

Pinterest: Power-up your hostess coaching

Bonus tip: Agree on payment and delivery details with your host as you give her the sample box. That way she’ll be able to provide that information to her friends when they place an order. Also write this information on a card that you place inside the box.

Once the party is finished, you collect the sample box and restock it for next time.

I always have several sample boxes ready to go so I can provide them when a host books a party with me.

Host Bingo

One of the things you can do to ensure your direct selling event is a super success, is to coach your host. If you’re new to direct sales or party plan, this can be challenging. Perhaps you’re not sure where to start or how to tell the hostess how to make her party or showing a success. That’s where Host Bingo comes in. This is a fun and easy way to give your hostess an incentive AND direction on how to make her party successful. All you need to do is to print off the printable (fill out the form below to get it). Then send this to the hostess with your host pack. She can qualify for a prize by completing all the tasks in a row and there’s a special prize if she completes the whole bingo board.

The tasks are all designed to help your event be a success and you can follow up with your host a few times with reminders for the pre-party tasks (just a quick SMS or Facebook message is fine). Obviously you’ll also need a few prizes. They don’t need to be expensive. You could choose products that you have been able to get for free or cheaply, you can grab some wine or chocolates if you don’t have products, or have some fabulous flowers delivered to her.

Party Games for Direct Sellers

Games are an awesome secret weapon for your parties. They help guests to relax and have fun. They help you to get your booking or recruiting message across. Games also help to keep your parties fresh because with a big stash of games you can always mix things up for repeat guests. Grab the Ultimate Games Bundle with 26 done-for-you games that are ready to play! All the necessary printables and images are included. And until the end of the year it’s available for only $9.75 !!!

View the Ultimate Games Bundle

Host Coaching Helpers

Host coaching is a critical element to the success of your business: the more engage your host, the better the results at your parties will be.

When I was new to direct sales, I deliberately focused on improving my own host coaching and I noticed a massive increase in attendance which led to higher sales, bookings, and recruiting leads.

It all flowed from that important first step: hostess coaching.

When you do hostess coaching well, you’ll also notice fewer cancellations and no-shows.

In this article I present 3 ‘helpers’ to assist you with your own host coaching.

Host Coaching Helpers for direct sellers

I have 3 host coaching helpers for you:

FRANK list
Spoil You Rotten Bag
Star Host

FRANK
So, first up is FRANK.

Even if you already know FRANK, I’ll teach you a little trick to supercharge its effectiveness.

The reason you want to use FRANK is that the most successful parties include guests from the host’s different circles of friends.

By inviting different people from different circles, you gain access to new circles.

It will also reduce the chance that invitees decline as they’ve been at a recent party already (which would also impact sales), and chances of multiple bookings are higher as the guests feel they have plenty of their own friends in their network to invite to their own party.

FRANK stands for Friends, Relations, Acquaintances, Neighbors, and Kid’s contacts.

Using the free worksheet (download below), you can help the host to come up with a list of names. It’s a simple but incredibly effective process to prompt someone to think of all their networks or circles.

However, you can boost the usefulness of the FRANK list even further by using the Friend field to include friends-of-friends. Most of us have met our friends’ connections but we may not know them well enough to invite them directly.

But what you tell your host to do is to actually ask her friend to bring this person along: “Don’t you think Chris would like this too?” or “I think Samantha would enjoy this party too, why don’t you bring her along?” A great way to encourage this is to provide the host with written personalized invitations that the friend can then pass along to their connections.

Doing it this way will work much better than just saying “bring a friend” to the people that are invited. That is too broad and open an invitation 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 Jasmine too?”, the friend will likely feel obligated to follow through and actually invite Jasmine.

That’s why you want to coach your host to use the FRANK worksheet and actually name friends-of-friends on the list.

Grab the host coaching bundle to make your direct sales parties a success.

Star Host & Spoil You Rotten Bag
Next up are the Star Host and Spoil You Rotten Bag incentives.

These are tools to incentivize the host to invite plenty of people, to encourage friends to place pre-party orders and to encourage further party bookings.

You will need to come up with some incentives: some small prizes or prize packs that you give the host when they’ve achieved the goals that you’ve set. Cheap company products or products that you’ve qualified for through incentive programs are ideal to use.

If you don’t have anything suitable, create your own little prize pack with a few luxury chocolates, a pen & notebook, a candle, etc. Put them in an attractive mug or basket and wrap up with cellophane and a ribbon. It doesn’t have to be hugely expensive, presentation is key though.

The best way to use the Spoil You Rotten Bag is to staple the printable to an actual pretty paper bag and send that to the host as part of their host pack. The idea is that the bag will be filled with the prizes at the party.

As a bonus, the other guests will also see how the host is earning free gifts, which could lead to more bookings at your party.

The Star Host printable just needs to printed and sent to your host with your host pack before the party. This way the host knows beforehand what is needed to qualify for their free gift and will begin working towards it. And by doing that she’ll ensure that you and her have a successful party!

I personally change over the incentive tool I use each month to keep it fresh. So one month I’ll be using the Spoil You Rotten Bag and the next month I’ll change to the Star Host incentive.

I’d love to hear how you are using these worksheets and the results you see from them. Also, what are your host coaching tricks? Write a comment here or talk to me on Facebook.

3 Tips to increase attendance at your direct sales parties

So you’ve got a party booked 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. You’re disappointed. 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 an awesome industry with plenty of opportunities.

So what can you do? You can help your host to increase attendance so you and her will have a great time!

Here are 3 ways to help your host

1.) Ensure your host invites contacts from a variety of networks in her life. Help the host to use the FRANK worksheet (download below) to come up with a list of names. FRANK stands for Friends, Relations, Acquaintances, Neighbors, and Kids’ contacts. Most of you will know it. But the secret to boost the usefulness of the FRANK list is to use the Friend field to include friends-of-friends. These are people that are friends with your hosts friends (she may even 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 just saying “bring a friend”. That is too broad and open a comment 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 actually invite Anna. That’s why you want to coach your host to use the FRANK worksheet and actually name friends-of-friends.

2.) Go the extra mile and write out invitations for your host to hand out. Make it super easy for the host by printing out pretty invites that already have all the details on them. All they have to do is 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.

For digital invites, I recommend the Shuffle by Elify app so the invite goes directly to a contact’s phone. Shuffle allows you to text great looking invites that really grab people’s attention. You create the invite with all the details, 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.