Recruiting with Games

When I started my direct sales business, I didn’t play games at my parties.

At the beginning of my career, I thought that my guests would find games childish or just not fun.

I had been to party plan events with other companies, and I had been asked to walk like a chicken or sing a line from my favorite song – and I wouldn’t say I liked it. I was out of my comfort zone and didn’t want to do that with my guests.

So I avoided all games for quite some time.

But after playing some games that respected people’s comfort zones and focused on having fun, my results were excellent!

Guests were more relaxed, and I got more bookings and leads for potential new team members. So that’s why I am now encouraging you to try games.

Why do you want to use recruiting games in your direct sales biz?

Recruiting games benefit anyone who is not yet confident talking about the business opportunity more directly.

When you’re planning to play a recruiting game at your parties, this also ensures you don’t forget to bring up the business opportunity (which we’ve all done, I’m sure).

Games are a fun and relaxed way to introduce career options, without being “salesy” or pushy.

Guests are likely to be more receptive to the message when it’s shared in a fun way.

There are two essential things to remember when playing games at your direct selling event:

Have a little fun with it. That means you have to keep up a good pace, don’t slog through it slowly but don’t rush. Make some jokes and be a bit silly.

Make the game yours, so it fits your style, personality (and company and products).

Today I have 2 recruiting games for you that have worked well for me, so give them a try.

Game 1

To play this game, give each guest a piece of paper to keep track of their score as they listen to you recite the following poem. Anyone who adds the 25 points at the end should be followed up about the business opportunity.

You can also add small prizes (small incentives, chocolates, etc.) for high scores.

Game 2: Ask me about my job

This is a game that I play at the end of the party when people have well and truly ‘warmed up’.

I set a timer for 2 minutes to ensure it doesn’t drag on.

You encourage guests to ask you about your job as a party plan consultant. Then, you reward a question about being a consultant with a (chocolate) prize or a raffle ticket (with a raffle prize draw at the end).

Sometimes nobody wants to be first, and nobody asks you a question. The way to get the ball rolling is to act like an auctioneer and ask yourself a question like an opening bid. Make it funny, and guests will pretty quickly join in.

Keep your answers short and succinct, don’t overwhelm people with too much information at one time.

I usually throw (gently!) the chocolate prizes to the guests to keep the momentum going and add a bit of activity.

You can grab the free recruiting rhyme printable below.

3 Tips to increase attendance at your direct sales parties

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.

3 Ways to increase attendance at your direct sales parties. Help your host to make your parties a big success.

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.

Get even more bookings from parties

The better you become at securing bookings from parties, the faster your business will grow and the easier it will be.

And suppose you don’t have wild dreams of becoming a hugely successful businesswoman, but you want your direct selling business to supplement your family’s income consistently. In that case, it’s super helpful to keep your business ticking over efficiently by securing new bookings at every party.

Why am I giving you so many ideas?

Different strategies work for different personality types. You don’t always know what will work for you (with your personality, company, and products). So keep trying out new ideas until you find a few techniques that work well for you. Then get really good at those!

Don’t stop once you’ve found one thing that works for you. For example, you want to mix it up so that guests who’ve seen you at one party won’t get bored with you. If you work through the same “script” every time, you’ll bore the pants of people who’ve seen you at multiple parties. Also, when you present the hosting opportunity in a new way, you may resonate with someone who didn’t respond before.

So that’s why I like to give you as many ideas to try as I can.

Bribery Basket

This method is a fun and exciting way to entice guests to book a party. I take a pretty basket with a good range of different products (wine, chocolates, candles, etc.). Anyone who books a party within the next few weeks can choose a product from the basket. This is one of my most popular booking enticements. Some of my regular hosts actually ask me to bring the basket to their party.

Deal or No Deal

This method is a great way to turn the subject of bookings into a game. I use two different versions:

Put six pretty boxes on display. Three contain an instant gift, and 3 include a gift AND a party booking. So they have a 50% chance of getting a booking with their prize. Anyone who’d like to can pick a box and open it.

This game is a lot of fun, and I find that anyone willing to try their luck on an envelope or box usually goes ahead to book a party whether they “win” one or not.

The trick to making this game work well for you is to pay a lot of attention to the presentation. The prettier the boxes or envelopes are, the more guests want to open them.

Pay the Date

This strategy will front-load your month with plenty of parties. People who book a party can are offered a special price.
For example, you can offer them a special product at the price of the calendar date. So if they book on the 1st of the month, they pay $1. Booking on the 10th will cost them $10.

Many of my booking strategies or recruitment strategies use product incentives. The way I make this work for me is by using every opportunity at my disposal for free or cheap products.

Many direct sales companies offer opportunities to win products or get extra discounts on products. I use these opportunities to get some high-value items for Pay the Date, and I also get a range of low-to-medium value items for Deal or No Deal.

Keep your incentives in mind when you have an opportunity to get free or cheap products.

Have fun with these strategies. I’d love to hear which you have tried!