Elevate Your Direct Sales Business with Kelly Northcott

Jenny Perry is an Advanced Director with Pampered Chef, and she joins me to share her tips for boosting her calendar and keeping it as full as she wants.

Jenny joined Pampered Chef three and a half years ago. She has promoted several times, developed leaders, leads an engaged and productive team, and earned three trips in addition to numerous other awards.

What makes Jenny’s story even more extraordinary is that she was a school administrator for the first three years of her business, and she didn’t even have a personal Facebook account until a few weeks before she became a direct seller.

She signed up for Pampered Chef, figured out Facebook, managed a busy schedule outside of her business, and has consistently held at least eight parties a month (and sometimes she does more than twenty in a month). Most of her parties are done virtually, and she recently started adding in-home parties to her calendar.

Jenny credits her calendar being as full as she wants it to be with:

• Her systems for keeping track of guests’ interests and needs.
• Building relationships with her hosts and their guests.
• Warming up the host offer throughout the party.
• Making the offer personal for each guest.
• Immediately re-booking her hosts for another party for six to twelve months.
• Expecting to book parties at every party.
• Knowing when to make the host offer.

You’ll want to take notes for this one, and if you still have questions after you listen to it, send me or Jenny a DM or ask in the Facebook group. 

RESOURCES:

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Jenny Perry’s Instagram

In this episode, we talk about how to use your birthday and your customers’ birthdays to grow your direct sales business.

I start by discussing some of the mindset benefits of celebrating other people’s birthdays. Celebrating feels good, raises your vibration, attracts more good vibes to you, and helps you become your future self.

Successful people are the kind of people who go out of their way to celebrate others. The simple act of wishing someone a happy birthday takes a small amount of effort, but it can have an impact on both the person you’re celebrating and on you. 

Birthdays are an easy reason to contact people, and because most direct sellers struggle with reaching out and initiating conversations, doing this will strengthen your reaching-out muscle. No one is going to reject you if you send them a birthday greeting.

In this episode, I give you ideas on how to stand out when you do this simple act and how to engage with people who send you birthday greetings.

Birthday offers and coupons are common business practices, and I break down the pros and cons of doing them and when you should do them so that you maximize your visibility and increase your chances of getting sales. 

I wrap up the episode by explaining why it is a terrible business practice to use someone’s birthday as a reason to send them a booking message. 

RESOURCES:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kellydnorthcott

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Free Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/directsalesworkshops 

Learn more about my programs: https://www.kellynorthcott.com/learn  

Is the party dead? I don’t think so. The way some direct sellers do them might be, but as long as the party you do includes five crucial elements, the party works.

The direct sales party format has evolved over the years. The first version consisted of an hour-long presentation in someone’s living room. Then, catalog parties were added, and, of course, social media and virtual parties became popular.

And now, four years after the start of the pandemic, when all direct sellers were forced to go 100% virtual, in-person parties are making a comeback, and even social sellers and direct sellers who joined during the pandemic are playing around with them.

What’s the right party format for you? Do five-day Facebook parties still work? 

This episode will help you figure this out, and I include the five elements that all parties should have no matter how you do them.

An Educational Component

Guests should leave the party with information that will serve them. This is beyond the information about the features and benefits because they can get that from the product descriptions on the website.

The information you share should be valuable and tailored to the group you’re serving at the party, and the products should be presented in a story-like logical sequence.

An Experience

This can be immersive, where guests touch, taste, and try products. If you’re doing virtual parties, you have to create this with your descriptive words and animated actions. 

This can also be an interactive experience between you and the guests and the guests and the host, where the engagement is meaningful.

A Connection to You

This is critical if you want to build a business, customer base, and team. Connecting with you is the only way to build know, like, trust. 

Clearly Presented Offers

Guests won't act on vague or general offers. You have to be clear about the offer. Connecting with guests makes offering individual offers easier, more personal, and more successful.

Post-Party Strategy

You need systems to continue serving the guests and a strategy to get guests into these systems and keep up with them consistently. Otherwise, your business will be an exhausting hamster wheel of parties.

The bottom line . . .

Be sure that your parties include all five of these elements, do them however you want to, be curious about what works and what needs tweaking, tweak one thing at a time, focus on future bookings, and have fun with your parties.

RESOURCES:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kellydnorthcott

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Free Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/directsalesworkshops 

Learn more about my programs: https://www.kellynorthcott.com/learn  

Learning how to create an effective message is an essential skill, but no one signs up to be a direct seller so that they can send booking messages.

If you want to keep your direct sales calendar full, you need to master the skill of booking parties from parties. 

In this episode, I break down the four things you need to do at your parties to get the booking results you want.

Focus on Bookings

Parties are where you sell products, but you’re also selling the host and join opportunities. Focus on bookings at your parties. People come expecting to buy, and if you’re using best-selling practices, sales will come naturally. 

Your parties should be valuable and successful so that people want to come to them and host them. People need to have a good experience, and it needs to be a big enough experience that they want to offer it to their friends. 

Treat Your Hosts Well and Make Their Job Look Fun and Easy

Your hosts’ job is to invite people to the event and make everyone feel welcome. It isn’t their job to sell products or book parties. If you give them a lot of tasks, you might turn off potential hosts because they don’t want to do all that work.

Warm People Up for the Booking Offer Throughout the Party

A lot of direct sellers make the mistake of not talking about the host opportunity throughout the party or jumping straight to the offer instead of warming up people.

Two of the tools I teach in all of my programs are sprinkles and hot buttons. Sprinkles are subtle hints that create awareness and desire. Hot buttons are people’s motivation and reason for doing something. 

When you combine sprinkles with hot buttons, you’ll create interest throughout the party for the host opportunity, and people will be ready for the offer when you present it.

Individually Offer the Booking Opportunity When It’s Appropriate 

Even if you use the best sprinkles, you still have to individually offer the host opportunity to get the bookings. If a guest is engaged in the party, you can offer it at the end of the party. If a guest isn’t engaged, you can still offer the opportunity, but it will probably feel like a cold message and won’t be received positively. Instead of rushing the offer, continue to build relationships with those guests so that when you do offer it, you can make the offer personal.

RESOURCES:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kellydnorthcott

Get your questions answered on the podcast: ask them by filling out this form

Free Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/directsalesworkshops 

Learn more about my programs: https://www.kellynorthcott.com/learn  

Most direct sellers tell me that they’re interested in doing more parties, but they struggle to book them.

So, in this episode, I'll share my booking formula that will help you fill your calendar and avoid the common mistakes that many direct sellers make when it comes to booking parties.

Booking parties is a fundamental skill for your business, and when you master it, you’ll be able to apply the same principles to lots of other areas of your business.

Copying and pasting someone else’s message isn’t going to teach you that skill. It might give you a quick win, but it will cause new problems. Most of the time, the messages you’re copying and pasting aren’t effective and contain one or more of the mistakes I talk about in this episode.

Your business is a series of conversations, and a booking message is part of the ongoing conversation. One of the mistakes that direct sellers make is that they aren’t engaged with the person they’re offering the host opportunity to, and the message feels cold because it is.

Engaging before the offer allows you to avoid another mistake, which is sending messages that aren’t personal. 

There are lots of reasons to host a party, and when you can match up the reason that makes it an easy yes for the person you’re messaging, the message will feel like an act of service.

You don’t want to send a generic message or list out every reason why someone would want to host just to cover your bases because that will make the message too long. No one reads long messages. Heck, you probably stopped reading these show notes by now.

Other common mistakes to avoid are asking yes or no questions, asking more than one question, and suggesting dates. 

When you use my booking formula, you naturally avoid these mistakes. 

Booking formula:

purposeful warmup + non-yes or no offer + “so that” + personal benefit 

I explain each element of the formula and give you examples in the episode.

Listen to the episode, play with the formula, and post your draft in the Facebook group if you want my feedback on it.

RESOURCES:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kellydnorthcott

Get your questions answered on the podcast: ask them by filling out this form

Free Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/directsalesworkshops 

Learn more about my programs: https://www.kellynorthcott.com/learn  

A lot of direct sellers are using the social selling model to build their business, and that will get you some results from your warm market, but when you combine the social selling model with the party model, you’ll greatly accelerate your results.

This industry was built on the party model, and just like this industry, parties have evolved over the years. The traditional format can still work depending on your product and audience, but you can do workshops, masterclasses, or lives. 

If I were in the field, I’d use an updated version of the party model to meet and sell to new customers, and I’d use the social selling model to serve and stay connected with them no matter what I sold.

In this episode, I give you examples of party formats and host incentives you can use if your company doesn’t have a host program.

I also outline these eleven benefits of the party model:

1. Parties allow you to share a lot of information in an organized and structured way, which helps people process information and make decisions.
2. Guests know what to expect at a party, and they come with a buying mindset. They expect an offer at the end of the party. 
3. It’s easier for you to initiate conversations at a party, even if it’s the first interaction. The party warms people up.
4. Hosted parties greatly expand your reach because a host will invite people outside of your circle. These are people you would never meet just by posting on social media.
5. Hosts give you credibility, and they are motivated to connect you to their friends.
6. Host coaching helps you build a relationship and allows you to share information about your join opportunity. A lot of direct sellers hosted parties before they joined. 
7. Recruiting is easier with a party model. Parties are fun. You get to model a fun business, and you’ll build relationships faster through parties than you will just by posting.
8. Launching and training new team members is easier with a party model, and the faster new team members launch, the more likely they are to be successful.
9. Parties give you more control over your success, and they are a better predictor and measurement of it. Parties give you instant feedback on your skills.
10. Parties are success on demand. Whenever you want more sales or recruit leads, you can do a party.
11. The best place to book a party is at a party. 

If you want to add more parties to your calendar, stay tuned for the next episode, and I’ll walk you through how I run a booking blitz.

RESOURCES:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kellydnorthcott

Get your questions answered on the podcast: ask them by filling out this form

Free Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/directsalesworkshops 

Learn more about my programs: https://www.kellynorthcott.com/learn 

Direct sellers have lots of opportunities for support, and they each serve their own purpose, but one of the most impactful sources of support is from your peers.

In this episode, I give you all the ins and outs of a peer-based group, which can also be referred to as an accountability group, a mastermind, a growth group, or a networking group. 

I’ve been in groups that were great, groups that were okay, and groups that fell apart very quickly, and I share my experience and tips so that you don’t waste time figuring it out. 

I tell you who will thrive in one of these groups and who will be annoyed by one.

I give you guidelines for how to set one up, how to find one, and what you should do before you join one so that your group is the right fit for you.

I also give you suggestions for how to communicate with each other and how to structure your calls so that they’re productive.

And I tell you how to handle it when someone dominates the group or has a negative Nelly in your group.

This episode is a playbook for a peer group, and if you want this year to be a growth year for you, I encourage you to be a part of one.

RESOURCES:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kellydnorthcott

Get your questions answered on the podcast: ask them by filling out this form

Free Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/directsalesworkshops 

Learn more about my programs: https://www.kellynorthcott.com/learn  

This episode wraps up the 14 Days of Loving Your Business series, and on it we focus on treating yourself.

I give you a couple of suggestions for how you can do this by buying something for yourself and acknowledging and thanking yourself and your business for the treat. The treat can be as small as a cup of coffee. The point is that you acknowledge that you got to buy it because of your business.

You can also do this without spending money and treat yourself to some time off or to do something for yourself.

When you think about it, this whole series is an opportunity to treat yourself and fall in love with your business.

I encourage you to revisit this series at least once a quarter or even once a month. You could also go on a date once a week and constantly rotate the dates. 

When you’re intentional about spending time with your business and getting to know it, you’ll appreciate it more, which will increase your success. 

Send me a DM and let me know what you thought about the series, which dates were your favorites, and what you discovered by going on them.

Parks and Rec Treat Yo Self through the years. 

Learn more about Energize by clicking here: https://www.kellynorthcott.com/energize

The VIP Workshop is a bonus workshop in Elevate. Learn more here: https://www.kellynorthcott.com/join-elevate

RESOURCES:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kellydnorthcott

Get your questions answered on the podcast: ask them by filling out this form

Free Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/directsalesworkshops 

Learn more about my programs: https://www.kellynorthcott.com/learn 

On today’s date, you’ll invite someone to join your VIP group, and this is essentially the same process you’d use to ask someone out on a date.

If you want to experience success on any level in your direct sales business, you have to learn how to make an offer. If you sit around and wait for people to come to you, you’ll be waiting a long time, even if you post every day on social media.

You have to learn how to initiate conversations and make offers, and not just any offer or a generic offer; you have to learn how to make the right offer to the right person at the right time in the right way. 

If any of those things are off, you greatly increase your chances of getting a no or getting ignored. 

This episode walks you through a message process that you can practice by inviting people to your VIP group, and then when you’re ready, you can use the same process to make sales, booking, and recruiting offers.

Learn more about Energize by clicking here: https://www.kellynorthcott.com/energize

The VIP Workshop is a bonus workshop in Elevate. Learn more here: https://www.kellynorthcott.com/join-elevate

RESOURCES:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kellydnorthcott

Get your questions answered on the podcast: ask them by filling out this form

Free Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/directsalesworkshops 

Learn more about my programs: https://www.kellynorthcott.com/learn  

On today’s date, you’ll find your perfect match. Think about this date as filling out a questionnaire on a dating app, and define what you’re looking for in an ideal customer or team member.

Doing this will help you find them because you’ll know where to look for them, create content that will attract them to you, and serve them well because you’ll know what they want and need.

In this episode, I walk you through questions to help you identify your ideal customer's qualities, demographics, lifestyle, and interests.

This lesson is based on a lesson from my program called Energize. Energize is a low-priced month-to-month program designed for direct sellers who work their business in the nooks and crannies of their lives and want their business to be easier and more fun.

The lessons in Energize focus on the selling process of direct sales, and each week, you get a couple of short lessons with action steps that you can complete in a few minutes.

Learn more about Energize by clicking here: https://www.kellynorthcott.com/energize

RESOURCES:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kellydnorthcott

Get your questions answered on the podcast: ask them by filling out this form

Free Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/directsalesworkshops 

Learn more about my programs: https://www.kellynorthcott.com/learn