Let’s talk about eight direct sales tips for beginners.
Want a proven plan for growing your direct sales business without feeling like you're chasing your tail? The Direct Sellers Business Blueprint explains the 4 key areas you must master to build a simplified, systematic business. It will even tell you which area to tackle first, so you can stop feeling overwhelmed or confused about what to do next. The best part? It's completely FREE!
#1 – Be Patient
The first lesson is to be patient. It takes time to build a solid business, learn something new, and implement what you learn. So be patient with yourself, with your business, and what you’re trying to do. Many times direct sellers walk into their business and think because they’ve done traditional sales or something similar, they know exactly how the business will work. That’s most likely not true. You will mess up, and that’s okay. You’re not going to know and understand everything as soon as your kit shows up on your doorstep.
Bottom line. Give yourself some grace. As long as you’re growing and moving forward, call it a win!
#2 – Track Your Numbers
If you know me, you know I love numbers. While I realize everyone does not share my love of all things numerical, I’m going to tell you to track your numbers. Before you tune me out, hear me on this. Data is knowledge and power. Numbers don’t lie and they have zero emotion. Numbers don’t feel anything. They just tell you what it is.
When I first began my direct sales business, I went after everything with gusto. I wanted to do all the things! So I started strong, but because I was tracking my numbers, I started noticing my party calendar was starting to slip. I booked a whole bunch of parties when I first started. You know what I’m talking about…the whole friends and family circle. But then I noticed that I wasn’t booking parties as far out as I thought I should be. My sales were strong but my calendar was definitely starting to slip.
And because I wasn’t emotional about the data, I reached out to my upline and asked if she thought there was a problem. She, also being a data nerd, gave an emphatic “YES!” So we brainstormed ways to fix it. I took pages and pages of notes. Again, because I was tracking the data and paying attention, I wasn’t three months down the road staring at an empty calendar.
When we track the data, we can pinpoint the problems more easily. We can more easily see what’s actually going on and be proactive instead of reactive.
At this point you might be wondering which numbers you should be tracking. Here are a few to get you started:
- Average party sales
- Average party attendance
- Average order size
- Average # of bookings per party
- # of people I have to reach out to in order to get a booking “Yes!”
You can literally track anything in your business, but these are just a few to get you started.
#3 – Serve First, Sell Later
This next lesson is one of the hardest to learn. Serve first, sell later. Unfortunately, this is one that many direct sellers get wrong. They come out of the gate with a hard sell. Most direct sellers start their business because they truly need the income. So the desperation kicks in and all people end up hearing from us is –
Buy my stuff! I need money! I need bookings! Oh hey, join my team!
Here’s the deal, friend. People buy, host, and join with people they know, like, and trust. It doesn’t matter what aspect of the business we’re talking about, we should come from a place of serving and not just selling. Ask yourself –
How can my product help this person?
OR
How can my business solve their problem?
OR
How does my product save them time and money?
When we approach our business from a place of service first, everything else starts to take care of itself. The desperation language is left at the door, and we don’t end up looking like a sleazy used car salesman in the process. (No offense to used car salesmen. I’ve met some great ones in my life! But they all came from a place of service first.)
As you’re thinking about your business, really think about how you’re serving people. I can tell you with complete certainty that the recruiting, sales, and bookings will take care of themselves if you serve first and sell later.
#4 – Get Outside Your Friends & Family Circle ASAP
Another one that many direct sellers mess up on is not getting outside your friends and family circle as fast as possible. Friend, I want you to RUN outside that circle. Like really, really fast. Your friends and family can only buy so much of your product. Before they tell you they can’t buy anything else or host yet another party, get outside of this circle.
And let me be clear, it’s totally okay and appropriate for you to begin your business there. Your friends and family are the people that are going to be the most forgiving when you don’t understand all the products or when you mess up and post something wrong in the party. They know you and love you anyway.
But from that core group of people, we want to start to fan out and meet new people. We want to be introduced to their friends and family, and then their friends and family, and then their friends and family.
One of my favorite questions when someone was considering joining my team was “Are your friends tired of booking parties?” My answer was always “My friends don’t book parties. They all know what I do and where to find me.”
#5 – Get Support
My number five tip is to get support. If you feel like you’re not getting where you want to go, ask for help before you decide to call it quits. In case you forgot, scroll back up to my first tip – be patient. It’s going to take time to learn and master all areas of your business.
Don’t be afraid to reach out for support, so you can get the help you need to improve your business. Reach out to your upline or to the rock stars in your company. Find coaching or training. Bottom line – go find help! Don’t just wait for the business to fix itself. Be proactive and go find the support that you need.
#6 – Don’t Wait on your Upline or Company
This one might step on some toes, but don’t wait for your upline or your company to do something or to teach you something. This goes along with getting support, but I want to take it a step further. Way too many direct sellers are waiting on their upline to do something for them. They’re waiting for them to develop training or they’re waiting for them to show them how to do it.
Friend, go figure it out. The University of Google is amazing. You can Google just about anything and someone somewhere has created a tutorial on how to do it. Don’t stall your business because you’re waiting on someone else to answer your questions.
If you have a question about your back office, call your home office. Do a search. Find the answers. Don’t wait for someone else to pour into you. Your business goals are way too important to you and your family to sit around and wait for other people.
Friend, the most successful people are the people that are going to go after the information. They’re seeking out the support, training, and finding new ways for them to be better at their business. Go make it happen.
#7 – Set Clear Goals
It should come as no surprise that my seventh tip is to set clear goals. When people first get started, they usually just want to ‘make a little extra money.’ Well, how much money? What would make a difference for your family?
When we don’t set clear goals, it’s like getting in a car and not having an address to go to. Are you just going to get in the car and drive in circles? You need a destination. Are you going to the grocery store? Are you going to the doctor’s office? Are you going to Target? Where are you going?
Just like driving, you need a destination for your business. Once you know the destination, then you can actively work towards getting there.
#8 – Just keep going
The last tip is for veteran direct sellers and newbies alike. Just keep going. I know firsthand that there are hard seasons. There are times where it feels like you just can’t get traction. There will be moments where you feel like you’re all over the place and every.single.thing is a struggle. But friend, on the other side of the struggle, it’s soooo much better. Because if there was no struggle, there would be no success.
And no matter what you see on stage at your next convention or hear on your next training call, there are no overnight successes. The people that you’re seeing did the hard things and they kept going even when they didn’t feel like it. They sought out help and had clear destinations in mind for their business.
It doesn’t matter what you’re facing right now, if you will keep going, stay positive, set clear goals, seek out the answers, and be committed to working through it, I promise you, the payoff will come.
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Want a proven plan for growing your direct sales business without feeling like you're chasing your tail? The Direct Sellers Business Blueprint explains the 4 key areas you must master to build a simplified, systematic business. It will even tell you which area to tackle first, so you can stop feeling overwhelmed or confused about what to do next. The best part? It's completely FREE!
Mary Haynes is a highly successful direct sales leader turned strategist and coach. Her passion is helping party plan people streamline and scale their businesses using simple, proven strategies. Her goal is to eliminate business overwhelm so direct sellers know exactly what to do and when to do it. Mary is also a homeschooling mama that lives in sunny Florida with her husband, 4 kiddos, 2 dogs, and various other backyard animals.
