Today is our final installment in our mini-series on Catalog parties. We will offer some tried and true tips (in no particular order…sorry!) for helping your hostess experience success in this alternative venue to a traditional home party.
1) Set a deadline. Keep a catalog party open no more than about 10 days. By keeping the deadline close in, your hostess will keep it high on her priority list.
2) Coach your hostess to “share” the catalog amongst friends, thereby limiting the amount of time that a guest has to “lose” the catalog in the scurry of life. Tell her to drop a catalog off on her way to the grocery store and pick it up (payment and order) on the way home, in order to share the catalog with someone else.
3) Offer to mail catalogs to long distance family and friends. Let your hostess know you usually do follow up calls to explain product to these people as well. She should make an initial call to be sure they are interested first!
4) Be sure your hostess knows how to complete your order forms and properly add up orders including tax and shipping.
5) Don't assume your hostess will know what to say…help her with scripts for talking to her friends. “Mary, I was thinking about you when I decided to do this catalog party…I just KNOW you're going to love__specific product name because (you love to entertain, you have so many birthdays to buy for, you love to cook, you love to decorate, you are so great about playing with your kids, you take so many pictures, you care about family values…FILL IN THE BLANK based on your product!) When is a good time for me to drop by for about 5 minutes?
6) Consider leaving your hostess a small sampling of product to show her friends while circulating catalogs.
7) Mini demo your products to the hostess before she begins to collect orders to build her enthusiasm and help her know what to say.
8) Goal set with your hostess. Find out what's on her wish list and (based on a low average customer sale for your product), help her know how many orders she will need to collect to get the items she would like for free or at a reduced price.
9) RECRUIT YOUR HOSTESS…anyone who is a successful catalog hostess should absolutely positively become a consultant. After all, she is really doing YOUR job, isn't she? Let her know that if she would like to join you as a consultant on your team, she can use this first catalog party as her own! This is a great way to get her business off to a fast start.
10) ASK, ASK, ASK…how did she do it? When you have a catalog hostess who really does a great job; ask her what she did to make her show a success. This information is invaluable in training team members and in coaching your next catalog hostess! ( Pssst…we'll let you in on a secret…it's how WE get some of OUR best tips!)
FINALLY, once again we stress that a catalog party should be booked only as “frosting on the cake”. DO NOT consider them to be replacements for our real bread and butter which is…(say it with us now)… Home Parties!
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