Traditional Direct Sales Marketing

Direct sales is a business system that allows Independent Consultants market products through in home sales.

Traditionally, Consultants are taught to first sell products to friends and family members. By having a friend host a home party with 4 or more other people, you can sell products to a large group of people all in one go. Unfortunately this can also cause problems for many reasons:

1. Not everyone wants your products - Marketing under the assumption that everyone will like your products, that everyone will buy, is just not logical.

The nature of business is that only 1% of those interested will buy. This means that if you have 100 friends, you will be lucky to get 10 orders. You're going to need to know a ton of people in order to make this business work.
2. Dependence on relationships - Depending on your friends to buy products to keep your business a float is going to seriously damage your friendships.

Your friends and family know you're getting paid for their orders, and the more you push for sales, the more your friends may think that you're trying to take advantage of them.

Your dependence on your friends may also breed resentment in you when they aren't interested in buying your products. The success of your business shouldn't have to depend marketing your products to every single person you've ever known.

3. You may not have any friends! - Because direct sales depends so heavily on friends and family to buy products, those that don't have packed address books and overflowing contact lists will be at a serious disadvantage.

Traditional direct marketing requires you to write out a full contact list of every single person you can think of. You're then supposed to call every person on this list and ask them to book a party for you. Can you really think of 50 people to call? Who will you call, who will you sell, to if you don't know anyone?

This is a very common problem, but your sponsor will feign deafness when you ask for more help.

She'll just tell you to write out that contact list again and again, totally ignoring your frustration and anger at her lack of helpful advice.

Or, even worse, your sponser may suggest the following ways of meeting new people:

• Aproach strangers in parking lots with samples in hand.
  
  
• Ask clerks in department stores for extra help and then invite them over for a quick skin care lesson.
  
  
• Join a popular mom group in your town - even if you don't have children!

If you like to be social, chances are you might already be doing these types of things. But if you aren't, it can be extremely intimidating, not to mention demeaning, to join groups just for the purpose of selling products to other members.

It will also be pretty obvious what you're doing when you join a group and just talk constantly about your great products and business opportunity.

And this is really unfortunate because direct sales really is a wonderful system for working from home. It's an excellent way to make money and start a business without a huge investment of money.

The problem is not with direct sales, but with the marketing program you're using.

Home shows and parties are out of style, and certainly out of sync with the modern world we live in. Women love the chance to get together, true, but most know that a hostess party is just a thinly veiled sales pitch.

Being successful at shows and parties also requires a certain personality. If you're a shy, introverted, or private pseron, you're probably not going to do very well selling products through this method.

But there are new marketing methods available in some direct sales companies.

Why not try some untraditional direct marketing techniques and see this will work better for your business?