Here are some helpful hints for making the most of the holiday selling season.

Get organized! – You cannot have a record-breaking season if you are not prepared. Set aside one hour today to order supplies, update your potential hostess list, get your show bag in order, clear your desk, and make those booking calls.

Schedule early and schedule tight!  – Begin filling your calendar with more shows than you would ever dream of holding. Promote noon and four p.m. tea shows so you can hold two shows in one day!

Have a family meeting. – Share with your family the importance of the season ahead and together decide on a reward you will all enjoy when you meet your goal. Post a family calendar on the fridge that includes important family events as well as your shows. Create a plan for when mom is away on business and make sure they know that they are an important part of your career.

Prepare meals in advance. – Set aside one afternoon or evening each week to prepare healthy meals for the nights you won’t be home. This eliminates the stress of rushing a meal and running out the door. Your family will know that they are your top priority. (For cook-ahead meal ideas go to our Meal Planning section in the DSWA Learning Library.)

Maintain an attitude of gratitude!  – The holidays are a busy time and are sometimes overwhelming; however give thanks for the abundance coming your way and celebrate your success. You will have time to take it a little slower in January.

Holiday Sales – Now is the time to gear up for the selling season ahead with fabulous sales ideas. Give your display tables a festive touch by draping them with elegant fabric in seasonal colors. A greeting card, ornament, or wrapped gift will also remind guests the holidays are just around the corner. Help clients take the guesswork out of gift giving with a Gift Certificate, if your company has this available or make your own gift certificate or basket gift. Have one on display at your shows and always offer this as a solution to your male clients. Offer to help busy clients take care of the people on their gift list in one easy stop with you.

Gift Buying Appointment. – Have the items delivered to your home, then gift-wrap and label each gift and personally deliver the order to your client’s home or office. Look into the possibility of participating in a community or church holiday bazaars. Often these events offer great exposure at a reasonable price. Be sure your products are properly labeled for your shows. This will make it easier for your customers to write up their own orders and reduce the order taking time at your shows. But remember to be familiar enough with the style and price of your samples so you can check orders for accuracy.

Jane Deuber is a Co-Founder of http://www.DSWA.org (the only association dedicated to the needs of the independent party plan and network marketing professionals). Discover what makes the DSWA so unique. Listen to three motivating and informative free teleseminars by visiting http://www.mydswa.org/tele_class.asp

When it comes to direct sales, it can pay in the long run to be aggresive and forward with your product or service, but it can also hurt your image and sales. How aggressive is too aggressive? There is a fine line, when it comes to direct sales, of being too forward and pushing potential customers and clients away and having just the right amount of aggressiveness to make sales to the customers that are “on the fence”.

Be honest and let your emotions show your customer why the product or service you are selling is a necessity to them. Don’t just start a conversation with a total stranger with the reasons your product or service is the best and why they need it. Your approach should be very light and a way to get some information from the person. You need to build up an “arsenal” to use as a way to introduce your product or service. During first contact, you should listen 80% and speak 20%. This is your chance to find out about them and incorporate why they should need your product or service.

Direct sales representatives that listen the majority of the time are the few that will become very successful in the direct selling business. If your idea of selling to a total stranger is bombarding them and pushing them to purchase, you should think about your approach and why it is too aggressive. Do you notice how pushy car salesmen are? This is why you see so many people looking at cars on lots AFTER the dealership has already closed… they don’t want to deal with the car salesman. These people that wait to search for cars after the dealership closes are going to find the car they want to purchase, and then they are going to go to the dealership when it is open and probably buy it through the salesman that stands out to them as kind and caring, not pushy and aggressive.

Don’t be “that” direct selling representative. If you push a customer into a purchase and they are not happy that they purchased it later on, who are they going to tell the product about? No one! What they will tell people is that they shouldn’t deal with you and to stay away. People are much more willing to tell friends, family, and even strangers about a bad sales experience than they are about a good sales experience.

With direct sales, you want people to be happy because they will spread the word and you will get referrals and friends of that customer coming to you to purchase. Family members and friends of your existing customers will provide a lot of your future business, so pushing them will just be detrimental to your future business. The customers of a pushy direct sales representatives will be much more inclined to spread the word of why NOT to deal with you and your sales business.

Remember, when it comes to being the perfect direct sales representative, you want to listen more and speak less. Find out about your customer and then find ways to show them that they have need or use for your product or service. This is the key to running a successful direct sales business from day one.

ECP has years of experience running successful direct sales businesses. Learn more direct sales tips and information. You don’t have to suffer through trial and error for months, get your direct sales business information!

Direct Sales Training:  Jared is an exceptionally good closing manager. He is the manager that closes the difficult deals. One day I asked Jared to tell me his negotiation skills success secret.

Jared said his secret is like the TV show CSI (Crime Scene Investigation). Only Jared’s CSI stands for “Customer Selling Investigation.”

Jared explained that when he was a new closer and didn’t close a sale he would do a CSI on the deal. He would interview the salesperson that worked the deal. In most cases he was able to quickly determine the missing ingredients in the deal. Maybe the salesperson did a poor job fact finding with the customer and didn’t know their hot buttons. Maybe they didn’t identify the customer’s main motivation for considering the purchase. Maybe there was a poor product selection in matching the customer’s needs.

Jared’s Realization – Jared said he soon started to realize that as a closer he was more like a report card on how well the salesperson set up the deal.

Jared concluded if he could do effective direct sales training with his salespeople his closing ratio would increase. Jared soon became a sales coach to his people. He helped them improve their fact finding skills, their listening skills and their product selection skills.

Jared’s Almost Magical Closing Improvement – As Jared started doing more sales training coaching his negotiation skills and closing ratio seemed to almost magically improve. And the more he did sales training with his sales team the more his closing ratio skyrocketed.

Your Direct Sales Training Action Item:  Proactively take charge of your own sales training. Take some time to sharpen your fact finding skills and product knowledge skills. Do your own CSI after each deal and analyze what happened and why. Soon you will be working a lot smarted and closing a lot more sales like Jared.

David Nassief negotiation skills coach invites you to improve your sales with the free report “Selling Secrets of Top 5% Earning Salespeople” David’s site is http://www.phoenix-best-sales-jobs.com

How effective are you at sales? How many skills do you need to be good at in order to be effective? Where do you start improving your sales skills?

What if I told you there was a way to measure exactly how effective you were at sales? Well, there is. And not only that, there is a way to measure and access progress made in learning and mastering the direct sales process. It is called the personal effectiveness profile and it assesses the 50 critical skills necessary to be successful in your business.

Some of the basic skills include things like discouragement threshold, industry knowledge, connectedness, and planning skills. It is really important to make sure these and the other basic skills are mastered at an acceptable level before moving on to some of the core skills.

The core skills include things like listening, product promotion, selling aptitude, persuasion, answering questions, overcoming objectives and asking for the business. If just one of these skills at this level is causing a road block in your selling process, it can mean that your business is at a standstill.

Only after the 40 skills in the basic and core levels are completed should you begin focusing on some of the advanced skills, such as the use of systems that create duplication. So many times, however, we find ourselves bouncing around not know exactly what skills we are proficient at and which ones need improvement.

I would highly recommend that anyone in a direct sales business take the personal effectiveness profile. It will help you shorten the success cycle by identifying, once and for all, where your weaknesses exist. Once you’ve done that, you can create a plan to improve them and finally experience that success in your direct sales company you have been striving for.

Coach Cheri Alguire has coached over a thousand business owners to success in their direct sales businesses, real estate businesses or small business. Find out how she can do the same for you at http://www.coachcheri.com/

Business and Life Coach Cheri Alguire has partnered with hundreds of Real Estate Professionals and Small Business Owners to help them become more successful in business and in life. Coach Cheri specializes in Coaching and Training for Small Business Owners, Working Mothers, Real Estate Agents and Managers. Learn more at cherialguire.com and http://www.CoachCheri.com

Direct sales training is enhanced with sell words and inspiration phrases to build prospect fervor. Sell words are a sales closing technique boost, inserted to compel inspiration to buy now. This listing of sell words provides the energy and vigor to lead your prospect into a sale close.

Sell words work to reinforce your product and highlight the benefits you are presenting. They add force to emphasize an inducement to take action. Most direct sales training involves learning how to fight off objections and handle resistance in closing sales. The techniques of inspirational phrases automatically work in holding back your client from giving objections and resistance.

Directly use or modify the inspirational words and phases shown to work into your sales closing techniques. After awhile you notice sell phrases that become a regular part of sales closing. Forget what your sales manager said, that the prospect buys because of you not the company you represent. That is why inspiring potential customers first provides force to closing the sale.

Here is a listing of some direct sales words to encourage prospects to increase interest. These inspiration phrases and action words include: dare to compare, deluxe, demanding attention, daring innovation, deep burning desire, definitely affordable, desirable, discover how, described as outstanding, deluxe edition, develop the best strategy, dynamic, difference of impossible and possible, discover the mystery, do your finances embarrass you?, don’t be a fried chicken, double your profits, and dramatic breakthrough.

An additional listing of direct sales words includes: earth shattering, enjoy the independence, exploding volcano, expressway to success, enter a new galaxy, extras at no charge, everything you expect, eye opening advice, economically sound, effective immediately, exchange pennies for dollars, electrifying results, extensive product research, enchanting, enormous savings, essential ingredients, expert market timing, and eyeball popping.

As you see all the inspirational phrases and sell words start with the letters “D” and “E”. This could be a reflection of dollars and earnings heading your way.

Well published author, Donald Yerke likes to concentrate on what you don’t already know or what no one else dares to print. Tell it like it is. Read Don’s author bio.

Watch for his new paperback book debuting on Amazon this fall. It is loaded with great insurance marketing, brokerage, sales, and recruiting information and facts.

Come and get your FREE “Think and Grow Rich” Ebook by Napoleon Hill instantly. The website address is http://www.agentsinsurancemarketing.com

As a direct selling party plan business coach, I deal daily with people who are trying to get their business off the ground: getting more bookings, higher sales and more recruit leads. One of the most important things you can do for your business is simply to touch it daily. Do something, every day, to move your business forward.

Many people do not realize what business building work is. Cleaning your office or getting organized is not business building work. It’s housework. It’s getting ready to work. Cleaning your office is gong to give you a nicer space to work in. Getting organized is going to free you from searching for the piece of paper you need. But that is not work in the direct sales industry. Working in the direct sales industry means you are doing something to create bookings, increase your sales or developing recruit leads.

Some of the things you could do are:

To get more bookings: using your list of former hostesses and guests that attended parties in the past, develop a special (either one of your creation or one from your company) and call that list of potential hostesses. Make sure you have developed the wording you are going to use to encourage people to book to get the special for free or reduced prices.

To get higher sales: think about the parties you have had this month and analyze the presentations you did. What worked? What did not work? When did you “have them” and when did you “lose them”? Develop ways you can show your highest priced items and wording to encourage people to either buy it or book to get it at a discount or for free.

To get more recruit leads: go through your former hostesses and clients and look to see who has been a hostess more than one time, and guests who have purchased multiple times. Call them and talk to them about your company’s opportunity.

Creating a strong, growing direct sales business is not a matter of luck. It’s an issue of working your business. This is a business. Most people treat it like a hobby and then wonder why they don’t make any money.

The other issue is consistency. When you have a hobby you do it when you have time or when you feel like it. That’s okay when it’s a hobby. That is not an option when you have a business. A business is a job. It needs to be attended to daily. Do something daily, even if it’s just for fifteen minutes, to move your business forward.

Ruth Fuersten is the author of HOW TO BOOK, SELL, AND RECRUIT YOUR WAY TO SUCCESS, and co-author of Direct Selling POWER. Sign up for her free newsletter at http://www.booksellrecruit.com/sq

An extrovert has a genuine interest in his work and can communicate this interest with lots of enthusiasm. Because of this fact he is able to look on the brighter side of everything. Therefore, he can solve problems; his own or of his customers with efficiency, courtesy and diplomacy.

It is very important for a salesman to have a thorough knowledge of how his product will serve the needs of others, SO AS TO BE ABLE TO CONVINCE HIS CUSTOMERS. A sales person acts as the representative of his company and also helps improve its image. In direct selling, reactive questions asked by customers should be taken seriously. This can provide valuable information which can be explored in detail to help serve clients more efficiently.

Effective questioning skills to customers are also essential in direct selling and can be used to address critical issues throughout all stages of the trading process. Rather than the salesperson dominating the conversation and interaction, purposeful and planned queries are used to encourage prospective buyers to actively participate in a two-way collaborative discussion.

In response to statements from buyers, sales people ask related questions and paraphrase what the buyer has said to demonstrate their interest in and understanding of what the buyer wants.

The use of simple and direct questions allow salesmen to check back with the prospective customer to confirm that he/she has understood or agreed, and thus gain he/her commitment to make a deal.

They are applied in a manner that guides and moves the selling process forward in a logical progression till the sale is finally closed. Hence, effective questioning is the best way for a seller to get the attention of the customer and interaction in the conversation, so as to get relevant information.

Belsheba is a business management expert. She researches and studies on big and small business organizational strategies. Website: Business Management Solutions for efficient business operation.

Do you fear the objection handling phase of the selling process? What do you say when someone raises a common objection such as, “I don’t have the money,” “I need to think about it,” or “I don’t have the time.”?

One of the biggest challenges I see sales professionals and network marketers face is what to do when they hear these common but dreaded sales objections.

We know that at the end of a sales presentation the prospect is going to say one of four possible things:

1. “I am ready to sign up.”
2. “I have some questions.”
3. “I am not interested.”
4. “I don’t have time”, or “I need to think about it”, or “I don’t have the money.”

Prediction is a form of power. Because we know what they are going to say, the key is to prepare a powerful, persuasive response that will overcome their objection and move them to buy.

Persuasion is about leading and moving people to take action. If you analyze great network marketing leaders, you will find that they are great at moving others to take action.

At the end of your presentation you are going to ask your prospect to take action and that is when the objection handling phase typically begins. They may say “I don’t have the money”, “I need to think about it”, or “I don’t have the time.”

When you ask the prospect to take action, I want you to imagine that you are giving them a hot potato. When they give you an objection, such as, “I don’t have the money”, “I need to think about it”, or “I don’t have the time”, they are giving you the hot potato back to you.

What do you do next? You need to give it right back to them! Here are some ways to do that.

If the prospect says to you, “I need to think about it”, you can say:

1. Tell me more about that.
2. Other than thinking about it, is there anything else preventing you from moving forward today?
3. Other than thinking about it, I am sure that you have some other concerns. Can share with me your other concerns?

If the prospect raises the objection, “I need to check with my spouse”, you can say:

1. What would you do if your spouse says no?
2. Other than checking with your spouse, is there anything else preventing you from moving forward today?
3. If the decision were up to you would you move forward today?
4. On a scale of 1-10, how motivated are you to get started today?

Instead of you having the hot potato, you have given the hot potato back to your prospect. The prospect now needs to respond back to you, but they are probably not ready to take action yet.

At this point, your next step should be to tell them a story and then ask them to take action again. The objection handling process is like a dance. After you ask them to take action the first time they raise an objection or concern. You respond to the concern and they raise another concern or objection. You respond to this objection with a story and then ask them to take action again.

When you are handling objections, you want to tell a very specific type of story. You want to share a story of someone in a similar situation so the prospect can relate to the story. A great example is a story about someone who had the same concern they did.

For example, if the prospect tells you they don’t have the money, tell them a true story of someone else who didn’t have the money either. Then tell how that person found the money to move forward and now they are financially free because they did.

After you tell the story, ask the prospect to take action. For example, you might say “Based on what you have shared with me so far I really believe getting involved with our company could help you achieve your dreams. What do you say we give it a try?”

This is important. After you say this, be silent until the prospect makes a decision. At the end of each presentation, you want the prospect to make a decision. It’s OK if the prospect says no. A YES is a lot better.

Bottom line? – By using the above sales script techniques you no longer have to fear objection handling. Visit my sales training blog for more sales strategies and tips.