First Step Marketing

A growing number of women in particular are building highly successful ‘businesses’ through the selling opportunities offered by companies who market their products by the direct selling method. We’re all familiar with plastic kitchenware, underwear, household linens and make-up being marketed very successfully on the home party or home demonstration system.

Women, in fact, tend to make natural salespeople, with a warmer, more sincere approach than many men. Certainly with those products that are home-orientated, women can often discuss the product and its advantages with more credibility than men.

The better-known, larger companies that use the direct selling method are well aware of the persuasive power that women can bring to the market place and they provide their recruits with extensive training, support and motivational programmes so as to help achieve the best results.

Many of those women who have chosen direct selling as the basis on which to form their own successful home businesses, love the opportunities it offers — deciding on your own hours, meeting new friends travelling overseas (by winning trips on motivational programmes). You can set your own promotional goals and, so it’s often claimed, virtually write your own income ticket.

As with anything worthwhile, however, to get something out of direct selling you’ve got to put plenty in, and you’ll need the following attributes if you’re to be successful:

Enthusiasm. Stacks of it — though one of the advantages of this kind of business is the enthusiasm-generating meetings and seminars that are held regularly as part of the marketing programmes.

Organisational abilities. You’ll have plenty of organising to do: the parties or demonstrations, deliveries of the goods, and a fair amount of paperwork as well.

Strong self-motivation. On the whole, it’s a pretty competitive business. You’re encouraged to set yourself goals and targets, and to plan the growth of your own agency. But at the end of the day, it’s up to you to decide what you want and to go all out to get it.

Your family will, in addition, have to deal with your working in the evenings. Some of the time, of course, you can arrange to do your demonstrations during the day. But essentially direct selling — especially on the ‘party plan’ — takes place in the evenings or over weekends when your clients can get agroup together.

Twenty years ago, when I lived in a ’satellite town’ in England, I started selling plastic kitchenware at afternoon tea parties for housewives — and limped along not too successfully for a couple of months. Then I realised that the women who had money to spend were sitting in the factories and offices during the day. At lunchtime, most of them were too far away from home or shops to do anything constructive.

So I approached personnel officers and the like, most of whom were happy for me to arrange demonstrations in the factories and offices during lunchhours. I demonstrated every day from 12 until 2 in one factory or another for almost a year — and made a small fortune!

That was, of course, a unique set-up, since I had scores of ready clients sitting and longing for someone to entertain them during a boring lunchbreak, but it’s worth studying your area to look for new outlets or ways of fitting direct selling into a timetable better suited to you and your family.

Not all direct selling companies, unfortunately, are reputable so you should approach the idea with some caution. Before committing yourself to anything:

Get advice. Speak to people who are already in this kind of business. Ask them to give you real facts and figures.

Don’t sign any form of contract until you have checked it thoroughly and are positive you understand it — especially those clauses that refer to any financial commitment by you. If you don’t understand, then have someone explain it to you — your attorney or bank manager, for instance.

Find out if the company you are considering is a member of the Direct Selling Association. They have a code of ethics and standards to which their members must adhere, and this will at least give you guidance as to their credentials.

Start small. Most companies expect you to contribute to a starter kit, or to a set of samples. That’s fine if they’re talking about a manageable sum, or will allow you to lease the kit at a nominal amount for a certain period — until you’ve made up your mind that this is what you really want to do.

But watch out for companies that want you to purchase samples immediately for a large sum of money, particularly if they encourage you to take a loan or even to sign an agreement committing all your income to its repayment before you can earn anything yourself.

Avoid too, those companies which insist on your joining their training scheme, and expect you to pay large sums for it. The Direct Selling Association actually legislates against this in their code of ethics, and members of their organisation are expected to give any initial training in product-selling free of charge to new agents.

Be determined. Don’t approach this kind of job unless you really mean to work hard at it and are confident of your ability. If you’re looking for something that you can do a couple of times a week, when you feel like it, you probably won’t make much of an income at it. And frankly, you’re not the kind of person direct-selling companies are looking for.

One more word about that paperwork. You’ll be responsible for your own tax payments, so it’s important that you keep a special file containing details of your income and outgoings — car running expenses, postage, stationery, etc.

There are several expenses that you can claim for since you will be working from home. This is an area where you will find a good tax consultant worth his weight in gold, especially if you’re married and your husband is responsible for your income tax.

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 18th, 2010 at 2:11 am and is filed under Home Based Business, Tax, financial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.