SUCCESSFUL TECHNIQUES FOR SECURING BOOKINGS Jana Lundh, Executive Director II
Prepare
1. Go through your kit supplies every week that you have a show to make sure you’re stocked with your favorite items, soak, scrub, other necessary supplies and samples.
2. Make hostess packets to have on hand when you book at your show.
Suggested contents:
· Catalogs and order forms
· Monthly specials flyer
· Business opportunity flyer
· Handout on natural products or natural living (see downloads)
· A letter detailing any special hostess benefits you give in addition to what the company rewards hostesses with.
3. Some way to communicate your available party dates to your prospective hostesses:
· Pocket calendar
· Party date cards
Present
1. Your “booking commercial” if you have one – whatever form this takes, and if you don’t have one, consider composing one.
2. The list of incentives for hostesses to hold a spa party in their home
· Free gift?
· Half-price item?
· Goodie bag for them and their hostess that evening?
3. A list of services you provide for your hostesses:
· Bringing all the tubs and towels
· Creating a beautiful, custom invitation
· Sending a catalog to ALL the people on their invitation, making collecting any outside orders much easier, and increasing her attendance
· Facilitating an evening of laughter, relaxation, etc.
Provide
1. All the tools your hostess needs to have a successful party-
· A simple but beautiful invitation
o Personalized
o Mailed with a catalog
2. An easy, no-pressure reason to call everyone on her list about the party
· Monthly specials
· Bring a pair of clean socks
3. Ideas for a theme for her guests, a menu, and the experience she’s looking for
4. Attendance builders: drawing slips, a contest, some kind of gift for bringing a friend?
5. An opportunity for each guest to consider booking when at the checkout table
· See my scripts in “Bookings Clinic”
6. Your total support, encouragement, and confidence that this will be a fabulous evening that everyone will remember and want to duplicate in their own homes.
FIVE ways to get FIVE parties in the next FIVE days!
1. Schedule your own Celebration Spa and be daring about who you invite. Get out your “chicken list”.
2. Ask a good friend to help you out.
3. Utilize the Master Contact List/Memory Jogger document (downloads section)
4. Find a “Center of Influence” and do a one-on-one with her. Soak your feet. Chat with her about being a hostess for you.
5. Call a few past hostesses and tell them the new Spring Products are just being released. Ask them how they’d feel to be the first one in their circle of friends to introduce the new spring line. Perhaps incent with one of the new spring items!
Starting Over, a personal story from Jana Lundh, Executive Director
I had a great fall selling season in 2006! I earned the 2007 Spa Destination trip with over $10,000 in sales between July 1 and December 31, and had four new recruits who produced the required amount of sales. In December, I did about $3300 in sales in one five-day period! It was an insane time, but definitely a testimony to the fact that repeat customers can play a huge part in your holiday sales!
Going into January, I had two spa parties booked. Decent, considering January is typically a slow month. I hired one of my January hostesses, and the other fell clean off the face of the planet, I tell you! A few days before her scheduled party she was unreachable by phone, even though I left numerous messages. Right about that time, the members of my family (myself excluded, thankfully!) began coming down with a terrible bug, their sicknesses lasting two weeks each and overlapping one another until all of a sudden it was March and yours truly had not one thing on the books at all! It had happened. I had dead-ended!
In my six years as a consultant, I’ve dead-ended a few times. This is just one example. Life happens sometimes, doesn’t it? I’ve had to start completely over, but as I always say…
It only takes ONE spa party to generate an explosion of activity in your business.
In some emails with the home office, Bryan Leist (the President of our company) recommended that I go back to my original plan, the Master Contact List. Like most women, I meet new people all the time, so my list had grown. My feeling is this: if you have MET a woman, if you have been introduced, if she knows your name and you know her name, you know her well enough to invite her to a spa party at your own home! It’s an opportunity you mustn’t pass up.
Being a huge advocate of the spa party model and its unparalleled effectiveness in the presentation of our product and opportunity, I scheduled my own evening soak and compiled a guest list for Friday April 20th. I then called some past hostesses and offered them the chance to earn 15% hostess credits instead of 10% by hosting a party in the month of either April or May. I had two takers on that: Denise (April 21st) and Melissa (May 3rd). On Bryan’s suggestion, I pretended I was a new consultant and set out to have three spa parties in my first 30 days, shooting for two bookings from those and one new recruit.
My party on the 20th yielded a booking with Sherrelyn (May 4th). Denise’s party on the 21st gave me a booking with Mischa on May 10th and a new recruit, Mary. Mischa signed up under Mary after her own party, and I also got another recruit, Sarah, at Mischa’s party. I then hired a consultant at Sherrelyn’s on the 10th! AND I got two bookings from Melissa’s party- one for June and one for July. So, in my first 30 days as a “new” recruit, I had five spa parties, with two more bookings, hired three personal recruits, and did $3096 in sales! I simply implemented the system I recommended to beginners and it worked out beautifully.
Bookings are the life-blood of our businesses. Without them we are dead in the water!
Since I came into June with only one spa party (and I don’t feel too badly about that since the bookings from three of those parties naturally went to my new recruits) I decided that I would try something even bigger. I went through some of my files and selected 15 past hostesses and repeat customers who had never hosted a party, and offered them double hostess dollars on shows with sales over $400. Here’s how I worded the offer:
“Hi Susan! Happy Summer to you! I’m writing to you today with a really special offer that I’ve extended to just a few people. I’m giving DOUBLE hostess dollars to anyone who has some friends over for a soak in the months of June, July or August! All you need is $400 in sales (easy!) and you’ll receive over $95 in free Lemongrass products- knowing how much you like our stuff, wouldn’t THAT be fun!? Remember, nothing special to do or buy, just get your friends over for some sweet relaxation. We could even find a fun summer theme for your get-together. Call or email me soon and let’s find a time! I value you!”
The portion of the hostess credits I’d be picking up on a $400 spa party is $40. I’m only doubling the 10% of guest sales, not the extra $15 the company kicks in after $400. My cost on that $40 is $26 (or 65% of $40), and I’ve still made $114 profit. Also, I’ve just been exposed to a new group of potential customers, hostesses, and consultants. With care and consistency, I think I can slide into the fall selling season with enough spa parties to have a great start.
Let me just say, the Spa Party is where it’s AT! It’s the most effective way of showing women what it is that we do. Guests with even a latent interest in finding a social or economic outlet watch our presentation, in whatever form it is that YOU do it, and think to themselves “I could do this.” Similarly, a potential hostess gets firsthand knowledge about what an event in her own home would look like. I’m all for trying out some alternative ways to make contacts with women in our business, but my goal in any supplemental prospecting activity is to find a way to get into women’s homes.
Documents and recordings for suggested reading/listening:
- Bookings Clinic (doc)
- Booking Commercial by Kerry Oppenheim Jan 08 (doc)
- LU Bookings What is Holding You Back? Sept 15, 2009 (coordinating document in the Download section).
- LU Business Builders Bookings…How to Get the Party Started this Fall September 22nd, 2009 (coordinating document in the Download section).
- LU Business Builders Making Bookings Personal and Comfortable Aug 14 (coordinating document in the Download section)
- LU On the Go June 2, 2009 “Slip into Summer” Themes to boost booking and sales (coordinating document in the Download section).
- LU On the Go March 24th “Got Bookings?”
- LU 80 Easy Ways to Get Bookings March 24th, 2009 (doc)
- Master Contact List (doc)
- LU Business Builders Class Filling Your Calendar with Bookings Sept 16, 2008
- Don’t forget to visit the Lifeline Training Library too. Go to the ORDER section of the website and look under HELP FILES for the link. You will find several recording and documents there to help you FILL YOUR CALENDAR.