How to Create the Perfect Guest List for Your Booking Event

In Step 2 of How to Use a Booking Event to Fill Your Calendar, we focus on your guest list. The main focus of your booking event is to book parties for your direct sales business. You want people there who are in your hostess demographic. You also want people from a variety of groups so that you can start several party chains.

Think of party chains as party genealogy. This booking event can be the origin of lots of party chains. Each person who books a party is a chain starter. When you book a party from her party, you’re continuing her chain. If you book three parties from her party, you are not only maintaining her chain but also starting two new chains. A year from now, you’ll probably be able to trace a lot of the parties on your calendar back to this booking event.

A party chain can grow long and wide by your booking several parties from each party. It can stop when you don’t get any bookings from the current party or you recruit the hostess (in which case she’ll probably continue the chain). Or it can become a loop, and you keep doing parties for the same people.

You want a lot of party chains so that you have the best chance of avoiding their stopping or looping. The purpose of the categories is to help you brainstorm a guest list for your booking event. Don't skip over someone because you can’t fit her into a category or leave out a category because you can’t fill it. It is more important to have a lot of categories with a few people than a few categories with a lot of people. Have a miscellaneous category and add the one person you know from your yoga class and the two people you keep in touch with from high school, etc.

Having a mix of people at your booking event models what you want your hostesses to do at their parties. If they invite from a variety of categories in their lives, you’ll have a higher chance of starting more party chains. This will prevent party loops. It will also give you a better chance of continuing chains when you recruit one of your new hostesses because she won’t be associated with the other chains from the party where you met her. And if you do recruit a hostess whose party started several chains, she will have a stronger start.

The key to keeping party chains going is to master booking parties from parties. This is a skill that will serve your business well, and we go over it depth in L.E.A.P. which is my signature coaching program for leaders and aspiring leaders in direct sales. And although you don’t have to be a leader to be excellent at continuing party chains, I include it as part of the program because you won’t be a leader if you aren’t adept at it.

Cheering for you,
Kelly

P.S. Once you have your list made, invite people the same way you tell your hostesses to invite their guests. Contact them individually using whatever means of communication you typically use with each person.

P.P.S. This is the 4th of a 5-post series. Here are the other posts if you're playing catchup. 
#1 Get Your Guide to a Full Direct Sales Party Calendar
#2 How to Pick the Best Date for Your Booking Event
#3 Why You Want to Offer a Hostess Benefit that is Unique to You
#4 How to Create the Perfect Guest List for Your Booking Event
#5 Why You Want to Hostess Coach Yourself