Remember when I said there are some things in your direct sales business you can control, some you can influence and some that are totally out of your hands? Hostess coaching falls under the things you can influence even though it seems like it is totally out of your hands.

The good news is that your booking event is an excellent time to practice your hostess coaching skills. The even better news is that it is the only time you can control her because you are her. I know it seems weird to go through the motions of hostess coaching yourself, but it will serve you well not only for this party but for future parties.

Individually invite everyone. Follow up with everyone. When you’re hostess coaching the hostesses who schedule from your booking event, you’ll be able to speak from experience and not theory. You can even direct her to the text message you sent her two days before your booking event. She can copy and paste it and send it to her list. If you don’t do...

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...

In Step 1 of How to Use a Booking Event to Fill Your Calendar, you remind yourself of the benefits of hosting a party with your direct sales company. This includes your company’s tangible and non-tangible hostess benefits. It also consists of the unique and exclusive benefits you offer. Knowing these benefits makes you more confident when you’re offering to do a party for someone.

You earn the hostess benefits from your booking event (assuming your company allows you to self-host). I wouldn’t run this as a mystery hostess event because they are much more useful for product-enthusiasts (we talk about the best way to do this in Spark), and because the focus of this event is on the bookings rather than the sales.

Write down your company’s tangible hostess benefits. They include free and half-priced products, availability of hostess-exclusive items and bundles, future discounts, etc. You also want to list other benefits your company offers hostesses....

Hopefully, you’ve downloaded your Success Guide for How to Use a Booking Event to Fill Your Calendar. If not, you can get it here.

Now it is time to pick your date for your booking event a.k.a. party. (By the way, call it a party or whatever your company calls it and not a booking event when you’re inviting people to it. You can call it a booking event when you’re talking to your team about theirs.) One of the advantages of this system is that it gives you more control over your direct sales business. Because you’re starting party chains from your booking event, you’ll want to be purposeful when you pick the date so that you stay in control of your calendar.

Your direct sales business is made up of three kinds of things: things you can control, things you can influence and things that are totally out of your hands. When you have the opportunity to control something, you should take advantage of it. Your party availability is almost always in your...

Here is the fastest and easiest way to fill your direct sales party calendar, and it is super simple to train your team to use it.

The key to a successful direct sales business is to have a full party schedule. You get to define “success” which means you get to define “full.” The best place to book a party is at a party, but sometimes your calendar needs a little (or big) boost. I’ve developed a 3-step system for filling your calendar that you can use whenever it is empty, or you want to get a lot of parties scheduled quickly.

You can get it here.

When I joined direct sales, social media and texting didn't exist. So if I wanted to fill my calendar, I had to use the phone. To talk to people. Blah. I didn't love it, and I bet you don't either.

This is one of the reasons I developed this system, and once I started using it, I found it to be way more effective than making phone calls. My team felt the same way (probably because they disliked the phone more...