Work At Home Business Options

Archive for May, 2010

Twitter is an online popular social media web site that has become the flavor of the day in regards to marketing your home business, communicating with clients and customers and so forth.

A popular trend on Twitter is for home business owners to set up tweet later accounts. If you are not familiar with this, you can set up tweets to go out various times to your twitter followers whether you are online or not. There are several online sites that offer this type of tweet later application.

I believe that setting up tweets to go out when you are not online or too busy to tweet…however, you need to change them frequently. If you are tweeting the same 20 tweets over and over for days on end, it will irritate your twitter followers and many will quit unfollowing you.

Just like your web site and blog, your tweets need to include updated content often. If you are using a tweet later type of application, I suggest changing your content at least every 2-3 days if not more frequently.

Your followers don’t want to waste their valuable time reading and seeing the same handful of tweets from you over and over.

What are your thoughts?

Shelly

When it comes to having a Direct Sales home business, its just not about selling your products to your customers. Direct Sales and Network Marketing is also about building relationships with your customers, party hosts, team members, etc.

Many times a consultant gets too focused in pushing the product sale that they forget about building a trustworthy business relationship with the customer/client.

One of the ways you can build a relationship with your customer is to keep in contact with them. Let the customer know that you appreciate their business and that you are there for them when then need additional items.

When I work on building a relationship with my customers and clients, I like to talk to them about some generic personal topics…such as: Are they married, have children, hobbies, holidays, vacation plans and so forth. By allowing some personal chit-chat when you are conversing with customers/clients, this opens up the door to some ‘personal’ relationship building.

Studies have shown that customers/clients are more apt to do business with you or refer their friends and family to you…if they feel like they have a good business & personal relationship with you. It reminds me of the old saying “Customers will do business with those they know & trust” so its your job to get to know your customers and to let your customers get to know you.

When you take the time to build relationships with those who you come into contact with…this will lead to future sales, additional party bookings, new team members and so forth. Relationship building is well worth your time & effort and should be done on a consistent basis.

How do you like to build relationships with your customers and clients?

Do You Need More Bookings? If so, check out this site!

In just a few short weeks, the children will be out of school for the summer vacations. Once that happens, many parents will be scrambling for ways to keep the children busy.

As a mother and grandmother myself, I am not fond of letting kids sit in front of a television all day long or allowing them to play video games for hours on end.

So, my blog post today is to give you some ideas that you can utilize to help keep the children busy this summer.

* Invest in some new board games that are appropriate for their age, including puzzles.
* Plan to have mini arts and crafts days a few times a week.
* Exchange babysitting services with another local mom for 2 afternoons a week. (play dates).
* Invest in some new reading books that are appropriate for the childs age.
* Invest in some outdoor games such as Bocce Ball, Volleyball, Badminton, Croquet, etc.
* Plan to take your children to the neighborhood park 1-2 times a week.
* Visit your local library 1-2 times a week.
* Plan afternoon trips to: the museum, the zoo, rollerskating and ice skating rinks, amusement parks, swimming parks, movie theater, etc.
* Volunteer this summer in your community. There are many organizations that will accept an entire family to do some volunteer work for them.

As you can see from this ‘short’ list, there are many things you can do that don’t cost a fortune to keep your children busy this summer. If you ask me, these ideas are so much better for them than letting them sit all day long in front of the tv or video game console!

How do you plan on keeping your children busy this summer?

Shelly

When it comes to eating family meals together, I will often prepare a variety of summer-style salads for my family. I love this recipe because it’s the type of salad that is packed with a lot of goodies such as cheese, hard boiled eggs, peas, bacon, etc.

Cheesy Pea Salad Recipe

5-6 slices of crisp bacon, crumbled
2 cups green peas, drained
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
1/4 cup finely chopped celery
1/2 cup cheddar cheese, chopped into pieces
3-4 hard boiled eggs, chopped into pieces
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 cup of low-fat mayonnaise

In a large mixing bowl, combine the green peas, onion, celery, cheese, hard boiled eggs, crumbled bacon, salt and ground black pepper. Stir in the 1/2 cup of low-fat mayonnaise. Place lid on your bowl and refrigerate for 2 hours. Serve the salad chilled.

Today I wanted to share with our blog readers a very unpleasant situation that I recently experienced in regards to someone having a Direct Sales home business.

As you know, I have been in Direct Sales since 1987 and have a lot of DS experience. Recently, a distant family member joined a Direct Sales company. For the purpose of this blog post, I will refer to the company as Company ABC.

Most of us are taught to get busy right away building our business and for most of us, that means calling up and/or talking to our family and friends to book home shows or to come listen to our sales presentation.

However, there is a right and a wrong way to go about this. I do agree you need to work the phone and call up family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, etc and let them know about your new home business. This includes asking them to book a party, look at a catalog or to come to your presentation.

Where I have a problem with this is…when some Direct Sales consultants take this too far. For the past month, my distant family member has been calling me numerous times (more than 10+ times) as well as other family members and harassing us to come to her presentations, to give her orders, book parties from her and so forth.

Many of our family members have called me to complain and voice their opinions about this. I totally agree with them as I too…am being harassed by her. To make this clear…YES, we have all told her that we are NOT interested, NO we don’t want to book a party and NO we don’t want to place an order. Several family members have even gotten rude with her and hung up on her because they are tired of the harassment.

I think its great that Cousin B is busy working her new business with company ABC…however, she is going about it all the wrong way.

When a customer or potential customer tells you FLAT OUT and STERNLY that they are not interested in attending, booking or buying…you really need to thank them for their time and MOVE ON to the next one. You need to be the constant professional and that means accepting the word NO graciously and moving on.

One of the best ways for you to lose customers and/or potential customers is to keep harassing them or hounding them via phone, email or in-person meetings.

You ask once and move on. If you want to ask a second time, you should wait for a few months and then ask again. However, it is very unprofessional to be calling up people and hounding them to death several times a month to come and book a party or place an order with you. This is a SURE FIRE way to drive a customer right out the door.

So the next time you get a ‘no’ I suggest you move on to the next person on your contact list. If you decide you want to approach customer A again, you should wait a few weeks or better yet…a couple of months.

There is a big difference between being a driven go-getter compared to being someone who harasses.

Do You Need More Bookings? If so, check out this site!

I felt really honored when Christa Jensen of Jensen’s Designs and Eccentric WAHM agreed to do a guest post for me.

I’m thrilled to share center stage with Chrissy who I feel is very witty, generous, genuine and well, she just…you know ROCKS!

The Saga of a Blog Intern on WAHM Talk Radio, How This Single Decision Shaped Me into a Better Blogger

The opportunity to apply arose to become a blog intern on WAHM Talk Radio early in the year. I knew I needed to do this, something within me said; YOU love to blog but DO YOU KNOW really how to do it effectively?

I am not going to lie; no, I wasn’t sure if what I was doing was effective. By being a blog intern, by accepting this learning experience from someone who knows, who’s been there, who teaches it has opened my eyes to a whole new world of blogging.

I totally thought I was passionate before the internship however this experience has sparked something within that IS passionate about blogging.

I went into this internship knowing I would learn about blogging, no doubt but nothing could have told me how much more I would learn! The lessons I have learned, the tools I have been given and the instructions on how to use them all efficiently and effectively together are what I call priceless.

It was foreign to me to blog on a daily basis, although I strived too, the thought of how to come up with niche posting ideas daily was a bit scary too, and I questioned myself on that in the beginning. Learning what different things do and how to make them habit wasn’t, it just kind of fit.

Now was this easy? No, it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t supposed to be easy. This was to learn, educate in such a way that it would benefit me long term. It was like a college course for me. As the weeks rolled on though, I found I was more comfortable and that things flowed smoothly for the most part.

For the most part I mean this did not come without obstacles; surely enough I had to play catch up on daily posting due to things that arose beyond my control a few times during the 10 weeks. Although the frustration of that plagued me, I would not have changed those at all.

By working through the obstacles, holding to the commitment I gave this internship gave me an extended lesson as I have started calling it. Extra credit if you will even. If I make a commitment to blog daily, that is what I need to do, even if I have to back publish a few posts now and again to work around unforeseen obstacles.

This was by far in my years of working at home, the best thing that I was able to do for myself, my business. It took me from thinking I know, to knowing. It has given me the confidence, the tools to make myself into the blogger I want to be!

Do you feel like I did about you blogging? Are you thinking you may want to look into this? Mom’s Talk Network are taking intern applicants right now.

Written by Christa Jensen of Eccentric WAHM Blogger. She is a web design artist and avid blogger. She can be found working from her home office, doing things her own way! She enjoys virtually hobnobbing with other WAHMs.