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4 Top Reasons Direct Selling Can Help People in A Bad Economy
By Xavier Garcia

Direct selling is a marketing channel of direct distribution for products and services directly to consumers without the shipping of products to conventional retail outlets.

According to the World Federation of Direct Selling Associations (WFDSA) the Direct Selling Industry was responsible for over $28 billion in retail sales in the United States and over $114 billion in retail sales worldwide in 2009. That number continues to grow each year. The direct selling sector is a huge engine of economic growth in the US. According to numbers reported by the Direct Selling Association (DSA), more than 50% of American adults report having purchased services or goods from a direct selling representative. Additionally, one in five American adults claim they have been or currently are working as a direct seller. With more than 62 million sales associates connected with direct selling companies worldwide, the direct selling (network marketing) industry is dynamic and growing not only locally but on a global scale. Here are a couple reasons why direct selling is taking off:

1. Earn Extra Income

Direct sales can be a great way to earn some extra money as a supplemental income, or perhaps fund college savings, and retirement. Like any job, particularly in sales, so it is work. It’s not like you sign up and then all of a sudden checks start rolling in. You have to hold parties, demonstrate the products, and one-on-one selling which is the most popular technique for making product sales. But, while all direct sellers make money on the difference between retail and wholesale product prices, most direct-sales companies also have a commission structure that rewards the “downline” recruitment of additional salespeople into their system. This gives the direct seller an opportunity to expand his/her business as well as give others the same opportunity.

According to the DSA, the median income for direct sellers is a modest $2,400 a year. It’s enough to pay that extra bill, take that vacation or buy better holiday presents. Although some sales representative do earn tidy incomes, most use direct selling as a part-time supplement income.

2. Start A New Career

In 2009 the industry hit an all-time high of about 16.1 million Americans were direct sales representatives, according to the Direct Selling Association and with only 7.5 percent involved doing it full time with more than three-quarters being women. With employers watching their budgets more so than ever because of the bad economy, employees incomes as well as job opportunities have been stagnant. Nowadays, Americans more than ever are trying to make ends meet by turning to direct selling. More professionals today have entered the arena from doctors, attorneys, executives and many more have become instant entrepreneurs in the direct selling industry.

3. Start Your Own Business

Anyone can do it. There are no required levels of education, experience, financial resources or physical condition. People of all ages and from all backgrounds have succeeded in direct selling. Direct sellers are independent contractors. You’re your own boss, which means you can have the following:

• Business Ownership-Own a business of your own Boss and call your own shots.

 

• No Caps on Earning Potential- Earn what you are truly worth. You can earn as much as you want in proportion to your own efforts. The level of success you can achieve is limited only by your commitment and willingness to work hard.

 

• Goal Setting-Set your own goals and determine yourself how to reach them.

 

• Easy Start Up & Exit Strategy-Start your business with very little or no capital investment. Plus, it’s a business that’s easy entry and easy exit unlike traditional businesses.

4. Work flexibility

You choose when and how much you want to work either part-time or full-time. According to the DSA, some 5.1 million Americans were involved in some form of direct sales in 1991, up from 4.7 million in 1990. Furthermore, 89% of direct sellers do sales work only part-time, which means they either are homemakers or have other jobs with women accounting for 90% of all sellers. Many direct sellers are attracted by the flexibility of work hours but also by the opportunity to develop personal business connections.

Direct sales has helped many people in the US and across the world supplement their incomes as well as replace it in many cases. According to San Francisco Times, one lady of Brentwood started selling sweets last year by holding house parties with tastings of drinks, candy, cupcakes and other goodies. With her husband’s computer business struggling this has been a blessing for them.

She gives four or five parties a month, and works about 10 hours a week and nets $500 to $625 a month in sales. In addition to that she makes another $100 or $150 a month on commissions from sales generated by new reps she recruited. She claims, “It’s helped us out tremendously.”

So is Direct Selling for YOU?

Well that all depends on your ambition and ability to discard the hype and find a genuine business opportunity. So how about it… Is direct selling for you? Will you allow yourself to be successful? Perhaps be the next Direct Selling Icon? Business is all about timing and there is no better time now to be in the direct sales industry..

If you are serious about starting your direct sales business, there is one opportunity with no hype that I highly recommend that has stood the test of time. It offers a unique niche business opportunity where you dont have to buy into the sizzle. You’ll be able to create a solid lasting residual income unlike no other with this unique direct selling business. Visit my site at workingwithxavier.com to learn more and sign up and get my Free Report on “Insider Secrets to Building Your MLM Business Lightning Fast” Revealed By 7 Figure Networkers showing you specifically how it is possible to do exactly the same thing.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Xavier_Garcia

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If you are with any of the Direct Sales companies, I am sure that you are aware that if you want to make the big money, you need to be out there recruiting and adding new team members to your team. However, the real question is, Is Team Building Right For You?

When you are considering building a team with your Direct Sales business, there are several things that you need to consider. When you build a team, you are responsible for training, supporting, motivating and communicating with your team on a consistent basis. Before you start adding new consultants to your business, there are a few things you need to consider.

1. Experience: How long have you been with your particular company? Do you know everything you need to know about your company, their business policies and their products? If not, then you should not be recruiting. When a new member joins your team, you are responsible for training them and supporting them. If you don’t know what you need to know about the business, there is no way you can effectively help them. I suggest you work on learning everything that you need to know and get some experience before adding new consultants to your team.

2. Time Commitment: When you start training and managing your own downline team, you will need to be committed to giving up several hours a week of your time to just lead and train your team. You can not just sign people up and push them off to others. As their recruiter, it is your job to help them and that can be very time consuming. If you don’t have several hours a week to spare on just leading your team, you should not be recruiting.

3. Money: Managing your own team, especially a large one, can get expensive. There will be meeting and rallies to pay for, training materials to buy, refreshments to be made and served, phone calls to be made, etc. The company you represent normally does not pay for these costs and most times, this responsibility falls on the leader of the team. Before you start adding team members, it is important to figure out your financial situation and make sure you can afford the extra costs involved.

These 3 questions are the big ones that you need to consider before you leap into the world of recruiting. When you build a Direct Sales team, it is your responsibility to make time for your team, so before you add that first new member…make sure this is really what you want.

This article is copyright 2011 By Shelly Hill, All Rights Reserved.

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If you are thinking about joining one of the Direct Sales companies it is very important to check out the leader of your team to make sure that he or she is the perfect leader for your business needs.

What do I mean? Well…is most cases (not all) you will want to choose a leader that displays certain business qualities so that they can help you to succeed in your business. A good strong Direct Sales team leader will have certain qualities that you need to look for before signing up and joining a particular team.

Today let’s take a look at a few qualities that I feel are important.

1. Leads By Example: Does this leader go out and book & hold parties? Do they attend company sponsored meetings, conventions and training events? Are they out there working the business in a professional manner?

A good team leader will be out there booking parties, recruiting new team members, attending company sponsored training events and they will have a good strong business that they are actively working.

A bad team leader will be one who sits at home and pushes their team members to do all the “work” while they sit at home and reap the rewards.

2. Longevity: A good leader will have been in the business for several years and most of these leaders intend on working their business as a full-time career. The more time a leader has worked in Direct Sales the stronger their “training skills” will be and this in turn can help you to be a successful consultant.  

3. Leaders Availability: A good leader will make him or herself available to you as often as possible when you need help with your business. Don’t get me wrong, they won’t be available 24/7 as that is unrealistic and you shouldn’t expect that from them…but they will make themselves available several times a week to assist you.

4. Professionalism: A good leader will behave and act like a professional when they are around their team members, party hosts, customers and while attending business events.

If your potential leader has a bad reputation in not assisting his or her team members in a timely manner, pulling out of party bookings often, canceling team meetings often or other things that one “might” consider to be unprofessional…you might want to “join” another team.

I want to give you a personal example of professionalism that I encountered about 12 years ago when I was considering joining a particular team. I called up the team leader to “interview” her as I wanted to make sure I would be on a good stable team. During this phone call she whined & complained to me that her current team members were lazy and not applying themselves and even mentioned a few by name. This was my very first time speaking with her and that immediately set off “alarm bells” with me as NO team leader should be gossiping or putting down the members on their team to other people. I quickly decided to join a different team after that 30 minute phone conversation. I do highly recommend that you “interview” your potential upline’s team leader before signing on the dotted line as many Direct Sales Companies do not allow you to switch teams once you have joined.

There are many qualities a good strong team leader should have but the four I outlined here in this post I feel are the top four you should be considering before joining anyone’s team with any of the direct sales companies.

What are your thoughts? What do you look for in a good quality team leader?

I run or co-run a few home businesses and today I thought I would pass along a few tips that I have learned over the 20+ years that I have had a home business.

First…let me ask you this question. Do you procrastinate and don’t get your business work or client work done on time? Do you wait until the last day or hours before it’s due to complete it? If so, that is a bad business practice that you MUST change today!

When you have a home business it is usually yourself or yourself and a few others who are running it. You don’t have a large group of employees to rely on to help you get that work done. There are things that happen in our daily lives that we don’t plan on…like our family members getting sick, deaths ocurring in the family, natural disasters, electricity or internet going down or whatever.

If you let your work sit and try to work on it right before it’s due what happens if some emergency arises? Who will complete that work and get it in for you? In most cases…no one!

This is why it is VERY important that you break that procrastinating last minute habit today!

You really need to set up a schedule and pencil all of your business tasks and deadlines. You need to work on your business projects or client work ahead of time and have it completed and ready to go for submission or delivery several days before it’s actually due!

By planning ahead and completing your work ahead of time you will prevent business disasters and equally as important, it will be less stressful for you and those around you. Clients and Customers do not like to hear your “excuses” on why your work or their work hasn’t been completed on time.

 If you want to be taken seriously in your business and be taken seriously by your customers and clients you need to get organized and get your work completed ahead of time. So break that “bad” business habit today and save yourself a headache tomorrow.

Shelly

If you have a home business with one of the direct sales companies, it is very important to have an online business presence. One of the ways you can market your business online is to hire an affordable ghostwriter. Here is what an experienced ghostwriter can do for you.

1. He/She can write professionally written newsletters that you can email out to all of your party hosts, customers, downline team, etc. This will free up your time to work on other aspects of your Direct Sales Business.

2. He/She can write professionally written blog posts for you and post them to your blog. He/She can write them directed towards your niche, keyword load them and properly do the keyword linking so that your blog posts rank high in search engine results.

3. He/She can write expertly written articles for you that pertain to your niche. You will submit these articles with your own resource author’s box on them to various online article directories, web sites, other blogs, etc. Article marketing is a great way to drive traffic to your business web site.

4. He/She can write business advertisements for you to use in your email marketing campaign, classified ads, etc.

5. He/She can write expertly written web site content for you to post to your business web site on just about any topic that you would need.

As you can see…an experienced ghostwriter can do a lot to help you market your business online. He/She can write newsletter content, blog content, web site content, articles and ad copy to help free up your time for other business tasks.

Shelly Hill Co-Owns The Two Classy Ghostwriting Chics with her business partner Chris Carroll. You can find their online web site at http://www.twoclassyghostwritingchics.com to see all of the services that they offer to help you market your business online. You can find Shelly’s home business resource site at http://www.workathomebusinessoptions.com for free home business articles, resources and tips.

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I know! I know! This may seem like an obvious question. You maybe thinking I have lost it as selling your product or services are the key to being in business.

Being prepared to sell is both a mental and a physical preparedness in any sales business, direct sales or otherwise.

Mentally means that you are always in a selling mode whether at the grocery store or in your office. If you feel frumpy but you just dashed into the store for something, are you going to be able to chat up they lady in front of you in line? What about the friend you ran into? The kids are wild and she wants to place an order, are you going to be able to switch gears and become that professional you need to be? You have to be mentally prepared and know you will need to work your business every day, any time, any place.

Physically prepared means literally that. Can you pull a pen and business card out of your purse or pocket right now to assist a potential customer? If not, you need to be prepared. Do you have a brochure available? What about your product line? Do you know it? Can you flip right to the page that customer is talking about or direct her to it on your website? Is your website easy to navigate and up to date with current information?

If you answered no to any of these, you may need to get prepared to sell. Sometimes selling a product is an impulse. How many times has someone seen you and they say “oh, I have been meaning to call you”? Right there and then, you need to get that order or set a time to call them for order placement.

Being prepared may seem like a simple concept, but sometimes more often than not, we can get caught not being prepared and lose a sale or lose our professional image. Don’t let it happen to your direct sales business. Take some time right now to get what you need and find a way to have it available at a moments notice. Your customer will thank you for it.

Copyright Chris Carroll ~ All Rights Reserved

Chris is a work at home mom that has made direct sales her business of choice and enjoys sharing information and tips with others. You can find her at her business site http://DirectSalesTalk.com . She has also partnered with a friend on a product review site for small business owners at http://TwoClassyChics.blogspot.com .

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