“Tory Johnson's Secrets of Direct Sales Success” plus 2 more |
- Tory Johnson's Secrets of Direct Sales Success
- The writing's on the card
- ‘Hauling’: The New American Consumer
| Tory Johnson's Secrets of Direct Sales Success Posted: 13 Sep 2010 04:34 AM PDT Sept. 13, 2010 In a challenging economy, many people have not only turned to direct sales to supplement their income, but they've also turned up the heat on their commitment to generating a serious paycheck in this $28 billion industry. Only a quarter of all active direct sellers earn more than $10,000 a year, so I set out to learn their success secrets. Avon: Grace Campbell Success Secret: Ask Around First Grace Campbell's 's husband owns a plumbing business that tanked in the recession, which forced Grace to find a way to help pay the bills. When someone suggested Avon, Grace worried that she'd become the "pest who's always pushing something" on other people, so she first asked friends and family what they would think if she became an independent representative. Would they be interested in the product? Would they buy from her? When everyone answered with an enthusiastic yes, she had the confidence to go for it. (Plus, the starter fee of just $10 was a big draw.) Don't sign up with a company until you've done some research among your likely target market. Stella & Dot: Zandra Gay Success Secret: Build a Team with Serious Networking Zandra Gay is a stay at home mom of three kids under 6—and at the end of last year her husband lost his job in internet sales. Within 10 days, she snapped into action with jewelry giant Stella & Dot because she needed the money and the flexibility. She loves the jewelry, wears it every day and naturally gets a lot of compliments. That's an obvious segue into sharing what she does. She also has another secret: Zandra asks everyone what they do, and they in turn ask what she does. (Smart for any professional!) That's helped her recruit other reps who are now on her team. She makes money on her own sales – and on the sales of the people under her. With any legitimate direct sales opportunity, you will only make money on your recruits if you're also an active seller. Lia Sophia: Kim Phillips Success Secret: Share Your Personal Story Kim Phillips and her husband both lost their jobs, wound up on food stamps, living in a friend's home, and sharing a '93 Buick. They're both college educated—she's a classically-trained pianist too—and she kept asking, how did things get like this? Kim admits she always turned her nose when invited to direct sales parties, but when someone said there was real money to be made, she dove in with another jewelry leader: Lia Sophia. Now this is her full-time job, and she tells everyone her story. So many of the women she meets are down and out because of the economy or a troubled marriage, and they're buoyed by Kim's triumph over adversity. Barefoot Books: Chaunci Pirhalla Success Secret: Pursue Innovative Marketing that Matches Your Lifestyle Chaunci Pirhalla and her husband ran a language learning business that went under because of the economy. She homeschools her 6-year-old son and has always had a passion for books. That passion, plus the need for a new paycheck, led her to Barefoot Books, a unique line of more than 400 books and activity packs for children. She's found really innovative ways to incorporate this business into her lifestyle. She markets to a homeschooling co-op of 500 families. She partners with farm co-ops in her area to promote the books related to healthy eating and cooking. She's convinced baby boutiques to carry the books on consignment. Chaunci's check average $3,000 a month. Pampered Chef: Cinnamon Burk Success Secret: Follow "3, 2, 1" Rule Cinnamon Burk lost her sales job and realized it would be difficult to find a similar position. A friend suggested Pampered Chef and she had nothing to lose by giving it a shot. Cinnamon says success boils down to a rule called, "3, 2, 1," which is part of the training she receives: Make 3 contacts every day, host 2 cooking shows a week and recruit 1 person per month. Research the training tools and support available before signing on with any company. The amount the company invests in videos, pamphlets, catalogues, coaching calls will tell you a lot about the support available. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Posted: 12 Sep 2010 02:41 PM PDT Posted By KATE SCHWASS-BUECKERT, QMI AGENCYPosted 2 days agoSome may say the written word is dead. Those people clearly haven't discovered postcrossing. With more than 200,000 members in 209 countries, to deliver this project aims complete postcards from the world strangers all over to each other's front doors. "Receiving postcards always lit my day, and made mailbox a my visits to the lot more interesting," says founder Paulo Magalhaes. "Knowing a fact that there were more people that enjoyed receiving postcards from far away, the idea of how to match them across the world came up." He launched the website on July 1, 2005 while finishing a computer science and a systems engineering degree. Now, just a little more than five years later, postcrossers have passed the five million postcard sent milestone. Louise Jolly joined up just a month after Magalhaes started the website and says she feels a bit like the ambassador of Postcrossing for Canada. "It's amazing to see how postcrossing has grown in five years," she said, noting when she began, there were just 443 users in 25 countries. Now, postcards leaving this country number almost 200,000. Jolly, who lives near Kawartha Lakes, Ont. holds the title of having sent the most postcards in Canada (more than 1,400) and says postcrossing allows you to "travel anywhere in the world right from your own home." "I think being No. 1 comes with a certain amount of responsibility to represent our country well by being timely, informative and polite," Jolly says. Like Jolly, Marian Munro from Halifax has picked up the hobby. Munro has collected vintage postcards for more than 30 years and a friend told the museum curator about postcrossing. She signed up more than two years ago. "I realized that this could be a fun way to ensure there are lots of vintage postcards for my son, by sending and receiving them worldwide," she says. Munro has sent more than 375 postcards, and says she budgets $50 every two weeks for stamps. While most people sign up for Postcrossing as a hobby, Magalhaes said a number of people use postcrossing for education. "In schools, teachers -- or parents in homeschooling -- are using postcrossing in creative ways as a teaching tool. "Postcards coming from far away make kids interested in geography, English and even other cultures and societies. Its randomness helps in learning about places that might not be so common in textbooks too," he explains. Mardi Desjardins of Winnipeg thinks postcrossing is also giving her an education. "I am learning things about our world and its people. I have at least heard the names of most countries of the world but have little knowledge of what many of them are like or what the history of those places is. "More than once, I have received a card that has sent me on a little research mission to learn a bit more about something the card told me about," she says. Magalhaes still sends and receives cards, and he says only some people recognize it's him on the other end of the postcard. "I receive a lot of postcards -- many members mail me just to thank for the project: It's a great community! Some people that get my address in postcrossing recognize my account, but others don't -- I enjoy it either way," he says. As for a favourite, Magalhaes says "every postcard is special" and it's not just about the image on the front. "It's what the person wrote, the stamp, where it came from and the distance it crossed to reach me," he says. - - - Neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet, nor hail shall stop this hobby Postcrossing has become a worldwide project. Overall there are 210,675 members across 209 countries, mailing 499 postcards every hour. Their postcards have travelled 28,070,621,862 km-- that's 700,452 laps around the world. Here are some of the 209 countries that are involved and how many users they currently have: U.S.A. -35,039 China -20,907 Germany -14,988 Finland -12,687 Russia -12,607 Taiwan -12,169 Brazil -6,946 United Kingdom -6,285 Canada -4,178 Australia -3,679 Belarus -3,451 France -3,180 Italy -1,732 Argentina -1,409 Sweden -700 Mexico -602 Lebanon -13 Afghanistan -10 Haiti -2 Soloman Islands -1
Comments on this Article. You are currently not logged in.This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| ‘Hauling’: The New American Consumer Posted: 11 Sep 2010 11:05 PM PDT There's a YouTube phenomenon that's been bothering me: the haul video. These videos are homemade by young women showing off their clothing or makeup purchases (their "hauls") to anyone willing to watch. The craze has 100,000 videos carrying its badge right now on YouTube, and according to Times Online, new hauls were being uploaded every 12 minutes last week. The thing that bothers me about these videos isn't exactly the personalities of the young women featured in them; they're personable and seem friendly enough. The clothes and makeup in the videos aren't bad either. Anyone can see these chicks really know how to put together an outfit and sniff out a bargain. The weirdest thing about this particular sect of the YouTube world is that these people are spending their time after shopping trips talking about what they bought and in great detail. I appreciate the design elements of a nice blouse as much as the next girl, but to spend 10 minutes preaching about skinny jeans to (what I imagine to be) a rapt audience is kind of depressing. Whenever I watch these videos (purely for research purposes, of course ... harumph), I can't help but feel they perpetuate the stereotype that Americans are nothing more than materialistic sheep. 100,000 videos dedicated to expounding upon purchases made at CVS pharmacy, Macy's, and Forever 21: It leaves one to question what the ultimate purpose is. Blair Fowler, known as the "haul queen," told Good Morning America that she started her videos because she found sharing her girly acquisitions fun. I can see the fun in doing it, sure, but at the tender age of 16, Fowler dropped out and opted for homeschooling in order to focus her energy on shopping. She and her sister actually split advertising revenues with YouTube, which earns her big bucks, and companies shower her with free clothing in the hopes that she'll name-drop. So the purpose looks to be chasing the American dream: being paid an obscene amount of money to do what anyone else could do (just kidding … or am I?). Getting paid to do what you love is swell and something we should all aspire to. Hopefully, if we do something we love, we can contribute to our communities and perhaps even the world in a meaningful way. However, showing off clothes on a video-uploading site isn't exactly posterity in the making. It's impermanent; the clothes that were so cherished in a video will be old rags in a month or two. The newest trend will pop up, and the effort put into making a video won't mean jack. A video people emulated with fervor will soon be all for naught. Maybe it's my bourgeois attitude that makes me lack understanding. There's something thrilling about telling people you bought a gorgeous item off the rack that had a 75 percent discount. The people who watch get a vicarious high from seeing someone else's shopping treasures; it's like buying things without spending a dime. This isn't hurting the people in the videos or the viewers, so what's the problem? It's really a problem of ideals. When most people think of America, they envision a country where freedom is the most precious of principles. Instead, the reality of the situation is that buying power is a tenet of our society. Whether you're buying mansions or $7 shirts, the more stuff you have, the more interesting, admirable, and "American" you are. Hopefully, this trend will die down slowly but surely, if not for the superficial consumerism argument, then because it's taking up airtime and print space that could be used for real news. Now that's a real pity. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Yahoo! News Search Results for Homeschooling To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
No comments:
Post a Comment