HELP! - with my mail order business, and staff reaching targets!

[MissBossLJ]

Hello There

well basically i run two mail order businesses.
1) supplies fine lingerie for women
2) supplies high branded fragrance, prestige skincare, tanning, gift sets, makeup and haircare - all designer big name brands and we are massively cheaper then rrp.

How i run these two businesses is mainly through parties. Both mail order companies have a professionally designed catologues and so on. We have staff and we get out staff bookings. we provid ethe staff with chic uniform, pay them 7.50 an hour, pay them for 4 hours work a night when the party only lasts on average 2 hours but they always get paid for 4. we give them the product starter kit for free whereas majority of rival companies charge their staff to purchase the starter kit.

at each party around 10-15 guests attend.

to begin with the staff member will talk about the company explain all the sizing, product categories and current lines and how to order with all the neccessary forms provided and so on.

we also have a few party games where people can win prizes and so on. after that people generally mingle and have a bit to eat and then order, and these parties are held within the clients home similar to ann summers etc.

also as an incentive to the party host(client) with every booking we give them ten pounds free to spend and a free bottle of champagne. also if group orders go over 250 pounds ppl recieve an additional 20 percent off.

for staff incentives.

we have bonuses for met targets and a division called the sales league where our staff are put into groups devised byt he area they work in with other representatives and for each party and orders they gain they get points and they compete against on another and at the end of the year these points that they earn can be spent on anything from cash bonuses, meals out to even weekends away for high performers.

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Now the thing is all i ask from our staff is that they gain 8 items order per party and when you work it out that is not even one item per guest attending. the staff seem to be struggling to get 5. it cannot be the items as the way in which they are presented even in the catologues and the quality is superb and the guests even say they love the stuff. yet i am not getting the numbers i wish?

i am almost fully booked with all my staff for parties in jan and february now and i really want to increase productivity. surely the problem has got to be with the staff. do you think the staff are not really giving it the hard sell. what do you think i should do.

i have decided i am going to retrain them in a weeks time and really emphasise they need to be getting 8 items and i have also devised a promotions scheme for the consumer which encourages multi buys and discounts as well as a loyalty card.

what would you recommend?

any help would be grateful!

LJ

[Will]

Hi
Sounds like you have put a lot of work into this - great job!

I think what you will find is some people at the party are not there to buy, they are there for the party and to have some fun. The people who do buy are probably buying only one item each... a good idea may be to start introducing package deals where they could get their second, third (and so on) items at a slightly discounted price.

I do not know too much about these sort of parties, but from what I have learned in other areas it is about up-selling to those who are buying (some people call it value adding).

One other thing I would suggest (not sure if you are doing it yet?), is start a website with your products for sale on it. Each person at the party can be given a card (or even a discount coupon to make it interesting), and it will give them a discount on your website if they want to buy after the party. This creates return business, and you won't be paying staff for those sales.

Hope that helps

[MissBossLJ]

Hello there,

Thankyou for your reply

in regards to upselling, being as i have had this problem and want to increase the numbers up to 8 items per party i have implemented incentives for the consumer for example, such as buy two get one free, buy so many kncikers get some free etc loads of promos like that and i have done package deals to try and encourage the multi buys, also to reduce over heads i have decided to slide in and cross sell the items from my other business the beauty one as it relates to udnerwear and its coming up to valentines, in order to cut overheads of staff wages and also to try and help my staff to sell more items so now they would need to get only 4 lingerie items and 4 from the beauty bit, i have coprresponded the offers throughtout the beauty stuff as well such as buy two get one free or get one half price etc. Thankyou for your feedback do you think what i just typed will be the right move in bringing productivity up?

regards

[Will]

Yeah that is the way to go, although why not just make the business into one, an underwear and beauty product party (not an underwear party, but taking some beauty products along)? This will make you spend less time organising everything, as it is all the one package, maybe train your sales staff to know exactly why the products are good etc.

I am a huge believer in the internet, so if it was me, I would get straight on to putting the website up so they can buy after the party. The incentive is you could offer free postage, and they can then buy at their own pace, or maybe buy things they didnt want to buy infront of other people.

[MissBossLJ]

yeh we are having a site built, but then its hard to get serious amounts of traffic to your site by doing parties and so on imagine i have a lot of staff and there booked nearli every night doing parties people need the products to be sold to them and put to them to buy people i find tend to buy when u lead them to the water them getting them to just do it online, hence y richard branson has a mail order beauty company he operates through the same channels, i still think web presence is essential also though so i will be implementing that as another channel to gain more orders..

thankyou so much for the advice

[vmgbpo]

I would recommend that you go to the different parties and see how your staff is working. You can give pointers on how they can improve their parties.

[MissBossLJ]

ok, thankyou i thought that i would see how the first booking going of this month and if productivity is still down then i shall attend the second booking.