How to Grow your Party Plan Home Business

By Kimberly Earley for Work-At-Home.org

Ask anyone in business what the single most important aspect is in starting a home business for someone that wants to work at home, and you’ll hear a multitude of answers: sufficient capital, cash flow, profit margin, and more.

All of those things are important, many work at home businesses have been started on a shoe-string budget, or with a small profit margin. Those home-based businesses will still thrive, as long as they understand marketing and advertising are essential to any business, and even more so to a work at home business. You may have a great product line to sell, excellent customer service, unbeatable prices… but without a customer base, you won’t have a thriving business. No one can buy from you if they don’t know what you have to sell.

Beginning and growing a party plan work at home business is no different. It’s an excellent work at home opportunity. Most companies provide a training manual that contains excellent information. Use it! It’s your lifeline to growing your business, written by people who have had the experience and found what works. There are times; however, that you’re at a loss. You had your first six bookings, and your bookings off of them… and you’ve experienced cancellations, or worse, parties that have no bookings. Now what? You’ve got that great product line, great hostess specials, but all of your leads have dried up. First, go back to your manual, and follow every step in it for any leads you may have from your past parties. Next, call your former hostesses and see if they’re ready to get more free items (have another party). Then, follow a few of the steps below. Just remember, concentrate on getting bookings… bookings are the life-blood of any party plan. If you don’t have parties, you can’t get more parties, and you can’t fill up your calendar.

• 1) Your first step should be to register and create a website for your work at home business. If you’re not a web specialist, search the internet, compare plans. Secure your own domain, to make it easier to direct people to your website. Plan to keep your website updated (we’ll talk in a minute about what you’re going to update it with), so be sure that you know how to make simple changes. Create your email address.
  
• 2) Order or create business cards for your home-based enterprise. I recommend ordering them through your company. Most party plan programs do not allow you to use their logo, except on their approved forms. Use it! You want people to think of your company’s name, and think of you. Order or create as many as you can afford, then hand them out like candy at Halloween, two and three to a person. Business Cards get circulated. You hand them to a customer, and they’ll keep one, and pass one of the others to someone who they think might need or want your product. Print your website address on it, as well as your email address. Many customers might shy from a call, afraid they’ll be pressured into booking a party, so they’ll use your email address or visit your website first.
  
• 3) Create flyers. Consult your training manual. You will probably find that your company already has flyers with your monthly specials created – all you’ll have to do is add your name. Make these flyers in color, pictures bold, showcase your monthly specials and build the need to host a party in potential hostesses. You’re getting your name out there, reaching people who might not even know about your company or its products. Make sure they do. Some of the best places to post them are in grocery store and convenience store windows, bulletin boards, near mail pick-ups at apartment complexes, anywhere that people gather. Keep a list of where you’ve posted your flyers and update them regularly with the new specials.
  
• 4) Create contests. Remember, your single goal is to get more bookings. Create a monthly contests to get more bookings: the hostess this month who had the most bookings held (this is important, as it creates the urgency to schedule the bookings close in, and not allow the new hostess to change her mind), the hostess who had the highest number of people at a single show. Make the prize something they’ll want to compete for. Add the details of these contests to your website, along with the results. This gets your hostess checking your website. Once she does that, she’ll see the new monthly specials, she’ll see people winning, and she’ll also encourage the potential hostesses that booked off of her party. Make it fun, easy, and engaging!
  
• 5) Set out drawing boxes. This is a lead-builder. With a little time and ingenuity, these can be made easily. Take them to convenience stores, oil change stores, your local photographer, dentists’ and doctors’ offices. Ask if you can leave them, and record anywhere you’ve left them. Again, make the prize exciting. Collect your names weekly, and add them to your newsletter list. Be sure to put your business cards out, too, and let them know (on the box or on the flyer) to check your website… make it easy… the first week of the following month.
  
• 6) Create a newsletter that you can send via e-mail or snail mail. Use your door prize slips (or the ones you’ve created) to build your contact database. Send newsletters each month, even if they haven’t had a party in several months… you never know when your hostess might be ready for another one.
  
• 7) Ask your friends and family members to help you advertise. They can help by handing out business cards, flyers, or taking a catalog to their work and their friends. Help them give a catalog show and get the hostess benefits themselves!
  
• 8) Throw yourself a Party! Be your own hostess and throw yourself a party. Invite your family, friends, and everyone in your database. Advertise the party just as if you were the hostess, use your door prize slips, and either have a drawing for a guest to win the hostess benefits, or use the hostess gifts yourself to stock up on your items for your contests and drawings.
  
• 9) Giveaways. These are fun. Take an item that is in your product line, but is in-expensive, and create little giveaways. For example, if you are a Candle Consultant, buy several boxes of candles, some tulle or individual treat bags, and some confetti. Spread out a small piece of tulle, sprinkle some confetti, and place a single tealight in it. Take your business cards and using a single hole punch, punch a hole in the top left-hand side of the card. Take a small piece of curling ribbon, slide your card onto the ribbon, gather the tulle and wrap it tightly around the top of the bag. Now, leave these anywhere you can think of! Give them to your hairdresser, cashier at the mall, waitresses (with a generous tip), the girl at the drive-thru taking your change, and the one giving you your food, the lady at the post office, the receptionist at the dentist and doctor’s offices… and, if you live in a city, take a day (or a lunch hour) and drop them off at every receptionist in one building. Always see if you can get a card from that person, at the same time, and add them to your list. If not, you’ve still made their day, and they’re likely to at least drop by your website and check out your product line. The giveaways can be adapted to any party plan, with a little imagination… if you don’t have something in your product line that can be used as a giveaway, then purchase something inexpensive that’s related to your business and use that. Get creative, and have fun!
  
• 10) Co-op with other party ladies in your area and have a “Party Day”. Get together with a candle consultant, make-up consultant, jewelry consultant, fashion consultant, and scrapbooking consultant. Go together to create an “Open House” and each of you advertise the party to your leads. The loyal scrapbooking patron may also love jewelry or candles. Again, you can each either hold a drawing for the hostess benefits, or be the hostess, and use the benefits to add to your kit, or use for your drawings and raffles.
  

There are lots of ways to make your work at home job work. It just takes a little creativity, and a lot of persistence.

Kimberly Earley is a contributing writer from a small town in Texas. A mom to six children, she enjoys researching party plans and other work at home jobs. For more information on Kim, please see her website at www.kimberlyearley.com or email her at kim (at) kimberlyearley.com.