Sunday, January 23, 2011

Direct Sales Company

Choosing a direct sales company might be one of the hardest parts of starting your own home party business. There are so many choices now a days, and a company for every product imaginable, this can be a very daunting task. The most important thing for you to remember is to do is your research before joining any direct sales company. There are many factors involved in what type of company you want to be apart of. How will you know what company is right for you? Take in consideration some of these factors, and you will be well on your way to starting your own home party business.

What products interest you?

First and foremost, you will want to find a direct sales company with a product that interests you. If you actually enjoy what you are selling, this will come across to your customers. Just think back to a time when someone you know raved about a new product she had found to you, weren’t you interested in trying it out for yourself? This is the same concept. Your enthusiasm for your product will make others want to try it too. Passion will keep your business strong.

What are the costs involved with joining?

Money is almost always an issue when joining a direct sales company. Most companies have some kind of initial investment. This does not give a company any less credibility.

Keep in mind the cost of joining and the starter kit and what it includes. Make sure to take note if a company website is included. This will come in handy later on when you want to branch out and do some online networking. You will also need to think realistically on what other costs may be involved in the weeks and months ahead. What kind of inventory will you need? Do you plan on advertising? What other promotional items may you need to get started? Also make sure to find out if your chosen company has any monthly or quarterly quotas you have to meet. Do these seem realistic to you? Make note if there are any minimums when placing orders as well. If for any reason any of the company’s requirements seem unrealistic, take a look at another direct sales company in the same category. They are all a little different somehow.

What is the commission rate?

This is a biggie, and a very important factor to consider when selecting a direct sales company. How much money are you actually going to make? What is their commission plan? Ask yourself, “If I sell $1,000 in product at 25% commission, is $250 worth it to me?” Typically you would want to find a company that has the highest commission rate for the products you are interested in selling.

Are you compensated for building a downline?

Is there any benefit to you in recruiting others and building a downline? Residual income can be one of the easiest ways to make money with a direct sales company. It is the only way to go to make money long term. Have you ever heard of woman making $100,000 or more a year in direct sales? They are all making this because of recruiting, building a downline, and living off of the residual income. Basically residual income is when you are paid for signing up other people underneath you and building a team. You are also rewarded when your team members build their own team, and this goes on for however so many levels. Often you are paid a percentage of what they sell/buy from the company. The more team members you sign up, and the more they sell, they higher your residual income checks will be. This is the easiest way to make money with out ever selling anything yourself. Take note of the percent of residual income you make per member, and on how many levels this goes down.

Do you have any say over what you are selling?

This is important if you want to have control over any aspect of your business. Do your products have a predetermined price that is set, or can you set your own price? How are you allowed to sell your products? Is it only through home parties, or can you do craft shows, and fundraisers too? Another very important thing to consider is can you do advertising. Offline or Online? It may be hard to get a business going that does not allow advertising of any kind. Take a look at the company's list of “rules” before signing up.

Will you have support from the company?

After you have joined a direct sales/home party plan opportunity, will their be any kind of training to get you started? Will you have a sponsor that will be there for you and answer all your questions? What is the customer service like at the home office? Does the phone ring and ring when you are trying to get a hold of headquarters? Basically ask yourself if things are ran in a professional and timely manner. This can tell a lot about the success of the company and how they do business.

What will your competition be like?

Another major factor to consider when beginning a home party plan is knowing what your competition will be like. You usually do not want to be involved with a saturated market. Find out how many representatives are in your area, and if possible, find out how well their business is doing. See if you can spot something they are missing and focus on that aspect of sales. When possible try to be one of the only consultants in your area, and try to offer a unique product that can’t be found anywhere else, but through you.

Can you grow your business online?

As you may know many direct sales and home party plan companies have taken their business online. Find out if the company you are considering allows this. Can you have your own website, that is not affiliated with your company's. Is their online ordering allowed through your website? If you do plan on taking you business online, make sure you can advertising online.

Summing it all up...

Never just jump into any direct sales business opportunity. The key that I am trying to stress to you is to do your research! Direct Sales can be a very fun and profitable venture, and long term, can make you a lot of money. Make sure you get the basics first, and choose the best company that suits your needs. Using these tips on Choosing a Direct Sales Company will have you well on your way to starting your own Home Party Business!

Raise Money

If you're like many women who want to start a home based business, one of the things that may be stopping you is a lack of funds.

While there are many new Network Marketing and Direct Sales businesses that are free to join, it will take at least some money to get things rolling...money for business cards, inexpensive marketing and advertising methods, postage, your own personal products to experiment with, samples, etc.

Even if you are starting an online business that markets a service, or that has no physical product, you will need money for domain name registration, web site hosting, low cost advertising and the like.

Here are some ideas for raising the needed capital.

Get a loan.

Do you have a relative who would loan you the money to get started? What about that Great Aunt who always said you'd be great in your own business? How about Mom or Grandma?

Perhaps they would accept barter (your new product, for instance...good rejection-proof way to get them hooked on it!) in lieu of repayment? Does Grandma have a shed full of stuff that she's been wanting to sell or eBay but doesn't have the energy? Would Mom like to have her house cleaned for the next few months?

Ask your sponsor for help.

Ask your upline sponsor if they would consider buying the starter kit for you, and then taking the profits from your first parties or commission checks as repayment?

Some sponsors do this already, but if not, she may be so impressed with your drive to succeed that she will say yes.

Have a yard sale

This is what I did to get started in my business. This one has twofold benefits...you're making some extra cash but also have a captive audience of people coming to you! If you're really energetic, go around to your neighbors and tell them that if they leave their castaways in a box on the curb, you will come pick them up. Do this before your sale. Slap a price tag on the merchandise and cha-ching!

Be sure to make a sign advertising your new product or service and plenty of flyers or business cards to give to each shopper.

Sell some stuff on eBay.

Sell things from your own home (name brand kid's clothes and popular book titles are easy and almost always pull a good price). Go to library book sales and buy books for .10 or .25 and list those. Use your my eBay page to advertise your new website!

Use your tax return.

Release the clutter, sell a useless piece of furniture or item in your home.

For me, it was the dusty electric guitar Kitchen appliances (you know what I'm talking about here!) that were going to make your life easier, exercise equipment that makes you feel guilty when you trip over it...

Pre-sell the product.

I got this one from my beloved Kim Klaver, aka Ms. Stud. Go around to your tribe (the people who love you enough to do anything you say), your coworkers, neighbors, playgroup Mommies, and show them a *picture* of the product, tell them what it does, collect the checks, deposit them and order your product. Sell it back to them at retail.

Do a quick, temporary odd job.

A friend of mine just did this one. She put a sign up at a local health food market that said "Non-toxic cleaning services". (Notice that she created a niche). That day she got a call, did a job for an elderly women and made $150. Of course, she used her own nontoxic cleaning product and will probably end up getting a customer out of the deal too! Babysitting for a couple of weeks, dogsitting, housesitting...you get the picture.

Talk to dh.

Notice I'm leaving this one until last! Hopefully you have the kind of relationship where your husband will be overjoyed that you want to improve your financial standing. If you garner his support in the beginning he is much more likely to be helpful along your journey, with the inevitable ups and downs of business life.

Time and Money!

Conference calling can save you money. There is no doubt that in the sales business, every second counts. Whether it be training, sales meetings, or other needs, pulling your employees away from the sales opportunities even for these important tasks, cuts down on the time they can be making you money. If you take the first step and try using conference calling, you may just find yourself saving money and making money. Let’s point out some of the features and benefits of using conference calling here:

Consider the costs of training individuals. You need to fly them to your location. You need to invest the money in teachers, a place to teach them, and the products used. Then, you still need to pay for their lodgings and maybe even their food. This is costly. Even if it is a simple one day training, you still have invested quite a bit of money. Now, what if you could get all of the training in that you need through a conference call? You still provide the training experience to your potential new sales team, but allow them to remain at their current location. With conference calling, you save money by not having to move people around while still delivering a one on one training experience.

Secondly, you keep your employees were they need to be- on the sales floor. You don’t have to invest in much time away from the business at all. You do the training through the conference call and they are right back to work after the call. Not much time is wasted then, and profits can immediately improve.

You can hold many people on the call at the same time. There is the potential for many people to get on it and therefore, you can address a large group of people or only a few.

Consider using conference calling for your sales meetings as well. Again, you provide the information that is needed to reach your sales team while keeping them on the floor, working those sales. It just makes sense to use conference calling to save yourself travel time and money as well. Plus, you can have associates across the state, country, or even the world plug in to the call. All of their input can be provided, then to all other associates.

As you can see, there are many reasons to use conference calling in the world of sales. Let us face the facts that time is money. You save both when you incorporate this system into your training, sales meetings, and staff meetings. Your employees can take what they have learned and apply it only minutes later when they get back to work. This effective means of communication is also quite affordably priced. When you factor in the amount of money you are saving from travel expenses, it gets even better! Conference calling is a simple system that can potentially save you quite a bit of money! See how it can benefit you, right now!

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Business Sales Ideas

The largest growing business opportunities today is the sales that transpires from one business to another business. We call this the "Business-to-Business" sales field as the business who is selling products only sales to other businesses not to private citizens. This is the way that "Business-to-Business sales first started and this type of sales was referred to as wholesale. Wholesale business became popular when larger business owners needed a place to pick up products for resale for their local customers. The wholesale business would buy up products cheap from the market and resale to local business owners at a discounted rate so that they could resale making money. Everyone seems to profit from this type of business and the consumer foot the bill.

A man by the name of Sam Walton decided to make a difference for the smaller business owner and the general public by opening up wholesale products to everyone by starting what is called a "club." The club as he referred to it gave the small business owner the right to get his products cheaper and the average citizen the chance to buy in bulk if they wanted. The name of this wholesale resale was dubbed Sam's Club. This idea caught on and soon others decided to do the same thing soon there was the opening of Price Costco another wholesale club. You have to be a business owner in order to buy products and of course you must prove it by showing your licenses. The wholesale clubs cannot charge you taxes on your products because you must pass that on to the consumers. This was a great idea from the onset but places like Sam's Club soon drove others from the market place. Many cities started to complain as Sam's Clubs moved into their areas putting the smaller business out of business.

People realized that they could buy products at a wholesale price by becoming a member and since the membership fee was so small for the year found that the savings far outweighed the cost. Then of course since many people prefer not to buy in bulk the idea of opening up a retail chain store next to the club only seemed a natural course of events. The birth of Wal-mart stores across the nation happened overnight making it impossible for the small business person to remain in business. This did not seem to affect the buying power of the average citizen who preferred the larger chain stores and clubs to the small town business. There still remains a multitude of small business owners today in every town and city in America and most of them buy their products from places like the club at a wholesale price The two have eventually learned how to live successfully together side by side in doing "Business-to-Business sales.

Business Manipulation

Business manipulation is an art. Art mastered almost to perfection. Nowadays, buying equals existing and in that sense the power of business is paramount. And so, companies become manipulators.

How do companies use advertising - to manipulate or inform people? Yes, it gives information about what exists on the market, where and on what price, but it still remains the most powerful manipulative machine. Everywhere we go, we are bombarded by advertising slogans, posters, flyers, billboards. Each one of them offers us something off the price, make gifts and for what purpose? To convince the buyer to buy the product, to go on a holiday, to use a company. One customer will lead to another and so the ultimate goal of advertising will be achieved - increasing profits.

The world is controlled by money and business manipulation keeps the winning cards. Today, one country belongs to those who control the big companies in it.

The scam produced by companies in order to sell their products can be more outrageous than you can possibly imagine. In fact, the bigger the company, the higher the probability that it will try to acquire a monopolistic share in its market by using well-disguised manipulation.

Drug companies can be notoriously shameless when speaking about business manipulation. One of the most striking examples was the scandal with the big pharmaceutical company Merck which had paid a well-known publisher to create a medical journal. The articles in this journal were, understandably, very positive about Merck drugs, but nobody had mentioned that the articles were written by Merck itself. This story is almost too hard to swallow, namely because, the company had been manipulating not only ordinary people to buy its products, but also doctors and other professionals who had been reading the journal - people who are trusted and can have influence on their patients.

When thinking about this example, it's hard not to ask ourselves how many other such cases are out there that we don't know about. How many of the hundreds of products we use every day are a result of shameless business manipulation? The answer would probably depress us. How can we be sure that what we read in the press or what we see on television is not simply a paid advertisement? We cannot. Somehow, over time, being a consumer has started to mean being lied to, manipulated or indirectly robbed.

Main Street Vs Middle Market

When preparing to sell a privately held business, it is important to determine which category the business falls in - Main Street or Middle Market. The classification of a business will determine several important strategic decisions including: How it should be valued, how to market the enterprise for sale, the type of buyer likely to be interested, and the business intermediary firm appropriate to engage for assistance. The goal of this article is to highlight the distinguishing features of Main Street and Middle Market businesses and to review the major differences in the sales methodology.

Main Street & Middle Market transactions are most often delineated by the size of the business either in terms of revenue or earnings. There is not a universally accepted definition of size and, most often, a business intermediary firm will adopt a specialty formula. The majority of lower middle market companies fall in an area where they are too small for investment banks and too large for the average business broker. Engaging a business intermediary firm who has the capabilities to properly represent your company will be critical. Often the business size is not the only distinguishing characteristic defining Main Street from Middle Market businesses. The industry, the complexity of the transaction, the depth & breadth of management, the presence of intellectual propriety or private brands, as well as the type of buyer that is targeted will also have an impact on the methods used to package the business for sale. The chart below details some of the typical differences in how the two types of businesses are defined, valued, packaged for sale, and confidentially marketed. It is important to note that the chart is only a guideline as many businesses will reflect similar attributes. Please consult with your local business intermediary to determine how your business should be treated.

Main Street:

•Business Revenue: Less than $3,000,000
•Business Earnings: Less than $1,000,000
•Type of Sale: Asset Sale
•Buyers: Entrepreneurs or Displaced Corporate Executives
•Business Valuation: Based on Sellers Discretionary Earnings (SDE)
•Financial Statements: Owner, CPA Compiled
•Business Management: Acquirer is buying a job. Existing management is less critical.
•Complexity: Transaction can often be accomplished with less complicated "boiler plate" agreements.
•Confidential Marketing: Marketing to a very broad buyer base.
•Marketing Package: Confidential Business Review
•Pricing: Marketed with a specific asking price.
•Broker/M&A Fee Structure: 10-12%
•Retainers: Minimal Retainer

Lower Middle Market:

•Business Revenue: $3,000,000 - $75,000,000
•Business Earnings: Greater than $1,000,000
•Type of Sale: Asset Sale or Stock Sale
•Buyers: Corporate Buyer or Private Equity Group (PEG)
•Business Valuation: Based on EBITDA
•Financial Statements: Reviewed or Audited Financials
•Business Management: Current management is often a key driver to the acquisition
•Complexity: Deal structure can be very complex requiring customized legal documents.
•Confidential Marketing: Highly targeted direct marketing to strategic & financial buyers.
•Marketing Package: Comprehensive Offering Memorandum
•Pricing: Asking price is rarely listed in the Offering Memorandum
•Broker/M&A Fee Structure: Double Lehman/Negotiated
•Retainers: Monthly Fee

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Aluminium Scaffolds

Aluminium Scaffolds are great for industrial and residential uses. Traditionally people have been using the steel scaffolds. But the steel scaffolds are heavy and difficult to carry from one place to another. Aluminium Scaffolds are lighter and therefore easy to carry. The Aluminium Scaffolds are becoming more and more popular in the construction industry and in other several areas. Here follows a discussion on the uses of Aluminium Scaffolds.

There are a number of variations of Aluminium Scaffolds. The Aluminium Scaffold towers, mobile towers, frames , Planks etc. Another great Aluminium Scaffold is the DIY scaffold tower. These scaffolds are strong, lightweight, highly flexible fixed or transportable platform. If you are on the lookout for the scaffolds, you can easily choose from a wide range of Aluminium Scaffolds.

Traditionally the scaffolds have been made of steel. These steel made scaffolds are heavy and difficult to carry. But the Aluminium Scaffolds are lighter than the traditional steel scaffolds and therefore easy to move. You can get all the facilities of the steel scaffolds from the Aluminium Scaffolds. The Aluminium Scaffolds are no less durable than the steel made scaffolds. Moreover, the Aluminium Scaffolds are rust free and flexible.

Aluminium Scaffold Towers

One of the available great Aluminium scaffolds is the Aluminium scaffold tower. The Aluminium scaffold tower is a freestanding scaffolding that is not dependent for structural support on the structure on which it is being used. The Aluminium scaffold tower is suitable for industrial as well as the residential uses. This type of towers is reasonably quick to erect and dismantle.

Moreover, the Aluminium scaffold towers are available as mobile scaffold towers. They are even more flexible scaffold towers. The mobile scaffold towers bring great advantages for the users in all environments. If you use these types of scaffolds, you will not have to dismantle and set up the tower each time you change a place of work. These mobile scaffold towers can also be used in industries. If you have to work over a large area and have to change the location, you can use these mobile scaffold towers in industries.

The mobile scaffold towers can help decorators, plasterers, tilers and other such construction professionals, who want to finish their job easily and more efficiently. With these versatile towers, you can do many works such as plastering, painting, rendering, roofing, manufacturing, rigging, air conditioning and many more.

Aluminium Scaffolds are cost effective and safe

If you use the portable or mobile Aluminium Scaffolds, you will not have to dismantle and set up the scaffolds each time. It will save both your time and money. They are also safer than the ladders. The construction companies are showing increasing interest to these Aluminium Scaffolds for the convenience and efficiency they bring for the users.

The prices

It is true that the Aluminium Scaffolds are more expensive than the steel scaffolds. But if you consider other facilities of the Aluminium Scaffolds, the price will not seem to be a big issue.

Thus, if you are on the lookout for the suitable scaffolds, you can easily opt for the Aluminium Scaffolds.