Learn How to Succeed in Direct Sales

Today’s post is all about how to succeed in direct sales, and the timing of this post could not be better.

The direct sales industry has been around for decades and has created countless self-made millionaires; however with everything that is going on in the world and with more and more people wanting to earn an income from home it is starting to see a significant increase in popularity. 

Every day more and more people are taking a serious look at this industry as an intriguing method of building a home based business.

People are realizing that thanks to social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram they now have a very viable and real opportunity to create a significant side income that has the potential to turn into a full time income from the comfort of their home.

In this post I am going to show you exactly what it takes to be successful in this business.

If you are already in the industry this information is going to help you get on track and crush it; and if you are looking at joining a direct sales company this post will help you to be able to make an informed decision whether it is for you or not.

Why Direct Sales?

The first question to answer is why should you build a direct sales business?

The answer is a simple one.

If you have the desire and ambition to build a business that is capable of earning you a 5 – 6 figure income but you only have part-time hours available to do so than there really is not a better method of doing so than direct sales.

With only a small investment of a few hundred dollars direct sales allows every day people to get into business for themselves and provides the opportunity for them to earn a significant income working part-time hours.

Will it be easy? Nothing worthwhile is easy my friend. Having said that the actual activities involved with building the business are simple. Anyone can do them successfully. The hard part is staying motivated and committed to doing so.

Is it possible for you to become successful? It sure is. It has been proven time and time again that people with determination and commitment can do very well in this industry.

How long will it take? That really depends on you. The average time it takes for people to become successful varies. For the most it is somewhere between 12 – 48 months. It took me 8 months. Even if it took you 60 – 72 months, would it still not be worth it?

Completely revolutionizing your life within 5 – 6 years? To me the answer is obvious, of course it is worth it. What is the alternative? The 5 – 6 years are going to come anyway, why not spend them working on a brighter future?

The 3 Types of Direct Sales Companies

The direct sales industry is huge and it is made up of many different types of companies.

These companies typically fall into one of three categories.

Single Tiered – With these companies you become a distributor of a company and sell their product directly to the marketplace for them. They pretty much leave it up to you to figure out how you want to market and sell the product.

Most of these companies’ products are higher ticket products. They have a higher price tag than the other companies we will look at. As a result you are paid a higher commission from the sale of their products.

Instead of making $30 from the sale of some makeup. You make 2 – 3k from the sale of a hot tub. I don’t know if there are hot tub direct sales companies but for this example we are pretending there is.

You do not have a team with these types of companies and you do not try to build an organization or downline like you do in multi level marketing (which we will touch on soon).

Party Planners – We all know these companies very well. They are the Mary Kay and Avon type companies.

The focus with these types of companies is for you to host product sampling parties. You start out by hosting your own parties where you invite the people you know over to sample and hopefully buy your products.

You than shift to asking your friends to host parties for you where they in turn invite their friends over to sample your products.

You of course make a commission from the sale of any items you sell at these parties and your goal is to also convert these customers into recurring customers who order monthly from you.

You can also recruit other people to become distributors and build a team where you earn a commission off of any sales your team members make as well. However recruiting is typically a secondary focus with these types of companies. Whereas with the next type of company recruiting and team building is much more of the focus.

Network Marketing Companies – This is where what I refer to as the big business model is built.

Network marketing is also referred to as multi-level marketing or MLM.

Your goal with building these sorts of companies is to build a very large organization or downline of users of the product and people who share the opportunity with others.

You can do what they do with the party planning companies and just retail products if you like, however that is very much of a small business focus.

The large incomes and residual income checks are created by building a large team of people who as I said use the product and also share the opportunity with others i.e recruit.

I recommend that people who build these businesses approach their prospects about the opportunity first instead of the product. If someone is not interested in the opportunity you can than ask them if they want to buy the product.

The whole concept of these opportunities is based on the principle that it is better to earn a little bit from a lot of people versus a lot from a few people.

There is no question that the biggest incomes in direct sales are created by building a network marketing company.

Treat Your Direct Sales Business Like a Real Business

If you truly want to succeed in direct sales one of the biggest factors to your success will be to treat your business like an actual business.

This might sound like common sense, however the fact is that most people treat home based businesses more like a hobby than they do a business. They play with it here and there.

They will do some work on it and than not touch it again for a couple of days or even weeks. No business can survive let alone thrive being treated like a hobby.

If you opened a traditional business whether that is one you started from the ground up or purchased as a franchise you would treat it with the respect it deserves.

If your operating hours were from 9 to 9 daily you would be open those hours and working your business. You would not be open one day and be closed the next. You would not change your operating hours just because you did not “feel” like working your business that day.

Direct sales it is a part-time business so you do not need to be open anywhere near those type of hours, however you do need to give it the time it deserves.

If your plan was to work your business from 7 to 9 in the evening you need to make sure that no matter what you are working your business from 7-9 every evening, no excuses.

Treat it like a business and it will pay you like a business would; treat it like a hobby and it will pay you like a hobby would.

Learn How to Deal with Rejection

You succeed in direct sales by making sales of your product and recruiting other people to become distributors with your company.

You do this by approaching people you have relationships with. The industry should actually be called relationship marketing.

Your job is 2 fold:

1. You approach the people you presently have relationships with to see if they are open to taking a look at your product and/or opportunity.
2. You meet new people and develop relationships with them with the intention of eventually approaching them as well.

If you are trained correctly and approach people the right way about your product and opportunity the majority of them will actually take a look at it for you.

But the fact is that not everyone is going to buy your product or join your opportunity.

The key here is to understand that they are not rejecting you. They are simply rejecting the product or opportunity. And guess what? That is OK. Your job is not to worry about that.

Your job is to continue meeting people, developing relationships and seeing if they are open to taking a look.

If you get trained the right way, go to work on improving your skills and simply keep doing what I have just shown you; you will find all kinds of people who are interested in buying what you got and joining your business as a distributor.

So do not allow yourself to get discouraged by the people who are not interested, that is simply part of being in business. It is just the way it is and it is really not your concern. Your concern is to focus on the activities and trust me the results will follow. They always do.

The Only Way to Fail in Direct Sales is to Quit

Nothing could be more true. The people who succeed in anything in life are the people who did not quit. They are the people who kept ongoing even when they did not feel like it.

Worthwhile things in life are not just given to you. Achieving them requires hard work, determination and a never die attitude. Direct sales is no different.

My advice is to engage in a daily personal development regime. Personal development will keep you motivated and on track to do what is required even when you don’t feel like it.

There is an old saying that says: “The man at the top of the mountain didn’t fall there”.

That guy had to climb and climb and climb before he reached the top.

If you keep on climbing you will make it to the top. If you quit it’s over, you are done. The choice is yours.

For more on how to avoid failing check out this post:

The top 8 reaons why people fail in network marketing.

Create & Maintain an Ever Expanding Prospect List

This was a strategy I learned directly from one of the top trainers in network marketing, Mr Eric Worre.

He explained to me that when a prospect says “no” to an amateur they scratch that person off their prospect or contact list and never approach them again about their opportunity or product.

He than explained that professional network marketers never scratch anyone off their list.

Instead they understand that “no” does not mean “no” forever, it simply means the person is not interested or ready to buy or join at this time. They understand that down the road they might be interested.

A professional understands that life changes for people all the time. Just because someone does not need or want to make extra money right now does not mean they won’t in 6 months from now.

People’s financial needs are constantly changing:

• Companies downsize and people lose jobs.
• Couples start families and realize it is expensive to do so.
• Kids grow up and parents start to realize the cost of education is pricey.
• People decide they would like to buy a new house, new car or finally take a family vacation.
• As people get closer to retirement age they realize they don’t have enough money saved.

All of these reasons and more are why a professional always follows back up with people who said “no” to their opportunity. Things change in people’s lives and you never know when they may be interested in your opportunity.

This is where creating and maintaining an ever expanding contact list comes into play.

You want to create a list of everyone you know. As you meet new people you add them to your list. When someone says “no” to your opportunity, you do not scratch their name off the list, you leave it right where it is.

This way your list is always growing (ever expanding). This way every single day you will eventually have more people than you can even possibly contact.

Keep notes of conversations you have had with each person. Get a calendar and set dates to follow back up with the people on your list. Refer back to your notes before you call the person.

This is how a professional does it.

Focus on Relationships Not Sales

As I have indicated in this post already, we are not in a sales business, we are in a relationship business.

You are not a sales person and your job is not to sell people or try to convince them to buy your product or join your opportunity.

Your job is simply to develop relationships and once you have a relationship (rapport) with someone find out if they are “open” to taking a look at your business.

That is all.

People who try to sell in direct sales fail. People who just go out and meet new people, develop relationships with them and see if they are open to an opportunity succeed.

Meet New People Daily

Set a goal daily for how many people you are going to meet. I recommend that you set this at 5 – 10 people.

Which thanks to social media is a very simple goal to meet. Within 30 – 60 minutes it is very simple to have met 5 – 10 new people on sites like Facebook, Linkedin, Instagram and Twitter.

I have all sorts of posts on this blog to show you how to find new prospects for your business, here are a couple to get you started:

How to get prospects for network marketing

Can you really get MLM leads for free?

Approach People Daily About Your Opportunity or Product

Set another goal for how many people you are actually going to approach daily to see if they are “open” to taking a look at your product and/or opportunity.

A minimum of 3 people daily is a great goal. If you can stick to these goals of meeting 5 new people daily and approaching 3 daily you are going to have a very successful direct sales business in no time.

Succeeding in this industry is just a matter of creating activity. Getting people into your funnel. The more you put in the top of the funnel the more are going to come out the bottom and buy from you.

It is as simple as that.

Follow Up

Here is where so many people miss the mark. They go through all of the effort of meeting people, developing rapport and asking them if they are open to looking at their opportunity and than they never follow up.

It blows my mind why people do this, but it happens all of the time.

I personally believe that it is their fear of rejection. They do not want to be told “no”, so they convince themselves that if the person is interested they will get back to them.

This will never happen. It does not matter how interested the person is in your opportunity, if you do not follow back up with them, they are going to get busy with life and lose their interest.

When someone agrees to look at your information, set at date and time within 1 – 3 days to connect back up with them. Put it in your calendar and than make sure you actually call them back.

The fortune truly is in the follow up.

You can learn how to follow up the right way here.

Learn How to Market

Before I close out this post I am going to leave you with this last point.

In every single other business model in the world you are told to learn how to market your business. In direct sales however marketing is shunned upon by the old school leaders.

They do not think you should spend time marketing. They believe it will distract you and your downline from the relationship building activities I have talked about in this post.

I actually do understand where they are coming from and believe it or not agree with them to an extent.

You absolutely must focus most of the time you have set aside daily to build your business on the activities I have shared with you in this post. You absolutely must make sure your team is spending most of their time doing those activities as well.

However I do believe learning how to market your business on the internet by engaging in what is referred to as Attraction Marketing can also be a beneficial long term strategy for you and your business.

Never do attraction marketing instead of the core activities I shared with you, but it can become a powerful strategy that you do on top of those activities.

Simply put attraction marketing is using internet marketing strategies such as blogging, video marketing, paid ads and email marketing to generate leads, market and advertise your business.

It is a long term strategy that can take 12 – 18 months before you see any results. But once you start to it can be a powerful component of your business building plan.

You can learn more about marketing your business on these posts:

MLM marketing 101

MLM marketing tips

If you want to learn how to do attraction marketing I recommend you learn from these guys here.

There you have it my friend you now know exactly how to succeed in direct sales. The choice is now up to you if you are going to go out and make it happen.

I wish you all the success in the world.

Cheers to YOUR Success

Robb Corbett

P.S. Do you want to learn how to recruit 5 – 10 new distributors into your business every month? Sign up for my Free Prospecting Boot Camp on the side of the blog (bottom if you are on a smartphone).

P.P.S. Have questions about what I covered? Drop them in the comment section below and I will be sure to help you out.