Is Direct Sales for everyone?

Up until a few years ago the word, “direct sales” didn’t excite me too much. I knew about Amway as my Grandparent’s sold it. I had been to a Pampered Chef party or two. I knew it had the word sales in it and that pretty much scared me off. I have a hard time with fundraisers for my kid’s school, how could I ever sell anything?

Then 2010 came. I was on Twitter and started following a girl who sold Scentsy. She was really nice and seemed to love to talk to people and talk about her Scentsy business. I saw what she did and felt I could do it too. I was already active on Twitter and I was a new fan of Scentsy. What would be the harm? So with a quick prayer, I ordered the started kit and my journey began.

The first thing I did with my Scentsy business was let everyone I knew know that I was now selling. Just by doing that I was able to get a few customers right away. Either their own consultant had moved away or lost touch or they never had one in the first place. I realized that a lot of people loved Scentsy and those who didn’t either fell in love when they heard about it or were polite and said, “just not my thing.”

After a month or two I realized that I would need to grow my team. I wasn’t totally sure how to do this so I focused on sharing my love of Scentsy with people. I posted about it on Twitter and on my blog. Then people started signing up under me. They loved Scentsy too and wanted to be apart of it.

Now, two years later my group is up to 93 consultants. I am hoping to get to 100 by the end of the month. It has grown beyond what I ever thought possible.

Now the question is, is direct sales for everyone? No it really isn’t.

Do you have to be a salesperson to make it work? No you really don’t.

In order to make direct sales work, you need these two things-

1) A love of what you are selling. If I didn’t love Scentsy like I do, it wouldn’t work. How could I talk about a product I didn’t love and use for myself?  It would get old fast and I really wouldn’t know enough about it to share with others.  People want to know that you take pride in the product you are selling.  They want to know it is good and worth the cost.  If you come to my house you will see a Scentsy warmer in almost every room.  I don’t have one in my two-year-olds room for good reason  You will also see my son’s Scentsy Buddy collection and my big box of scents.  It is obvious that I stand by this product.

2) The drive to share your product and your business.  I don’t mean you have to be a walking salesperson.  I am not.  I do like to make sure people know I sell Scentsy.  I usually wait for it to come up in conversations naturally.  If people ask me what I do, I say that I have a Scentsy business and I am a blogger.  Sometimes people ask more about Scentsy, other times they ask more about blogging and some say, “that is cool,” and move on.  Online I will share about my business on twitter, on a blog or on Facebook.  Facebook gets me the most Scentsy business.  I am able to share photos of the product and talk a little bit about the opportunity.

The main thing to remember about direct sales is that it is all what you put into it.  People ask me if selling Scentsy is hard or if it takes a lot of time.  It really depends and I am finding the more I put into it, the more I get back.  They call us Independent Scentsy Consultants because we all need to make our business our own.  Some people have 8 hours a day to spend on it and others don’t.  I have found that Scentsy usually sells itself but I do need to put in effort to make my business succeed.

A lot of direct sales companies focuses on the party model.  One of the reasons I joined under Scentsy was I knew I would not be able to have a lot of parties.  I do like to have an open house every few months and I do a handful of parties but I run the majority of my business online and I like it that way.  When my kids are older and all in school full-time I will be able to book more in-person parties but for right now, online is really working for me.

Have you ever been involved in direct sales?  How did it go for you?

If you are interested in talking more about joining my Scentsy team, please let me know.  I would be happy to answer any questions you might have. February is one of the best times to join because you get double the testers and double the catalogs in your starter kit.  I have enjoyed selling Scentsy the last couple of years and excited to see where it will go in the future.