Reply to question on handling customer receipts

Lisa,
Your party was wonderful! It's definitely more challenging to have it at your own home though because you are playing hostess and demonstrator at the same time and you know everyone who is there.

When you are hosting an open house in someone else's home, you won't necessarily be giving them a house tour, but hopefully the hostess will already have an expression up in their home that people could see. It's best to get everyone in the same room with all of your tools and samples and capture their attention for 15 or 20 minutes to do the "spiel". The spiel should consist of describing the product and it's various uses (it can be used on so much more than just walls although that's the most common use obviously), showing them how the catalog is organized into environments paying special attention to the embellishments and how they are sized and priced, showing them any samples you have brought with you and doing an application demo on your demo board. I would spend a few minutes on the "double up rewards" benefit for hosting a show and talk about the free and half priced product they would earn. I think it's also important to work into the spiel how you got your start and how much you enjoy selling this product and how the company is still in it's infancy and it's a great time to sign up!

After you've gotten all that out of the way, my parties usually turn into a format similar to what was going on in your home. People form groups and look at the catalog or the photo albums and ask each other's opinion about what they should buy to put on "that one wall in my living room". If you have access to a computer, it's very useful to show people how to use the design tool online (make sure you give them each a customer corner instruction sheet and a sample to take home). I also offer to help anyone with a custom order right then and there.

As far as the order forms go, I rarely use them. I have them sitting out and if someone is placing their order that night, I will have them fill it out and I'll total it for them, but if they are planning to go home and think about what they want to order, I just tell them to either email the order to me or to the hostess. Make sure that you educate your hostesses on the monthly incentives before you leave that night. Each month they offer a free expression (usually a welcome sign) if you spend more than $50. The hostess will need to ask the customer what color they want that expression in. You don't want to end up sitting down at your computer at 11pm on the last day of the month to submit the open house order and find that you have these unanswered questions. The specials will change at midnight and they won't allow you to go back and order a July special item on August 1st. Also keep in mind that those free items are NOT automatically added to the order. The system will prompt you that they qualified for it, but it's up to you to enter the item number into the system for it. Otherwise, they won't get it.

I was talking to Monica about this a little bit last night, and I'll share this with the rest of you. I try to get my hostess packet out to the hostess 3 weeks in advance of the open house. I use a large clasp envelope and put in it a catalog, a hostess letter that you've filled out with the show date, time and location (available in document library), a copy of the specials for that month (also available in the document library), invitations, a business card and I also include one of my color sample sheets where I've taken the time to put a sample of all the colors on it. It's a better representation than the catalog (I usually assign this job to my 10 year old daughter!). I either drop that off or mail it to them. I find that they end up using that same envelope to keep themselves organized with any outside orders they may collect and money throughout the week leading up to closing the show. I also make an envelope for each show for myself where I write the hostess name on the outside of it and keep any order slips, scraps of paper that people have written their orders on, design tool printouts, email correspondence, checks, etc. in. It's especially helpful when you have multiple shows open at once. In my email box, I also create personal folders for my shows and keep any communication or emailed orders filed in them. I will usually call it 'Jones Show in Process' and once the order has been submitted to the company, I'll rename it 'Jones Show Submitted' and once the hostess has received the product and there are no open action items for the show, I'll rename the folder yet again to 'Jones Show Closed'. I'm a little bit OCD, okay well maybe a lot! You certainly don't have to do things my way, but as I mentioned to you before, I didn't have any guidance and these are things I did that seem to be working for me. I adjust things as I go and you will too! I welcome everyone's ideas. If you are doing something that works well, share it with the whole team.

As far as catalogs being "borrowed" for the week, I found that many came back by the time the show closed. Some were kept. I definitely do get calls from people who have seen my catalog at someone's home, so I'm no longer stingy with my catalogs like I was at first.

Wow! I didn't mean to ramble on. I hope some of my suggestions help.