Learning from a Bomb

I debated whether to do this post, but decided that I want to be honest about "failures" as well as successes. Plus this might happen to someone else. So here goes.

My teenage daughter and I decided to have a party for her school friends. We scheduled it for Sat Sep 5 from 11-1. She handed out 25 invitations at school.

Well, guess what? No one came. Not one. I didn't know how many to expect, but I surely didn't expect that not a single person would come.

At first I was really disappointed. Then I started thinking. It was a holiday weekend. She handed the invitations out on the Wednesday before. We didn't make any reminder calls. Plus these were teenage girls. I told my daughter she ought to talk to her friends at school on Monday and see if anyone wanted to buy, but she felt funny about "bugging" her friends. And she is a teenager after all, so I didn't pressure her.

Bottom line? Here's what I think:

1. Watch for big potential conflicts when you schedule parties.

2. Make reminder calls the night before.

3. After a show, call those who didn't come. Sometimes they just forget. Sometimes they wanted to come, but couldn't, and still might order. It doesn't hurt to follow up. Sometimes I have gotten more orders on followup calls after a show, than at the actual show itself.

4. If you're going to do direct selling, you're going to have some disappointments. You have to learn how to recover from them and move on if you want to succeed.

That's what we're going to do.