When you join a party plan or direct sales company, one of the first things you are asked to do is draw up a list of contacts. This initial list is intended for you to think of everyone you know, so that you can approach them about your new business venture. Most companies suggest using the FRANK method:
• Friends - friends old & new, friends of friends, friends of the family
• Relatives - close family, extended family, in-laws
• Acquaintances – hairdresser, beautician, dentist, vet, etc… (anyone you meet on a regular basis)
• Neighbours – neighbours old and new.
• Kids – anyone you come into contact through your children (e.g. their friends’ parents, other mothers at the Playgroup, Nursery Teachers, Dance Teacher, etc)
Ideally, you should speak to these people face-to-face in the first instance. Explain to them exactly what your business venture entails and tell them what you hope to achieve. (i.e. Do you want to earn some extra money for Christmas or to go on holiday, or do you intend to make this new venture into a full-time career?) Invite them to your Starter Party, ask them to host one in their own house, ask them to pass catalogues around at their workplace to collect in some orders for you, or ask them to recommend someone who may like to book, buy or even join.

Ensure that you have at least eight bookings from your FRANK List in your diary for the next three months. At each of these parties or events, you should not only seek at least two further bookings, but you should also look to collect the following contact details from all the guests:
• Full Name
• Full Address
• Daytime Telephone
• Evening Telephone
• Mobile Telephone
• Email
You should ask them to indicate their preferred method of contact. Encourage them to provide this valuable information by explaining that you can contact them with special offers and useful information. Make it clear that you do intend to contact them, but that they are free to unsubscribe at any time.
By seeking permission to contact them, there should be no surprise when you do. This should make your initial contact easier. You can start off your telephone call like this:
“Hi Sarah! It’s Annette Kerr from Virgin Vie At Home. I met you at Lucy’s party last month. Are you free to talk just now?…. Great! Remember I said I would contact you if there were any special offers on? Well, I’ve got great news…”
It’s good practice to ask whether it’s a convenient time for a chat. If it isn’t then ask when would be a good time, note it in your diary and call back at that time.
If you are emailing a Contact for the first time, you should explain who you are, remind them where you met and why they gave you their email address. You could start your email like this:
“Hi Joan! It’s Annette Kerr from Barefoot Books, we met at the St John’s Church Fayre last month. I am writing to advise you that we have an end-of-season sale on at the moment, with savings up to 80%.”
In order to grow your home-based business, you need to build up a large list of contacts, and you need to keep in touch with these contacts regularly. The easiest and cheapest way to do this is by email. Email allows you to send the same information to hundreds of people at the same time. The beauty of email is that it is quick, cheap and can be sent at any time of the day at the click of a button.
It is good practice, when sending out bulk emails as part of a campaign, not to show the email addresses of the other recipients. This is an important Data Protection issue. If you use a regular email account, you can achieve this by using the B.C.C. field on your email. However, if you have a lot of contacts, you should consider using an auto-responder to send your email campaigns.
I use Sign-Up To for my email campaigns. This is a great UK-based company, which you can try out for free for up to 50 contacts. There are lots of templates and useful tools for you to use, as well as a good, friendly Support Team. You can create personalised contact forms to collect leads from your website.
You can use your auto responder to send regular email newsletters (e-zines) to your customers. You can personalise them by uploading photos. You can then track the progress of your campaign to see how many emails bounced, how many were opened, how many links were clicked, who opened, who clicked and who unsubscribed. Each email has your contact details, an option to forward to a friend and an option to unsubscribe. Visit http://www.sign-up.to for more information.
The Sign-Up To team have put together some do’s, dont’s and think-about’s for captured data in their blog. You can read the blog entry here.
I also use a fantastic stay-in-touch system, which sends beautiful personalised greetings cards to my customers and prospects. I create the cards online and then they are printed and posted straight to my recipients’ doors. I can choose from a huge catalogue of ready-designed cards or I can personalise my cards with my own photographs. I can also use my own handwriting font and up to four signatures. I can do all this for less money than I would spend in the card shops. You can try out this exciting system by clicking here.
Whatever method you use to stay in touch with your customers, you should be courteous and respect their wishes. If they no longer wish to hear from you, you must remove them from your Contact Manager straight away. Otherwise, you might get reported for spamming.
Thanks for reading!
Annette
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