Party On! Part 1

Some direct selling newcomers wonder whether the days of Party Plan business success are past. They understand that the time of women being home during the day—the traditional time for successful Party and small group sales—is largely over. If distributors, presenters, consultants, or representatives (call them what you may) can’t fill the living room, or even the seats around the kitchen table, can the Party Plan businesses model find success in the new frontier of relationship-based network marketing?

It is true that most early successful Party Plan pioneers like Tupperware, Home Interiors, At Home America and too many more to mention have all restructured their sales plans (product presentation and customer acquisition systems) and hybridized their compensation plans (career and commission systems) and have had to evolve around the declining availability of women in the home to do business. So, has the day of Party Plan method of direct selling evolved itself away? Has the Party Plan ceased to be a viable business model?

This author responds with a resounding “No!”

I’m no newcomer to the world of Direct Selling. As a 30+ year veteran to the business, I’ve seen and helped many Party Plan companies navigate their way through the evolutions that have prolonged their way of business. My observations about the heritage and the culture of Party Plans and party planners may lend some valuable and viable insight to the question.

Don’t be too quick to relegate Party Plan business to only its former primary selling method. There is much, much, more to Party Plan business than how it attracted and serviced consumers in the past. Nor should one think that the Party Plan is passé. Network Marketers sometimes assume that Party Plan business participants don’t or can’t make significant income from a business geared toward average consumers; one that does not turn virtually every prospective client into a wholesale customer. The balance of its compensation plan percentages places a high commission on establishing and servicing customers.

Long before the term ‘relationship marketing’ became vogue within our business Party Plan companies, executives, leaders and even the newest consultant participants understood that success was all about relationships. It was about establishing and nurturing relationships of respect and trust through service, not only mining existing relationships for prospective new prospects. Successful Party Planners build relationships; they don’t burn them!

Another distinguishing characteristic of Party Plan business is found in its field leadership. Party Plan leaders tend to be people, primarily women, who have risen through the ranks and to the occasion of leadership by experience-based success. Their leadership is in example, coaching and realistic development of product-based passion and life-balanced goal setting. Successful Party Plan leaders do not foster nor encourage “fake it till you make it” or “go big or go home” platitudes or pressure.

In today’s world of almost a new “super juice, miracle pill, and aromatic magic” a day Party Plan, direct selling businesses and direct sellers focus on the continuing interest and demand for simple and serviceable personal care, adornment, and attractive and enhancing products for the house and home. While the product breadth is often great, you won’t find an excess of compensation-qualifying or rank-qualifying purchases hidden away in successful Party Planners garages, closets or web-based flea markets. Successful Party Plan businesses tend to be product centric and product driven rather than product investment driven.

Perhaps the greatest enduring aspect of the party plan model is the genuine focus fostered by the pioneer greats like Mary Kay Crowley and Mary Kay Ash and Doris Christopher and many others who set the stage and the tone for Party Plan corporate leadership. Ask them what their business was and you would find that the business was the women who joined and represented their companies. They not only understood, but taught and lived and infused the business with the priority of building the self-esteem and success of their consultants. For their companies it went beyond success in the business into success in the lives of the women who joined them as party planners. If the day of Party Plan is past, for any specific company, it is likely a result of the failure of the Chief Business leader to understand and employ this critical paradigm. People matter. Successful Party Plan businesses weave this principle throughout the business.

Check out Part 2 of this three part series for tips on designing an effective Party Plan company in today’s market.