Party On! Part 2

For those who still hold to a Party Plan approach to direct selling and for those who may be considering it for their products and services, here are my suggestions for maximizing your Party Plan success.

Balance
The emergence of Network Marketing has pushed all Party Plan businesses to examine the balance of their compensation commitments. Typically the Party Plan industry has put little of the available cash compensation percentage to team development, especially the rewards that drive recruitment and recruit training—in Party Plan terminology “Team Development.”

Cash compensation
While typical Party Plan type businesses work with from mid-upper 20% to mid 30% for total sales-force compensation; usually 20-30% is attached to personal sales commissions. This has left too little for effective rewards for both team (personal group development) and leadership override rewards.

Sometimes it takes only a tweak of a few points to encourage and drive team development and team sales training success. Restructuring the leadership reward qualifications and rewards to targeted pay-for-performance objectives can accelerate leadership performance. These changes, if not extreme, can be made to help reignite active growth in the organization, without stifling personal sales.

Here I must remind the reader that cash compensation is only one aspect of the full business opportunity and that career plans, promotions and non-cash incentives drivers must also be renewed to effect positive motivation whenever there is a change to the cash compensation component of the business.

Business intelligence
Another of the Network Marketing driven strengths and strategies for direct selling that Party Plan businesses must not side step is the need for effective business intelligence and communication tools. Timely recognition of activity and inactivity within a Party Plan Consultants’ personal and group business is vital for application of team, group and corporate encouragement, recognition and leadership action. Party Plan companies that incorporate business intelligence technology tools into their systems and training for sellers and leaders build competitive advantage in their businesses.

These tools rely on real-time number crunching and trend monitoring information. Over the past five years and especially now more recently, this information has increased in both sophistication and simplicity. The availability of these business intelligence technologies should be a key component of both tools and training for every Party Plan venture. Especially for serious consultants and leaders. Keeping abreast of the options and offerings for these tools is a must-do for all corporate sales leaders.

Check out Part 3 of this three part series for more tips for designing an effective Party Plan company.