A successful home party is one that generates bookings. A booking is a commitment by a guest who agrees to host her own party on a specific date. Without bookings, there are no more parties.

Sometimes hostesses don’t want their guests hosting another party. They want their guests to purchase only at their parties.

You may be surprised to discover that the territorial hostess is not the problem. It’s the symptom of the problem.

What Is The Problem?

To learn more about why hostesses become territorial, watch our educational video below.

Hostess Rewards Programs

Hostess rewards programs are an important element of party plan companies. These programs reward people who invite friends and acquaintances to their homes who purchase products or services from a consultant. Most often, rewards are free and discounted products.

Have you ever wondered why we don’t just pay hostesses money? Here are 4 reasons we don’t recommend this practice:

Hostess vs. Representative

If a person wants to make money, we want that person to enroll as an independent representative. We don’t want to offer money to hostesses because it may interfere with recruiting.

Cost

When you give a hostess a free product, it costs you less than money. For example, a $20 product may cost your company $5. $5 is less than $20.

Hostess Orders

When a hostess spends some of her own money at a party, we make money on her purchases. The money we make on her purchases helps to cover the cost of the free products we give her.

Hostesses Are Great Customers

If a hostess buys your products, she is more likely to buy them again. We would like to have hostesses become repeat customers. If a hostess is paid in money instead of free or discounted products, she is less likely to buy once and therefore even less likely to buy again.

Like Compensation Plans

Hostess programs are indeed like mini compensation plans for hostesses. They are designed to motivate specific behaviors.

What behaviors are we talking about?

Bookings

A hostess program is one of the key motivators to encourage guests at a home party to host their own future. The future of a consultant’s business is directly tied to bookings, so bookings must be encouraged by hostess programs.

What are you doing to encourage guests to host a party? Are your sales events truly enjoyable experiences? Will enough guests wish to repeat their experiences, but this time as hostesses? If not, you have work to do!

Purchases

While your hostess program should offer a free gift and “hostess dollars” based on retail sales which can be redeemed for products of the hostess’s choice, you should also encourage the hostess to spend money on discounted products. Why is this important? It’s important because when a hostess spends her own money, the profit you earn on her purchases helps to pay for the hostess dollars that were given to her.

The best hostess programs not only reward hostesses well, but they pay for themselves from the dollars spent by hostesses on discounted products!

Second Time Around

Does your hostess program specifically reward previous hosts? If not, you are missing an important opportunity to make your hostess program truly remarkable.

A Measurement Culture

Are you carefully monitoring each component of your hostess program? Do you know which parts are working well, or which ones are lacking? Are you examining results not only across the board of all consultants but also by individual consultants?

If not, you should start measuring now!

Conclusion

Hostess programs are a vital component of all party plan direct selling companies. While the compensation plan for consultants is important, too, if yours is a party plan company, don’t forget this mini-compensation plan.

Customer Rewards

We want customers to buy again and again. We can encourage and reward this behavior by providing customers with free products or product credit for their consistency in placing orders or for their total purchases over time.

We may also want customers to introduce the company’s products to their friends. We can offer those who refer customers free products or free product credit when their personally referred customers make purchases.

Customer rewards are not dependent on a party’s sales.

The common thread throughout all customer programs is to reward customers for activities performed over a long period of time. Think marathon.

Hostess Behaviors

Hostesses invite their friends to a party, whether held online or in-person, or both. They earn free product credit and discounted product purchase opportunities, the amounts of which are based upon the purchases made by those who were invited to the party.

Hostess Rewards are based fully on the sales generated at a single party.

The common thread of all hostess programs is to reward hostesses based on the sales made over a short period of time. Think sprint.

Mustard and Ice Cream

Mustard and ice cream are each tasty, but together they would make a nasty treat. Don’t make the mistake of mixing desired hostess behaviors into a customer loyalty program.

Customer loyalty should not be tied to the sales made to other customers at a party, whether real or cobbled together to meet a party minimum. Likewise, hostess programs should not provide rewards for sales made over a long period of time.

Everyone Wins

With good hostess coaching and a good hostess program that rewards both the current and new hostess for bookings, everybody wins.

The consultant gets more bookings and holds more parties. The current hostess has a larger party, earning hostess benefits from the sales at her party plus additional rewards from bookings. Your company benefits from more parties, more consultants, and more retention.

If your hostesses become territorial, don’t get mad at them. Instead, focus on what can be done differently when coaching a hostess.