Monday Morning Meeting

Okay I admit it. I hate Monday mornings. It’s when “my list” is longest and sometimes I just don’t know where to begin. That said, I usually try to wake up a little earlier on Mondays so that I can have a half hour of quiet time (while even Ken is sleeping!) to organize my thoughts, make a game plan for the week and try to get motivated!

During this morning’s solitude I was thinking about the fact that I speak to 5-10 of our independent sales reps each day to discuss various topics – table set up techniques, sales tax rules, hostess benefits, boutique store sales tactics and strategies, vendor event sales and website ordering, just to name a few. Over the past week or so, each time I hung up the phone from one of these conversations (or completed an email exchange) I thought how much all of our sales reps could benefit from what had been discussed. So with that in mind, I’ve decided to start a Monday Morning Message. Each Monday morning I plan to offer a brief tip, suggestion or helpful comment that will hopefully help our reps to organize, promote and advance their business.

The first Monday Morning Message:

Consider inviting another vendor (or a few) with non-competitive products to attend/help coordinate a party. There are entrepreneurial moms in every community. Whether they are selling jewelry, stationery, handbags, cosmetics or women’s apparel (just to name a few) they will likely have a customer base that differs from yours. In that way, you’ll all benefit from a more varied and (numerous!) invitee list which will hopefully translate to a better attended event – and more sales! You should give a brief description in your invitation as to what each of the vendors will be selling. Just think, someone who comes to the party looking for a handbag may just not be able to resist your LikeWear clothes!! You’ll likely find too that these vendors will in turn invite you to some of their future events as well.

I hope (and will encourage) our reps to reply to the Monday Morning Messages with any comments, feedback or personal suggestions they may have on that day’s topic or anything else they would like to add. I’m hopeful that this will help to foster a greater sense of unity. Most of our reps don’t know one another but we are all part of the same team – if we all succeed on an individual basis, it makes the company stronger as a whole. To that end:

"The greater the loyalty of a group toward the group, the greater is the motivation among the members to achieve the goals of the group, and the greater the probability that the group will achieve its goals." --Rensis Likert