Flyers are extremely versatile. You can use them for almost anything!

They could be used as a quick and cheap way to advertise a one-time event. Maybe you need to boost sales and want to offer 25% off your retail merchandise for the next 48 hours. Printing an expensive full color flyer wouldn’t be time or cost effective, but putting together a quick, eye catching flyer that you can just get copied at a local office supply store would be both time and cost effective.

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Restaurants need menus. Whether it’s a board on the wall or something you hand out, you have to tell your customers what you are serving.

A menu should reflect the attitude of the restaurant. A tropical, breezy, colorful restaurant should have a menu that fits that same theme. A boring, text only, black and white menu just wouldn’t quite do it. A corporate cafe in a downtown complex might want to appeal to the business crowd who is in a hurry to just get their lunch and get back to work. You should consider what you want to convey to your customers. Are you there to entertain them? Get them fed and out in a hurry? Wine and dine them for the evening? A menu does so much more than tell someone what food you are serving, it sets a mood for their dining experience.

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Ever had a party online or offline, and had guests say “I love that item, but I can’t afford it right now”, or “It’s so hard to decide, I want all of this!”. This is a perfect time to sell all those items to your customer without them having to pay a dime.

If you aren’t using this idea already, make sure to put it into action immediately. Have a gift registry form ready to point those customers to should they want extra items they simply can not buy right now.

What they do is fill out their information, special dates (Birthdays, Anniversary, etc), and the products they want. Then, they fill out names and contact information of relatives and friends they know they will be receiving gifts from. You contact the relatives, stating where you received their information and what’s on the wish list you hold. Ask them if they would like a reminder before the special date, and which item they will be purchasing.

Simple eh? It’s a win-win situation for everyone! You make the extra sale, the gift-giver knows they are buying a gift the other person wants (no guess work or wandering around a mall!), and the one receiving the gift is getting exactly what they wanted but couldn’t afford.

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The first thing you need to do is find out exactly what it is you’re afraid of. Are you afraid of success? Believe it or not there this is an actual fear of some folks. Are you afraid of failure or rejection? Do you fear being perceived as being pushy? Do you (secretly of course) fear that your product may not meet the expectations of your customer? You can’t come up with a solution if you don’t know what the problem is.

There’s a huge misconception in direct sales being that you think you’re ‘imposing’ on your friends, family or just a customer in general. As long as you feel as though you’re imposing…you are. You need to love your product and feel as though you are offering a service. You’re filling a need.

People are natural-born sellers. We just don’t realize it when we’re not making money from it. Let’s say you go to a movie that you loved and you have a friend that you know would enjoy it too. Wouldn’t you recommend it to him/her?

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A lot of people are very intrigued by the idea of joining a direct sales company and being able to make extra money from home. There are a few things a first-timer in direct sales should know before signing up.

1. There are always more expenses than first expected.

This is true for any business. Even though your start up kit may be only $49.95, you will incur other expenses such as promotional supplies, and advertising, which you may not previously considered.

2. Leads will not just come pouring in.

If you want to make your business successful, you are going to have to work for it. No matter how easy you think it will be to sell or sign up people with your direct sales company, the customers are not just going to come to you. At first you might have great success with your new product, but at some point you will need to put in some real work to introduce your business to new customers.

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Remember that first and foremost, a non-profit organization is a business. You may be applying to the agency because of the cute puppies on its publicity materials, but their job is stay in the black. That means they have to take in more money than they spend on their mission. Your potential job is undoubtedly related to that: generating publicity, executing successful events, donor relations, etc.

Most, if not all, non-profits answer to a board of directors—much like a private-sector company answers to its stockholders. Sure, the work you do at a non-profit is generally more altruistic than most other companies, but the bottom line is the same: you have to produce results for your organization to continue its work.

So what does this mean for your resume? It’s essential that you include examples of how you’ve produced results in the past. Your results-driven experience may only include the time you helped the PTA raise $500 through candy sales, but pointing out the results you achieved—“By focusing the kids on specific goals, I helped them increase their totals over the previous year by nearly 15 percent”—makes it relevant.

Other tips for putting together a top-notch resume for a non-profit organization:

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Email is a fabulous tool and can be used to the maximum for your business but there is nothing like a personal meeting or a telephone call to take your recruiting from average or below to super recruiter. Ask the top recruiters in any direct sales company and you will discover that they attribute much of their recruiting success to using the recruit interview.

On the phone or face to face your chances of closing your potential new recruit are best if you spend most of your voice to voice time listening and asking questions and less time telling about your opportunity and spilling your story.

So here are some ideas for questions you can ask your new inquiring potential recruits that will get HER talking more and help you determine what she’s looking for and how your direct selling business can help!

• “Have you been involved in Direct Sales before? Tell me about that.” The nice thing about exploring past Direct Sales history with your prospect is that you can determine what kind of “lingo” is appropriate when it comes time to talk about compensation, downline, overrides, etc. Some of those words are foreign to someone who has never been in direct sales before and you should avoid using them, especially in the first interview.

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Meditation: an altered, yet natural, state

What is an altered state? Simply put, it’s a state that’s different to your usual state of waking consciousness, and different from your sleeping state too. It’s like a state between the tow worlds of wakefulness and sleep, you’re very relaxed, but you’re awake, you can be very focused, yet you’re very relaxed.

Meditation produces highly beneficial alpha brain-waves that result from deep relaxation. One of the many benefits of meditation is that it’s positive effect on the nervous and immune systems of your body can stay with you for hours, unlike recreational relaxants where the body swings back into a stress aroused state as soon as their influence has worn off, the rewards of meditation are both long lasting and accumulative. The more you meditate the better you get at it and the better you feel.

Meditation: the ultimate antidote to stress

Stress is considered a contributing factor in up to 80% of all illness. At best it makes you irritable, unpopular and unproductive, at it’s worst it makes you miserable and sick.

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One of the biggest challenges that many of my clients bring to their coaching sessions revolves around achieving life balance. This is not surprising when you consider that we live in a world where there is so much going on, so many choices to make, and a myriad of demands on our time. Given the fast-paced nature of the world in which we live, how exactly does one achieve the ever-coveted state of “balance”?

The critical first step is to define what life balance actually is. As much as the phrase is a popular one, most people aren’t able to clearly articulate its meaning. The reason for this is quite simple: balance looks different to each person. What looks like a balanced, manageable day for one person may look like complete chaos to another individual. So, it is essential that you get clear on what balance looks like for you. Ask yourself: what would be present in my life if things were more balanced? What would I be doing? How would I be feeling? Once you know the answers to these questions, then you’ve got a solid sense of what you’re aiming for. You’ve got a direction in which to head.

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Life, by general consensus, is a complicated affair that can be tackled in as many ways as there are people. It is possible to cruise by it without worrying too much, blatantly ignoring aspects and factors that can cause abrupt changes in one’s life. On the other extreme, it is also possible to experience such levels of stress and anxiety that one is unable to find security only in certain areas of personal comfort. For others, life gets to them and they simply lose touch with reality itself, their mental imploding. Yet, all of the approaches that people have come up with to cope with life tend to be rooted firmly in stress.

The fact is, stress is a prevalent and natural component of life. Even during simpler, more idyllic times, there was always a certain level of pressure that people had to deal with. The triggers that cause states of extreme duress differ from person to person, mainly because people have different levels of tolerance for it. Some may find a certain level of pressure to be absolutely intolerable, while others would be able to get through it relatively unscathed. Perspective and perception, in this particular case, appears to be the key factor in determining how much stress a person can handle. However, regardless of how one views the pressures that modern life piles up on a person, it still has to be dealt with somehow.

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