Hostess Gift and Incentive Scheme
There are a lot of different ways to set up your hostess gift and incentive scheme, and ultimately it’s up to you to decide what works for you. The most important thing is that your hostess feels the rewards are worth the effort of hosting a party. And the more generous your incentives, the more likely it is that new people will be motivated to host a party for you too. I do think it’s important to give a hostess gift just for hosting the party, regardless of the number of guests that turn up and how much they buy. A lot of potential hostesses are worried they won’t be able to get enough guests and that they won’t buy enough, so if you show them that is not all you’re concerned about, they’re more likely to ‘give it a go’. And chances are she will then try her hardest and there will be plenty of guests and sales! Although I make quite varied amounts at different home parties, I haven’t had one yet where the sales didn’t make a hostess gift worthwhile. Tip: Choose a small hostess gift that she'll appreciate but that doesn’t cost you too much in terms of time or materials. Here are some ideas:
If it’s possible to make a mini version of your craft, try that. People might start having parties just to collect your minis! Another option is to give a gift certificate – that way she can put it towards whatever she’d like to purchase. In addition to a thank you gift, you should also have a way of rewarding hostesses for lots of sales. Although you can still use gifts for this, I do think it’s better to offer commission or gift vouchers, so that the hostess can buy the crafts that she wants. There are two ways of doing this: 1. Basic commission: This means that the hostess earns a straight percentage of guest sales to spend on her own purchases. This usually ranges from 10% to 15%. It’s a nice simple system, as it rewards the hostess more for more sales (e.g. if guests spend $100 she gets $10 but if they spend $300 she gets $30), but means that if there are very few sales you don’t lose out by giving away more than you’ve made. I use this method and give 10% plus the hostess gift, but I have to admit the main reason for this is that using 10% keeps the maths nice and simple! 2. Sliding scale: This is also a nice way of rewarding the hostess for bigger sales totals – if the sales go over a certain threshold then she earns a greater reward or percentage. This can help your sales, as hostesses have been known to convince their mother/best friend to buy something extra to get the totals high enough for the next level of commission! An example is: (This is a very basic example and you need to decide for yourself what thresholds and percentages will work for your crafts.) In addition to the above incentives I have recently started giving the hostess a gift voucher for every guest who books their own party at hers – making the voucher valid from the date of that party onwards. This does seem to encourage the hostess to tell her friends how great it is to host a party! I recommend the The Little Black Book of Home Party Plan Business Secrets by Party Plan Pat to get your business off to a profitable start.
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