Phoenix Trading - Hints and Tips

Lalaladybird

I joined up because of this thread but I am freaking now because no-one has responded to my post :eek: and I'm so worried I have just wasted £95 and will have to work live crazy to just earn that back before I make any profit. I'm also worried that after postage costs of sending brochures to some of the people on my xmas card list and posting out any orders that I might just break even at best. Can anyone reassure me. I was really excited. I'm within my 14 days to cancel. Should I? Should I just get a normal part time job?

Wibblywobbly14

Lalaladybird wrote: »

I sent off my agreement yesterday and have got myself all organised, I'm really looking forward to getting my stuff.
-I will get a cash book and a few baskets, resealable bags for brochure drops and another hardbacked book to keep a log of customers...what they bought etc.

I could do a coffee and cards morning though and get my dh to take her out. Do they work well as a launch?

Also how do you find out where craft fairs etc are going on? I bought the local paper last night and there was nothing in there! Would a car boot sale be any good?

Hello, welcome to Phoenix! IT has been a bit quiet on here lately, but I check it quite often, so I'll reply! It sounds as though you are all set and ready to go! YOur preparations all sound good. One thing I would suggest is that maybe you use a card file to keep your customer details on, that way, it will be easy to add cards when your notes on customers increase and you can put out blank cards for people to add their details to directly.

Just keep your eyes peeled on local noticeboards for stalls, also www.stallfinder, they will come up as the summer and then CHristmas approaches. However, I would say by far the most profitable way to sell the products is buy passing on the brochures and collecting orders and encouraging your customers to pass it on and gather more orders for you. I use fairs and events more as a 'PR' exercise, to adveryise that I am there available for coffee mornings and fundraisers.

Coffee and cards do work well, I think, as everyone will turn up because they are interested to see what you have got. I have only done ones with a fundraising element to them, as I was too shy to ask people otherwise!

Good luck with everything, just be enthusiastic!

Wibblywobbly14

Money_maker wrote: »

Have noticed all previous posters have gone suspiciously quiet.

How do you trade at this time of year when there are not many fairs and so forth on? Is anyone still doing door to door and hows it going?

I have confidence that I could put in a first order from family and friends but would then need subsequent customers.

Hi Moneymaker, I don't know why it is so quiet at the moment, it may be just that the pre-Christmas period is so busy and exciting that people were on here a lot looking for tips. That is the time when a lot of people sign up too.

Personally, I send out a load of brochures as soon as I can and get a few parent and toddler groups booked up - I give them 10% of what is sold, and do the game with the Treasure Hunt Map suggested on this thread. I have found that over time I have just collected more regular customers and I just try to encourage them to show the brochures to others and spread the word. For example, one of my friends was saying she needed to order some cards from me, but she prefers to see the cards themselves as they are nicer than in the brochure. I am happy for her to come around, but she is useless at getting around to things, so I offered to loan her a basket of cards and giftwrap to browse over the weekend. I gave her a basket with 100+ cards in, a couple of brochures and 10 sheets of wrap and tags. Naturally, she had a few family visiting over the weekend, so instead of her using just 10 cards, I ended up with a sale of 30 cards, plus 3 sheets of wrap and two new customers - it all adds up! Now I have made some flyers advertising this service and will display them and send them out when the next supplement comes out (included a photo of a basket of cards on my flyer).

I have only tried door to door twice, and only got one customer from it, but she is a good customer, so it may be worth trying, as long as you get your brochure back!

At the moment, there are a lot of charities that you could do a coffee morning for. I have done a few of these, and invited a friend who makes jewellery to come along and sell her stuff too - this has worked well, as she's invited people she knows and I've gained a few new customers from this.

Make sure you collect peoples details so that you can ask them if they'd like to be updated with the latest brochure/supplement and it is a chance to ask them if they would like to host a coffee and cards or evening party, and whether they'd like info on joining Phoenix. (I am shy and so just give them a little form to fill in with a tick box for these details)

That's all I can think of for now, as I have my daughter clambering all over me!

Money_maker

Thank you for your responses.

Will probably mull it over for a while. Do have many ideas but they always seem more feasible at night rather than the cold light of day. Off my feet with a broken ankle anyway so have around 5 weeks to think it over!

Thanks again.

drywhitewine

I joined at the end of Jan with just the £45 starter kit and so far so good. Made my money back and more with my first order, but I've put that back in with getting more brochures, envelopes, bags etc and some stock. All my orders so far have been from friends and family, just giving the brochure out. I've now moved on to work colleagues, and my mums Christmas card list!

I made 2 sample folders (both from the stuff in the starter kit), 1 of which is with my mother in law (doing wonders at her place of work) and the other I'm giving to people for the weekend or whatever (only been doing this for 4 weeks so playing it by ear still). I've also got one of the gift bags, and filled that with a cards and take it with me to work etc

I haven't actively seeked out any 'coffee/champagne and cards' or stalls etc but I plan to do them if they come up. 2 people have also expressed an interest in becoming traders themselves and that was again by just sending them out the brochure. The newsletters are so useful to read, full of good ideas.

I can see that if you were doing this for your sole income then it could seem hard work for not much reward but only for a while, as far as I can see the money really starts when you build your business up (like anything else on here) and start sponsoring other people/becoming an ET. But if you love the product then it makes things alot easier. Its so exciting when you get your delivery, and have to pick out the orders, it just doesn't seem like work to me! Whether that's cos I've still got the novelty factor I don't know, but like I said, so far so good....

gingermuff69

Hello everyone

I have been directed to this forum by one of my friends and what a source of inspiration it has been. I have read through all the threads (is that right? I'm new to all this)

I just wanted to let you know what I've been up to, and to see if I could be doing anything else to maximise my time/effort:

I have to run all this probably mind numbing information past everyone as my Fiance thinks I will earn nothing more than pocket money and wont ever earn my initial £45 pound back so I am determined to prove him wrong!!!!! - Also I really do not want to go back to work (on maternity - Small monster is 8 months old ) so I need to be focused.

I received my pack on Saturday 14 (Valentines day) and set to work printing off labels and letters to go in the brochures.
I made up two sample folders but used the whole brochure and after I read the info again realised that this could have made 4 folders.....live and learn.
I gave one folder to my dad with strict instructions for it to be passed around. He took it to the pub with him on Saturday night.
I made up two display boards to take to events.
I have two table top sales booked in for March.

On Sunday 15, I did a brochure drop with aprox 30 brochures to cover half my street. I picked them up on Wednesday and I managed to get £38 in orders. And interest for a sponsor, gave her the pack.

I dropped the other sample folder at a friend mum's as I knew it will go around at least 3 people. This was a disaster - everyone sounded enthuiastic but no orders. I was very dissapointed!

I picked a few people off my list to send a brochure out to and made the pack up and wrote a personal note. - Not posted them yet, life got in the way.
Met up with two friends on Monday and I got two bookings for coffee and cards both in March. So a good days work I think.

My Weight Watchers leader said last week that I could have a table at the meeting on Thursday this week to display my wares - so, because I dont have any stock to sell I came up with a brilliant idea. At christmas I bought all the cards I would need for 2009 at a friends house from a Pheonix lady, so I dug them all out (about 35) and put these out for sale. Only one sold and I had 1 order all from the same lady. A bit dissapointing! But have 3 leads for charity events/fairs.

I did another brochure drop and pick up and got another £10 of orders, and I took a folder to my local kids centre - I had a order of £9 and was allowed to leave the sample folder for a week.

And thats about it.

I want to become an ET already, maybe I'm pushing it a bit but I sooooo do not want to return to work.

What else can I be doing? (only have the 45 pound kit )

Thanks for letting me pick your brains.

Ginger

Rosemary_Jane

Well done, Ginger, you're doing really well.

The early enthusiasm is a really good time to get known and this is really important. For example, the Weight Watchers display was good for the three leads - you never know what things will lead to.

If you log onto the Phoenix site and go to downloads, I suggest you read all the newsletters, especially the Australian ones, which are chock full of ideas and strategies. One of them has advice from the second top seller in Australia, who sells at parties ONLY from sample cards.

This is good, because it helps other people think they can do this, even if they haven't got much money.

Keep going, but do be aware that the income takes a while to climb, and don't give up in disappointment when the first few months seem to pay less than you want.

Look in the genealogy part of the site as well, and contact your upline ETs until you find soemone who you can relate to, who will support and advise you.

Rosemary

gingermuff69

Hello Rosemary

Thanks for the advise, I will do. I have got a lovely sponsor who I am going to meet on Tuesday when we go to the ET's house for a meeting. I'm quite excited to finally be able to meet some people who are going to be enthuiastic about me starting out.

I'll keep you posted.

Ginge

nicalodian

Hi everyone and the newbies,

Well although I work full time i've done something else for the past few years more as a hobby really. I was successfull over xmas however by the time I joined I was too late to get any stall at fairs etc so a top tip is to book early. Some start advertising after summer, on stall finder some are even advertising now!! I've also found some traders to be a bit ruthless and unfortunately have had hardly any contact with my upline which is a shame seeing as someone is earning from my sales so now get support from random traders i've met/come across on here. Also reccommend stallfinder as a good source of finding events. There is also a thread on Netmums on a sticky of events going on in your area so that's worth checking now and again.
With schools where I am i've found some of the PTA's to be really lazy. My kids school didn't even have a xmas fair last year which is dissappointing and seem to raise money through lastminute.com ideas, discos etc so that narrows my avenues down a bit. For that reason i'm concentrating on offices for the time being. I tried an old folks home and had some interest so am hoping for a booking of sorts there soon.

I did try a basket in one school but after it being there for about 3 weeks the staff seemed confused as to what to do. I had printed an info sheet/letter and put it in the front of the folder but it seems that nobody looked at this and so as someone suggested on a previous post the best advice is to attach something very simple/stupid to the basket with bullet points otherwise it probably just won't be noticed/read.

I've made most of my sales through work/offices and not had one party yet but to be honest i've not actively tried to get them.

My main problem upto now has been the fact that initially I ordered quite a bit of stock of what I thought would be most popular and then only to sell from the brochure and have to re-order (and pay the large postage cost). This has given my a kick up the backside to get some stalls sorted so that I can sell from stock.
This also happend at xmas. I ordered the 100 pounds set and although I sold about half, most of my orders were re-orders from the brochure. You just can't seem to predict what people will like so personally I won't be ordering a xmas pack this year, but will order a few packs then go from there. I've recently been selling some at 1/3 off just to generate my cash back rather than having them sat in the box till xmas. (not sure if this is good or bad lol).

I bought the baskets from laura ashley on sale for about 9 pounds and they're lovely for the offices. I also have about 3 sets of the laura ashley box sets of 3, 1 set of which I use now and again but have the option to use them all if I wanted.
I never pay full price for these bits as when they don't have offers in the shop or online there's a website (my!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) which usually have a 20% discount code available.

Some very kind soul on here helped me out recently with an order as they were ordering anyway (you know who you are lol). This saved me the postage charge on a small order however paid the postage to the other trader. I would really reccommend trying this avenue with smaller orders because the postage has really eaten into my profits over the past few months. Obviously doing it this way your order won't be counted so it's not building up towards a monthly bonus so you have to weigh it up one way or the other.

Ref the postage aspect, i've got a family member and a friend who regularly put in 20 pound orders. I have to post the brochures up and then the orders but because they keep returning it works out worth while. I think you have to weigh up your odds on that one.

HTH someone maybe.

Lalaladybird

It is my first day Trading!!!!!!!

I have made up my binders (3 hours work :rolleyes:), I am going to go to costco today to get the grip lock bags and I have bought a lot of large stamps to post brochures out to family and friends (what a lot of expense for a job). Then I will post brochures round the neighbours.....one problem I have is that they didn't say you need to have a printer to do this job :eek: I don't know how I'll get along without enclosing a letter with my packs....any ideas anyone??? That has really thrown a spanner in my works and I feel very discouraged. I'm convinced people won't understand what to do or what is even about without a letter, my OH says he wouldn't bother reading the letter and people will know what to do

I will phone some toddler groups today and make up a basket to leave in a business How many baskets and brochures do you have circulating at any one time?

I started this hoping I could have a flexible part time job so I could stay at home with my dd (1) but now I think I'll have to get a normal p/t job and do PT until I can recoup my losses. The tax thing is also scaring me.