Creating Your System | Terra Cotta Pendants

Creating Your System for Marketing Essential Oils

In a perfect world, your interaction with prospects would go something like this:

“Hello, my name is [insert your name here]. I market pure essential oils for health and wellness.”

“Wow! Sign me up for a large order and tell me; can I do this business with you?!”

Sigh~ you wished it could be true, didn’t you? Because you (like me) love essential oils and are excited about doing the business we assume that everyone we meet will feel this way. However, as you’ve probably already discovered, it’s not that easy.

Why not? Two reasons. The first is that as much as people love shopping, and as much as they want to purchase things of quality they are reluctant to pay the Quality Price before they see the Value the product has for them. [Education is needed.] The second is that people tend to buy from people they know, trust and like which tends to minimize the risk involved with making a purchase. [Relationship-building is required.]

To address these factors, you need a system; a way to transform your business-building plans into a series of steps which maintain a connection with your prospect as you offer education on essential oils and build a relationship with them.

A system is like a series of squares on a board game. The first square represents the initial encounter with a prospect, and the last square represents your goal. Your role as a marketer is to identify or create the squares [steps] and guide the prospect from square to square until he or she arrives at the last one.

To set up your system, you need to know exactly what your goal looks like. After trying many different approaches to building my business, I decided to focus on creating a large customer base. My reasoning is this; some of the customers over time with experience with the oils and interaction with me would choose to do the business. Either way, they would remain part of a solid commission-generating base.

Design your system to suit your personality. It was only when I got a clear understanding of myself as an Educator that my business began to grow in earnest. The Article The Planning Process outlines a simple system you can use to get clear on your marketing style and make plans to suit it. Use these plans to create the steps in your system. I’ll share the steps of my system. If you like, you can use it to inspire you in the development of your own.

Step one – The first encounter – introduce yourself and let them know you market and teach about pure essential oils. Mention that you hold workshops on how to use essential oils. This catches people’s attention since most people have heard about Aromatherapy but don’t know very much about it.

Step two – If they seem interested loan them a CD or tape and a small flyer showing the dates of your upcoming workshops. Yep – you carry these on your person at all times! Write down their name and phone number.

Step three – Encourage them to come to a fun and aromatic “How to Use Essential Oils Workshop” [next article] in your home which provides education and a relaxing experience with essential oils.

Step four – At the end of the workshop, tell them about four ways they can learn yet more. Make a flyer with this info and pass it out. My flyer looks like this:

HOW TO LEARN MORE

Buy some oils and experience them for yourself.
Come back to a workshop – bring a friend.
Book a one-to-one consultation to learn how the oils relate to you personally.
Get on the Contact List so you will receive tips VIA email on how different essential oils can help you and hear about upcoming workshops.

The next steps branch out from the actions above. If they purchase essential oils you put them in your Follow-up Process; if they come back to another workshop you check to see where they want to go from there; if they book a Consultation with you, chances are they will either order or come back to another workshop and if they want to be on your Contact List make sure that what you send is packed with value along with your invitations to your “How to Use the Oils” Workshops.

At each step, if you are not able to move the prospect to the following step, offer to put them on your Contact List. This ensures that you maintain contact with them and allows them the opportunity to step forward at another time: Keeping them in the Game goal.

You can also insert steps before number one which makes the system even more efficient. Offer “Introductory” Workshops within your community. At the end of these Workshops, move to step two by inviting participants to learn more by attending a “How to Use the Oils” Workshop in your home. In my experience, people who attend both workshops and have listened to my company’s audio info, nearly always place an order. Someone who continues to gather information does so because he or she wants the product!

No matter how you are building your business, face-to-face, online, over the phone or in another creative way, having a system is essential. Perhaps the way it helps most is that it calms the person you most need to calm; yourself. When you know that your only objective is to gently nudge the prospect to the next step, there is less pressure on you [and less pressure perceived by your prospect] than if you feel you have to ask for the sale right away.

Once the steps to your system are in place building your business will be like playing a game where you observe prospects at different steps along the board and gently encourage them to move towards the finish line. What fun!

The backbone of the System outlined here is the “How to Use the Oils” Workshop. Begin by perfecting this step in the system. All your communication with prospects seeks to bring the prospect to the Workshop. You want to be sure that once they get there, their experience convinces them of the value of having essential oils in their life. In the next Article, we’ll talk about a simple plan for setting up a “How to Use the Oils” Workshop in your home.

Photo credit: Velo Steve

©2007 Terra Cotta Pendants About the author: Lori Gosselin has worked in network marketing since 1997. In 2003, this passion led to the creation of www.Terra-Cotta-Pendants.com This is the sixth in a series of twelve Articles which outline a simple way to market essential oils.

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