Is Being A Silpada Designs Independent Representative Right For You

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In 1997, Teresa Walsh and Bonnie Kelly had founded Silpada Designs. They happened to be room mothers for children in the same classroom. The two women struck up a conversation and discovered that both had a common interest in sterling silver jewelry. They tried several business ventures but each time were unsuccessful. This prompted them with an idea to design their own jewelry and show them at their own jewelry parties. Since those humble beginnings, their Company, Silpada Designs has had phenomenal growth over the years empowering a vast number of Independent Silpada Designs Representatives all across the country.

Silpada home shows and jewelry parties can bring in several hundred dollars at each party. Typical sales can run around seven to eight hundred dollars for the jewelry collection. Silpada Home Designs are very lenient on how their representatives run their jewelry parties. The representatives are free to run their parties as choose. This gives a large advantage over other home parties that specializes in the jewelry market, a definite advantage for those that are seriously considering this type of venture. Representatives do not have to follow any sales script, push a particular product, or for that matter required to throw any parties. Silpada Designs even allows you to be creative in your marketing by allowing you to sell jewelry directly, over the internet, by phone or any other creative ways provided that you do not miss represent the product. Many representatives are so enthusiastic about the jewelry line and they sometimes are their own best customers. What better endorsement can you possible have?

Make no mistake; Silpada Designs is a Multi Level Marketing (MLM) opportunity. But do no let that scare you. A Silpada Representative is not bound to hold a certain number of parties or is under any quotas or minimums for sales. The number of parties is strictly up to you. However, holding as many parties as you can earn you a great deal of money. In addition, like other MLM opportunities reps can earn prizes, jewelry and vacations for doing an outstanding job. The general commission for representatives is thirty (30) percent of retail sales for jewelry and fifteen (15) percent for accessories. You can also earn residual income from down line sales made by your recruits. Again, no requirements to recruit or have a down-line sale force.

Sound good right! So the question becomes, “How much is this going to cost me?” Unfortunately, for those that are on a real tight budget, its going to be a little costly. Its going to cost you for a certification fee, learning materials and of course some product. Figure almost two hundred dollars for the certification and learning materials and two to five hundred dollars for some starter product (cost of product to reps are at a fifty percent discount) to show. So I would estimate four to seven hundred dollars to get you going.

If you want to do this but you are concerned about the startup cost, I suggest that you go to a couple of Silpada Design parties and just see for yourself how well the jewelry and accessories sell. If you truly belief that you can make a go at this and you want to be in business for yourself, but have the startup cost, save up over several months or borrow it from family or friends if you feel the need.

Go into this venture with both eyes open and your feet firmly planted on the ground. Remember not to take on more that you can deliver. We all believe that it is easy to sell anything, but retail sales are very volatile and have a lot of ups and downs to it. Keep a keen eye on seasonality and run your business like a professional CEO. Never the less, this is well presented business model and is generally a very easy business to run.

The best part of the Silpada Designs business plan is that this opportunity has instant credibility in that the Silpada Designs Representative receive his or hers commission upon making the sale. You simple collect the money, take your commission and send the remainder to the company for payment and shipment. Other companies do it differently than Silpada Designs. They require all sales profits to be delivered to the company for payment and shipment of the product, then the company sends a commission check, sometimes have the representative wait weeks on end to get paid.

So, is being a Silpada Designs Independent Representative Right for You. I would hope so. Build a career, have fun, set your own schedule and make money at the same time. No experience is necessary, and you can learn as you go. Its one of the easiest ways imaginable to have your own business.

Sales Funneling – A Marketers Guide

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Sales people often feel that all marketing needs to do is to drive loads of leads their way. If this is the approach in your organisation, then you are missing sales and lowering potential profitability. Careful management of the tone and quantity of your marketing content across a planned sales funnel can deliver pre-qualified leads to a sales person, significantly improving the chances of conversion.

Many of us will have experienced a sense of ‘information overload’ where we simply switch off, or the frustration of wanting to know more about a product or service before we commit and not being able to find it. Both happen regularly, and when they do – you’ve lost a sale.

For almost every purchase we make, we run through a broadly similar decision-making process (I say almost, as the impulse bar of chocolate at the supermarket counter is quite a different process). Typically, and particularly for more complex purchases, our thinking will go something like this: ‘My laptop is heavy – I saw that ad for really light weight ones, who was it again?’ (Latent need); ‘There’s that ad, it’s X-brand’ (Awareness); ‘I’ll just check out their site’ (Interest); ‘Hmm, well the weight certainly compares well, but can I afford it, what are the other options?’ (Evaluation); ‘I’ll pop into Y-shop to see what it feels like and ask a little more about it’ (Trial); ‘I’ve researched the best price, I’ll get it from there’ (Purchase). Kotler and others have spelt out various different versions of this process, there’s bound to have been one modelled for most markets. By understanding the way people make buying decisions, you can map your sales funnel: 1. Awareness, 2. Interest, 3. Evaluation, 4. Trial, 5. Purchase.

Against this process you should map and measure your sales funnel, you’ll steadily whittle down your audience at each step, with interested parties moving through the funnel and those who either don’t want what you offer or who are turned off by your messaging going elsewhere. To maximise the conversion at each stage, marketers should consider two key elements; tone and quantity.

What do I mean by tone? As short-hand, think emotion. Against the sales funnel, there is an appropriate tone at each step. If you imagine a continuum from emotional to rational, typically your marketing material will need to start at emotional and move to rational through the funnel. To really get noticed, you need to appeal to our most human side, our emotions. If you hit a nerve, they notice you. However rational you are, e.g. ‘we’re cheap’, if they don’t feel a need for what you’re offering they’re unlikely to notice your communications in the first place. Successful emotional appeals, in marketing terms, usually hit on a negative feeling and say that you can take it away. This is called finding the point of pain. Once you’ve established that emotional appeal, your communications need to move into more rational territory, where proof is needed. As a sanity check on the tone of your marketing materials, map out each stage of the sales funnel and look at the material (offline, online, sales person, in-store, etc.) and then judge the emotional appeal – are you delivering rational messages too soon? Is your material providing further emotional messaging, when your buyer is looking for rational proof?

Quantity, in regard to sales funnelling, is a fairly straight forward concept – start ‘short and sweet’ and then provide more information at each step. Where most organisations fall foul of this is on their websites. Home pages are often jam packed with information. In a typical sales funnel, an organisation’s website is the second or third step – this means that people typically reach you looking for an emotional appeal (what’s the benefit for me?) and they are looking for key messages. Again, map out your journey and assess the quantity of information you are serving at each stage, it should start small and increase at each step.

So, if you’re experiencing lots of web traffic, but low numbers of enquiries – or lots of footfall and low sales, think about the sales funnel. An initial assessment against tone and quantity will signpost where your blockage might be and put you on the path to a free flowing sales funnel that has a tangible link to your bottom line.

Copyright (c) 2008 Bryony Thomas

How To Create A 30-60-90-day Business Plan To Use In A Non-sales Interview

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Can you use a 30-60-90-day plan for non-sales jobs? Of course–it works for marketing, project management, technical support, and many others. For instance, I got a call from a candidate going for a job in Marketing Communications. He had a 30-60-90-day template, but needed help translating it into a document for a non-sales job like the one he wanted. We spent a few minutes brainstorming together, and came up with some ideas and new directions that I also wanted to share with you.

To begin with, remember that there are objectives you have to achieve in every job. They aren’t all achievable in the first 30-60-90-days (or even in the first 180 or 360 days), but even with a really long-term objective, there should be some kind of break down of what needs to be done when, and certainly at least some of them can be taken care of within the first 30-60-90 days. So, for example: if you are in Marketing Communications, and you’re supposed to be building to a complete product launch in 9 months, there are some things that can be listed out to be done in the first 30-60-90-days in order to set yourself on the path to success and prosperity. Those are the objectives that you would use in place of sales objectives.

The same types of communications happen in many kinds of jobs – just not necessarily with customers. Instead of meeting with outside customers (as in sales), you might have more internal meetings, or you might be meeting with external vendors. For example, if you’re an events coordinator, you’re going to have to go on sites, request and review bids, share those with the sales staff perhaps, and have a plan for what needs to be done when.

Other possibilities for objectives to include in your 30-60-90-day plan: training, site visits, or learning company systems. There are many ways to tailor a 30-60-90-day plan to whatever job you’re interviewing for. Also, learning enough about the job to put one together will be helpful to you when you ask your own questions in the interview, because you’ll start off with more information than the average candidate.

The point to keep in mind is: Creating a 30-60-90-day plan shows initiative, preparation, written communication skills, and that you’re interested enough in this job to have done your homework. That’s always impressive to hiring managers.

Q84 Books 1, 2 and 3 by Haruki Murakami

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A publishing event which will capture the attention of the trade and of the reading public Huge sales in HS and Vintage for both his recent books and across the whole backlist Murakami fans will love this novel but 1Q84 is also a thrilling introduction to his world for those not already familiar with it The first printing in Japan sold out on the first day of sale. It sold over a million copies in its first month after publication. Murakami’s books are published in 45 territories, in 42 languages ‘Critics have variously likened him to Raymond Carver, Raymond Chandler, Arthur C. Clarke, Don DeLillo, Philip K. Dick, Bret Easton Ellis and Thomas Pynchon a roster so ill assorted as to suggest Murakami is in fact an original’ New York Times

About the Book: 1Q84: Books 1, 2 and 13

The year is 1984. Aomame sits in a taxi on the expressway in Tokyo.

Her work is not the kind which can be discussed in public but she is in a hurry to carry out an assignment and, with the traffic at a standstill, the driver proposes a solution. She agrees, but as a result of her actions starts to feel increasingly detached from the real world. She has been on a topsecret mission, and her next job will lead her to encounter the apparently superhuman founder of a religious cult.

Meanwhile, Tengo is leading a nondescript life but wishes to become a writer. He inadvertently becomes involved in a strange affair surrounding a literary prize to which a mysterious seventeenyearold girl has submitted her remarkable first novel. It seems to be based on her own experiences and moves readers in unusual ways. Can her story really be true?

Aomame and Tengo’s stories influence one another, at times by accident and at times intentionally, as the two come closer and closer to intertwining. As 1Q84 accelerates towards its conclusion, both are pursued by persons and forces they do not know and cannot understand. As they begin to decipher more about the strange world into which they have slipped, so they sense their destinies converging. What they cannot know is whether they will find one another before they are themselves found.

1Q84 is a magnificent and fullyimagined work of fictiona thriller, a lovestory and a mindbending ode to George Orwell’s Nineteen EightyFour. It is a world from which the reader emerges stunned and altered.

Praise for Other Titles by this Author

After Dark: ‘For sheer love of a thumping narrative, the novel delivers gloriously Inventive, alluring’ David Mitchell, Guardian After Dark: ‘A magnificently bewildering achievement Brilliantly conceived, bold in its surreal scope, sexy and driven by a snappy plot Exuberant storytelling’ Independent on Sunday Dance Dance Dance: ‘A remarkable writer…he captures the common ache of the contemporary heart and head.’ Jay McInerney Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: ‘Murakami’s fictional world is extraordinary.’ Sunday Times

Business Transfer Agents Time The Government Cracked Down On Rogue Operators Who Demand Money For N

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Hit by the recession or maybe just retiring or moving on, there are countless owners of small businesses whod like to sell up.

Business transfer agents are supposedly there to help them find a buyer.
But today I lift the lid on a string of them who demand huge fees even when they fail to get a sale, and then sue clients who refuse to pay up.
Rip-off 1: Judge backs family over firms one-sided contractVerdicts on business transfer agents dont often come much more damning than this.

The case involves one of the most notorious firms in this field, RTA Business Consultants.
It failed to find a buyer for a family-run car parts firm but still demanded payment.
When the owner, 70 Celine Pas Cher (http://www.sweio.net/celine/category/sac-celine-pas-cher) -year-old Andrew Rothery, refused to cough up, RTA sued.
And lost spectacularly.
Its rep Jen Leary bragged she could value a business to the penny but got the price of Mr Rotherys firm wrong by 700,000, Halifax County Court was told.
She lied that she could sell West Yorks firm Holmfield Auto Spares for 1.3m and persuaded Mr Rothery to sign a contract to pay 5,000 plus VAT for marketing, followed by commission on sale.

Suspicious of the high price put on his firm, Mr Rothery had two reputable business sales agents value it and they came up with a figure of 600,000.
So he refused to pay RTA, which sued him for 10,000 in supposed unpaid fees and lost commission.
Deputy District Judge Keith Nightingale threw out the case and was scathing about RTAs terms.
He said: The contract, it seems to the court, has clauses which are wholly one-sided and quite frankly it is a document that does not seem fair or balanced whatsoever.

Mr Rothery and his son Gavin were delighted.
It was the ignorant bad-mannered attitude of the people at RTA which made me determined not to give them money when they had not earned it, he told me after the case.
Ive been in business for 42 years and have dealt with lots of people who want to take money for doing very little.
RTA is one of them.
And Mr Rothery is not the only one to think so.
Andy Stenning / Daily Mirror Trubunal: Paul O’Reilly of RTA

An extraordinary insight to RTA came at an employment tribunal this month.
Former senior salesman Howard Rowlands told the hearing that the boss, Paul OReilly, threatened to punch him in the f***ing face in a row over the firms ethics.
Mr Rowlands said Mr OReilly was ranting and raving.
He said: I spun around and left the office as quickly as possible, I just wanted to get out of there. I felt threatened, seriously threatened.
Mr Rowlands also told the tribunal in Manchester that sales director Paul Mitchell explained how they would make money from a typical business seller, revealing: We want to stitch him up with the withdrawal fee.

Mr Rowlands said: I didnt do fraudulent contracts, thats what caused the animosity. I questioned the ethos and morality.
He explained that clients were unwittingly committing themselves to paying 1,500 even if no sale of their business was achieved.
He said: The withdrawal fee is on that contract for life, with instructions from Paul Mitchell and Paul OReilly not to inform people its there for life.
I raised it at sales meetings, that it was abhorrent. The withdrawal fee is like an anchor. If owners sell it themselves, RTA wants 1,500. If they take it off the market, RTA wants 1,500.

RTA disputed the account of its former sales star, saying it was made up because Mr Rowlands was facing disciplinary action over alleged racist language.
Mr OReilly also claimed that the Mirror had been ordered by the Press Complaints Commission to print a retraction for one of my previous stories about his company.
He was asked to produce this retraction, forcing him to admit: I dont have a copy of it.
Thats because it doesnt exist.

The tribunal ruling was postponed.
Fee free: The Turner Butler ‘guarantee’
Rip-off 2: 50,000 for web advertisingIf Turner Butler failed to sell his building business, Constructive Care, Steve Archer assumed he wouldnt owe a penny.
After all, hed been given a Full No Sale No Fee Guarantee. He said: This was included with every letter they sent out to me initially.
His firm folded after no buyer was found and Turner Butler are now suing him in Hertford county court for 50,000.

Even if they had sold his business at his suggested price of 288,000, Turner Butlers 7% commission would come to barely 24,000.
But there was no sale and Turner Butler, said Mr Archer, expects this huge sum for simply advertising my now liquidated company on free insertion websites, for something I could have done myself.
Rupert Cattell, of Turner Butler, said: We asked Mr Archer for an explanation of what happened to all of Constructive Cares assets while under contract to Turner Butler and he has declined to respond, or to provide evidence as to what happened to those assets.

Rip-off 3: Carol rises to Phoenix feeHoping to sell her gift shop in Bristol, Carol Budd put it on the market with one business transfer agent, and then a second. It was sold to a buyer who was introduced by the first company, she says.
Which has not stopped the second one, Phoenix Business Agents, threatening to bankrupt her if she doesnt pay them 8,600.
Their director Zulf Hamid gave me a big song and dance about how valuable my business was, and wanted to value it at 75,000 but I said that it wouldnt sell for that so he reduced it to 50,000, she said.

Eventually it sold for 28,000 to a buyer who had been introduced by the other company.
If Phoenix had found a buyer for me I would have paid them but Im not going to pay them for a customer that was procured by another company.
These people are targeting hard-working, honest folk.
A spokesman for Phoenix did not dispute Mrs Budds account of its initial enormous over-valuation of her shop or explain why it expects a fee thats almost a third of the sale price, but it insists that the buyer was registered with them.

Phoenix is a reputable business transfer agency, said a spokesman, saying the company hoped to resolve the matter through open and frank dialogue.
Couple: Barrie Hooton and Martin Marshall
Rip-off 4: 400k debts, but firm has shifted assets over to ex-directorLast week I told how Preferred Commercial demanded 5,000 from one poor client whose pub it had failed to sell, sending no prospective buyers apart from one time-waster.
Preferred Commercial is in liquidation with debts of almost 400,000 that it cannot pay. Which does not mean the end of the people behind this company.

If you click on website youre re-directed to an almost identical website for a firm called Vendor Direct.
This even uses the same old Preferred Commercial phone number.
Thats because its assets, including any unpaid bills allegedly owed by ex-clients, have been sold to Vendor Direct, whose director is Barrie Hooton.
Hes an ex-director of Preferred Commercial and partner – both in the business and civil ceremony sense – of another Preferred Commercial director, Martin Marshall.

Rip-off 5: No sale? It still costsNo sale, no fee. That was the crucial phrase in the sales pitch that persuaded Carl Bowman to put his hardware store in Leeds on the market with Ernest Wilson & Co Ltd.
Now he says ruefully: With hindsight I was possibly a little naive to accept the word of their sales rep and not query the terms of business further.
His store didnt sell and now Ernest Wilson is suing him for 4,765.
It was marketed at 205,000 without success, even though Mr Bowman says that he had been told before signing the contract that potential buyers were very keen.

He heard little until Ernest Wilson told him to cut the price to 160,000 and accept liability for their marketing fees.
When he refused, Ernest Wilson took it off the market and issued its court claim.
The firm insists that its terms and conditions are sent to every client and include the clause: Advertising and marketing sac celine (sweio.net) costs are payable upon withdrawal.
Director Stuart Moorhouse said: We were left with no option but to issue court proceedings.

He pointed out that Mr Bowmans complaint to The Property Ombudsman had been rejected.
Mr Bowman responded by reminding Ernest Wilson that they were fined in 2012 by The National Federation of Property Professionals.
Its tribunal ruling began: We are disappointed that we have heard three further cases connected with Ernest Wilson, especially as there have been two previous cases, one in 2007 and another in 2011.
The latest case, which resulted in three 750 fines, concerned the giving to a seller client a copy of the agency agreement document for the sale of their business that is not identical to the version the client has signed.

Campaign group fights the roguesTales like the ones here prompted the establishment of the Campaign for Ethics in Business Transfer Agents , a free advice website.
Its spokeswoman said some small firms risk going bust if they pay agents who fail to find them buyers but still demand huge fees.
There are no laws to stop the business marketing agents from producing unfair contracts and then suing in the small claims courts, she said.
We encourage people who have successfully beaten them to help by providing witness statements, copy judgments and transcripts for the next person due in court.

You can find it at website
Read more from Andrew Penman hereBeen ripped off? Contact Andrew Penman by emailing [emailprotected] or writing to Penman Investigates, Daily Mirror, One Canada Square, London E14 5AP