INSPIRING DEMO STORY

(From our Demo Website)
Best, Fastest Way to Get Results

February 22, 2010

We've been focusing on the power of the workshop to strengthen and build your business, and several of you have shared your success stories with us. Recently Catherine Pooler, a demonstrator who has served on the Stampin' Up! Advisory Board and earned recognition as a top ten Demonstrator of the Year, told us the following:

When I started this business six and a half years ago, it was to get some free Stampin' Up! goodies. Within a couple weeks, though, I realized that it was a viable business opportunity that would allow me to work from home, go out on the weekends and evenings a few times a month, and not have to put my kids in day care. In less than six months, I was making more money than my previous job as a teacher.

And I did this doing workshops.

I have been successful with Stampin' Up! beginning with my first year, and my success came from doing four to eight workshops each month. About two and a half years ago, it became harder to book workshops, and when I did have a workshop, the sales were low. So I stopped asking for bookings. I was lucky to do one or two a month. I relied on my current customer base and my clubs. As a result, I saw my sales, club membership, and recruiting plummet, followed by my enthusiasm.

This past July, I booked five workshops! Wow! I hadn't had more than two workshops in a month in more than a year. And July? July is usually a light month. My enthusiasm went through the roof! I was excited!

And guess what followed? More bookings. More sales. New club members. I'm having my best January yet--and it's mostly from workshops.

Workshops work--and they're easy! When I am preparing for ONE workshop, I am preparing for all of them for the month. I design a few different projects, cut a bunch of card stock for all of them, and keep everything on a shelf for easy access. When it's time to go, I grab a couple boxes, make sure my catalogue bag is stocked, and I'm gone! A few hours of work, a whole lot of fun introducing people to what I love, great sales, new bookings and club members--that's what you get from workshops. (Don't get me wrong, they don't ALL turn out great, but most do!)

Sometimes we feel like we have to have a strong Internet presence to compete in today's world. Although I have a blog, the blog isn't essential to my success at all. Reaching out to people in our neighborhoods, our friends, our families and asking them to stamp with us--that is what will make us successful.

Picture this: A demonstrator gets her Starter Kit, has an open house two weeks later, gets sales and couple of bookings. She's off! She can do several workshops using the contents from her Starter Kit, along with a little ribbon and card stock, plus a punch or two.

Another demonstrator gets her kit, works to get her web site up and running, posts every day with traffic gradually increasing, hoping to get sales. In the meantime she's had to purchase almost everything in the catalogue to show new things all the time, and she's worked just about every day.

My blog is an addition to my current business, which I'm basing on the workshop model. That's the best and fastest way to get results!