How To Stack Your Calendar

Author: Susan Squier

Stacking your calendar is scheduling enough shows to protect your business against cancellations and low show sales. This process will help ensure that your direct sales business has consistent cash flow and growth.

In a direct sales business, if your shows aren’t booked close together your business will not have enough cash flow or growth to survive. This happens frequently in direct sales, and can be avoided.

Understand Your Calendar

The main components to stacking your calendar are booking your shows close together and over booking your calendar. More times than not, one third of your monthly shows will cancel or reschedule.

Cancellations are a part of this business no matter what your product. What this means is... if you want to hold three shows per week, then you need to book four shows per week. The worst that’ll happen is that you’ll hold all four shows one week, make some money, and then you’ll end up with two cancellations the following week; it’s the way it is in this business.

Weekend warriors need to double and triple book their weekend shows; filling each available time slot with a show is the only way to meet your monthly show goal. If you expect to profit from your endeavor, then your monthly show goal needs to include enough shows to cover cancellations, period.

When your shows are booked closely together, you have more opportunities to meet new people, which in turn will allow you to book more parties, which helps you meet new prospects; residual income is a lovely bonus.

You can profit from a weekend direct sales business, but you need to really book those weekends. You'll work from ten in the morning until six at night on Saturday, and more on Sunday.

The first step is to really understand your calendar. In order to understand your calendar, you must take a very close look at it, in advance, and decide when you can physically perform a show outside of your home and when you have other obligations.

Block Out Important Dates

Start by blocking out important dates. To do this, you’ll want to get an 8” x 10” calendar, sit down and put a big red x through the days that you absolutely cannot work outside of your home; not even for a few hours.

On the remaining days, make two lines in each box dividing each day into three parts; morning, afternoon, and night. In the appropriate day/time blocks, pencil in your appointments, children’s activities, meetings and special occasions.

Figure Out Your Money Days

What you have left are the days, and times, that you can commit to holding shows. These are called your money days.

Keeping in mind that your show, from start to finish, shouldn’t be more than 2-3 hours... color your money days in with a green highlighter as green represents money; we love visuals.

If all of Saturday is free, for instance, then color the entire day green. If you have a 1 pm Dentist appointment on Saturday, then you’d probably only color Saturday evening green.

You’ll need to give your business some of your weekend time as this is when most of your hostesses will want to host their parties. However, weeknight theme shows could increase your weeknight show average.

Complete this calendar process for three consecutive months and maintain it by completing another month at the end of each month. Without calendar control, you have no control over your businesses cash flow.

Book Your Shows

Now that you know when you are available, pick up the phone and start calling all of your contacts.

Book six to eight shows inside the next two weeks, then again for the following two weeks, and so on... until you have a third more parties booked than you actually want to hold over the course of the next three months.

Lunch parties, impromptu parties, and office parties are just some of the options available to you; don't be afraid to get creative to fill those time slots.

During your initial two weeks, you’ll need to be right on top of things to ensure everything goes smoothly. In order for this process to work, you must start with the up coming two weeks; it’s the foundation, so dig deep and you’ll come out on top.