The #1 Hostess Coaching Mistake You Don’t Want To Make

Hostess coaching is key to your Facebook Party success and has a direct impact on your results. That includes sales, bookings and sponsoring leads. But, if you’re partying in a Facebook Group (which I’m not a fan of), you might be making the biggest hostess coaching mistake without even realizing it. That would be creating the Group and encouraging your Hostess to start inviting friends right away. Before you know it, the Hostess starts auto-adding everyone she (barely) knows. And now her friends think you’re both spamming them. Most likely, potential guests will quickly opt-out of being in a Group they never asked to join. Even worse, they’ll leave with a not-so-great perception about you, your biz and direct selling in general. It’s a big risk that can lead to even bigger mistakes for both you and your team.  That’s why I don’t recommend online parties in Facebook Groups.

That being said, sometimes holding an online party in a Facebook Group is your only option. To help you get it right, I reached out to VIP Member Melissa Dettmer, a Norwex top leader who averages $5K+ in online party sales and 3 personal recruits each month. Melissa has held hundreds of online parties in (closed) Facebook Groups. To stay in compliance with Facebook’s terms, Melissa creates the groups from her business page. Then she posts as her page vs. her personal profile. Her highest online party to date? Over $2,000!

Here’s Melissa’s advice to avoid the biggest Hostess Coaching mistake when you are holding online parties in Groups:

Coach your Hostess to (always) send personal invitations

Before you create the Group, focus on the guest list. Coach the hostess to personally invite only the people she knows well enough that she’d invite them to her home. I recommend parties have a max of 50 guests, but 10 to 25 is a good and reasonable goal.

Give your Hostess words to say

I coach each Hostess to include three things in their personal party invite, which is typically sent via text or Facebook Messenger:
1. Why they love the product
2. Why they decided to host
3. Why they thought to specifically invite that person

Then the host asks if their friend would like an invitation to the party.

After the guest says YES (or maybe), the host can reply back with the group link and say, “Click here to request to join the party.” That way the host does not add anyone who hasn’t asked to attend the party.

Auto-adding guests to a Group is super spammy and can actually make people mad. It is absolutely not okay! You can also send the Facebook Group link in Messenger, but be careful not to send the link to too many people or too fast. Copy/paste messages sent in rapid-fire can get flagged as spam and land you in FB jail. Eek.

Follow best practices for sharing the Group

Coach your Hostess to post that she’s having a party (on her personal timeline) to catch someone’s attention that she may have forgotten to invite. She can add the closed group link to her post, and people will be able to click on it to request to join, regardless if they have been invited or not. Make sure your host does not rely on the post for the invitation to her party. In fact, I don’t even tell her to do this until after she has sent out her personal invitations.

Personal conversations and invitations are the keys to the success of any party, and this is especially true for Facebook Groups. Facebook is always changing, so if you want to be successful with Facebook parties you need to create sustainable solutions that will grow your business and teach your team best practices. That way you and your team will be ready to keep calm and party on.

Melissa’s Facebook Group scheduling recommendations:

Many direct sellers are partying in Groups because you can still use 3rd party scheduling apps, like Vizzlie and CinchShare, to schedule posts for your party inside a Facebook Group. Schedule your posts as your business page which keeps you in compliance with using your Page for biz (which I do).

VIZZLIE: Use my referral code 88EV342 to get a 2-week FREE trial (I’m a POWER user – haha!)

CINCHSHARE: Use code CSFree to get a 37-day free trial (I’m a CinchShare ambassador)

Melissa Dettmer is a homeschooling Mom of 4, retired Physical Therapist and Norwex VP Sales Leader who is leading the way as a Founding member of the Norwex Social Media Advisory Council

Related article: What Direct Sellers Ought to Know About Linking a Facebook Group to a Page

Ready to really rock your direct sales biz?