How to be a Body Shop at Home Consultant

Aloha Bloggerinos,

EDIT Aug 2013 - I have been receiving a great many emails asking me about being a consultant for the bodyshop and I thought I would address this now. I was a BSatHc (heh heh) for 2 weeks and then left. I found the experience to be not what I was told it would be. BS were often out of stock and it would be left to me to still take the customers money and promise the product 'soon', which in my opinion is not good enough. There was little support from BS and it was based purely on sales, not customer care. I would not recommend this job at all and feel pretty silly that I bought into the idea so much. I made hardly any money from it (like under £50 per party) and would spend hours doing it, travelling to the venue and sorting the admin. I am now not responding to emails regarding this topic. 

I've had a few questions about how being a Body Shop at Home Consultant (bsahc for ease!) works, so I thought I would do a post and explain it all.

It works a little bit like Avon, but so far I have found it to be rather a lot easier. At first when the lady told me it wasn't nearly as hard work as Avon I was sceptical but I have for sure changed my little mind!

What do I get?

For an initial start up of £40 you are given a huuggee stack of lovely glossy catalogues, a book of order forms (they make me feel tres profesh haha), a stash of leaflets and invites annnddd a great big bag of full Size Body Shop products! My bag is the "pamper kit" but hopefully soon I will be ordering the "makeup kit" so that I can do makeovers. I only paid £40 for my pamper kit but it's retail price is actually £190 so I feel very lucky. I also have a login code and password to the BSaHC website so that I can easily process orders (and it is easy, even for someone like me who struggles with the likes of Twitter hahaha), read the Inspiration section, learn about rewards and incentives and access my statement type jobby where I can see how much mula I've made!

You can imagine that when I have all these out on the hostess's coffee table or whatnot, with lids off and tops open, it looks really impressive and smells heavenly.

So what do I do?

To make money, you make sales. That's the jib of the nub. You can do this a number of ways. You could show your glossy catalogues to friends, family, neighbours etc and ask if they would like anything. I showed mine to my Auntie and she happily ordered about £30 worth of products. You can pop the catalogues through people's doors a la Avon and collect and hope for some orders. I haven't done this as it's cold and this seems a bit laborious for my lazy liking! Oorrrr, the easiest and most enjoyable way, is to have Pamper Parties! So far I have done 2 and they are a hoot! My friend's Mum, Dawn, hosted one at her house for some of her friends and the sales total was very good. I'll explain the numbers later. My friend Nicky also had one on Friday night and it felt more like sitting about with the girls (and I only knew Nicky!) than 'working'.

What happens at a party?

To book a party, the lady (or man I suppose but I can't really see that happening) picks the date she would like and you see if you can make it. So far, all of my bookings have been in the evening for a 7.30pm start but as I don't work in an office anymore, I could do day times too.

For both the parties I have done so far, I turned up about 10 minutes early to set up. Set up is just whipping your lovely products out and taking the lids off so the smell emmits all through the room and gets people excited. For your first party, your Body Shop team leader lady will come with you. Mine is Kelly and for my first party, she basically did it all and I just watched. I reeaallyy appreciated that because I was quite nervous and she showed me a good structure for the partay and a few tips etc. If you were to join, your leader would no doubt do the same.

So to kick off, all the guests have a catalogue and order form and you basically just show them what pamper products you have, pass them round so people can smell and feel and try them out, talk a little bit about the products (all the info is in the catalogue if you are unsure) and that is literally it! You can also talk about some of the products that you don't have, I like to focus on the cosmetics, for obvious reasons and play a few games to get the atmosphere really cheery (you will be told about games so don't panic, you don't have to invent them yourself!). Then I give the guests about 10-15 mins to flick through and write any orders down and make myself available for any queries. Then I just mingle about and take the order forms and ask if they would like to host their own party. At Friday night's party, there were only 6 people there but 3 asked to have their own party! Woop woop! I like booking parties like that because I feel like I know them and am relaxed around them.

The whole thing lasts about 2 hours, unless you're friends with the host like I was, so I stayed for drinks and nibbles afterwards :)

How much money do I make?

Basically, for every sale I make, I take 25% commission. So, if at a party, your total sales were £200 (very do-able) then you would have made £50. 

As you can imagine, from only 2 parties and an auntie sale, I have already made back my initial outlay and a bit of fun money to boot!

If the host has party sales of £150, she is entitled to £25 worth of products for free, which she can choose herself from the catalogue, so not a set group of stuff she might not like. As the party sales increase, so does her free spend- another reason to book a party!

How do I feel?

I was really unsure about the whole shibang before I started because I don't like to be pushy and I'm not very good with sales but I have found that because everyone knows the Body Shop, it just sells itself and people trust the brand. Super! There are also offers and deals in the catalogue that you can't get in store or online so that is a big bonus for customers too!

I'm glad I started at this time of year because people are doing their Christmas shopping and are all in the festive party mood!

Any questions, let me know Bloggerinos :)

Toodlepip!

xx