Monday, February 8, 2010

Tastefully Simple on Tour

This weekend was quite a blur for me. It started on Friday. I worked my normal shift at the airport and then drove straight home. I had a conference here in Omaha at the Omaha Mariott to attend for Tastefully Simple. Leaders from headquarters in Alexandria, MN came to Omaha along with many other cities during the same weekend for our conference. It was starting promptly at 3pm. I knew I wouldn't make that time but knew I could go in whenever I arrived. Leadership meetings were being held at that time. Now that I'm officially a Senior Consultant, which I earned by recruiting one person under me, I was eligible to attend this particular meeting.
I was able to get in on most of the meeting. After registering My own advisor Teri and our team mentor Tami from Burnsville, MN were at my table with a few others from our huge team. Soon after all the attendees gathered in the same room for the rest of the conference (the consultants had there own separate meeting prior to this) and we commenced learning about the new products that we would see in our new catalog that will be effective on March 8TH. Along with seeing them and hearing about them, we actually got to sample some of them too. Two big screens each had a video of the products being prepared by a product specialist at headquarters. So we got to see just how yummy they all looked!
Awards were given out for more categories than I can even remember. Top sales in a region, top recruiter in a region, top team sales in a region, and the list goes on and on. The numbers that some of these people reached was unbelievable. I hope that I can get those numbers myself someday. Anyway, Friday conference ended roughly at 7:30PM.
Saturday started out at 7:30AM with breakfast for anyone that wanted to be up that early. It included new breakfast products along with juice, coffee, water and various doughnuts, bagels and the like. We commenced our meeting at 8:30 with more product unveiling's. New strategies for sales and recruiting were introduced. Break time came about 10:00 with time for sampling some of the other new products. At this time, I was very full. Breakfast had satisfied me and then to put a snack on top of that only a couple of hours later was almost too much. But just sitting still after the eating made it worse.
Back in for more meeting and new product unveiling's. More awards were given to various consultants, and prizes were given out with name drawings. We had a chance to do a "booking blitz". Everyone had been told prior to the conference to bring their contact lists and booking calendar. We spent 20 minutes making phone calls to see how many parties each table could book. Yep, each person used their own cell phone and called their customers. It was quite noisy hearing all the chatter in the big room. Amazingly, the number of parties booked overall was unbelievable. Over 500 parties booked in 20 minutes!
Lunch time was at noon. New products in our catalog were prepared for our sampling. Really? More food? Wow, I wasn't in the least bit hungry. But the food was great! We were each given 3 of the new products to take home and have friends and family try out as well.
Back to the meetings. A mock party was shown on the stage with usage of the new party products and also to show everyone the best way to host the parties. Later, more products were unveiled. More awards were given out. Pictures were taken and more food was sampled at our mid afternoon break. Uffda....can you say miserable? It reminded me of days growing up and attending Christmas gatherings at my Grandparents house with all the relatives. We ate more food than anyone should consume in one meal!
Once we reconvened and had more of the usual, it was time to say goodbye. My team mentor had some awards to give to some of the members on my own team to give out. So we met in the hotel lounge for socializing and award time. I actually have an award coming to me for being 4th in sales last year! (she has to send it to me.) There are 64 total on our entire team. Can you believe it? I was very surprised!
A successful conference with many great ideas and helpful information for the upcoming year of parties. I'm very excited to start selling products from the new catalog. I have ordered and now received the new line of food. It's ready for my parties! Feel free to browse my web site and see if there is anything you want to get from the Fall/Winter catalog that will be discontinued on March 7TH. www.tastefullysimple.com/web/smccloud

1 comment:

Kevin Moberg said...

I think I would enjoy working for a company that is all about food and whose mission at conventions is to fill me up with as much deliciousness as possible. Good call, sis!