Well hello home party consultants!

How are your Direct sales home party business resolutions coming along?

Being one of those born at the outset of the year I leave most of my resolutions to Jan 6th.  Cause it my birthday.  I worked on my goals and one goal is to make sure all home party consultants have in their possession 1o Deadly Home Party Plan Business Mistakes (which is step 1 to accepting our failings) and then for those who want to get past the failings I have designed the Little Black Book Of Home Party Plan Marketing Success just for you!

I am often heard in Free 30 min. consultations that Marketing is psychology and psychology is marketing.  Interestingly enough, in my past life I graduated with a degree and have spent the majority of my life working with children.  In my last job I was a teen advisor/counselor/mentor/surrogate mother ☺!

A group of scientists did an experiment where they took a pike (The pike is a fierce carnivorous fish that eats other smaller fish, found generally in Northern climates). and put him into a large fish tank with an ample supply of minnows (food). Whenever the pike became hungry, all he had to was open his mouth and snap up a minnow.

As with any experiment there must be a control factor and also have a variable or two (see I was paying attention). After a period of time  the scientists put a barrier around and over the pike.  The purpose of this phase of the experiment was to determine just how long the pike would continue to hit its head against the wall so to speak in effort to get the minnows. For quite a while the pike would strike out after the minnows and crash into the glass barrier. I am sure you have figured out the variable here, it is the fact that the pike can see food, but there is a barrier whether real or imagined that keeps it from getting what it wants! This behavior continued for quite some time until the pike gradually tried  less and less. When the pike finally stopped, the scientists removed the glass barrier. By this time the pike had sank to the bottom of the tank and just laid there.

Once again with the glass barrier was removed and of course the minnows began to swim freely around the pike, even brushing up against his mouth. Not once did the pike strike out. The scientists’ intention was of course pavlovian in nature, something us psych folks called learned conditioning (remember the dogs with the bells and the food?).  The message was simple really when the barrier comes up, just chillax; when the barrier is removed, feast. But the pike just lay on the bottom of the tank and literally starved to death. Minnows everywhere for the asking, and the pike just starved to death.

This inability to work through difficulties, this trait of giving up when the going gets tough, this is what is commonly referred to as Pike Syndrome here in the Northern hemisphere.

Don’t be a home party pike!  Be sure to read embracing-fear-the-only-way-to-come-to-your-home-party-marketing-success!

Party Plan Pat

Direct sales & Home Party Consultant