Age Before Beauty by Virginia Smith

Author:Virginia Smith
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 0100-12-31T22:00:00+00:00

Allie spent hours that day in front of her computer. She took a couple of breaks to nurse Joanie and after lunch bundled her up for a walk in the stroller around the neighborhood to give them both a breath of fresh air. The rest of the time Betty seemed more than happy to tend her granddaughter while Allie worked, and Allie gratefully let her. When she finally sat back in her desk chair and smiled at her monitor, her shoulders ached from sitting so long.

Her database was a work of art. She even designed easy-to-use data entry screens and keyed in all her customers’ names and contact information, along with the specific Varie Cose products they’d ordered. She could print reports that listed and totaled all the orders by hostess, customer, or product. And she’d had a flash of genius when she realized she could scan in the original order forms with her little all-in-one printer, eliminating the need to keep paper copies. She might have a bug or two to work out over the next few days, but all in all, she thought her database was a breathtaking work of sheer brilliance.

But an examination of her new sales report revealed a disappointing truth. She had not sold as much as she thought. Though she’d conducted a couple of big events, when she totaled up all the sales, she was averaging less than a hundred and fifty dollars per party. Her cost on the product was 50 percent, which meant her profit was less than seventy-five dollars per party. Considering the number of hours she spent preparing for each one and doing the follow-up work, she didn’t want to think about how much she was making on an hourly basis. A look at her expenses showed her that she wasn’t as close to becoming profitable as she’d hoped. In fact, she was still a long way from breaking even.

The phone rang, and she jumped up to grab the extension on the nightstand before the second ring. Her youngest sister’s voice cut her off before she could even finish saying, “Hello?”

“Listen, you have got to stop calling my co-workers. It’s getting so I can’t walk into the break room without someone telling me you’ve left a ton of messages on their answering machine.”

Allie winced at the irritation in Tori’s voice. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t called anyone except Heidi, and that’s because of her makeover party.”

“So you haven’t called Diana or Fran?”

“Well, yes, but they came to Heidi’s party, not yours.”

“Doesn’t matter. They all know you’re my sister, so when you start acting like a used car salesman, they blame me.”

Allie dropped to perch on the edge of the bed. “I’m not acting like a used car salesman! They all indicated on their customer cards that they might be interested in hosting a party themselves. I’m just following up like any good businesswoman would do.”

A grunt of Tori’s aggravated breath sounded through the phone. “Do me a favor, would you? Stop trying to do business with the people at my office.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.