Are you looking for ways to promote your home based sales business? If you have your own home sales business, you face unique challenges in advertising and promoting your business. You dont have a High Street store to bring in the custom, and your advertising budget is probably at the little to none mark. One very effective use for your budget is by using promotional products like printed pens and sticky notes to increase your visibility with customers. Here are six ways to use printed promotional pens to advance and advertise your home based sales business.

Hand out printed pens to acquaintances and friends.
Put your name, business and contact info on printed pens and hand a few boxes out to friends, acquaintances even your children with the request that they pass them forward. Operate on the tell-a-friend principle. The more printed pens out there with your name on them, the higher is the chance that theyll produce results. Even letting your kids loan out your printed promotional pens at school will help get your name into the homes of potential customers.

Use your printed pens as calling cards.
Pack up a bunch of sales bags that hold your latest sales brochure, adverts for any special sales that your company is running and one or two printed pens with your name and number on them so that your potential customers can get back to you with orders.

Choose quality printed pens that people will want to use.
The printed pens you choose dont need to be expensive, but they should have some distinguishing feature. Pens that write smoothly, pens that are hard to lose, pens that just plain feel comfortable in the hand are all good candidates to choose as your printed pens. You want people to associate your name with quality, not with a cheap pen that leaks ink all over their purse, so take the time to choose a pen that youd want to use yourself.

Use printed pens to take orders at home parties and send them home with the guests.
Have you ever been to a home party where the sales consultant carefully handed out pencils then collected them up at the end to take home with her? Shes missed a stellar opportunity to market her business. When you do a home party, bring along your own printed pens to hand out along with the catalogs and order pads, and send them home with the guests. That way, theyll have one more way to find your name and number when they have questions or want to book a party of their own.

Printed pens can motivate your own sales people.
Once you start taking on your own team of sales people, pass along your wisdom and your printed pens. While printed pens are among the least costly of promo items, they ARE an out of pocket expense for an independent sales person. Get your sales team started by including a dozen or so printed pens with your company logo to hand. Reward high sales weeks with more promotional items and printed pens not for their own use, but to increase their sales potential.

Hand out printed pens and other promotional items at local fairs and events.
Take every opportunity to be involved in your community. Hire tables at local street and craft fairs and participate in community awareness events. You can lend your name and your time to charity events or support good causes in various ways. Keep in mind that everything is an opportunity to publicize your business, and when you associate yourself with charities and good works, your company image benefits. The more you are known, the easier it is for customers to associate your name with your business.

If youre looking for something distinctive in the way of printed pens, youll find a huge assortment of them online. There are many UK promotional gifts suppliers that have been supplying promotional items like printed pens for years. They not only offer a great selection, theyll often have professionals who can advise you on ways to use their promotional products successfully.

Gareth Parkin is the co-founder of Ideasbynet, the UK's leading online promotional pens and printed pens company based in the north of England. Established in 2001, he has taken the UK gift market by storm by the application of modern business thinking and the latest search engine marketing techniques. For more details visit http://www.ideasbynet.com