What is a daily routine and why should you care about Sales and Marketing training on a daily basis?
In the absence of a corporate overlord, you need to establish a disciplined routine done on a daily basis that is designed to help you achieve your business goals.
As a home based entrepreneur in a network marketing type business, you can build a business over time built upon a basis of a 2-3 hours routine, if you are disciplined. Keep in mind that daily routine does not include things like coaching, training, team meetings, and traveling (things that may not be needed on a daily basis).
Running your own business takes perseverance, but in network marketing or multi-level marketing (MLM), you can achieve a life style of freedom that does not exist in other types of small businesses where the model is exchanging time for money. Moreover, network marketing is a very low overhead business, which greatly reduces the need for investment capital therefore reducing the overall risk involved with MLM business.
So what is a suggested daily routine?
Four areas are important and one is critical once you make the decision to seriously take on an MLM business. This list I originally learned from Ray Higdon through his audio training:
1) Meditation
2) Personal Development -Mindset
3) Sales/Marketing (business) training
4) Prospecting and connecting
I will cover a business subject today and the others in future posts…
Daily Routine: Sales and Marketing Training – suggested time 15-30 minutes
There are so many ways I could have approached an article about sales and marketing training. I happen to be reading “Ready, Fire, Aim” (2008) by Michael Masterson, taking a point from his book is a good place to begin.
Michael Masterson is not a network marketer, but he is a businessman who can leverage resources and solve problems in real time. Much of what he writes about is applicable to a traditional company which requires a growing employee head count, the creation of departments, and the innovation of products. Nevertheless, some of his principles in building multiple multi-million dollar companies (his subtitle is “Zero to $100 Million in no time flat”) are so clearly applicable to network marketing, that it will absolutely blow you away.
I captured some notes from chapters related to a startup phase of a business, where he covers some topics relevant to MLM such as:
Imitating Success, Why Impress a Higher Price, Working with a “Want” Market, and USP – Unique Sales Proposition.
This being just one blog article, I’ll present some ideas related to Imitating Success. What I will write is a fusion of ideas from various authors and my knowledge of MLM.
Starters: Imitating Success and Understanding the Significance of Sales
A few MLM business basics and more mindset
Time is of the essence. Since most beginners in MLM do not have a successful business background, patterning your activities after someone who is successful will save time and should offer you enough confidence to get moving. Getting yourself to move and take action cannot be underestimated. Preparing yourself by leveraging the lessons made by others so you will minimize wasted time and frustration will simply help you arrive at your goals earlier.
Treat your MLM business as a real business and not a hobby.
If your main objective is to build a substantial income, you need to make sure you have the mindset of a business owner. Regarding the 4-color system categories of people: you can be seeking community and fun, you can be into the details of of the companies comp plan, you can be (or must be) filled with a desire to help others, and you may be a type-A ambitious person – you can be all of these, but in any case, you need to adopt your new role as an owner of a business.
Granted, not everyone’s objective in MLM is to be a hardcore business builder, and that is okay, there’s room for everyone in this interesting world. An MLM team can offer a sense of community and support for a variety of people.
Joining an MLM company as a business owner is so deceptively easy, you might mistake it for something it is not. What it absolutely is, for those that desire massive success that it offers, is a business. If you manage to think about it in any other way, you will likely sabotage yourself or lead yourself to disappointment.
Virtually every successful business owner understands to get their business off the ground requires generating income. In Masterson’s view, being able to sell a product before it is ready or while it is still in its early development is critical.
In MLM, your products are already proven, so going out to make sales or to recruit people becomes your number one priority (How you recruit and prospect or share your opportunity is the content of another article).
Although you are working as a team in MLM, imagine that your company will fail unless you take the responsibility to generate your own income. So spend less focus on buying a new computer, picture frames (Masterson has a great jaw-dropping example of this in his book) or even nailing down details of a comp plan and get out and start prospecting and recruiting. Ray Higdon, refers to prospecting and recruiting as “profit producing activities.”
In the spirit of Masterson’s business building philosophy, learn to deal with problems as they arise and not spend too much time planning for every contingency that may or may not arise. As Rich DeVos has said, often 60-70% certainty is good enough to act.
You should build an initial foundation of mindset, prospecting and recruiting training, but it is critical to accept that getting the feedback from real attempts (action) to build your network are critical. Head knowledge is grossly deceiving and potentially paralyzing. A little action done consistently with feedback from prospects (whether to recruit them or not) and your coach or upline will serve you like nothing else can. Richard Bliss Brooke: Two a day and 10 in play.
Masterson recommends that 80% of your business effort should be in sales. In MLM that means prospecting and recruiting should make up 80% of the time that you are putting into your business and that you sustain that effort until you achieve a certain income goal where you can create career or lifestyle options for yourself.
Mark Yarnell, author of “Your First Year in Network Marketing” suggests that you should be personally responsible to sponsor enough people until you reach and maintain your desired income, it can be through a combination of direct customers and front-line business builders, and then focus on deepening and growing your network to secure a long term residual income. The basic rule I use is the width of your team determines your income, the depth of your team determines the longevity of your residual potential.
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“Ready, Fire, Aim” can be found in my book store: click here
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I’ll see you… on the next page
Challen Yee