First Step Marketing

When your network grows big, you can’t do it all. Don’t even try to, or you’ll run yourself ragged. The secret of success is to ‘grow’ your own people and, by doing so, let them handle their own affairs. Your role becomes more one of monitoring what is going on, leaving you free to spend more time looking for prospects. Never forget to build, build, build.

If you have well-developed and trained distributors in your downline you can, with confidence, leave them to build their own businesses. To be sure, always make yourself available to handle a crisis or to give expert advice, but don’t hinder your downliners with a ‘telling’ management style. Once you’ve given them a head start, push them from the nest and they’ll fly! Read the rest of this entry »

Networking is a people business. So you must continually work at developing good relationships, team morale and effective communication.

Effective communication is a two-way interaction between two parties and it implies both verbal and nonverbal communication. It is a vital skill for all distributors and network marketing leaders. Ask yourself whether you would like to listen to yourself at a presentation meeting. Who is the best speaker you know? What ideas, techniques and presentation methods can you copy from him or her?

Here are some ways in which you can improve your communications:

Rehearse what you are going to say Do you know what you are going to say, why you want to say it and how you will put your points across? Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone has a huge bundle of talents waiting to be utilised. It doesn’t matter who you are or how old you are. Colonel Saunders of Kentucky Fried Chicken was 62 when he started his business. If you want a sizeable income, the choice is yours. You should not use the excuse that the reason you’re not rich is that you never had a chance. Network marketing is an opportunity that is available to everyone. If you don’t take it, it is your democratic right, but there can only be one loser. To realise your potential you need a change of attitude.

The behavioural psychologist William James at the turn of this century made the monumental discovery that man can control his destiny. His famous words were: ‘The greatest discovery of my generation is that men can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.’ Read the rest of this entry »

If a company’s strategy represents its overall approach tomaximizing business success—stated in terms of achieving certain sales, profits, product delivery, and employee turnover goals—then the mission statement represents a more generalized and idealistic vision of the company’s purpose in life. If done right, a mission statement can go a long way toward energizing everyone in an organization to achieve the ideal.

Unfortunately, in the rush to develop mission statements, many companies have established statements that are somehow too general and lofty. I have seen a number of missionstatements that commit companies to being “the producer of the highest-quality (name the product) in the world” or “the top company in the (name the industry).” In my experience, the best mission statements are oriented in either of two directions: Read the rest of this entry »

Assembling a cash flow statement: chronicling the past. To help you get started in putting together your own cash flow statement, this section describes the cash flow statement of a hypothetical architectural firm, ABC Architectural Services.

The cash flow statement is for the four months just ended (For the purpose of the exercise, we assume that we’re now at April 30.)

A few notes about this company:

It employed seven people in January and received two new architectural design contracts in January for $25,000 each. These jobs should each take five months to complete and are payable as completed. Read the rest of this entry »

All business owners know what cash flow is—if not technically, then emotionally. Nevertheless, it’s worthwhile to approach this subject from the very beginning because it is key to business success. Some business school professors have even begun to impart to their students the latest thinking about cash flow: “Cash flow is more important than your mother.”

A useful way to think about cash flow is to view the business as a living organism. Cash is the nutrient that runs through its arteries and veins. The brain might be viewed as the product or service, the heart as the marketing, and the stomach as the finances, at which point it all begins to get a little messy. If you don’t have enough cash flow, though, rest assured that the living organism turns into a skeleton. , Read the rest of this entry »

Selling is tough. Salespeople have to be able to deal with endless rejection and still remain positive and enthusiastic.

Moreover, they must be able to make professional presentations, answer questions, handle complex requests, and otherwise turn prospects into customers.

Clearly, then, simply deciding which sales avenue you plan to use isn’t the end of the planning process. The business plan must discuss how you will motivate your salespeople. Here are three tasks that must be dealt with:

Training. The salespeople, whether they’re your own or representatives, must be thoroughly familiar with your productor service. That means they must understand how it works, what its benefits are, and how to sell it most effectively. If the product is going to be updated frequently, the salespeople need to be informed about the changes. Read the rest of this entry »

An excellent example of assumptions underlying a business plan is provided in the People Express financial. Here we find a list of 12 assumptions that help clarify the projections that follow. Most have to do with revenues and expenses associated with flying the company’s expected three plane fleet. Thus, we learn in points 7, 8, and 9 that revenues don’t include certain items that could become important later, like excess baggage and charter fees. And we learn in points 4 and 5 how the aircraft lease and personnel costs are figured in. Read the rest of this entry »

Most business owners write business plans because theyhave a specific need that can be met by a particular audience.

The owners may need a bank loan. In that case, the business plan will be addressed to bankers. The owners may have decided they need to formalize their company’s planning process and require a business plan that all managers can understand. Read the rest of this entry »

It might seem as if I’m complicating matters by suddenly suggesting the possibility of writing several business plans. After all, you might ask, if I’m having difficulty writing one business plan, won’t I simply compound my problems by trying to write two or more plans?

My experience is that you will actually find it easier to address the plan to specific audiences rather than to an abstract, all-inclusive, single audience. When you know your audience, you can “speak” to those readers in terms you know they want to hear or do not want to hear. Read the rest of this entry »