Do Business Well

Do you use quiet times or waiting periods productively? If you have an appointment to see a prospect and arrive 10 minutes early, one option is to knock on the door and hope to start early. But if that person is just finishing supper and expecting you 10 minutes later, she may resent the intrusion. Use that time to brush up on your product knowledge.

Do you work in a systematic way? At home arrange your work area and office effectively. Keep a filing system, contact book or daily diary. Have a neat stock room and a small but well laid out display. With regard to paperwork, if you handle the same piece of paper twice, you are probably being ineffective. Don’t write if a phone call will do. Don’t hesitate to use the wastepaper basket to get rid of ‘junk’ rather than filing it.

Do you wage war on waste? If you devote two evenings a week to your business, on those evenings you must cut out having social chats with the neighbour, a beer at the local pub and watching sport on television. Those days or evenings which you set aside for your business must be sacrosanct.

Do you expand your working-day (or evening)? How do you do this? Simply make an extra call to a prospect before you call it a day. Just one. If you work in the evening three times a week, that’s 156 extra contacts per year. In the four years that you give yourself to really get your network going, that’s an additional 624 extra contacts — and a lot more business!

Do you review what you are doing from time to time? Don’t carry on slavishly doing the same thing week after week. Experiment and evaluate. See what works for you.

Do you set yourself deadlines? People usually work better under a little stress and it adds urgency to one’s work.

Remember Parkinson’s Law: ‘Work expands to fill the time available.’

Do you avoid people who waste your time? Some folk are lonely and therefore tell you that they are interested in networking. The critical test is this: after you have shown them how, do they become involved in the business or do they keep popping in for a chat? If they do the latter, make it quite clear that you have a business to run and that time is money. You can always find a gentle way to do this: you have an urgent report to write, you have an appointment to go to, etc.

Do you set your alarm clock an hour earlier than usual and keep it that way?

Do you avoid self-recrimination and regret? It was G.K. Chesterton who said: ‘Nothing will so surely sap a man’s energy as wondering what he might have done differently yesterday.’ Don’t waste time wallowing in regret about things you cannot change. Remove the phrase ‘if only’ from your vocabulary. Replace it with ‘next time‘.

Do you make decisions? Procrastination is the thief of time. Yes, you may get it wrong, but that is part of the learning curve. Making decisions invariably means taking action. And it is action that brings results.

Do you finish what you start? Getting a network started is fine, but if you quit shortly after you start, you’ll never accomplish anything worthwhile.

Action:

• Have a vision.
• Sign up as a distributor.
• Study your network company’s starter kit.
• Read all company brochures, training materials and information provided.
• Discuss any questions with your sponsor.
• Set up your home office.
• Order equipment and stationery.
• Obtain stock.
• Open a bank account.
• Develop some product knowledge.
• Set your goals — short, medium and long term.
• Decide on some specific steps of action (action plan).
• Work out a daily timetable of activities.”
• Keep records of what you do.
• Monitor your progress.

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