Do Business Well

The majority of people who work from home, whether they be working for giant corporations or in one-man bands, work by themselves. On the one hand, that means they are extremely efficient — no interruptions, no joking during meetings, no office politicking around the coffee machine, or gossiping in the lunch break — but it also means that homeworkers can feel terribly alone and isolated.

`I found that working six hours a day at home was worth more than eight in the office,’ says Emma Dally, now Publishing Director for The National Magazine Company. ‘There are so few interruptions that you are able to work very intensively.’ Continue Reading »

5 Comments »

Evaluate Professional Email Marketing Services Capabilities

Does your provider or product vendor have a professional services group or does it rely on your internal IT group or outside system integration services to install its product or integrate its technology platform? The quality of professional services groups varies widely and the vendor’s own team is often not the one best suited to implement your email marketing solution. When evaluating professional services organizations, look for the following:

• An emphasis placed on professional services by the vendor (as opposed to your sudden realization that you need help implementing the vendor’s solution).
• Depth and breadth of services offered.
• Detailed domain experience that maps to the problem your are attempting to solve and products or technology you have chosen.

Continue Reading »

5 Comments »

The Internet ties all information systems together regardless of their physical location. In effect, it has enabled a company’s internal computer network, its local area network (LAN), to extend its reach on a global scale. Organizations are therefore no longer constrained by the information systems they can build or buy and install on their own physical premises. Every computer is connected to every other computer on the Internet. This simple truth changes everything. What used to be “internal computing resources” at a company have now become external resources that the engaged organization makes available to all its constituents. The reality of the Internet is that everybody is connected to you and you are connected to everyone else: your customers, your vendors, your suppliers—even your competitors. It doesn’t matter where a particular network function is physically located or who operates it, just as long as it’s secure and reliable and provides the right functionality to solve a particular problem. Continue Reading »

5 Comments »

You work when, where and how you like.

Traditional’ business is highly regulated. You work a 45-hour week. You have to be at work during the ‘core’ hours, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. You have to travel to work and consequently live within reasonable distance of your employment. None of these principles apply to network marketing. You can work as many hours per week as you wish, when you wish, and you can live where you want to. There is tremendous flexibility.

You are committed to developing lifelong relationships.

Network marketing hinges around giving behaviouf Traditional behaviour focuses on taking. How concerned is the car salesman really that the customer gets a good deal and becomes a lifelong customer? While management mayespouse this ideal, many sales people are concerned solely with getting the order and making commission rather than in ensuring the customer’s complete satisfaction. Continue Reading »

4 Comments »

Here are some reasons why network marketing has attracted so many people:

You add value to your own life.

Many people feel locked into a job. They do not enjoy going to work. They work because they have to provide for their families. Given the financial freedom to leave tomorrow, they would.

One of the reasons for the tremendous success of network marketing is that it adds value to people’s lives while at the same time generating wealth. Network marketing is not exploitive of talent:

• It builds up people, their stature and self-esteerfi.
• It uses fully their own energy, skills and talent.
• It provides individuals with a feeling of self-respect and identity

In network marketing, the individual takes responsibility for her own life. Developing a network provides one with a tremendous sense of achievement; a feeling of getting things done and being responsible for one’s own destiny. Instead of living the life of a zombie, going through the motions of working from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day, it really sets you free to realise your true potential and be rewarded for it. Continue Reading »

3 Comments »

Will you make money — a lot of it — overnight? Direct selling can make you rich, but not overnight. Network marketing is often presented as a get-rich-quick scheme.

However, nothing worthwhile ever came without a struggle, and rewards are modest at first. The average earning for someone who puts in considerable effort could be R300 to R5 000 per month at the end of the first year. But this varies from company to company.

This is not much, you may say. But consider this: if you went to university to study engineering, you might end up with a job that paid R100 000 per year. During the three to four years you studied, you would earn no money. (We’ll exclude vacation jobs.) The cost of a three- to four- year residential course is about R45 000 to R60 000. So you’ve lost between R45 000 and R60 000 and three to four years of income as well! Continue Reading »

5 Comments »

If you are serious about starting your own business, why not answer these questions:

Do you really want to start your own business? Are you prepared to invest three to five hours every week on a continuous basis in order to build up your network?

If you said ‘No’ or if you are not sure of the answer to the above question, don’t read further. Without your personal commitment to putting your ideas into action, you will remain at the same income level; someone who envies others for their wealth, success and fortune. Yet thousands of people have been positive about this question and said: ‘Yes! Let’s go for it!

Do you really want to make money? Many people are quite happy with their lifestyle. They have become used to a limited income. While they love to read magazines and dream about, that romantic holiday in the Seychelles, adventure in Africa in an off-road 4×4, expensive designer clothes and jewellery, a luxury home or holiday cottage, this never becomes a reality. They do not really want to change. Continue Reading »

5 Comments »

Deferred compensation

Network marketing benefits the networker by continuously rewarding past efforts and not just current efforts; a form of deferred compensation.

In network marketing, the benefit you get from your efforts is continuous, not a one-off. When you build a network, you are rewarded not only for the sales you make but for the sales your networkers make. This benefit remains with you as long as those members stay in your downline. Every time they sell, you make money.

Unlike conventional business, where the benefit ends with the conclusion of the sale, in network marketing the introduction of any new distributor into the system benefits you for as long as that person remains in the network and purchases and sells. Continue Reading »

4 Comments »

The first use of network marketing is generally credited to Nutrilite, a direct sales company in the United States selling food supplementation products which, in 1943, instituted a marketing and compensation programme that encouraged each of its sales people to build up an independent team which sold and distributed products.

In terms of this programme, the original sales person not only earned a commission on every product she sold, but Nutrilite also gave the sales person a two per cent bonus commission on the sales of every new distributor (sales person) she had introduced. Therefore, the more distributors the sales person introduced, the more money she made.

From this early beginning, the growth of network marketing (sometimes called multi-level marketing or MLM) has been explosive. In 1959 two sales people in the Nutrilite stable, Richard de Vos and Jay van Andel, split with their parent company to form Amway, now the largest network marketing company in the world. They focused on household cleaning products. Another exNutrilite distributor, Dr Forrest C. Shaklee, formed Shaklee which was also a tremendous success in the food supplementation business. Continue Reading »

5 Comments »

Obtain stock

At first you will not need to carry large stocks. Most network companies send products to their large distributors per courier. When your turnover increases, you are likely to place orders directly from the factory, but initially you will obtain stocks from your sponsor for onward delivery to your customers.

Just as a reminder of how the system works — your sponsor will sell you the products you want at exactly the price she paid for it. You make your normal retail profit on those products you sell directly to customers. The balance you sell at no profit to your distributors, but at the end of the month you receive a rebate on the total turnover of goods purchased by your downline. Your sponsor, in turn, gets an overriding rebate (commission) depending on the value of goods sold by her downline.

As your business grows you will want to hold a small stock, perhaps in your office or a spare room, to save you numerous trips to collect stock from your sponsor. Continue Reading »

4 Comments »