Direct Sales: Money Maker or Money Breaker?
It’s your decision. You started your direct sales business with the idea of making money. The choices you make in your direct sales career will determine if your business will be a money maker or money breaker.
The first thing you should do before ever deciding to join any direct sales company is to do some research. Find out how well the company is really doing, what the competition is, how long they’ve been in business, and if they have been mentioned in any well-known business magazines like Forbes or Fortune 500.
If you find out that they are well established and successful, have been in business a while and are growing strong, decide to join, then the rest should be fairly simple, but it still depends on you.
Setting goals and putting forth time, effort and, yes, money are necessary to make your direct sales business a money maker. It is not going to happen by itself or overnight not matter how much the people at the top try to tell you the product or the company sells itself.
Time management is an absolute necessity for making a direct sales business successful. You are in business for yourself now, so you need to know how to make wise use of your time. Don’t spend time on tasks that are not money makers. Learn to schedule your business so that it coincides with your family, church and other activities. One of the greatest things about being in business for yourself is having the ability to make your own schedule, so learning how to do it well should be a priority so that your business a success.
Save time by being organized. If you are unorganized and everything is in disarray all the time, you will waste valuable hours looking for lost receipts, sales orders, catalogs, or even product. Get yourself organized and your business will be more likely to succeed.
Something you should avoid doing is using your profit to buy more product. You will try to justify spending your money for new products, more products, prizes, supplies, accessories….you name it because you feel if you just had “it” that it would make you a better consultant and bring you more sales. That road only leads to storage spaces filled with all the products you aren’t using at the time, too many old catalogs and paperwork. There is nothing wrong with investing in your business but try to balance selling the old and/or discontinued products as cash & carry with purchasing the newest and best for your product display. Often, direct sales companies will offer new products as incentives. Try to earn new stuff that way instead of spending your hard earned cash.
Making your direct sales business a money maker is dependent upon you setting worthwhile goals, being organized, know when to spend and using good time management skills. If you need help in any of these areas, get it now! There are tons of books and websites out there on the subjects and there are people in your upline whose success depends on your success, so get your hands on whatever information you can to help you succeed. If you are truly in business to succeed, you will do whatever it takes to improve yourself and therefore ultimately reach your goals, dreams and desires.
