90-Day Plan: D-3 - Organisation

After preparation, organisation is the key to a successful, active 90-day plan. Spending some time getting organised will save you time later, as well as providing you with a morale boost as you improve your 'competence confidence'.

Organisation is closely linked with determining your priorities for the next 90 days. If you've done your ten point preparation homework, you'll have a list of your five goals. Those are your key priorities. So what's next?

Your aim should be to declutter your life as far as possible - physically and mentally. Irrespective of your own mental image of who you are and what you want to become, you won't grow yourself or your business if you are dragging junk around with you.

In other words, your 90-day organisation phase should include the following:

1. Set up a dedicated email account for your business. DO NOT clutter it up with subscriptions to the latest "wonder guru" email lists. If you're subscribed to certain lists, re-evaluate their usefulness. Unsubscribe from all those you can't be bothered to read on a regular basis. Then unsubscribe from those that spam you with sales offers - you can subscribe later when you've reached your goals. Keep your final list of subscriptions down to a maximum of 5. Now change those email subscriptions to RSS feeds. That way you can look at them via your browser and declutter your inbox.

2. Use the 2 minute rule for all incoming email, post and phone conversations - including anything that crops up in your contact manager websites. Deal with it, dispose of it or decide to tackle it at a specific date and time. Your inbox/in-tray should be almost bare. Work on it until it is.

3. File receipts as soon as you get them. If you don't have a filing system, start one. File by category, such as car, petrol, order payments, invoice payments and bonuses/commission.

4. Set up a business bank account as soon as possible. If you can't manage to do that, at the very least you need to set up a separate savings account with money transfer capabilities. This helps you to separate out your personal life from your business life as far as the taxman is concerned.

5. Make sure you have immediate access to customers, team members and prospects contact details at all times. If that means using a filofax or daytimer rather than a computer-based system, then that's fine. Just make sure it goes with you at all times.

6. Set up activity tracking for all plan-related activities. Talk to your upline, or contact me for a selection of templates. If you are involved in direct sales, you should be tracking sales generation activities, quantity of orders placed, by whom, projected and actual delivery dates, order value and retail profit. If you are building up your team, you should be tracking prospect contacts, follow up calls, autoresponder subscription and unsubscription rates, amount spent on advertising, advertising source to prospect ratio, prospect signups. When coaching your team, you should be tracking their retail and recruitment activity with them, as well as tracking your coaching activity.

7. If you are running your business from your home, ensure anybody else in your household knows how to answer the phone in a professional manner. Roleplay is useful here - practice phoning until they get into receptionist mode automatically. If you can't manage that, invest in call diversion and send all phonecalls to a number you can control and access. If your company provides a voicemail facility, subscribe to it - it's worth it.

8. Invest in a whiteboard and place it somewhere prominent in the main part of the house. This will be where you and your family/co-habitees can update each other as to what's going on. Consider investing in a "family" calendar - the sort that lists daily activity by person.

9. Invest in a cashbox, so that business income can be kept securely until you can get it to your bank. Make the habit of banking your takings before you spend them.

10. Set up a system so that everybody, including family and customers, know when you are working on your business. Use your whiteboard, update your wallplanner, and decide on a routine that suits you and your customers. Then stick to it for the next 90 days.

Good luck. We'll deal with creating your plan tomorrow.

Network Marketing for Beginners - The 3 Rs

You may have heard about the 3 Rs of Education - Reading, 'Riting and 'Rithmetic.

There are 3 Rs in network marketing too, and this time, you don't need to mis-spell to make the mnemonic fit.

The 3 Rs are Reflect, Revise and Refocus.

Reflect

This should be done at the beginning of every action plan, whether you plan out 7, 28 or 90 days of activity at a time. It should also be done if your tracking shows that you're in danger of missing your targets.

Is what I'm doing effective? - Am I getting in touch with enough prospects? Is my retail turnover sufficient to support my goals? Is my customer service excellent? How many hours am I spending to achieve my results? Are my family threatening to change the locks if I don't spend more time with them? Whose advice should I follow?

Could I be doing it better, or differently? - What can I do to improve the situation? Would more customers help? How can I generate more leads? Where are my constraints - money, time, or both? What can I set aside in my life to help with building my business?

What are my options? - List the options available for the situation you wish to reflect on. This is the time to brainstorm, regardless of whether you choose any of the options or not. Options can include time management techniques, asking for referrals from customers or prospects, rearranging your personal or business budget, etc.

Revise

Go over your existing plans, tracker sheets and targets. If you haven't got any, create them! Ask yourself the following questions to identify the changes you need to implement:

What do I need to change to improve my results?
How will I implement the changes?
Over what timescale?

Produce new plans, tracking and targets to enable you to take action.

Refocus

Now that you've taken time out of your busy schedule to improve how you operate your business, ask yourself the following:

Why am I doing this?
What are my goals?
What are my targets?

Write the answers down and keep them somewhere where you can refer to them regularly. Better still, commit the answers to memory.

Once you've done this exercise, put it into practice straight away and track your new results. Never rest on your laurels - you should aim to improve with every iteration of your plan.

Reasons for Business Failure - Part 1: Planning

So, why do businesses fail? Why are a third of businesses gone in the first two years, and why do half not survive the first five years? What goes wrong between the initial enthusiasm and the final desperation? How can we stop that happening to us? How is this relevant to network marketing in general, and Kleeneze in particular?

Let's take the main reasons first:

Poor Planning

I don't know about you, but if I hear "Failure to Plan is Planning to Fail" one more time, I'll hit something. Anybody attending a network marketing training session will be told that, as though it's a failsafe mantra. Anybody who works at a relatively experienced level in any business or industrial sector will have heard a version of it.

Yes, some people fail to plan, but most people who are serious about building a business do plan. They are told to provide business plans to banks, or to plan their workload, so they sit down, try to work out what they want to happen over a given time frame and write it all down.

The trouble starts with what happens next.

Some create plans that look good on paper but which are wildly optimistic and are based on everything in life, including the global economy, being absolutely perfect. 

Failure to plan for adverse situations is planning to fail.

Some assume that, once the plan has been created, that's it. By some mystical universal force, everybody and everything will telepathically understand what's required and align with the plan, without further input from the creator. 

Failing to work according to your plan is planning to fail.

Some write the plan, allow for real life to intervene and work the plan but they don't amend the plan to allow them to grow their business. They are stuck in a mindset that tells them that as long as they do the minimum level required, they'll be fine.

Failure to review your plan and reset targets upwards is planning to fail.

I've planned to fail in the past based on those three criteria and it's painful. It's also OK. Planning to fail is a learning exercise that all new entrepreneurs will go through in one form or another and it should not be used as either an excuse for failure or a reason for others not to try the same path.

So you're overoptimistic at times? You haven't accepted how much work is involved in building your own business? You think you're heading for the stars when really you're coasting in neutral? 

Get over it, get a new plan written and commit to it. Work it; review it at weekly, 4 weekly and 13 weekly (90 days, remember) intervals; change it and improve it as necessary. Then get back to working the plan. Repeat until it's a part of you.

Because where your future's concerned, it's not an attitude, it's a way of life.

Consistency = Success

Well, I've proven something to myself - and I can't stop smiling because of it...

A bit of background - I spent several years working with another network marketing/direct selling company and although I moved a couple of steps up the payment plan, I never really achieved what I wanted. Part of that was due to my own inconsistency (life got in the way A LOT, including divorce, kids changing schools, teenage angst, parental ill-health, you name it). Not once did I achieve a bonus from the company for any of my efforts.

After 3 months with Kleeneze, including more upheaval, a holiday and a really bad bout of bronchial infection - all of which wiped out 4 weeks and 2 potential bonuses - I have received my first bonus payment and achieved my first retail goal 8 weeks ahead of schedule!

That's big.

I have a story I can tell others now.

In my first committed 4 week period since I started the business, where committed is defined as sticking to my revised target of 400 catalogues out every week, my retail income from Kleeneze, including my bonus is:

 
I am truly delighted about this!
 
Week 1 of Period 12 has just finished and I've already achieved 50% of the sales that got me the bonus payment in Period 11. Talk about an incentive to hit my next target ahead of schedule.
 
I now know that I can achieve regular Kleeneze bonuses and that I can teach others to do likewise. Time to build up that team.
 
Here's to a fun and prosperous month.

Day 1 - Starting slowly

Today was a classic example of life getting in the way of planning.

I got home today to find I'd received 4 large boxes, all rather heavy. Catalogues weigh a lot, collectively. I cleared a space in the living room and got on with creating my catalogue packs.

Two and a half hours later, I'd done 100 packs, it was past 9 pm and I'd forgotten to eat anything...

I'd also listened to the DVD and CD in my official starter pack, so I was still fired up at the end of all that activity.

I still have another 100 catalogues to bag up, but I will deliver what I have tomorrow night.

In the mean time, all new Kleeneze distributors need the following AT THE START before they can be serious about their business:

1.  Day slips - these tell the customer when you will collect the catalogues. They are not supplied by Kleeneze, you need to make your own or buy them from one of the printers supplying Kleeneze stationery.
2. Recruitment advert slips - self explanatory, advertise to your customers that you are trying to build a team. These are not supplied by Kleeneze.
3. A paper trimmer. A lot easier/safer to use than a craft knife for trimming your own day slips.
4. LOTS of name and address labels with name, address, contact number and Kleeneze number. If you've got 200+ catalogues, the 650 that Kleeneze send you barely cover the 200 x 3 catalogues they send out at the same time. Again, try Able Label or one of the printers that supplies basic labels if you don't want to print your own.
5. A laser printer - essential if you're going to print your own day slips. Don't bother with an inkjet - head for Argos or other similar shops and work out the cost savings over a year.

Day 0 - Preparing the Ground

Having committed myself to actually sticking to a 90 day plan, I decided to organise myself a bit more.

First step - put up the new lockable postbox, so that my mail is in one place. That'll cut down the frantic hunting around the house for the latest repository created by my offspring. I've found 3 week old "pay now or else" bills behind the TV before now...

Second step - tidy the office. Easier said than done, as it's seen as a dumping ground for things that my eldest son doesn't want. Filed a lot of paperwork by the simple expedient of shoving it into a cupboard and closing the door. I'm obviously not that organised yet.

Third step - rough out the 90 day plan.

Of course, the simplest solution would be to map out identical blocks of time on every week day. However, this is the real world and as a single parent with a full-time job, not to mention full-time parenting, identical blocks of time is not an option.

So, I have set targets for both retail and recruitment lead generation. I will be keeping a record of planned activity, actual activity and results and I'll update it here on a weekly basis for the next 13 weeks.

Weekly Targets:

200 catalogues out, 3 times a week.
500 recruitment invites, door to door. 200 of those are going out with the catalogues.
10 clubs/organisations contacted with the suggestion of fund-raising parties based on the Christmas catalogue.

I'm bursting with energy and really looking forward to my first day of action. Here's to eventual success.

90 Day Plan Preparation

A 90 day plan has to be one of the simplest concepts in running your business. It's also one of the hardest to get right.

At first sight, there's no problem. You decide you want to run your own business. You start investigating options. You choose your preferred route to success. You attend some pre-business start up training, followed by some business training. And that's when the trouble starts.

As part of that business training, you get told that there are several key factors to your future success:

1. You need to be passionate. That's OK, I wouldn't be investing time and money in seed money and training if I wasn't passionate, you say.
2. You need to be organised. Not a problem, you assure yourself. It won't take long to tidy up a corner of the dining room/bedroom/attic. I've got my stapler, I've got my binders, I have a phone - how difficult can this be?
3. You need to have a plan. I've got a plan, you say, smiling to yourself. I'm going to do this business brilliantly, I'm going to make loads of money and I'm going to be a great success.

At that point, you've just joined Walter Mitty in WonderfulMe Land and killed off any chance of succeeding.

Let's face it, if achieving financial freedom was that easy, there would be no poverty in this world.

Success = commitment + focus + persistent action

You need all three parts to build a solid foundation. Focus gets you zeroed in on your target. Commitment binds you to a course of action that will enable you to achieve your goals. But without the persistent action, there will be no long-term achievement.

So, you need that plan, it needs to be simple, and you need to stick with it.

All too often, we come away from training meetings with our ears ringing with MLM mantra. The one I personally feel does the most damage is this classic:

Massive Action = Massive Results

Poorly applied (because nobody's thought to tell the poor noob how to do so), that mantra is responsible for more failed businesses than I care to think.

Let's break it down, shall we? Action = Results. We all know that. But who defines "Massive"? You? Your upline? Your family?

So the new distributor/representative/sacrificial lamb listens to the various speakers at the training meeting and decides they need to:

1. Buy into the business at the highest level possible, regardless of personal cost.
2. Buy huge amounts of lead generation material OR spend a fortune on leads.
3. Scattergun leaflets around the neighbourhood, spam their friends and family and fill up the garage with unsold products.

This leap into action usually means that on day 1, they do whatever they've been advised to do - say, deliver 500 leaflets, phone 10 relatives/friends, place 5 adverts in various papers.

By day 7, they're down to putting out 200 leaflets per night, there's no relatives left who'll answer the phone and the 5 adverts were obviously a waste of time because nobody called.

By day 14, they're not putting out leaflets any more, their friends are avoiding them at social events and they are scared they'll never shift that stock.

By day 28, it's meeting time again and they get encouraged to stick at it for another 4 weeks.

I know of people who've spent more than £15,000 trying to build their business like this. They all gave up, or the money gave out. Either way, it means the dream died.

So why on earth am I giving this whole Network Marketing concept another go? I must be mad, right?  

Wrong.

Just because there's a wrong way of following instructions, doesn't mean that those instructions don't have meaning and value. Just because some uplines seem more concerned with their own profits than helping you build a solid foundation for your business, does not mean all sponsors are corrupt, money-grabbing villains.

Each of us bears responsibility for our own actions. That includes the responsibility for performing a sanity check on what you've just planned for your business, buoyed as you are by the adrenalin rush of attending a really good business training. Your upline is not responsible for your business. You are.

Network Marketing is a People Business. As such, you are an ambassador for both your retail business and your team building. If you waste huge amounts of money on poorly targeted lead generation, don't follow up, don't build rapport with your customers by regularly calling/delivering catalogues/providing product - then that is what your team will copy, regardless of how many passionate members of their upline try to coach them differently.

To succeed in this sort of business, we all need to listen, learn, apply. We need to set SMART goals, not dreams. We need to plan and then stick to that plan. And we need to have an underlying mission statement for our business growth.

My business growth mantra is:

To build a Kleeneze team that is completely self-financing from retail sales.

In other words, after my initial investment of £171 for 200 catalogues, my distributor kit and a large Kleeneze-badged catapuller, all business growth will be funded by my retail profits.

Any lead-generation activity will be financed on that basis. I will start off with low-cost or no-cost promotions and move forward from there. I'll let you all know how it goes.