I personally find that one of the hardest things to handle with my own home business is ensuring that I’m working on the right things.  It’s very easy to get caught up in all of the many angles of your business and find your day completely gone. 

What makes you money in your business?   Organizing your desk doesn’t! 

You don’t want to become a professional meeting attendee either, so you need to make sure you’re doing something EVERY day that’s building your business.

Obviously you need to be sure that these tasks are properly aligned to your goals, availability and skills, but we’ll talk about that another time.

Make a time commitment and stick to it EVERY day!

What we’re going to talk about here is how to get yourself organized so you can easily keep your business growing!

This is an extremely simple process:

List everything in your business that will actually make you money.  For example…

• New customers – 1 point
• New representative Sign-up – 2 points
• Successful Home meeting (3 or more attendees)– 5 points
• New guest at a weekly group meeting – 2 points
• Registration for national company events – 1 point
• 3 way calls – 1 point
• Track how many of these you perform every day!

Typically for about every 10 points worth of work you do you’ll get 1 new distributor for your business.

This can be applied to ANY business because the key to all of them is consistency.

You can make this fun and host team competitions for whoever has the most points each week.  Make it FUN!   Remember that even though people are participating in a home business they typically enjoy the social aspects of building it.

I teach all of my distributors how to apply these techniques in a fun and efficient manner, but if you’d like to learn how to apply more advanced techniques I would recommend getting a copy of “Building On a Budget” which I’ve found invaluable in building my business.

As I mentioned in the first portion of this series it is very important to know what you’re getting yourself into no matter what type of business.  If you don’t understand these areas you run the risk of losing   your business   and wasting your time.

You need to know:

Who endorses the company?

You need to have third party support that potential customers, employees or representatives can relate to.  This endorsement really needs to align with the product or service strongly as well.

What direct competition do they have?

Is this a one of a kind product you’ll be selling or are there a lot of other companies selling competing products?  What sets their products apart from the competition?

Are they publicly traded?

Depending on the area this may not be critical, but when choosing a home based business it might be.  Because of corporate reporting laws and other things put in place to protect investors a publicly traded company has the potential to be a better choice than a private company.

Do their policies and procedures limit your marketing efforts in any way?

Some companies require that you only market to specific types of customers or limit your use of certain words or phrases in your marketing.  You need to clearly understand these limitations so that when you are building your game plan you’re not caught off guard.

Do they charge extra for tools, websites, etc?  How much?

You need to know how much you’ll expect to pay for a web site, business cards, leads, etc.  Some companies include this for free and others charge.  Don’t assume anything.

What countries can you do business in?

We are constantly operating in a global market and you need to keep this in mind from the beginning.  If you can only do business in the United States you’re severely limiting your upside potential.

What paperwork are you expected to do?

Some companies will handle everything for you while others require you to track your business personally.  Make sure you know what will be expected of you.

How do the business opportunities you’re evaluating stack up?