Exploding Your Business
If you have mastered success steps #1 – #5, you are ready for the ultimate step: exploding your business!
Most home business opportunities have their foundation in direct selling, and most reputable home business companies will form part of the Direct Selling Association (DSA), even your network marketing companies.
What type of home business do you have? To answer this question in the simplest manner, just ask yourself: what am I getting paid for?
In all legitimate business opportunities, you are getting paid for bringing value to the market place. This is either in the form of a service or a product of real market value, or both. In some home businesses you get paid for your own sales only. In others, you also get paid commissions on the sales of distributors you introduced to the company.
Caveat: If you are getting paid for recruiting new distributors for the company, it’s most likely an illegal pyramid scheme, as most countries have consumer legislation in place that defines an illegal pyramid scheme as one whereby you, directly or indirectly, are getting paid for recruiting.
In legitimate network marketing companies you do not get paid for recruiting new distributors. You only get paid a commission on their product sales. The incentive is therefore there for you to provide an additional service in training the distributors you introduce to the company. The better you train them, the more sales they will make and the more commissions you will earn not only from your own sales, but also from their sales. (This information is critical to understand if you want to know how to explode your home business.)
Exploding your business profits requires you to tap into the principle of leverage.
Billionaire, John Paul Getty said it best when he stated: “I would rather earn one percent from the efforts of one hundred people, than one hundred percent from the efforts of myself.”
Exploding your business – The salesman
If you are only getting paid commissions for every retail sale you make, you are most likely in a home business with a uni-level compensation plan. If this is you, you are most likely just an independent representative (rep) for the company. As such you are technically running your own business as an independent contractor, but for practical purposes, your income is limited to the amount of sales that you make every month. If this is you, your opportunity to explode your business is limited to one thing only: more sales. Increase the amount of presentations you give = increase in your sales = increase in your income.
Think back to success step #5. Which presentation style have you mastered? Now, let’s say you present to 20 people per month. Mastery, as you will recall, will enable you to sell your product or service to 3 out of every 10 people you present to. This means that you will make 6 sales for the month. In order to make a decent living from only 6 sales, you therefore need to sell big-ticket items, like real estate, where your commission per sale is as high as possible.
Advice: Make up in numbers what you lack in skill. If your competitor is so good that he can sell to 9 out of 10 people, and you just started and you can sell to only 1 out of 10, you can still make more money than your competitor. How is that possible? Simple. Make up in numbers what you lack in skill. While he is presenting to 10 people for the month and makes 9 sales, you simply present to 100 people and make 10 sales. You beat him.
If you wish to achieve your full potential as a salesman, you will do well to heed the advice of one of the greatest business philosophers of all time, the late Jim Rohn:
“To succeed in sales, simply talk to lots of people every day. And here’s what’s exciting – there are lots of people!”
“Practice is just as valuable as a sale. The sale will make you a living; the skill will make you a fortune.”
“In the sales profession, the real work begins after the sale is made.”
“One customer, well taken care of, could be more valuable that $10,000 worth of advertising.”
“Good service leads to multiple sales. If you take good care of your customer, they will open doors you could never open by yourself.”
“Don’t wish it was easier; wish you were better. Don’t wish for less problems; wish for more skills. Don’t wish for less challenges; wish for more wisdom.”
“You must either modify your dreams or magnify your skills.”
“Whoever renders service to many puts himself in line for greatness – great wealth, great return, great satisfaction, great reputation, and great joy.”
Exploding your business – The business owner
If you are running your own home business where you are the boss to hire and fire at will, you have one of the greatest, if not the greatest tool to explode your business to your avail. It is this – leverage.
If you are the only one making presentations and running your business, you will soon reach your maximum output…and that might not be your desired outcome. Yes, you can work 18 hour days, but how long can you sustain it before the side-effects will show up in your relationships? The answer lies in delegation.
Appoint someone to do your admin. That will give your more time to do more presentations and make more sales.
Appoint more salesmen and saleswomen and teach them to present. If you have 5 people out there, presenting to your target market, getting 3 out of 10 sales, it means together you can make 15 sales a day, instead of just the 3 if you were on your own. (Presuming everyone presents to 10 people per day.) This is called, leverage. The power of leverage. You leverage other people’s time and efforts.
Leverage in the traditional business environment does not come without its problems. It has been said that if you have one employee, you have one headache. If you have more than one employee, you will feel like you are running an adult daycare center! Labor laws in most countries make it very onerous on business owners to employ people. The ability to run a business with harmony between your staff members is a skill that not many people possess. Hiring labor consultants and staff managers just add to the cost of running your business.
A further downside for the business owner is this: an employee will never work as hard for the business as the owner would. And why would she? The owner has a vested interest in the business – profit-sharing; the employee does not. The employee never gets paid for the full value he or she brings to the business. In short, the business owner must make a profit on the efforts of his employees in order to be able to run a profitable business.
If you are an effective business owner, you will train your personnel as best you can. That way they will bring more value to the market place and hence increase the business’ bottom line. However, in most cases, you end up training your competition. If your employees become more skillful and more valuable to the market place, they will seek opportunities for promotion or else go work for your competitor, who by the way does not have to invest any time and effort in training them, as you already did a marvelous job in that department. In short, it’s a no win situation for you. You, as business owner, will just have to continue to hire new people and train them up until they leave to work for the competition or become the competition themselves. This makes exploding your business very hard.
Advice: Treat your employees better than your competitor treats his. Give them a reason to stay with you. And if they decide to leave; always part on friendly terms and extend an invitation to them to come back at any time. Once they discovered that the grass is not greener on the other side, they will be able to come back to work for you once again, this time with gratitude and loyalty that money cannot buy.
Exploding your business – The network marketer
A network marketing business presents one of the most exciting opportunities to explode your home business through the power of leverage. However, not every network marketer knows how to tap into the power of leverage and hence the “failure rate” of new distributors can be quite high.
In network marketing you are getting paid commissions or profits on your own personal sales. You are also getting paid commission on the sales of other independent distributors that you introduced or sponsored into the company. Avoid schemes that offers to pay you for recruiting new distributors, regardless of whether the new distributors produce any sales themselves. In most countries, such schemes will be caught by the consumer protection legislation as illegal pyramid schemes.
Not all network marketing companies are created equally. When you are choosing a network marketing company, look for one that sells consumable products that are superior to the competition. This is measured by looking at the results people have when they use the products. In the end, the results will speak for themselves. Also choose a company that rewards its independent distributors well. This is measured by comparing the compensation plans. What percentage of the gross turnover does the company pay to its distributors? Lastly, look at the history of the company. How long have they been going? What is their vision? Can you identify yourself with its mission? In short, will you feel good and proud to represent the company, its products and it’s business opportunity? Money alone should never be the determining factor.
With network marketing you get to tap into the power of duplication without the headaches of hiring employees. Each distributor that you sponsor into your company, becomes an independent distributor just like you. He or she has the exact same opportunity to share in the profits of the company as you. The better you train your new distributors, the more skilled they will become. The more skilled they become in doing the business, the more money they will make. As a reward for training them, you will earn a small percentage commission on their sales. They will always earn the largest chunk, as it’s only fair. In network marketing, unlike illegal pyramid schemes, the new distributor can outperform and out-earn his sponsor. How? Through the concept of leverage which in network marketing is sometimes known as the “doubling principle” or “duplication”.
If you do not know how to double or duplicate, this leverage principle will be like the lost holy grail to you; it will be illusive and over time erode your belief in the existence of leverage. You will look at others who are effectively duplicating or doubling their businesses with envy. Your only logical conclusion will be this: they got lucky. Does this sound familiar? If so, do not despair. We will get to the “how to duplicate” shortly.
If you are not familiar with the doubling concept of network marketing, the late John Kalench, MLM trainer extraordinaire, describes it as follows:
“You are one. You double and become two. Two doubles and becomes four. Four to eight, eight to sixteen. Sixteen to thirty-two. Thirty-two to sixty-four. Sixty-four to 128. 128 to 256, to 512, to 1024, to 2048 and on and on. That’s the great growth possibility of Network Marketing.”
They key words of the above quote are this: growth possibility.
Is duplication a fallacy?
Why doesn’t everybody double?
John Kalench answers this phenomena as follows:
“Because not everybody learns that the key to doubling is the other double word – duplication.
The only way you will ever experience this doubling growth in your Network Organization in real terms – and by that I mean the kind that shows up every month on your printout and on your bonus check — is by duplication. Ans just as duplication is the key to building an ever-expanding Network Marketing business, training is the key to duplication.”
To achieve sustained growth in your network marketing home business, requires you to tap into the power of leverage. This you do by recruiting and training new distributors how to do the business.
- You need to know how to do the business – by doing it yourself.
- You need to teach your people how to do the business – what you teach must be congruent with what you do.
- You need to teach them how to teach others how to do the business.
Network marketing is most definitely not a lie-on-the-couch business. It requires work. Not hard work, but smart work. It’s no good to be a star distributor, i.e. the top recruiter or top sales person. Star distributors are like shooting stars. Over time, they burn out.
Instead, you must be a “star maker“.
- Star makers know their product.
- Star makers know their customers.
- Star makers know how to identify their target market.
- Star makers know how to effectively package and deliver their sales presentations.
- Star makers know how to teach their new distributors how to do and teach the above.
Exploding your business – How to teach?
Tell them what to do.
Show them what to do. (Take them along to one of your presentations and let them watch you.)
Let them do the presentations. You are there with them while they do it. Don’t do it for them. They need the practice. They need to acquire the skill. Remind them that the practice is worth more than the sale. The sale will make them a living, the skill will make them a fortune.
Teach them to teach the skills they learned to their people.
Now you have all the tools to go out there and create an avalanche in your home business, especially if you are in the network marketing industry.
Crux: Exploding your business profits by applying the 6 Success Steps and teaching it to your people.
Here are the links to the 6 Success Steps for ease of reference once again:
#3 – Identify your target market
#4 – Package your presentation
#5 – How to get a new customer
Once you have mastered this sixth success step, the skill to duplicate and double your business, you will find yourself in the position so aptly described by Napoleon Hill in his book Think and Grow Rich.
Once the money starts flowing as a result of your exploding business, it will come in such abundance that you will wonder where it has been hiding all those years.
This my friends, conclude this series on “Working a Home Business – Success steps #1 – #6.”
The key to exploding your business lies in learning to do the business by learning the skills in success steps #1 – #5, and to then teach that to your new distributors.
Keep focused on doubling your organization. Do not lose heart. The power of duplication only reveals itself after it realizes that you aren’t going to quit.
To appreciate the power of duplication, read this revealing story about the water hyacinth – arguably the best duplicator in nature.
There is a floating aquatic plant called the water hyacinth. It grows on the surface of lakes and ponds in the tropics.
The water hyacinth grows by duplication. It doubles itself every day. One becomes two. Two becomes four, etc. Even in a big river or large lake, if conditions are right, within thirty days this plant can cover the entire surface of the water. No boats can cross. The hyacinth grows so prolifically, it simply takes over.
Now, here’s what’ so interesting. On day twenty-nine, just one day before the lake is completely covered, the lake is only one-half hyacinth!
That’s right. Fifty percent of the lake’s surface is water and the other half is hyacinth! And remember how the whole process began: with a little green plant no bigger than your hand! That’s the power of Network Marketing.
In the beginning, it’s hard to see how large your Network ultimately will become. When two become four and four become eight, that doesn’t look like much in a vast lake that’s all water. That’s when you have to remember the story of the water hyacinth.
If you found this article series to be of value, please recommend it to your friends by sharing it with them. Most people find the share buttons below quick and easy to use.
It would also be most appreciated if you leave me your comments. Everybody knows that gratitude expressed brings a lot more good things into your own life. You can express your thoughts in the easy to use comment section below.
To your success!
Yours sincerely,
Willem & Suné Kilian
Global Expansion Team
Herbalife ID: 46-024370
Email: wjkilian@gmail.com
Based in Australia.
p.s. My wife and I are independent Herbalife distributors since March 1996. We both got great results on the products. She lost 10kg within the first few months and I lost 36kg in 6 months. We both maintain our new healthy weight ever since. (Compulsory legal disclaimer: These results are not typical. Individual results will vary.) Although we are both professionals – she being a medical doctor and me being a lawyer, we recommend the Herbalife products to everyone who wants to improve their health and well-being. We are a typical Herbalife family. Our kids love the products as much as we do. The Herbalife business opportunity is arguably one of the best in the network marketing industry, paying back 73% of the gross turnover to its distributors via retail profits, wholesale profits, royalties and bonuses. The combination of these amazing products with this solid compensation plan, makes Herbalife in our eyes the best network marketing opportunity out there.
If you are interested in the Herbalife products or the Herbalife business opportunity, please email me directly at: wjkilian@gmail.com . We are looking forward to meet you and talk with you, and if this is for you, welcome you into our team.