If you are building a network marketing or direct sales home business, you know how difficult it can be to find time for everything you know you need to do.
If you sit down and make a list, and look at the time required to do everything, it isn’t unusual to find that there just aren’t enough hours in the day. I’ve found that many experience this from time to time. I’d like to share some things that will help you focus on actions that will make your home business grow.
Here are three home business tips to keep in mind for everything you do.
Direct Contact with People is a Must
Network marketing and direct selling are “people businesses” – to make money and enjoy success, you must interact and talk to prospects as well as help those you’ve already sponsored be successful.
For everything you plan to do for your business, ask yourself if what you are doing will lead to actual contact with someone. It’s easy to fall into a trap of doing “administrative” things such as organizing and planning what you’ll do later. Planning and organizing is without doubt critical to success, just be careful that you don’t overdo it.
Evaluate Your Actions in Light of Your Goals
For every action you plan, be realistic and ask how this will get you closer to your goals for your home business. We all do things sometime that seem productive, but which in reality may be taking us farther from our goals instead of closer.
For example, when I was learning about blogging, I was taught that it was important to post new content to my blog every day. I did that for a while, but found that it took a significant time commitment and after a point became counterproductive.
Now, I post less frequently and spend more time on prospecting and following up – and it pays off.
Create a Weekly Plan
You may be thinking, “My weeks are so hectic, there is no way I can stick to a plan!”
I hear you. I have weeks like that. Last week, I had a very nice plan in place, with lots of things I really needed to do. However, this was just one of those weeks where there were lots of unforeseen events and “stuff” that didn’t go as expected.
Despite it, I still accomplished far more than I would have if I hadn’t created any plan at all. “Winging it” works for some things, but not so well for home business productivity.
Keep these things in mind and focus on finding and talking to prospects and customers for your network marketing or direct sales business – this is the best and most productive way you can spend your available business time.
Did you get some value from this post? If you did, I would really appreciate you sharing it with others! And, your comments are welcome below!
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About Eldon Beard
Eldon, I work from home and liked the part of your post explaining about setting a weekly schedule. It is very important while working from home to have focus as there can be many interruptions with family and friends. That is the reason it is a good idea to have a separate work area in your home while working from home.
Hello Rosemary,
I totally agree – having that separate area to work from means a lot. That allows you to keep everything you need to work with somewhat organized, as opposed to having to move from place to place within the home based on what room is unoccupied at the time. 😉
Hi Eldon. I’m glad to meet you through TSA and always love finding posts on how I can be more productive. I don’t know if it is because I’m a musician, but sometimes I find it hard to stay on task. Your advice re analyzing my tasks and planning my week are great. I usually try to avoid a weekly plan, but I think I’m going to give it another try! Thanks for sharing.
Wishing you a song in your heart,
Miss Leslie @ Music with Miss Leslie
Hello Miss Leslie,
Doing that weekly plan isn’t always easy, but it’s just having some organization that seems to make things go smoother for me. I definitely encourage you to give it a try. 🙂
Hi Eldon,
Great tips on productivity! Love what you said about direct sales//network marketing as a people business. We forget that we need to talk to prospects- people that have an interest in the business or products – if we want to move our business forward. It’s easy to mistake social media activity with productivity, isn’t it?
Thanks for sharing!
Janette
Janette, love this:
“It’s easy to mistake social media activity with productivity, isn’t it?”
Social media is great for meeting new people and building the relationships for future success, but while doing this you have to be talking to people today about your business too.
Hey Eldon,
I agree with all 3 of your points. Possibly the most important one for me is the need to have a plan. Every week and every day of that week, I have goals and things that I must do. It’s the key to my success because a failure to plan is a plan to fail!
Hi Dereck, I have actually known people who seem to be able to “wing it” every day and achieve a lot. However, for most of us, having a plan written down and following that plan as closely as possible is a must. I know it helps me stay focused and productive, otherwise I’d tend to get distracted and go off in other directions. 🙂
I never thought of doing some Weekly Plan. Since I started working at home I never had a chance to create a plan. Anyways this is very helpful since planning is very important on scheduling your work at home.