Dear readers,

As we begin 2011 you may be wondering how you can make 2011 your best?

Here are a few tips for you:

• Treat your business just like you were starting over again.  Even if you’ve been in your business for 2 years or 5 years or more, go back and treat it like you would when you were starting out.  Make your warm market list. Get aggressive in going to your friends and family.  Over the years new people may have come into your sphere of influence that aren’t aware of what you do.  Others may have been watching you for years and may finally be ready to take a look at your business. Maybe their situation has changed and now they are open to the idea of joining a network marketing business.
• Write your goals. It goes without saying that the most successful people are goal oriented people.  The beginning of the year is a great time to reflect on the goals of the past year and set new goals for the future.  Make sure to put them into writing. Don’t worry about the things you didn’t accomplish last year. You can wipe the slate clean and start over. 2011 is a new year!
• I also suggest taking a notebook and sitting somewhere quiet for a bit. Begin to dream again. Exercise your brain and let yourself dream. Let yourself envision what your dream life would be like.  What would you do with your time? What would you do with your money? What would your family be doing?  I took a notebook on about January 2nd and sat down and wrote out several pages.  The first page were my positive present tense affirmations.  “I am a success.” “I am attracting the right people into my business.” “I am a world class business partner.” That kind of thing.  The second page was were I started to envision my future and what it could be like.  What would my business look like?  What would my personal life look like? Where would I live? Who would I live with?  What would my partner be like?  What would we enjoy doing together?  What charities would I support? What would I do for fun?
• Now a lot of people would stop here… they’d make some goals and some dreams… but the next step is a plan of action!  Make a plan for how you can begin to achieve those goals. You don’t need to know how to reach them all but you need to at least have a plan to begin with.  Are you going to build a mailing list? How?  Are you going to blog more? How often?  Are you going to buy leads?  Are you going to join a networking group like BNI?

You need a plan to get from point A to point B.  You could have a goal to get from San Diego to New York but if you don’t have a plan, if you don’t have a map, if you don’t have a vehicle, it will be hard to do.  You might eventually get from San Diego to New York if you don’t have a plan but it will take awhile and you will probably get sidetracked along the way.  However if you have a clear plan of action you could drive to the airport, buy a ticket, and be in New York in a few hours.  Or you could buy a map, get some gas, and get in the car and start driving.  In a week (or even less – I think some race car drivers did the cannonball run in less than 36 hours driving non stop at high speeds) you could drive across the country and be in New York.  Or if you had no plan at all you could maybe just set out, hitchiking, walking, hoping to meet people along the way… but you don’t even have a map you’re just going where the world takes you.  A lot of obstacles would come up to prevent you from getting to New York.  At the very least it’d take a lot longer than the other methods.

Do you have your goals written down?  Do you have your plan of action to achieve those goals?  Do you have any tips on how to make 2011 your best year yet? We’d love to hear them! Leave a comment and let us know!

- Ben Fitts

MLM Training > business plan

2010 is here!

What is your plan to grow your MLM business?

I heard a great tip from a friend of mine who is the top money earner in my company. He said he starts with a plan of action every year to pretend like he is starting over in his business. He acts like January 1 is the first day he is starting and puts together a plan of action based on that philosophy.

I know for me personally when I start a new project I’m excited. When I start in a new network marketing business in the past I’m very aggressive. I build my lead list. I call all my friends and family. I get aggressive with my advertising and marketing.

The problem I personally experienced is that I built a large business quickly. I then got into a mode of managing and working with my team. I have 6200+ people on my team. I let myself get too busy managing my business, training others, etc. It’s a different mindset than when I was first starting out.

Plus over my many years of being involved in my business I’ve met new people and my friends list probably needs to be updated.

Starting now I’m refocusing and pretending I am starting out from scratch again. I’m setting my goals. I’m building my list of friends and family. I’m contacting my warm market. I’m going back to basics. I’m going to work hard again just like I was starting out from scratch. I’m not ignoring the people already in my business I’m just refocusing on building again. Leading by example.

I think it’s a great idea.

If you were to pretend to start over in your business, what would you do?

Leave us a comment and let us know!

- Ben Fitts

MLM Training > business plan

Sample thank you card I use

I’ve been writing a series of articles on my business plan for 2009.

One of the things I believe in and I’ve read a lot about is sending thank you cards.  One mistake many people make with their thank you cards is they write their thank you card expecting to get something in return.

MOST business people will send a thank you card with their full business card information inside. Or they’ll send a thank you card that will say something like “the best compliment I can receive is you trusting me with a referral.”

The problem is that is an expectation of getting something in return.  You’re giving to get not giving to give. When you give to give you win trust and favor with the person much more than giving to get.  Sometimes people give expecting to get something in return.  If you give just to give to the person, then they have a deeper appreciation for you.

I send thank you cards for lots of occasions.  I have a card (pictured here) that I send to say “it was great to meet you”.  I have thank you cards I send to every new client or customer.  I even send thank you cards when I get good customer service.

Just the other day my wife and I went to the AT&T store to get new cellular phones.  We received really excellent customer service from a fellow named Matt. We took up an hour or more of his time and it even went past closing.  He went the extra mile to make sure our phones got setup properly.  So I sent Matt a little thank you card along with some brownies.

I just returned to the AT&T store to switch phones.  Matt came over to me immediately.  He wanted to thank me for the brownies.  Even though another associate was already helping me Matt was more than happy to give me some extra help in picking out my new phone and accessories.  He was so thankful that I thought of him and even sent him some tasty brownies as a treat.  I guarantee you every time I go in to that AT&T store I’m going to get GREAT customer service. All from a little thank you card!

Do you send thank you cards to your customers or prospects? Do you have any stories to share?

Click on the “comments” to the right of this story and leave us a comment and let us know!

- Ben Fitts

PS. Are you looking for an awesome solution to send custom thank you cards like the one pictured here? I’d be happy to help you get setup with a free account to try it out.

MLM Training > business plan

In my series on my business plan for 2009 I talked about how one of my goals was to develop new friendships.

You might be wondering, why?

First of all I think we sometimes don’t want new friends because we maybe got hurt by old friends.  So we keep our friendships to a minimum.  At least I know I sometimes get like that.

Remember network marketing can also be called relationship marketing.  So think about those “relationships”.

That means you need to work on developing new friends.  You don’t want to simply target these new friends for your business though.  You want to actually BE a friend.  You want to GIVE to them.

One thing I did to meet new people was to get out locally and meet new business people.  I joined a BNI group.  BNI is a group that is designed to help other business people with referrals. One of the main tennets of BNI is that “giver’s gain”.  In BNI you give referrals to others.  You participate in the group.  Maybe you bring coffee/breakfast to your group meeting.  Maybe you go meet some of your other group members one on one to learn about their business.  You learn to look for ways to help other people.

As soon as I started to do this in my BNI group I began to get referrals back.  You see the people had learned to trust me and we had developed relationships.  I was giving out referrals. I was assisting the group by sending out welcome cards to visitors and new members.  I was sending invitations to the open house.  I was becoming an active member of the group.  When the other members saw this they began to trust me with their referrals, but it took awhile to build that trust.

So that’s what I mean by making new friends.  I mean looking at these relationships as friendships not simply business connections.  You would go out of your way to assist a friend. You would probably not go out of your way to assist a business connection you just met at a chamber luncheon.    By building relationships you grow stronger bonds.  If that business connection had gone out of his way to help you, if he had show genuine interest in you, your family, your business… then you’re much more likely to go to extremes to help that person.

Do you agree or disagree?

- Ben Fitts

MLM Training > business plan

As I’ve been discussing recently one of the most important things you can do for your MLM enterprise in 2009 is to start with a business plan. (see the business plan category for related posts.)

So far I’ve come up with a little over 30 different things to work on in 2009.  I’m going to attempt to do these myself.  You might find some ideas here that are things you’re interested in. You also might be able to share some comments and give me some new ideas.  Please do!

This is week 25-36… the first 12 weeks can be found here, weeks 13-24 can be found here.

Week 25 Join some link / advertising exchanges
Week 26 Buy some text links
Week 27 Setup Google PPC Advertising
Week 28 Live everyday like it’s your last
Week 29 Recognize someone on your team that deserves recognition
Week 30 Hire an accountant
Week 31 Hire a virtual assistant
Week 32 Incorporate your business
Week 33 Join a networking group, like BNI
Week 34 Hire a PR Firm
Week 35 Write an ebook
Week 36 Setup a mailing list with an autoresponder

That’s all I have so far for 2009, but I’m sure I can find a few more things to add.  Do you have any ideas on things I can add to my action plan?

- Ben Fitts

MLM Training > business plan