Dodo Loves Marketing

When your network grows big, you can’t do it all. Don’t even try to, or you’ll run yourself ragged. The secret of success is to ‘grow’ your own people and, by doing so, let them handle their own affairs. Your role becomes more one of monitoring what is going on, leaving you free to spend more time looking for prospects. Never forget to build, build, build.

If you have well-developed and trained distributors in your downline you can, with confidence, leave them to build their own businesses. To be sure, always make yourself available to handle a crisis or to give expert advice, but don’t hinder your downliners with a ‘telling’ management style. Once you’ve given them a head start, push them from the nest and they’ll fly! ..more

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Networking is a people business. So you must continually work at developing good relationships, team morale and effective communication.

Effective communication is a two-way interaction between two parties and it implies both verbal and nonverbal communication. It is a vital skill for all distributors and network marketing leaders. Ask yourself whether you would like to listen to yourself at a presentation meeting. Who is the best speaker you know? What ideas, techniques and presentation methods can you copy from him or her?

Here are some ways in which you can improve your communications:

Rehearse what you are going to say Do you know what you are going to say, why you want to say it and how you will put your points across? ..more

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Everyone has a huge bundle of talents waiting to be utilised. It doesn’t matter who you are or how old you are. Colonel Saunders of Kentucky Fried Chicken was 62 when he started his business. If you want a sizeable income, the choice is yours. You should not use the excuse that the reason you’re not rich is that you never had a chance. Network marketing is an opportunity that is available to everyone. If you don’t take it, it is your democratic right, but there can only be one loser. To realise your potential you need a change of attitude.

The behavioural psychologist William James at the turn of this century made the monumental discovery that man can control his destiny. His famous words were: ‘The greatest discovery of my generation is that men can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.’ ..more

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If a company’s strategy represents its overall approach tomaximizing business success—stated in terms of achieving certain sales, profits, product delivery, and employee turnover goals—then the mission statement represents a more generalized and idealistic vision of the company’s purpose in life. If done right, a mission statement can go a long way toward energizing everyone in an organization to achieve the ideal.

Unfortunately, in the rush to develop mission statements, many companies have established statements that are somehow too general and lofty. I have seen a number of missionstatements that commit companies to being “the producer of the highest-quality (name the product) in the world” or “the top company in the (name the industry).” In my experience, the best mission statements are oriented in either of two directions: ..more

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Assembling a cash flow statement: chronicling the past. To help you get started in putting together your own cash flow statement, this section describes the cash flow statement of a hypothetical architectural firm, ABC Architectural Services.

The cash flow statement is for the four months just ended (For the purpose of the exercise, we assume that we’re now at April 30.)

A few notes about this company:

It employed seven people in January and received two new architectural design contracts in January for $25,000 each. These jobs should each take five months to complete and are payable as completed. ..more

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All business owners know what cash flow is—if not technically, then emotionally. Nevertheless, it’s worthwhile to approach this subject from the very beginning because it is key to business success. Some business school professors have even begun to impart to their students the latest thinking about cash flow: “Cash flow is more important than your mother.”

A useful way to think about cash flow is to view the business as a living organism. Cash is the nutrient that runs through its arteries and veins. The brain might be viewed as the product or service, the heart as the marketing, and the stomach as the finances, at which point it all begins to get a little messy. If you don’t have enough cash flow, though, rest assured that the living organism turns into a skeleton. , ..more

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Selling is tough. Salespeople have to be able to deal with endless rejection and still remain positive and enthusiastic.

Moreover, they must be able to make professional presentations, answer questions, handle complex requests, and otherwise turn prospects into customers.

Clearly, then, simply deciding which sales avenue you plan to use isn’t the end of the planning process. The business plan must discuss how you will motivate your salespeople. Here are three tasks that must be dealt with:

Training. The salespeople, whether they’re your own or representatives, must be thoroughly familiar with your productor service. That means they must understand how it works, what its benefits are, and how to sell it most effectively. If the product is going to be updated frequently, the salespeople need to be informed about the changes. ..more

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An excellent example of assumptions underlying a business plan is provided in the People Express financials. Here we find a list of 12 assumptions that help clarify the projections that follow. Most have to do with revenues and expenses associated with flying the company’s expected three plane fleet. Thus, we learn in points 7, 8, and 9 that revenues don’t include certain items that could become important later, like excess baggage and charter fees. And we learn in points 4 and 5 how the aircraft lease and personnel costs are figured in. ..more

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Most business owners write business plans because theyhave a specific need that can be met by a particular audience.

The owners may need a bank loan. In that case, the business plan will be addressed to bankers. The owners may have decided they need to formalize their company’s planning process and require a business plan that all managers can understand. ..more

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It might seem as if I’m complicating matters by suddenly suggesting the possibility of writing several business plans. After all, you might ask, if I’m having difficulty writing one business plan, won’t I simply compound my problems by trying to write two or more plans?

My experience is that you will actually find it easier to address the plan to specific audiences rather than to an abstract, all-inclusive, single audience. When you know your audience, you can “speak” to those readers in terms you know they want to hear or do not want to hear. ..more

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The income statement is the one we all tend to focus our attention on because it provides the proverbial “bottom line”— the company’s profit or loss. It’s usually done on a quarterly basis.

As you look at the basic income statement you’ll notice that it seems a lot like the cash flow statement. You start with your revenues less commissions. From that, you subtract direct labor (drafters and architects, for instance, for an architectural firm) and materials.

The result is a subtotal that gives you your gross profit or loss. (The percentage of gross profit to revenues can be a very useful number. It’s your gross margin and can help you compare yourself with others in your industry—it tells you immediately whether your labor or other costs are way out of line.) ..more

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The key concern in preparing multiple business plans ismaking sure that each is tailored to the interests, needs, and fears of its readers. A business plan that is exciting to one group of readers may be terrifying or simply irrelevant to another group.

Consider a business plan for financing. A company wants toraise $3 million and isn’t fussy about whether the money comes from a banker or a venture capitalist. Chances are strong, though, that the business plan that appeals to the venture capitalist won’t appeal to the banker, and vice versa. ..more

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As I suggested at the beginning of this chapter, most entrepreneurs have a very specific purpose for their business plan and, once that purpose has been accomplished, the formal planning process is over. The People Express business plan is theonly written plan the company ever put together. The question of why the company never assembled another plan to guide its astonishing growth is one that prompts extensive explanation from founder Donald Burr.

Quite simply, he begins, the company didn’t really need an operating plan once it had financial backing. Not even for budgeting purposes?

“We felt budgeting was one of the things that stand in the way of customer service,” he explains. “The mind-set of budgeting is that it’s finance driven instead of customer driven.”

Burr points to Continental Airlines, which acquired People Express, to illustrate his point. “Continental Airlines lives by budgeting,” he says. “From the food to the uniforms to the people, it’s budget driven. You end up with a seriously flawed product as a result of such a process.” ..more

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If your plan is intended to help your company raise money, you will almost certainly come under questioning and scrutiny from the financiers. How can you be so sure that you will achieve the market penetration you project? Have you given enough credence to the competitive pressures you’ll encounter? Aren’t you perhaps underestimating your sales and administrative expenses? How certain are you that you’ll collect 60% of your receivables in 30 days? And on and on.

Some of the questions and criticisms you encounter will be sincere concerns based on the battle-hardened inquirers’ previous experiences with smaller growing companies. Some, though, will be negotiating ploys. The amount of financing abanker or investor is willing to commit is linked to his or her assessment of the plan’s overall credibility. ..more

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When you think about it, the proof of the pudding as far as any business plan is concerned is how it compares with reality. Investors and bankers will tell you that in their experience, entrepreneurs are lucky to achieve half the sales and profits their plans project.

Indeed, financiers customarily “discount” the plan’s projections to a certain level in determining the amount of financing to make available. That is, bankers may discount the value of assets or receivables intended as collateral. Venture capitalists may discount the expected sales and profits, which are used to help determine the company’s future value, as a way to gauge how much of the company they get for how much investment. ..more

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Only five years ago, most markets were dominated by a few leading companies, mighty icons with household names that seemed immortal. How quaint all that now seems. Today’s competitors are far more numerous, able, and fierce than ever before because they have to be: What used to be outstanding performance is now the norm.

A useful analogy is the sport of speed skating. In the 1980 Winter Olympics, American Eric Heiden accomplished an unprecedented feat—he won five gold medals Though it was unbeatable in 1980, twenty-five competitors surpassed Heiden’s record in Nagano, Japan, eighteen years later in the 5,000-meter race, and did so by at least 12 seconds. The gold medalist, Gianni Romme of the Netherlands, covered the distance in 6 minutes 22 seconds, eclipsing Heiden’s time by an unbelievable 40 seconds. For that competition, Heiden would not have even qualified. ..more

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In an age in which customers are scarce, any company’s best practices seldom remain proprietary. Business models are shamelessly imitated with inner corporate workings becoming public knowledge. Best practices travel at Internet speed.

People are becoming masters at imitation. If you don’t have a good idea yourself, you can always knock off someone else’s product. An imitation is not necessarily an exact copy. You use details to create a difference: the look, the product extension, the packaging—anything that can make the other company’s idea look less new And this is easier than it used to be. If once you could hold on to a secret formula for years or even decades, now it’s a matter of months or days before your competitors catch up and replicate it. ..more

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Innovation has become so commonplace that scarcely any product survives long enough to age. New ideas and items are born obsolete. The cycle never stops. Accordingly, customers and suppliers alike grow dizzy in their futile pursuit of the next best thing.

Last year, consumers in the United States were inundated by roughly twenty-three thousand new packaged goods—about 450 per week. Revlon, Inc., alone introduced four hundred new items. Combine that with the thousands of other new consumer products that appeared, from computer advances to car models, and you get a sense of the plethora of choices, a flood that would have daunted Noah. ..more

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In the age of customer scarcity and the Internet, the boldness and ambition of the new market leaders are unprecedented. Like their market presence, their aspirations are larger than life. They stretch their resources to the maximum and set unprecedented goals for businesses still in their infancy. They are determined to rule their markets and have no qualms about making the serious and risky commitments necessary to do so. Such spirit stands in marked contrast to the traditional manager’s tendency to spread risk and exposure, to take small, well-tested steps forward, and to avoid putting all the eggs in one basket.

Not long ago I spoke to the leaders of a company in the cutthroat communications field that, in terms of its competencies and operating model, looked very promising. But one vital element was missing: The leaders‘ aspirations were woefully inadequate for the battles that lay ahead. ..more

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The new market leaders know that the greatest constraint on today’s customers is time—more critical even than money. The broader choices, the constant stream of innovations, and the pace of contemporary life conspire to crowd people’s schedules. Whether you’re in the market for a CD player for home or a new supplier of components for your company, you don’t have time to evaluate every option, consider every shred of information, and explore every contingency—even though it would probably be useful to do so.

Time is a flexible commodity: We willingly spend more of it on some activities than on others. A busy manager for whom every minute counts will happily spend hours on thegolf course, but an easygoing person with time to chat will hang up angrily on a telemarketer who calls at dinnertime. ..more

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