What To Look For In A Business
(Print off and tick, if not all ticked think again before you proceed with any home-based business)
Areas to ensure
- Ensure that the companies are listed with www.dsa.org if they are not they are not legal
- Ensure that your leaders are going to be good mentors, even if that means talking to others in their teams. Ask for top awards, proof of business turnover or of that of their leaders
- Check out how the company has been ranked as a business on yahoo
- Ensure they are debt free
- Ensure the company has cash flow in their business
- The future is all based on research and development, otherwise your company may be left behind, do they constantly come up with new sciences, technologies or top products
- Ensure they are opening up new countries and that you can be part of that no matter what level you are in the company (note some companies only allow international sponsoring when you are at certain levels.
- Ensure that you will have residual repeat sales, there is no point eg if they buy a fridge once, when will they need the next one? Repeat sales is your financial nest egg
- Ensure that they have a call center to answer questions for your team, there are times when your leaders will not be free
- Some companies require more than a outlay of $250 per month, people get into home-based business because of wanting to increase money, can this have an impact on people not meeting the business criteria’s
- Ensure that the marketing materials are professional and compliant with ACCC, and FDA, TGA, and other regulations
- Ensure that there is no background where they have copied another product that had a patent as this is not good business sense
- Ensure that the people you are entering the business with are not only in it for the money.
- Ensure that they have training in place
- Ensure that the company has a annual convention and that you can get there via incentives
- Can you do some form of advertising, a lot of companies disallow this
- Ensure that the company has incentives, this increases retention and excitement is formed in the company
- Ensure that the company has conference calls, as a lot of mums can’t leave their homes
- If they have only party plan, remember the sales are based on you being present at parties only. What if you or a family member gets sick.
- Is your monthly cheque dependent on a set amount of enrollees (eg some companies you need to get 3 people to get paid, this can be a stretch for some people who can only do very part time hours).
- The worst one of all, we were in a company where if we didn’t do better than the people in our team we would lose the team. Ensure you are not with a company that has this, eg letter of intents or you lose your downline. What’s the point of helping others, and working when you may not be as good as others in your team and then you lose them via the companies rules.
- Check out the compensation plan, have they won awards, is there great money involved.
- Ensure the presentation is to the point, not hours long and best based on the web.
- If you are currently involved in another business, leave your ego out of it and see whether you are with a good program via this tick score sheet. (My suggestion, we tried 4 companies before settling, and thank goodness we did).
- Ensure that the name recognition won’t impact your future business/sales. If you are ensure you can ask 5 strangers if they have heard of the company you are looking at, if they all have or most of them have, it could be difficult to have your business
- Can you upgrade to different levels, or do you have to start at a set position to get those benefits straight away.
- Ensure that if you move to another area do you lose your customer base, what’s the point of working and then passing it to someone else
- If you customers want to buy retail, does the company ship it straight to them, or are you a postal service which takes your time
- Is there a Unique Selling Proposition, ie no competition, a product people can’t buy at the shops, and something that evokes their emotions.
What About Other Forms Of Business?
PARTY PLAN
Do you have a product that people Need to buy and have repeat sales with eg if you have the best shoe’s in town, people can still buy them at the shops, and there goes your income. And how many shoes do people need a year.
People will only purchase goods that have value, you may see your sales drop in a recession, if they can get them from other places.
What if you get sick, does the business, only have party plan, if they do, your sales are dependent on you getting to the parties. And if you have kids, what if your kids are sick.
Testimonials are an excellent selling point, can you give testimonials as they tug at people’s hearts.
Is the product benefiting other people, there are many products in the party plan industry that don’t.
Our business can be done via party plan, but there are many other ways as well.
My suggestion, do a few things at parties, better to have some repeat residual sales than no income. Eg someone in the team is doing music books for kids with our new skin care launch as well as kids nutritional products, and is doing very well.
CHAIN LETTERS
Illegal
PROGRAMS THAT BUILD YOUR ENTIRE DOWNLINE
People are loyal to people not computers, people get in and 3 months later they are gone as no one orders, who would, and it looks easy. This business is simple, but not always easy as you need to change your behaviours ie less tv.
FAKE WEBSITES
There are business’s where you buy affiliate marketing, but basically what you are doing is setting up fake websites to send them to other websites, if this sits on your conscience then go for it, but don’t spend a lot of money, as Google is not cheap, and you are in competition with many other people.
PAYPAL
It’s great for the person advertising, but they get money for apparently showing you what to do, so again if this sits with your conscience. A lot of things advertised are e-books that you resell with the rights to resell, but anyone can do that and you have competition.
OTHERS
If you would like more of my opinions feel free to email me or to find more info visit my personal websites which are included in my profile.
(September 2007) (
