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If you haven’t experience any sort of business success at this stage of your journey, you may be one of the many who asks Google, the question: “how to be successful in business”.
Having found this page, you’re in luck! and actually, in for a great treat as this article wasn’t written by a paid writer who earns his or her living writing articles for others with zero business experience but by someone who actually runs a business and has experienced some successes in his chosen field.
I have been successfully running my business in the last three years and in those three years; not once have I relied on a salary as I have, convincingly and happily left the 9 to 5 world in 2012 when I got laid of from a job 14 months after I migrated to Canada.
“Without a job and with a family to support – in a new country, you might be crazy not to look for a job!”
That’s what a lot of people, specially my wife’s relatives thought and told me so… but guess what, four years after; my family and I are in a way a better financial situation and living a better life than those who ridiculed me for not looking for a job (and worst, starting a business) when I got laid off and I got nothing but a measly, $900.00 a month of employment insurance.
I did try (to look for a job) a couple of times, but at the time, I felt that I’m just not made to work for someone else. Also, being laid off at a job when you’re roughly one year in a new country isn’t a good sign – that just made me realize that there’s no future working at a job in this great country. However, opportunities abound if you are to look outside the employment world.
I have always wanted to start a business even when I was in the Philippines and I did try my hands in a handful of business opportunities but I guess, I wasn’t ready to succeed that time. Little did I know that those failures were preparing me to be successful in business later in life.
You see, I always believe that the great thing about starting and running a business is that you can always start again… with a clean slate and even well equipped.
In each business failure, you’ll pick up a handfull of lessons that will better equip you next time around. The thing is; in business, you only fail when you quit! It’s like life, most people fail in life and become what they could have been because they don’t stick around long enough into something that will help them achieve their goals. In other words – most people just quit too soon. You need to have an un-waivering faith if you want to succeed.
Table of Contents
Change Your Mindset
When you’re getting into business, you don’t doubt your own success nor fear the uncertainty. Businesses fail around you all the time but it doesn’t mean the entrepreneurs who run the business failed, personally, not unless they quit of course.
It doesn’t matter if it’s your 9th or 100th attemp; you need to be too stubborn to quit.
If there’s one thing you should fear, it’s the fact that you’ll have to work for someone else for at least 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for the rest of your working life and only be entitled for a four week vacation max per year.
So before you even start a business; as an entrepreneur, you have to change your mindset and you have to strongly believe and commit that you will succeed and that failure is not an option.
It doesn’t matter what everyone else around you is saying. In your mind, you are and should be successful. Failure don’t exist! Whatever setbacks you may experience, they are nothing but temporary setbacks.
Select The Right Opportunity, Niche, or Industry
Your business success will largely depend on the market. Whatever industry or niche you may be in. There should be a market who are hungry for whatever it is that you have to offer. Truth of the matter is, a lot of pepole do not become successful in business simply because they are in the wrong industry or they join business opportunities without really evaluating the company offering the business opportunity (which most are get rich quick schemes), the industry and the compensation plan.
The easiest way to start a business with little to no upfront capital, that has the capacity to make you profitable right away are still the ones in the direct sale industry. The direct sale industry is one of the oldest industries in the world and has time and again proven itself to be one of the not so many industries that produces the world’s many successful entrepreneurs.
The second most easiest, that doesn’t require a lot of capital is an online business which can also be a very rewarding venture over time but far from what most get rich quick gurus make you believe; an online business will take a far more longer time to replace your full time income if you don’t have the required capital for your advertising and marketing budget.
Having mentioned the word “easiest” or “easy”, I have to mention that I’m saying this with a caveat, not because it’s easy, it doesn’t mean that you don’t have to work for it. The ones that find success in the direct sales world and even in the online marketing world are some of the hardest working business people you would come to know.
Also, it doesn’t mean that because a direct sales business is the easiest business to start with little to no capital and one that has the potential to make your business profitable right away; should you jump head on the first direct sales or multi-level marketing opportunity presented to you.
Be for-warned that a lot of these businesses pay very little that it’s almost impossible to replace your full time salary not unless if you have hundreds of thousand downlines, which will make it very difficult for someone just getting started. Also, a lot of these opportunities are focused on recruitment alone because the company and the top people makes a lot of money on joining fees and starter package sales.
A direct sales business that truly offers the best entrepreneurial success opportunities isn’t marketed as a get rich quick scheme, is focused on sales and product movement, nurtures associate and leadership development, requires long term commitment, and fosters ethical business practices.
Recruitment in the direct sales industry isn’t a bad thing but when the company you work with or the leadership focuses too much on recruitment alone; then it may not be the right company for you if you want to be successful in business because if all you do is invite people to business opportunity seminars, you don’t actually grow as an entrepreneur, you just become good at inviting people and would most likely employ bad business practices to lure them into signing up as an associate. If you want to build a team, you have to establish your track record first. You wouldn’t want to be coached by someone who isn’t where you would want to go, would you? This goes without saying that you woudn’t be able to coach others to be successful in your business if you yourself aren’t successful at it (yet).
You have to be careful when evaluating a niche or opportunity as a business venture is a long term commitment. It’s like marriage, you’ll have to live with it
Have A Strategy
I was in Vegas early this month for a business convention and one of the topics they asked me to speak about was “lead generation”. Lead generation is a vital part of any small business or profession; without leads, you won’t have customers.
Roughly 3 years in this specific business that I’m involved in and yet, I and my team has been consistently one of the top producing team since year one when I was just starting out by myself.
Coming into any business organization or starting out your own, you have to start with a strategy…
What I learned in business early on is to focus in two things. The first one involves activities that will bring in money right away. And the second one are activities that will bring in money in the future. Your strategy should revolve around this fact; whatever business you’re in, you will need sales, without sales, your business won’t thrive.
Your strategy shouldn’t be as complicated as the Fortune 5 but you’ll need to have a couple of them at your disposal.
Without a strategy, you will find yourself running around in circles, without really achieving anything.
Don’t Beg for Sales Focus on Value
Speaking of strategy, you’ll also need to have a sales strategy that makes people buy because they want to, not because they’re forced into it. Never make your prospects feel that you’re selling them because you need to make a sale or that because you need the money.
Focus on delivering value, the money will follow. You see, people like buying, but I tell you, none of us wants to be sold!
Sales has evolved, don’t be a hard-core, loud mouth salesperson. You have to listen to your target market’s need. Keep in mind that you are in business to serve them, not just sell them.
Whatever products or services you have to offer, focus on selling yourself. You may be familiar with the idea most sales guru tout, the one that tells you to sell the sizzle or sell the benefits. Well, if the person you’re selling it to, don’t like you, chances are, you won’t get the sales. Sell yourself first, then you won’t have to beg for sales.
Come in with a strategy, don’t push it to them, establish relationships, then sell the sizzle!
Have Lunch… Or Dinner… Lot’s of Them!
Don’t just eat out. Take people who are already where you want to be out for lunch or dinner. Establish relationship with people whom you would want to learn from, do business with and get referrals from. If you talk to any successful salesperson or entrepreneur, you’ll learn that their business is entirely built by the relationships they foster. You have to surround yourself with centers of influences. Even when we say, that “you’re going to go out on your own” when you start a business, fact of the matter is; you can’t build a business ALONE. You need the help of other people, be it employees, staff, coaches and mentors, connections and centers of influence.
I am an online marketer and I believe that the marketing opportunities online is very huge but the truth is, if you want it fast, you either have to pay for traffic or find clients offline. In my business the very first clients I served came from referrals; I surrounded myself with centers of influences who believed in the value that I offer others.
You don’t have to over-spend of course, the point is that you have to offer people who you want to connect with some sort of value in order to get their attention and with this, I suggest that you have to offer genuine value.
The law of wealth is simple: You have to give massive value to as much people as you can.
Take Consistent Action… and be Persistent
Forget get rich quick schemes, most of the time; overnight successes are at least 10 years in the making, so don’t stop taking consistent action.
If you’ve read the Science of Getting Rich, Napoleon Hill’s Think And Grow Rich or any book of the same caliber, there’s only one secret to success, and that’s taking ACTION. If you are to compare how the wealthy go around their day with that of the poor and the middle class; you’ll see a major difference. For one, the poor and the middle class are controlled by circumstances, the rich controls the circumstances.
Everyone would like to start a business but very few will have the courage, patience and persistence to keep on hitting the throttle to achieve success. 95% of the time people quit at first signs of failure. If you want to be successful, you have to be failure-proof. You will have to accept the fact that you will fail multiple-times in your journey to success, you also have to acknowledge the fact that you have to fail in order for you to succeed.
A lot of people are too afraid to take action because they FEAR failure; this is a very stupid mindset! If you think this way, you will never succeed because the fear of failure will haunt you each time you’re about to take action.
Now that you know that failure is part of the journey, you have to do what you have to do and fail as much as you can; I know, this advise sounds stupid but you know what? You only succeed if you fail and you become very good at it.
Persistent action is the KEY to SUCCESS.
There’s a true story of a man, who was new to the city he was working in. With no friends or connection, who set out a goal to find himself a girlfriend in the next six months. His strategy was simple. Everyday he would stand outside the office he work for during his break and ask every lady who appealed to him to go out with him for coffee, of course, he was rejected most of the time but one girl said yes and ended up to be his girlfriend.
Most salespeople quit the first time they were rejected; most people would buy between the fifth and seventh time they’re exposed with the product.
Learn How To Sell
You already do it almost everyday. In fact, you’ve been selling all your life from when you first sold your parents to buy a toy that you really wanted and every time you go for a job interview. If you’ve been selling all your life, why then are you afraid to sell professionally?
The wealthiest men in the world are great sales people! You have to read that again. The wealthiest men in the world are great sales people.
You may have a bad experience with snake-oil salesmen who took advantage of you or a loved-one that’s why you dread learning it but it doesn’t mean that you’ll have to be a snake-oil salesman yourself.
A value-oriented sales skills will make you wealthy; true sales is isn’t about taking advantage of others, it’s about delivering valuable solutions to others.
Before you start selling a product or service, you have to make it a point that you believe in it and that it truly does deliver value to your clients or customers. Don’t sell a product or service that you don’t believe in or one that is designed to rip off your customers. The universe may not give you long term success. The bigger value there is; the more successful you will be and your success will be long term.
Years ago, salespeople pitch and pitch and pitch without ever listening to the clients. Nowadays, you have to learn how to listen to your clients’ needs and identify sales signal. When you feel that your client is ready to close the deal with you, you have to stop talking and bring out the paper work. Most salespeople lose the sale simply because they don’t know when to shut up thereby overselling the prospect.
You have to use the right words for words can make you rich but don’t lie to your prospects; lying would not do you any good for the long term. Your prospects are smart, help them make a well informed decision and they will close the deal with you. Don’t lie by promising the impossible for they will notice it.
If they need to think it over, give them the opportunity to think it over but always offer a win-win solution. Don’t pretend that you’re not going to make money off the deal. You have to make it a clear that you’re running a business and that you’re going to be compensated for the deal.
Honesty in sales will grow your business a thousand fold.
Shoot for Leveraged Income
You can only do so much in any given day. Work hard but learn how to utilize other people’s time and money whenever possible.
If you’re running a home based business. You have to leverage others wisely. You don’t just recruit people on your team. You have to train and build them up to be successful. Forget about “catching the big fish recruiter” on your team or trying to get a “superstar”, you have to learn the business yourself first so you can train your people to be the best at what they do. Also, if you’re in a company that’s focused too much on recruiting than production, you have to get out of that at once because the first money anyone will ever make is fro the sales of products or services.
Leverage wisely!
Leverage is expansion. Think of a traditional business for example. You would most likely start it on your own to save on labor cost and learn the ropes first then when you feel that you already know what you’re doing, start hiring people to leverage your time.
Same strategy will work with any home-based business. Don’t feel that you’re pressured to recruit people right away; you have to start by establishing your business first on your own. A true home-based business is one whose system will allow you to start making money without any down-lines.
If you’re in a traditional business or in sales, you have to leverage yourself by hiring others, using technology and attracting capital partners so you grow your business beyond what you can accomplish when you’re by yourself.
When you’re starting up a business, you have to build a business system around it as if you’re establishing a franchise, so time will come when it would run even when you’re not there so you can focus on other more important things than working on your business.
