Attributed to Percy White
“I don’t have time.”
Get used to those words. They are the network marketer’s curse. But, if you can learn to manage your own time better, you can persuade others through example and training, that “I don’t have time,” is just another way of saying, “You’ve yet to convince me this opportunity is worth my time.”
What activities would you accomplish, or extra projects you accept, if you had an extra day each week? How many more prospects could you contact if you had an extra eight hours each week, to do with as you please? Think about it. Imagine you lived in an eight-day week, while everyone else slugged away in a seven-day week. What could you accomplish?
Take tasks to the cleaners
by adding an extra day’s work to your week.
The trick to finding an extra day’s work for each week is time management. Now, you’re probably thinking already, “Oh no, he’s going to tell me I can’t have any fun.” Wrong. All you need to do is plan each day’s activities. Analyze how you spend your time, and get rid of time busters such as: waiting around for people without doing something useful, showing up for appointments an hour early then sitting in the waiting room twiddling your thumbs while you wait, or coming home from work and plopping down on the couch for four hours of mind numbing television. Time management is not about sacrifice. It’s about setting priorities and recognizing the time busters in your life. Consider the following example of a typical day:
• Preparing for Work………………………………………….1 hour
• Commuting to Work………………………………………...1 hour
• Work………………………………………………………...8 hours
• Dinner……………………………………………………….1 hour
• Family Activities……………………………………………4 hours
• Sleep………………………………………………………...8 hours
Look at that schedule. Where is the time to build a network marketing business? How about the time it takes to help your kids with their homework, or answer phone calls, and do household chores? There is a heavy demand placed on the average adult’s schedule. And not only must you figure this time management stuff out for yourself, you also need to be able to convince prospects that they have the time to work the business, because guess what? “I don’t have the time,” is one of the most commonly heard objections in the business.
To get the most out of each day, you need to learn how to shave minutes and fill dead time with productive activity. Start slow. For the first few weeks learn to save one hour each day. This can be accomplished by either cutting out one television program per night, spending less time in the bathtub, or simply planning your day in advance.
The trick to time management is to get rid of the dead time--put it to work for you. Listen to tapes in your car. Read a book while waiting in the doctor’s office. Spend your lunch hours doing something productive, rather than moping around the office cafeteria like most people.
You can find minutes every day that have the potential to add up to over eight hours per week. With that extra eight hours, you have a full day’s work advantage over everybody else each week. Which, incidentally, can amount to over one month of free days in a year (52 days to be exact).
Newbie Trap: Failure to make time available to work the business. Forget the excuses. You will find time to do the things that are important to you.Business is like the lessons in the Book of Ecclesiastics, which remind us that there is a time to sow, and a time to harvest. All things have their time. Business is no exception. You can’t always do what you want at a given time, sometimes you have to do the chores you’ve put off, make a phone call you’ve been dreading, or approach a prospect you’ve delayed meeting. The important thing is that you do, this minute, the thing that is most important and/or productive. Just as there are four seasons, there are four R’s of time management crucial to network marketing success: a. Read.
Yes, read a book. Learn a new sales technique. Rejuvenate your enthusiasm for success by reading a biography. Read something by Og Mandino, or Zig Ziglar. Read your sponsoring company’s literature.
b. Relax.Take a nap. Go fishing. Play catch with your daughter. Watch a football game. Enjoy the afternoon with your spouse. Recharge your batteries.
c. Rehearse.
Practice your sales presentation. Improve your plan presentation. Find new anecdotes or interesting stories to add to your presentations. Call a prospect and ask them for feedback on your presentation.
d. Recruit.Call people on your prospect list. Stand on a street corner and hand out business cards. Visit a new recruit and help her call on people from her prospect list. Present the plan. Attend an opportunity meeting with a guest.
Right now,
do the most productive thing possible.
If you’ll do the four R’s described above, and consistently apply the philosophy of “doing the most productive thing possible,’ one day soon you will be able to add a fifth R to your repertoire: “Retire in style.”
Morning Hours:
Afternoon Hours:
Evening Hours:
Where do you spend most of your time?
What activities are you currently doing that somebody else could do? (I quit washing my car when my son demonstrated the ability to use the water hose by watering his sister’s bedroom through the window)
How much time do you want to devote to building this business? You spend over 40 hours a week working for your boss, how many will you give yourself? What will you sacrifice to make it happen?