Im in network marketing, and I need to improve my marketing skills. Ed explained that after going through two layoffs, he simply did not want to get back into the corporate world. After eight months on his own, he was disappointed in his own performance, and hoped coaching would help.
I decided to get to the point immediately. What percentage of the income you need have you earned in the last three months? Less than ten percent. Ed assured me that he really understood the work necessary to be a successful network marketer. He closed sales in about fifty percent of his customer appointments.
When I asked how he spent his time, he admitted that he would start each day by checking his email, and then get involved in doing research on the web. How much time did he spend on the web? He first said, too much and finally, four to six hours a day.
Why so much time? Ed said that it was very hard to make his first phone call of the day. The longer he could stay online, the longer he could put off the discomfort of making that call. Ed explained that he needed to call dozens of leads to set up the appointments that could result in sales. He spent his work time in chat rooms instead of making calls.
We then looked at numbers. How much did he want to earn? How many appointments did he need to have to make that much? How many calls did it take to get one appointment? How many calls would he need to make each day to get those appointments? Simple calculations, but he had never looked at them before. He was making only a fraction of the calls he needed.
When Ed understood what he needed to actually do to achieve his goals, he realized how his Internet abuse had undermined his own possibility of success. When I asked how he could avoid spending so much time on the web, he said he would discipline himself to make the needed number of calls before he turned on his computer.
Ed already had all the marketing skills he needed. His real challenge was facing his addictive behaviors and using his time productively.
Coaching Tip: Watch for addictive behaviors that first relieve discomfort and then takes more and more energy until those behaviors become a new problems.
Additional Information: Free Mini-Course:Integrity Use It or Lose It!
[tags] Coaching, Telling the Truth, Self-Management [/tags]
