subject: Make Sure You Have A Plan B? [print this page] Many of us are optimists and have a shell be right attitude.
This sort of attitude will work for some people some of the time, but there becomes a point where being unemployed each Monday is not really how we want to start a week.
There becomes a time when you want to know that you have a plan B and therefore know that there will be some cash coming in each and every week.
Having a plan B gives you the comfort of knowing that you and your family have some sort of financial security, it also demonstrates to a bank that you have a regular income.
Create Your Plan B
Knowing how to set up your business or having a secondary business to create a plan B can seem too hard. Within many businesses the people are working so hard just to stay afloat that the thought of extra work is not something they want to consider.
Within my business I knew that I needed to change the way I was doing things so that I had a regular cashflow but there were very limited options that I could see for doing this. We could make a lump-sum each time we made a sale, but there was not really any way to create a residual income or to spread the payments.
Instead I had to look outside of our business for other products or ideas (and there are hundreds of options) and in the end it came down to finding a product that I could market and earn a profit. I had a few fundamental requirements;
I wanted a quality product that was competitively priced
I wanted a consumable product so that customers continued to re-order
I wanted a supplier that I could trust to deliver on time and pay me on time
I didnt have the money that would enable me to fund a large upfront cost
I was not looking to be a millionaire within a month! I was looking for a regular passive or near passive income that would grow overtime but be sustainable.
I preferred to partner with a supplier that would handle the customer relationship so that my time could still be spent on my primary business and therefore my plan B would really remain a passive income.
When I looked at my requirements I knew it would not be an easy task to find a plan B that would provide what I was wanting.
Most suppliers either had a good product that was too expensive or wanted me to commit to a large quantity of product before I even knew if it would sell. The existing businesses that I looked at were too expensive for me to buy into and most really needed a full-time commitment which I was not willing to give as this was only my plan B.
I looked at some network marketing businesses and some of these were okay, but often the products seemed overpriced and many of them therefore required a hard sell approach to get the customer. From my own previous experience as a customer I also knew that the retention rate was low.
My Plan B
Then I found a great company called Melaleuca that operates what they call Consumer Direct Marketing.
This company has a range of product, but what got me interested was the eco-friendly cleaning product as this is something that every household uses on a daily basis and therefore the customers would continue to purchase. The company also has focused on ensuring that the products are priced like the supermarket brands pricing, but a lot better product.
Best of all, the systems are all in place so that I didnt need to create a new business model. All I need to do is use the product; refer people (my customers) to Melaleuca so then they can then purchase product from the Melaleuca website and I receive a nice little referral fee from each sale.
I am happy to discuss this opportunity with you and you can email me if interested to know more.
Email: sales@onlinebiz.co.nz
Finding Customers
Getting customers for any business is the challenge and I need to do this both in my main business and in my Melaleuca business.
The advantage of the modern world is there are now easy ways to connect with people and promote both yourself and your product. If you are reading this article and have gotten to read this paragraph then I could probably assume that you have a computer and know how to use it.
I discovered not too long ago about the power of social media with websites like Facebook that have an amazing amount of people that will be on Facebook on a regular basis and many will be on there each day.
The problem was I knew very little about how to connect with people on Facebook. I had a profile and had a few friends, but I didnt realise the potential or know how to tap into it. I then found some free Facebook training and this opened up a whole new world to me.
Facebook is now a major part of my marketing strategy and I have been blown away by the results!
