This was a fun little video I did after getting back from a fun and exciting day at the rodeo.  As you can see by the video my kids are absorbing more than I ever thought.

The seriousness of the Plan – Do – Review strategy cannot (although I did in this video) be overlooked or even made light of.  Business decisions, real decisions that are going to predict the outcome of your future depend on implementing each one of these steps.

The impact for me was huge.  Here’s how it happened.

I was frustrated as most network marketers are.  Hours and hours online following a system that wasn’t producing the results I had been promised.  (And it wasn’t for a lack of effort, implementation or any of the other excuses we come up with – it just plain didn’t work)  I took advantage of some offline training where the Plan-Do-Review strategy was taught.  Company came out with a new offline promotional piece which I was excited about and sat down to plan my strategies and the results I wanted.

Using Jim Rohn’s advise of “Talk to 10 you’ll get 1, talk to another 10 and then another 10, etc.” I Photobucketcalculated I could and would talk to 10 people a week about my opportunity.  That was only 2 a day for 5 days a week.  The end goal was in 90 days I would be making $5000 a month.  Perfect.

I did it.  Talked to 10, got 1, talked to another 10, got another one.  And so on, some of them caught my excitement and enthusiasm and started to do the same.  Life looked good.

Five weeks into my 90 day time frame I started to run into some hitches.  With the company comp plan!  I had never really analyzed the comp plan.  Just absorbed and believed the applied spin.

Five weeks into it – I finally did the analysis !  Why?  Two things – same week – 2 different people.

PhotobucketThe comp plan was a weekly comp plan.  In other words you had to qualify every week with a 100 points before you got paid.  A young woman joined me on week 4 of my campaign.  It was a Thursday.  Saturday at midnight was the cutoff each week.  Monday morning (4 days after she joined) she called, all excited, she had an aunt and her mom wanted to order the vitamins.  Total points:  less than 100.  By the time she calculated the exchange rate to US dollars (which was high at that time), added in the shipping costs from the US (which is not cheap), called to tell her two first customers what the total cost was for each of their orders, they backed out.  She was discouraged but we worked through it.  Me encouraging, walking through how she could amalgamate orders all into one week etc.  but the killer blow came when she asked me “How much money would I have made off that order?”  The answer of course was none.  All the effort, all the time, all the hope, all the excitement of her first sale in her new business and the financial rewards were none.

PhotobucketWake up call #2 came the very next day.  Another lady excited but still working a more than full time job asked me if I would sign up 2 new people for her.  She was extremely busy that week and would I do that for her?  With the long term in mind I connected with her two contacts and found out one had just wanted more information and the other was one of the most negative people I had ever met.  I took a deep breath and signed this person up knowing full well she was going to be more trouble than she was worth.  I was right.  Over the next few days she had to examine every detail, call and complain she didn’t like this and did I know that and on and on it went.  The killer again was the comp plan.  I didn’t meet my own requirements of my plan that week as a large part of my time was devoted to these two AND there was no financial compensation for helping your downline in this particular scenario.  The comp plan was set up that if you were on the same pin level as your downline than the upfront bonus money went to the next highest pin level.  I made the choice to help my downline, walked away from my own business building activities and didn’t get paid for it.  More analysis.  What on earth am I doing this for?

By the end of the week, just with the two stories I shared with you, my time and energies were going into non revenue bearing activities.  That wasn’t what I had started a business for.

Could I change any of that?  Nope.  I didn’t own the company.  Couldn’t change the comp plan.

Could I change anything?  Yes.  Me.  I could start the search for a company that recognized helping someone else start their own business is not a volunteer position.

I could very well still be building that company believing that all I needed to do was keep working, never give up, it takes years to build a proper foundation, and all the other motivational phrases that were keeping a whole bunch of people in that company.Photobucket

I chose instead to create a Plan – Do the work and Review the results.   I didn’t like what I saw.  And chose to do the only thing I could do – find something that would work – for me, for my team and most importantly for my kids.

Do you have a plan?  Are you working it consistently and diligently?  Have you reviewed the results?  Were they what you expected?  If no, why not?  Was it the plan, the doing part or the results that let you down?  A good friend of my uses the formula:  Intentions + Mechanism = Results.  What are your intentions?  To make money?  What’s the mechanism you are using to get there?  Is it working?  Analyze your results then make a decision.

Is it your turn to find the success that has been elusive to date?  If so, connect with me, I’ve been there, done that and Plan – Do & Review is where it starts.

To your success,
Joyce Penner

Success With “The MLM Marketing Pro”

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