It’s estimated that 97% of people who begin a direct sales business fail. This number discourages many people to even begin what could be the business of their dreams. The fact is 97% of people who start a small business using direct sales fail, but most fail for the same reason – they don’t set goals. Direct sales opportunities are designed to help people easily succeed in business, but like other businesses if you start without a plan, your chances of failure skyrocket.

All direct sales companies operate the same. They provide a product; handle the shipping, returns and even the sales tax. You sell the product to people and encourage others to start their own business. You are paid based on a percentage of your sales and your team’s sales. Starting, managing and maintaining a business doesn’t get any easier.

Like other businesses, in order to succeed you need to set goals and strive to meet them. But, in order to do this you need to know how to set goals properly. A goal shouldn’t be unrealistic. For example, someone just starting a business shouldn’t set a goal to profit $500,000 the first year. Setting an unrealistic goal makes the goal seem more like a dream than an actual goal. Instead, start smaller. Look at your company’s compensation plan and decide where you want to be in the next six months. Then, take that goal and break it down into smaller month to month goals. Once you have your monthly goals, devise a week-to-week plan to meet them.

Countless direct sales business owners make more every month than they would working a full-time job. They only work part-time hours and they set their own schedule. Yet, they still make a generous income. They succeeded because they had goals and they strived to meet them. Success is truly only a goal away.

If you’re looking for good direct sales opportunities, it’s important to make sure you find a good company with good products. Scentsy is a great company to work with and their wonderful products have created a loyal customer base. There’s no better way to start your direct sales career!

Direct Sales Business Education

The CashFlowShow – Direct Sales Radio will offer topics that teach work at home Moms(WAHM) home business & direct sales consultants how to create a consistent cash flow from home, using proven systems that work for all businesses no matter what the product line is. The show is a talk format with special guests on alternating weeks. Listeners may call in for audience Q & A, and Deb loves audience participation.

Win Direct Sales Training Program

The success of the show depends on YOU the listeners. With direct sales growing on a worldwide scale this move for The CashFlowShow from teleseminars to internet radio will fill a huge need internationally. Share The CashFlowShow – Home Based Business & Direct Saless Radio with your friends all around the world and win The CashFlowShow program for building your business and finding BOOKINGS! Share this link with your team and friends and get an entry for all new referrals and all international referrals. http://www.createacashflowshow.com/sweepstakes/radio.htm The Power UP For Professional Results grand prize is valued at $97!! How does that sound? You will get paid $97 for a referral!

In my opinion, the best way to get started in the network marketing industry is to work with the people you know. I know that a lot of people will disagree with this statement, so I’m going to take a few moments and explain why I feel this way.

If you are new to MLM, chances are you don’t know anything about sales or marketing. You don’t know much about online lead generation, capture pages, pay-per-click advertising, or any of the other important online marketing skills.

But you do know people. You have a sphere of influence. In fact, you probably have 300-1,000 people who you know, like and trust.

If you start your network marketing journey by talking with friends and family, you will do well. Your secret to success is your approach. In most cases, new distributors are taught to make a name list and then to pitch their business opportunity to anyone who is willing to listen.

That’s a recipe for disaster because most people have no desire to get involved with network marketing. But, many of those same people will be interested in your products.

Before you talk to anyone about your products or business opportunity, you need to spend a few hours creating a large name list. Ideally, you want 300 to 800 names on your list. That might sound overwhelming, but if you block off three hours of time, you will come up with that many names.

You want a large list of names so you have lots of people to talk with.

Here’s a few ways to get started:

• Write down all your Facebook friends
• Make a list of family members
• Refer to old high school yearbooks
• Play the alphabet get (names starting with “A.” then “B” etc.

Once you have your name list, pick the easiest person to approach and ask them if they would be interested in sitting down with you one-on-one to learn about some great products. Chances are, they will sit down with you.

After you meet with them and get an order, you need to do two things. First, see if they are willing to book an in-home party where you can come over and showcase the products.

If they aren’t willing to do that, try to get two referrals from them and follow-up with those people.

By following the advice in this article, you will achieve success in any network marketing company.

To learn other great ways to succeed in direct sales or network marketing, visit our website at http://www.multi-level-marketing-website.com/mlm-plan.html. Charles Holmes is an author, infopreneur and marketing guru.

Whether you joined your company for the additional income, the fun and products, or the tax benefits, taking the following steps will enable you to get control of your business finances for higher profits and greater peace of mind.

• Control your spending. Write down in advance what you will need for your business in the coming month. First, focus on business essentials such as catalogs and show supplies. Then be conservative for additional expenditures like buying equipment for your office or supplies for organizing.
• Be creative. Necessity is the mother of invention. Find ways to reduce unnecessary expenses by thinking creatively. Invite a prospect to your home for dessert and coffee rather than taking her to lunch at a restaurant. Make long distance calls to customers and hostesses on your cell phone if your plan includes free long distance minutes. Find new ways to save!
• Get Organized. Disorganization not only costs you time; it costs you money as well! Avoid wasting money on too many copies or duplicating forms by organizing your files. In addition, have a place in your wallet and a file in your desk where you place receipts for business expenses. Imagine the thousands of dollars in tax-deductions you may have missed simply because you did not keep a receipt.
• Track every business expense for the month. At the end of each month, total what you have spent on your business. Consultants who are maximizing tax benefits keep two totals: “Essential Expenses” and “Maximized Write-Offs” so they can see the additional benefits they are enjoying from their legitimate home-based business expenses. Write the highest total on the outside of a 9X12 envelope for each month.
• Track your income. List all your income for the month on the outside of the envelope as well. These will include Retained Profits (the 30-36% you keep from each show), Overrides (the amount earned on your team’s sales volume), and Bonuses (kit and volume bonuses).
• Compare income to expenses. Subtract your expenses from your income and evaluate the results. Keep in mind that if you are maximizing your tax benefits by writing off every legitimate expenses you would incur whether you had a business or not, you may show a loss that does not truly reflect the profitability of your business. This saves you tax dollars!
•  Make necessary adjustments. How can you reduce expenses next month? Are there expenses, such as mileage that you are not taking advantage of? How can you increase your income next month? These questions will help you get greater control of your business finances and give you a feeling of confidence and success!

Jane Deuber is a Co-Founder of http://www.DSWA.org (the only association dedicated to the needs of the independent party plan and network marketing professionals). Discover what makes the DSWA so unique. Listen to three motivating and informative free teleseminars by visiting [http://www.mydswa.org/tele_class.asp]

Twitter is no longer just one of your run-of-the-mill social media services. Twitter has in fact revolutionized social media services to such an extent that Twitter followers no longer just tweet about what they ate for lunch or what time their plane will touch down the airport. Twitter followers are corporate giants, high-profile celebrities, and all the rest of the planet altogether who use this grand daddy of social media services for information, socializing, and huge income-generation through web marketing.

How to use Twitter’s social media services to your business’ best advantage? A large following of course. The more Twitter followers your business have, the wider is your potential customer base, the greater is the possibility of sales conversion.

To increase your Twitter followers, here’s some neat tips:

1. Choose the best Twitter ID – Use a Twitter name that is relevant to your business, such as your business name or your business’ official website or blog. Some popular niche experts even use their real names to attract more Twitter followers. A stand out logo or Twitter avatar completes your Twitter identity.

2. Follow and be followed – Social media services are all about relationships. From a zero following at the start, increase your Twitter followers by following them first. Many of the follows that you created will almost always follow you back in a give-and-take relationship.

3. Learn from the experts – Twitter is one of those social media services that makes it easy to connect with niche leaders and experts. Follow these experts and learn how they tweet. And, if you answer or ask them questions, it seems you actually “know” these experts, and that makes you interesting enough for others to follow.

4. Tweet interestingly – Twitter followers perk up at attention-grabbing stories and images. Social media services often churn out a lot of trivial information, which is why links to interesting stories are always appreciated. When Twitter followers are interested, they re-tweet this interest to others, giving your original tweet increased exposure.

5. Be recognized as a niche expert – Social media services like Twitter allow for experts to rise in the Twittersphere, if you have something relevant to say, that is. So if your business offers a service or an expertise, tweeting about these services in a way that’s useful to Twitter followers will earn you their respect (and re-tweets), and will raise you to the rank of niche expert steadily for added exposure.

6. Use Twitter tools – Tweet Later is very useful as an auto-responder and for automatically sending direct messages to new Twitter followers. And, to increase the people you are following, Humming Bird is a very intelligent tool that automatically follows Twitter users based on search keywords. Twitter is one of the social media services wherein you can follow as much as 5000 people daily, using Humming Bird.

7. Recommend others – The golden rule applies in social media services like Twitter. If you find a tweet interesting or useful, recommend the tweet to your Twitter followers and encourage them to follow. There’s a big chance that you will get the same treatment — your tweets being re-tweeted and recommended to other Twitter followers.

8. Three-peat important tweets – As one of the most popular social media services, Twitter gets 24×7 daily user logins. For your important tweets, try posting them three times within the day to get maximum exposure from Twitter followers, who may belong to varied time zones.

By: Debbie A. Everson