By: Steve Norris

If you are in outside sales in what is known as a hunter position, you are either a water bucket carrying salesperson, or you are a pipeline building salesperson. Find out why you need to identify which one you are, and which one you want to be!

Robert Kyosaki tells a great story about a village that had a serious water issue. They did not receive enough rainfall to provide water for the villages daily needs, and the river was a couple of miles away and highly inconvenient for the village people to go to every day. The mayor decided once and for all to put an end to the problem. He would put the job of bringing water from the river to the village up for bid, and they would outsource the project to the winning bidder.

Well, as luck would have it, two men put in their bid, and they were both awarded the project. The mayor figured a little competition never hurt anyone, and they would also always be sure that they would have enough water. Immediately, man number one went out, bought two water buckets, and started carrying buckets of fresh water early in the morning back and forth from the river to the village 6 days a week. He took Sundays off, so on that day the village did not have water.

Man number two did not buy buckets or start carrying water at all. In fact, no one was sure what he was up to. This made man number one quite happy, as he was earning all of the money as the sole source of water for the village. It was terrific! Man number one continued to carry buckets day after day, all day long under the hot summer sun, and he made a darn decent living doing so.

Meanwhile, man number two had gone to work gathering investors, developing a business plan, and received permits to build a stainless steel pipeline from the river to the village. Once complete, he was able to offer an endless supply of water to the village 7 days a week that was cleaner than what man number one was able to provide for 10% of man number ones price! Competition had arrived with a fury!

The example was told to Kyosaki by his rich dad to illustrate a point on work and investing, but doesn’t it also apply to you in the world of competitive sales? In the past 10 years, anyone in sales can tell you the games rules have changed, and they have changed with a fury!

If you are mindlessly cold calling day after day, with no long range plan on how to put your prospecting on auto-pilot, how are you any different than the guy carrying two buckets back and forth every day from the river? How can you continue to compete with a stainless steel pipeline with your two buckets as you get older and your back starts to ache from the unending physical toil? As the odds of you succeeding against those with a long range plan become slimmer and slimmer, how do you get out of bucket carrying mode and make your own pipeline before it’s too late? How can you possibly avoid burnout? How will you continue to compete in the new digital age with ancient methods of water transfer?

You can’t. And, you won’t. If you do continue on the road of carrying buckets day after day, the inevitable end will be sales burnout, ending up broke, bitter, and completely confused as to what happened. Even as you work right now, some of your competition is in the process of building stainless steel pipelines of new clients. And some of those customers used to be yours. How do they do it? What are they doing? How did they know? But perhaps most importantly, how can you do it?

The answer to the last question is different for every field and every industry, but yet the answer is the same in concept. It’s the power of leverage. How does the pipeline carry more water than the individual? It is a structure that took a lot of time and effort to build, that works 24 hours a day even when you dont, required a vision for the future, and it fulfilled a need. You need to repeat that exact same process in order to create your own pipeline. If you are not in an industry where that is possible, you may consider finding one where it is. Carrying buckets long term will almost guarantee sales burnout.

When you take a look at your industry, there is already someone who is building a better mousetrap and is in process of building their own stainless steel pipeline for finding qualified customers. It is never too late to catch up. But do not be fooled, there is no shortcut in the process. There are hours of hard work involved, tremendous amounts of planning to fulfill a market need, and a long range view of where you want to be. When you decide to become a pipeline builder instead of a bucket carrier, your mind will explode with creative ways to make it so, but it will still require a ton of hard work to get there. The sooner you can identify where you are in the process, the sooner you can begin to work towards where you want to be. Eventually, you should be able to put your prospecting on auto-pilot. Best wishes in your pipeline building!

Article Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com

About the Author:
Steve Norris is a Texas based Energy Efficient Electrical Contractor and Telecommunications Broker for over 80 carriers nationwide. He specializes in hardware solution for multi-location business with advanced infrastructure needs. Over 90% of his clients are able to implement a new technology infrastructure with Dallas VOIP solutions without increasing their budget with TeleTAP.

This Affiliate Program Review article will look at the program, ‘Easiest Home Business Ever’, brainchild of Australians, Wes Thornton and Andrew Clancy.

In short this business consists of a very comprehensive training program and access to the unique Freagle affiliate marketing platform and your own 3D eCommerce affiliate store.

In my opinion to be successful in any affiliate marketing business you will need to fulfill four criteria:

1. You must have the mindset to be successful.

2. You must know how to market effectively.

3. You must choose the right products to market

4. You must be able to take consistent action over time

So how will this program assist one to fulfill the above criteria?

By far the biggest reason why people do not succeed in business, particularly online businesses is that they never develop a business mindset. To be successful one has to be able to commit to a program, products and strategy until one is successful or sure beyond reasonable doubt that a change should be made. What happens in reality is people bail out at the fist sign of an obstacle and then go on to change affiliations and products without ever becoming successful at anything.

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What day did Dinosaurs first roam this world? Which was the first type of Dinosaur? We are not exactly sure, though MLM is not nearly as old, the exact date or type is also still unclear. MLM evolved over a number of years, the marketing system was in development prior to World War II. As we all know, MLM is still evolving and maturing everyday.

Though there is word on the internet that “Wachters” was the first company, most people think and agree that Nutrilite, “The California Vitamin Company” was the first true MLM company. Not that it necessarily started as an MLM company, but the type of compensation plan that it later evolved into was much like a multi-level commission payment generated plan.

In addition to being crowned with the founders of a network marketing payment plan, they were also the founders of the Vitamin and Food Supplements industry, way back in the 1920s. Two of the more successfully representatives of Nutrilite was Rich DeVos and Jay van Andel. In the ensuing decade, they built a large, prosperous organization across America.

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Are your loyal customers spread word of mouth marketing?

Your faithful customers will not always be your greatest referral builders. There is no relationship between buying behaviour, frequent spending or customer loyalty and word of mouth. Porsche customers are not referred to the brand by other customers relatively; Porsche gets its referrals from children that love cars. Gaze beyond who is buying and who isn’t to find your greatest referral builders for your niche business.

What referral methods are you applying in your niche market?

1.     Are you looking for recommending behaviour? Capture a gaze at the prospects using your tell-a-friend forms or frequently talking about your personal brand.

2.     Are you looking for readers? Your blog and newsletter subscribers are often your prospects looking for an interactive sharing of creative ideas.

3.     Are you looking for prospects who crave your products or services? Everyone wants to wear or employ your logo is a superstar who wants to show your personal branding to the world.

Watch the video below to be inspired and be prepared to have your personal customer attitudes changed. Your prospects and customers will be drawn to you like a magnet by what you put into practice and learn from Johnny the Baggers’ prompting. An unforgettable story about a young man who changes the culture of a grocery store by being creative and giving the customers more than they expect.

Inspirational movie about customer loyalty based on a true story!

What is your ‘passion about’ to be a home based business?

Globally, Internet has given us the great opportunities and tools to excel and discover what we are really passionate about to do and network with people with the same interests besides our own tribes or race. Whether you are stay-home mum looking after kids, students, etc… I believe we can find that thing that we are interested to do and start from there. I agree that there’s no such as money tree that will grow overnight! It takes self-discipline, courage, patience, forbearance, training or preparation and most of all PASSION and BELIEVING on your VISION! No matter what other people say. Let’s be optimistic than wasting time.

Are you really passionate about it? Do you believe it yourself? Then start it now! You might still thinking…RECESSION is a hurdle…it was proven fact that RECESSION is an opportunity! Research it yourself and you will find more interesting facts about it. Let’s look for the opportunities when they come along. They are everywhere in the marketplace online & offline. Grab it if it’s for you then go for it!

Here in Australia alone, according to the Bureau of Statistics Australia (2003) (ABS) in 2003, as many as 67% of all 784,800 small businesses in Australia, were actually home based businesses. With an estimated 4% increase rate per year.

From Robert Kiyosaki, known as the author of “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” they stated this in their book:

“If I had to do it all over again rather than build an old style of business; I will build a Referral Marketing Business.” 

Home base business is the fastest-growing segment in our global economy. It has $100 Billion worldwide sales. Direct Sales has created 6-7 figure earners than any other industry.

YOUR CHOICE and YOUR CHANCE… Is it a roll of dice? Is it flipping the side of a coin?

“Success in life isn’t just about a roll of the dice…It is about our CHOICE when CHANCE or OPPORTUNITY passes by!” G. G.

Just LOOK for the opportunity and enjoy planting your seeds now. Definitely, you shall reap what you sow!