How to write your own check

November 8th, 2008 No comment

How many times have you read:” Are you tired of living paycheck to paycheck?” “Be your own boss!”, “Give yourself a raise”, “Write your own check”. If you’re somehow like me, I bet you’ve read it, heard it, (maybe even said it) a ton of times, especially if you are in a direct sales or network marketing home-based business.

But, how exactly do you “write your own check”?

Many people have no clue and they just go out to sell their product or service without a plan, just wishing they make enough profit to pay for a dinner in their favorite restaurant on a Friday night…

They fool themselves into thinking that they are rewarding themselves for their efforts and that it takes a long time to make a significant income with a home-based business. I just hope this is not your case.

It is true that it takes time to build a significant income with ANY business, but I’m sure most people are making less money than they could actually make each month with their business because of lack of direction.

I have been working strictly on commission since 2000 and I’m going to share with you my method for planning and actually “writing” my check.

It’s easy, you’re going to say: “why didn’t I think of that sooner?”

I call it “Planning Backwards” (This example is only based on your personal sales, I’m not taking into consideration any downline income or other bonuses, that you may have)

  • Determine how much you want to make, let’s say you want your monthly check to be: $1,000.
  • Find out how much comission you make, let’s say you earn a 30% comission on all sales.
  • Divide the dollar amount of your desired check by the comission percent you earn ($1,000/0.30=$3,333.33).

    • The result is the total dollar amount of the required sales to earn that $1,000 you want. You need to sell at least $3,333.33 dollars to earn a $1,000 check. That is your long term goal.

    At this point you think: “Is this woman crazy, how on earth will I sell $3,000 in a month?”. Trust me, you’ll see ;-)

  • Let’s divide this total in sections, into smaller, more achievable goals. For weekly sales, you divide the total sales required by 4 (weeks in a month) ($3,333.33/4=$833.33)
  • You will need to sell $833.33 dollars every week to achieve your goal.
  • Let’s say you do home shows, and usually you do 2 a week, this means that each show should be of at least $416.67 to reach your goal, ($833.33/2=$416.67).

    • Now you know that if you don’t reach that amount of sales in the actual party, you can work with your hostess so she gathers more book orders until you reach that amount for her show.

    Do you see where I’m going? Not that hard, huh? What if you did 3 or 4 shows a week?

  • Let’s say you are selling person to person, or that you can commit on your business to work 5 days a week. Then, you will divide the total sales by 5 ($833.33/5=$166.67).
  • This means that you will need to sell $166.67 a day to meet your goal. In some opportunities this means only 1 product!

    • Now that you know how much you need to sell per day or per show, you need to tie that down to how many contacts will you have to approach in order to get the bookings or presentations you need to sell your product or service.

    Perhaps you will need to talk to 5 people to get 1 presentation, maybe you will need to talk to 10, this varies depending on your business, market and area. Take the guesswork out of your business!

    Take control of your business and more importantly your income. Wasn’t that the reason you started your own business? To be your own boss, to work your own hours, to “WRITE YOUR OWN CHECK“? Think about it!

    About Mariangie - She lives in Puerto Rico where she works full time as an Agronomist, owns a home based business since 2004 and is the proud mother of 2 bright kids (and 2 cute cats).
    Filed under Home Business

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