Business Building During the Holidays

Business Building During the Holidays
By Pete Zdanis


The holiday season is fast approaching, and with it can come a whole set of new obstacles for the uninformed network marketer.

The obstacles:

Uninformed Network Marketer Mentality: “I’m going to take some time off during the holidays, and then start building my business again after the New Year.”

Uninformed Prospects Mentality: “Your business really sounds interesting to me, but why don’t you get back to me after the New Year, and we can discuss it then.”

How can we address these obstacles? Let’s start with the uninformed network marketer mentality:

Momentum is a very important part of our business. Momentum is simply maintaining a steady pace at anything. Once you lose it, it requires a lot of effort to get it back.

Think about driving your car down the highway at a steady 65 miles per hour. You are moving toward your destination and making good progress. However, when you pull off to the side of the road and stop, you are losing time, and it will require more time and energy (in this case, gasoline) to get back on the highway and accelerate back up to your previous cruising speed to get where you want to go.

The same is true of your business. When you stop making approaches and followups, you are no longer moving toward your business goals. And, the longer you take “time off”, the more time you lose and the harder it will be for you to get back to your previous business building pace. You will need to start making approaches from scratch, and you will have lost many of your prospects due to lack of followup.

Let’s say that you follow the tried and true method laid out in the “Power Of Two”. If you stop building your business from now until, say, January 2, you will have missed out on 98 approaches, 14 presentations, and at least 2 or 3 enrollments. Can you afford that? I know that we can’t.

And don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you don’t want to “bother” people with something like USANA during the holiday season. As you know, this is the season of giving, and the USANA products and business truly are gifts which we offer to our prospects, and it is up to them do decide if they choose to accept our gift.

If you don’t believe that USANA is a gift, then you need to re-think your belief level and business motives. Remember, building a USANA business has nothing to do with you, and has everything to do with your customers and prospects. Let me repeat that: Building a USANA business has nothing to do with you, and has everything to do with your customers and prospects. When you help other people meet a need or solve a problem, abundance will definitely come your way – for you AND your team members.

If you are not comfortable with that concept, try a simple exercise the next time you make an approach or presentation. Instead of thinking “What will signing this person up as an Associate or Preferred Customer do for my business?”, approach it from the standpoint of “How can my gift of USANA help this person?” You will be truly amazed at the difference in your results by making this simple shift in your thinking.

You see, so many people get things backwards when trying to build their USANA business, and that’s what leads to problems and failure. I know when I started out and was talking to a prospect, the foremost thoughts in my mind were where I was going to place this person when they signed up, and how much it would help my business. Now admit it, you’ve probably had the same thoughts, and maybe you still do from time to time. But, once I focused on trying to figure out how my gift could help my prospects, everything changed for the better for everyone, including me.

Now let’s talk about the uninformed prospect:

If a prospect tries to put you off until after the holidays, first of all tell them that you appreciate their concerns and respect their time, but that you just want to make two points with them before they make a final decision to wait until January.

Tell them that most people feel the same was as they do, and want to wait until after the holidays. So, what happens is that January and February are very strong business building months because people are looking to make a new start and improve their health and/or financial situation. By getting their USANA business set up now, your prospect can benefit from all of this activity instead of just being a part of it.
A major benefit of having a USANA business can be the tax advantages it offers. By getting their business set up now, they can potentially benefit from tax savings when they file their return in a few months, rather than putting those benefits off until they file their tax return in 2009.

Tell them that you respect whatever decision they make, but that you just wanted to make sure that they were aware of those two major benefits.

Remember, building a USANA business has nothing to do with you, and has everything to do with your customers and prospects.