Company Incentive helps to Galvanise me into Action!

At the beginning of this month the Franchise business I am involved with (Utility Warehouse) made an offer that is too good to miss! All I have to do is gather a minimum of two customers each month until the end of May and I will be given 500 Telecom Plus shares. If I manage to gather a total of 15 customers by the end of May, I will be given 1000 shares! At present, the Telecom Plus shares are trading at around £18. So I have the chance of gaining £18,000 for just a little effort!

My usual methods of just talking to people and the occasional High Street Win a Mini, only produces about one customer every other month! To achieve a higher gathering average, I needed to try something different.

One of the tools available to me is to post a neighbourhood letter to the houses in my village. The idea is to post the letters, and then knock on their doors a few days later, to see if they have read the letter. At the moment, there is a lot of discussion regarding whether this is doorstep selling, as this is no longer allowed, especially where energy is concerned, I am a bit dubious of working this way. The way some people have got round this is to knock on peoples door and ask them if they would like to enter a Free Prize Draw. If they say yes, then you give them the form and say you will be back to collect the form in a day or two. Attached to the form is the neighbourhood letter, which they can read if they want to. This technique, I am told, proves to be quite successful.

Yesterday, I stapled Win-a-Mini forms to 20 neighbourhood letters, and set out to deliver them. I had to knock on 50 houses (it feels uncomfortable when you first start, but it gets easier with practice), before I managed to give out the 20 forms. This morning, I visited the 20 houses again, and out of the 20, 6 of them returned the forms - without filling them in! 2 had already lost them! 4 couldn't find them, or hadn't looked at them and could I come back later in the week? The rest either were not at home, or wouldn't answer the door!

What I have learned from this experience, is that I need to do more of these, as there is a definite skill to approaching people this way. It is like climbing a ladder. Take a step with your left leg - learn the techniques. Take a step with your right leg - put the techniques you've learned into action.

It looks increasingly likely I won't manage to gather the required 2 customers this month, but there will be other opportunities in the future, and by then, I will have built up enough skill and experience to achieve the goals I set myself.