Working Smart can pay dividends!

Today, my wife had an appointment to see her doctor, so we decided to do some multi-tasking. My wife, my daughter, and myself arranged to walk to Stony Stratford. My wife to go to the doctor's for her appointment. My daughter to take our dog for a walk, and myself to keep them company and do a 30 minute High St WAM. We all achieved our various aims, our dog was completely worn out with the exercise (our daughter too!). My wife completed her appointment which conveniently took 30 minutes to complete. During the wait, I successfully managed to do the following -

Location	Time Taken	People Asked	Forms Filled	Call Back	Appointments
Stony Stratford	09:58 - 10:05	6	1	Nil	1
	10:09 - 10:16	11	1	Nil	1
	10:20 - 10:28	7	1	1	Nil
Totals	30 Minutes	24	3	1	2

Not bad for 30 minutes work, that would have been spent idly sitting in a doctor's surgery!

Multiple Chances For Me to Win £1000

As You may be aware, I am trying to build my business into something substantial. Unfortunately, because I am basically very lazy, and lack drive and motivation, the business is growing at a snails pace. the only saving grace I have is, I don't quit! To that end, I decided to do a High Street WAM (Win A Mini competition), only this time, I set myself a target of gathering at least 2 appointments every week, no matter how many WAM's it took! Rather than look to get the appointments in one day, I have to keep going every day until I do achieve my target. So this post is a work in progress, showing what I get up to over the course of this week.

Monday

Today, I visited Stony Stratford again, to see if I could gather any appointments. I did gather one appointment, but unfortunately, the customer then phoned me 15 minutes later to cancel the appointment. He didn't want to reschedule the appointment either! I spent 90 minutes there, and only got 6 forms filled in. At least that means I get 6 more chances to win £1000 next year! Below is the table of my efforts in Stony.

Location	Time Taken	People Asked	Forms Filled	Call Back	Appointments
Stony Stratford	10:30 - 10:45	27	1	Nil	Nil
	10:50 - 10:55	14	1	Nil	Nil
	11:00 - 11:10	23	1	Nil	Nil
	11:15 - 11:20	3	1	Nil	1
	11:25 - 11:26	1	1	Nil	Nil
	11:30 - 12:00	41	1	Nil	Nil
Totals	90 Minutes	109	6	Nil	1

Tuesday 

I didn't do any major work promoting my business today, as I had a hospital appointment in the morning, and took my wife shopping in the afternoon. My 3 week holiday was cut short after only the first week as I was desperately needed back at work to cover for staff sickness. Initially it should be for only 5 days, so hopefully, I will be back on holiday next week. So tonight, I will be working night shifts for the next 5 nights.

However, I did have an appointment to see someone about the business opportunity. The meetimg went well, but he couldn't be considered a canditate until he turns 18, which is next week. So I have another appointment arranged to see him on his birthday!

I also received a phone call from a potential customer, and have arranged an appointment for Thursday evening.

Wednesday

As a bit of activity to drive my business forward, I placed 50 business newspapers inside the daily Metro newspapers. Hopefully, they will spread out around London, and someone might pick up the business newspaper and give me a call.

I had to take my wife to work in the morning, and collect her again in the afternoon, so my day's sleep was disrupted somewhat, so not much time was available to do much else today.

Thursday

Again, I dipatched another 50 business Newspapers inside the Daily Metro Newspaper. This time I chose a different location for the Newspapers. My idea was that a completely different number of people would pick up these papers. So far, there has been no response - yet! I won't be giving out any more of these newspapers, as I have finally used up all the stock I had. Considering that I bought the supply nearly 4 years ago, it's about time I got around to distributing them all! It will be a few months before I order some more newspapers, as I am currently saving up for a mobile booth to do the WAM (Win A Mini) events at Car Boot Sales, Fairs, and weekend Markets.

Friday

Today, I arranged to do a High Street WAM with one of my team. Together, we went to Stony Stratford, and we stood there for 30 minutes asking people if they wanted to enter a free prize draw. My team member managed to get a few forms filled in, but alas, she didn't get any appointments. Below is a table of my own efforts, which ended with me gaining an appointment next week!

Location	Time Taken	People Asked	Forms Filled	Call Back	Appointments
Stony Stratford	14:55 - 14:57	7	1	Nil	Nil
	15:00 - 15:03	3	1	Nil	Nil
	15:07 - 15:08	1	1	Nil	Nil
	15:14 - 15:16	2	1	Nil	1
Totals	30 Minutes	13	4	Nil	1

At least the first hurdle has been negotiated, now all I have to do is get over the next hurdle of getting the customer to let me visit them as arranged. Then I stand a chance of getting over the final hurdle of getting them to become a customer!

On my regular occupation, I have now been asked to work the full 7 nights! What happens next Tuesday could be interesting, as that is when I would have been doing my own night shift if I wasn't on holiday. The person who is supposed to covering my shift, is now on holiday himself! So it is anybody's guess as to who will be covering those duties next week. I wouldn't be surprised if I get a desperate phone call from my manager asking for help again!

Return of the High Street WAM

After a couple of months of finding excuses not to do WAM's (It's raining, it's too cold, haven't got time), I arranged to do a High Street WAM with my colleague Matt, who is in need of some confidence and motivation in moving his business forward.

So together, we visited Stony Stratford High Street for 30 minutes. It wasn't raining, but there was a cold wind that made me wish I had been wearing gloves! Matt stood on one side of the road, and I stood on the other side, that way no-one would be able to escape us!!

Matt managed to talk to 39 people, but unfortunately he didn't get anyone to stop and fill in a form. I talked to 51 people, of which 2 stopped to fill in a form. As a result, I now have one appointment, and one call back to make next week. I even managed to give out a DVD about the Business Opportunity!

With this and any subsequent WAM's I do, I am trying to focus more on looking for people who are interested in the Business Opportunity. Gathering customers, will just be a useful bi-product that happens by default. I have been set a challenge to recruit someone into the business by one of the most successful people in this business, and get the new recruit qualified before July 1st this year. So now I will need to ramp up my activity to make sure I achieve the challenge set before me!

Below is the chart of the activity I did in Stony Stratford.

Location	Time Taken	People Asked	Forms Filled	Call Back	Appointments
Stony Stratford	10:30 - 10:35	10	1	Nil	1
	10:38 - 10:55	41	1	1	Nil
Totals	25 Minutes	51	2	1	1

Success in Rugby!!

As you may have noticed, I have been attempting to build my business through doing WAM's (Win a Mini) in various town and village High Streets. I was told that it was a far better method of utilising my valuable time to gather customers.

Last year I delivered 25,000 leaflets at the rate of 200-400 a day, taking anything from 90 minutes to 3 hours to complete each day I did them. For all my effort, I only successfully gathered 10 customers and one new team member (distributor). By my calculations, I invested about 185 hours of my time in this enterprise.

With the WAM's, I now invest a maximum of 30 minutes each time I do it. Within that time, I now manage to get at least a call back or an appointment on each occasion. I didn't when I first started, so I have now improved my technique, to progress to the present stage I am at now.

Last month I travelled to Rugby to meet up with another colleague in this business, to help him get used to doing the High Street WAM. It was bitterly cold, and I managed to stay there for only 10 minutes. I did manage to get a form filled in with a call back to be made in early February. A few days ago I made contact, and arranged for an appointment today.

Whilst I was in Rugby, I also did a High Street WAM, this time I managed 20 minutes before getting too cold (The temperature only got as high as 2 celcius!). The results of my activity are displayed below. My colleague also came along but he didn't do much activity.

The person I had appointment today with has become a customer! So this is my first successful completion of gathering a customer through the High Street WAM, start to finish!! Now all I need is for the weather to warm up, and I will be going for this technique BIG time!

I am also learning another technique that will hopefully gather customers at a faster rate than the High Street WAM's. Again, it will take a lot of practice before the dividends will pay off. Between these two techniques, I hope to step up my conversion rate and achieve my target of gathering at least one customer a week. At the moment, I feel like an airoplane bouncing along over bumpy ground, trying to gain speed. Eventually I will get up to speed and then I will suddenly take off! Then the skies the limit!!

Location	Time Taken	People Asked	Forms Filled	Call Back	Appointments
Rugby	12:50 - 12:55	21	1	Nil	Nil
	13:00 - 13:10	10	1	Nil	1
Totals	20 Minutes	31	2	Nil	1

What has happend to British manners?

I am frankly puzzled why some people have no manners. The world would be a much better place if we all practised being polite and being honest. Time and time again, I meet people who do not have the decency to respond politely to me. For instance, at work we have a radio comminication system that you can set for each individual Station. It is easy to accidentally switch the channel from your own Station to another one. When I hear someone request information on my Station channel, and know it isn't one of my staff, I politely let them know they are broadcasting on my Station, and they should check which channel they are on. What I would like to happen is the person to radio back and say thank you. What normally happens is dead silence! It's as if they are embarrassed to acknowledge they have heard me!

Another annoying habit people have is their way avoiding having to say no! I arranged to see someone today. As common courtesy, I phoned them an hour before I am due to be there to see if it is still convenient. Their first reaction is, "Sorry, I can't hear you, you're breaking up." Then the line goes dead. When I ring back again, they pick the phone up, as soon as I speak, they put the phone down on me. When I phone a third time, their answer phone is switched on! And all I was trying to do was confirm it was OK to go and see them! How difficult would it have been for them to say "no!".

Business Activity this week

Rather than give a day by day account of my activity with the WAM's and other methods I use for gathering new customers into by business, I decided to amalgamate a weeks worth of effort into one post. Probably, that will mean only one entry, if I don"t galvanise myself into doing more activity! This week has been a fairly busy one so far.

On Sunday, I headed off to Birmingham to attend a company Kick-Off Seminar. The idea of athe word Kick-Off is to literally Kick-Off the Christmas blues and get back into building your business again. The seminar was interesting as we had a guest speaker Tom 'Big Al' Schreiter give us some very good ideas on how to talk to 'prospects' as he called them.

On Monday, I started my personal self-development, by beginning to read a book "Goals!" by Brian Tracy. My aim is to try and read 10 pages a day. Also I visited Northampton to do a WAM

Location	Time Taken	People Asked	Forms Filled	Call Back	Appointments
Northampton	12:05 - 12:30	37	1	Nil	Nil
Totals	25 Minutes	37	1	Nil	Nil

On Friday, I visited Stony Stratford High Street, where I had some success. In the space of half an hour, I got 4 forms filled in and one led to an appointment being made. So the first hurdle was negotiated, geting an appointment. Now it remains to be seen if I actually get to the appointment, or will the customer cancel before I even get there!

Below, is the activity generated at Stony Stratford.

Location	Time Taken	People Asked	Forms Filled	Call Back	Appointments
Stony Stratford	15:50 - 15:52	1	1	Nil	Nil
	15:56 - 16:05	20	1	Nil	Nil
	16:10 - 16:15	14	1	Nil	Nil
	16:20 - 16:25	5	1	Nil	1
Totals	35 Minutes	40	4	Nil	1

On Saturday, I visited Bletchley High Street. I had to do this in the late afternoon as I am working night shifts this week, and I normally sleep in the mornings. Of course by the time I got to Bletchley it was nearly closing time for a lot of shops, so the number of people walking by on a bitterly cold night was a lot less than I expected. After only 24 minutes, with fingers numbed from the cold, I was about to give up and go home without getting anyone to stop and enter the prize draw, when someone did stop and give their details. More importantly, they agreed to have an appointment the next day!

Below is the result of my efforts in Bletchley.

Location	Time Taken	People Asked	Forms Filled	Call Back	Appointments
Bletchley	16:25 - 16:49	43	1	Nil	1
Totals	24 Minutes	43	1	Nil	1

On Sunday, an hour before my appointment with the customer I met in Bletchley the day before, I phoned them to confirm the appointment was still going ahead. The customer then said that something else had cropped up and could they arrange another time? So the appointment has been postponed until the next day. This is something that happens frequently, and I have learned from bitter experience to ALWAYS ring the client BEFORE setting out. The one occasion I didn't do this was to a client who lived 100 miles away. Despite waiting for 2 hours at his house, he didn't come home, and he wouldn't answer his phone!

I will phone the Bletchley client again to confirm that they will be there at the appointed time, before I leave home. That way I don't waste my time and fuel setting out on a pointless journey.

Still No real progress yet!

This year hasn't got off to a good start yet regarding my ability to gather new customers, or build my business empire by finding new team members. I have set myself some targets this year, to help me stay focused and push forward in building my franchise business into something that I can be proud of in achieving. Others in this business seem to have far greater ease at building their businesses than I do. It may be that their work ethics are far more driven than mine have ever been. I don't do this because I need the money, or extra free time. I don't have the driving ambition to be come a multi millionaire. I have consistently found it very difficult to find a big enough reason WHY I do this that would make me want to keep going out day after day and getting negative answers to my questions of wanting to help people save money.

This year I am trying a new tactic. I have told my friends and family what I hope to achieve this year with this business. What I have set out is possible with sustained effort. I am determined to better than I did last year, and last year was my most successful year yet, mainly because I took the time to deliver 25,000 leaflets over the course of the year. I still have another 5,000 leaflets to deliver, but this year I will only deliver them when I have time available. This year is where I hope to begin to perfect my technique at High Street WAM'S (Win-A-Mini). I still have a lot to learn, such as what is a good location, what time of day is best, and most important of all, how to get someone who stops to fill in a form to agre to let me do a presentation in their home! So far, it has yet to happen. I now manage to attract people to fill in the forms, I can also seem to get them to agree to call them back or pencil in an appointment, but I still fail to really take it to the next step. All the call backs have either not answered their phone, or said they were not interested. The one appointment I managed to get so far cancelled when I phoned him to confirm the appointment the next day!

 Sometimes this process can get so frustrating! Yet all I can do is keep trying. To that end, I took a colleague with me to Buckingham town centre again to see what would happen. My colleague spent the entire time chatting to me, and only asked one person walking by if they wanted to win a car! I was a lot more vocal, and asked a lot more people. However, this time I got the wrong type of people to stop and fill in the forms. Out of the three who stopped, two were young boys/men who were living at home with their parents, and the other person made me feel that he knew exactly what he was doing by giving answers that guaranteed that I could not go any further with my script. Basicically, he was telling me that I would be wasting my time taking the matter any further.

The one theing I am proud of about myself is I do not give up! I will keep on trying until I eventually become skilled enough to get the results I want. For those of you who are interested in my success or failure at my High Street WAM's, below is the result of my attempt in Buckingham.

Location	Time Taken	People Asked	Forms Filled	Call Back	Appointments
Buckingham	17:10 - 17:15	14	1	Nil	Nil
	17:20 - 17:25	2	1	Nil	Nil
	17:30 - 17:45	13	1	Nil	Nil
Totals	25 Minutes	29	3	Nil	Nil