I hope you enjoy these Simple Tips For Time Management In Direct Sales guest post!
With the busy lifestyles everyone has today, time management becomes a concern for all direct sales professionals. Juggling family, activities and business while keeping your priorities in order can be a challenge. Many party plan or direct selling professionals joined their home business company for the purpose of creating income without taking away from family time. Now they may find themselves in a dilemma on how to do both effectively.
- Manage your personal commitments.
- Manage Your Email
- Use proven systems
Personal Time Management
We all have a tendency to over-schedule our personal time and then have difficulty squeezing in our business activities. One thing is certain and that is that you cannot manage time. You can only manage your commitments. Most direct sellers and their families would benefit from fewer personal commitments. Studies have proven that children are feeling stress due to over-committed families. One sport or two activities is good, but several are too many for the average child. When there are several children in the household, the running from commitment to commitment produces stress for Moms, Dads and kids alike. The whole family will have a better quality of life and improved productivity when everyone learns to say no to over- committing to personal activities.
Email Time Management Help
You can free up some of your time by learning how to manage your email inbox. For starters the time spent on checking emails will go more quickly when you check it every day. Systematically checking your email reduces the enormity of it and generates income for your business. If you are in business to make money, then check your email daily.
Delete-Delete-Delete
Delete all irrelevant messages before beginning the review process. When you first open your email, start at the top, and highlight the first message in the list that is to be deleted. Holding the control button down, go down the column and highlight each one to be deleted. When you hold the control button down, you can just go down the column and touch everyone that you want to delete. You should be able to tell by the subject bar which ones those are. Do not mess with forwarded email, spam, social games or any rubbish. This is a really quick process, just hold the control button down and touch each one to be highlighted. You will have a column of blue highlighted emails, then just push delete. And wham! They are all gone!
Deal With It And Move It
Deal with each email as you have the time. After it is taken care of, responded to, printed out, etc. you can either file it or delete it. If it is an email that you want to save, move it to a folder that you have already set up on the side. You can have as many folders as you want under your inbox. Some examples: publicity, direct sales consultants, tech advisor, potential hosts, opportunity leads, etc. If you do not have time to take care of something, since it will take more time than you have at the moment, then just leave it in the inbox. Your inbox is only for incoming mail and mail not dealt with yet. What is in your inbox should all fit in one view pane at all times.
Did I say check your email every day?!
Proven Time Management Systems
There are hundreds of simple time management systems that will make good use of your time so that you can have balance between business and family.
Some systems may include:
• An accounting system for your finances (QuickBooks is good.)
• Data or contact management system
• Scheduling your hours
• Creating a business plan
Your direct selling company may include software for both financial management and data management with your submission process. Use it! The learning curve in the long run is worth it because they are designed to create efficiency.
Simple systems that make businesses efficient are what direct sales time management is all about. Frequently the home business owner needs only look to the corporate world to see what all successful businesses do and copy the same systems at home.
Deb Bixler retired from the corporate world in 2000 to enjoy life as a work from home business owner. In the first 9 months as a direct seller she built a sales team and show schedule which provided her with an income capable of replacing her corporate business salary of $80,000 per year. After 7 years of using direct sales as her total household income, Deb now teaches and trains direct sales professionals all across the US and Canada.
http://www.CreateACashFlowShow.com
Direct Sales Time Management
Elizabeth Grace Saunders is a time coach & professional speaker who empowers individuals to build businesses and achieve work/life brilliance™ through Schedule Makeovers™. Her empowerment coaching frees individuals from guilt, overwhelm, and frustration!
Discover how you can start enjoying your life TODAY! Look forward to talking with you!
Elizabeth has been featured in Inc magazine, The Chicago Tribune, and on NBC, and is happy to be interviewed for your broadcast or publication.
Hello and happy new year!
I just happily came across your book and approach and have purchased the ebook. I have one quick question as I begin: do you have any articles or resources on setting up a good email inbox folder system?
I’m all over the inbox purge approach but what I find most time consuming is moving emails to reference or topical folders, and establishing a good folder system that’s useful yet appropriately sized. Also, rules to automatically move e mails generally don’t work for me. Whatcha got? :-). Thank you so much!!