TIP #1 Know what you are anticipating in your business.
What does this mean?

It means that you will know where you are planning on taking your business in the future. It is a projection of what you want to achieve with your business.  This would include your activity to recruit customers and Distributors for your business. It would include projecting downline activity.  This is an estimate and it gives you a place to begin measuring your results and identifying the members of your team that are active and taking leadership positions. It would also include your revenue and volume estimates by month and then total for the year. It is inspiring to check these numbers the last week of every month. Some months you will be ahead of your projection some months you may not. What is important is you are getting a feeling for how your business works financially.

Tip #2 Know your financial reports.
The next step is making a review of every financial report you have available to you through your company.  Talk to your support department to understand the data on the reports and the outcome (why or intention) for the data being collected.  This will pay off in spades. It may take a bit of time to get used to the reports and where to find the information. Down the road it will be very meaningful and helpful to you.  Especially in training your downline team members to do the same. What I have found is that when a Distributor is truly engaged in building his or her organization, this is one of the places that holds their fascination.

It is extremely important to know what to measure in your business. Ask your upline (keep moving up till you find someone that can direct you) the financial specifics of your business.  Which numbers paint a picture for you. If you were in a business like an ice cream store, contractor business you would know your numbers. The Network Marketing Business Model  makes this so very simple. Please learn how to use this. This is what distinguishes a professional from a casual hobby.

Tip #3 Create a system to use in managing and measuring your costs.
This is not just about commissions or residuals. It includes your investment into your business. You may want to keep these records by hand or use a software program like Quicken.  It is easy to lose valuable time tracking information that does not help you understand your business better and or the way to optimize your efficiency.  I use a simple excel workbook to track my expenses and have created an excel chart that has my business projection for each year since I joined the Network Marketing industry in 2005.  As I mentioned earlier, Quicken is an excellent program to digitize this too.

Did you make a business projection for 2013? We have 13 days left to complete the 1st quarter of 2013. Share with me and our readers how you measure your success!

Much success!

Have fun and an outstanding week!

Sara