Work At Home Business Options

Archive for July, 2011

If you are looking to save some money you can start by using homemade cleaning products to clean your home with. Not only are these inexpensive to make but most are eco-friendly too! I use a lot of baking soda and white vinegar around my home to kill germs and to keep my home clean. Here are a few other ideas to help you get your house cleaned up and do so on the cheap.

Vinegar – Vinegar can be used to remove mold, grease, and mildew. Vinegar will kill bacteria and germs. Just dilute down your white vinegar with tap water so that it doesn’t irritate your skin while using it.

Baking Soda – Baking soda can be used as a scouring agent and deodorizer. You can even brush your teeth with it. I like to make a baking soda paste by just adding a tad of tap water to it and then use it for scrubbing. It will also do a great job at deodorizing your garbage disposal. If your carpets have a stinky smell sprinkle plain baking soda onto your carpets and let it sit for an hour and then vacuum it up.

Bleach – I purchased an empty spray bottle and I put in 1/4 cup of bleach and then filled it with tap water. It now can be use to clean counter tops, toilets, tubs and sinks.

Salt – Your basic table salt makes for a good abrasive scouring powder so sprinkle some onto your stainless steel kitchen sink and use a sponge to scrub it down. A salt scrub also works well for removing baked on food from your cookware and bakeware too!

Lemon Juice – Lemon juice mixed with water makes a great all-purpose cleaner. I keep a spray bottle filled with lemon juice/water and spray down my kitchen countertops with it every day. It also is great for cleaning the microwave, stove-top and refrigerator.

As you can see…you don’t have to pay a fortune at the store for chemical household cleaners when you can spend pennies and make your own at home! Do you have any frugal cleaning tips to share with me today? If so, please leave me a comment.

A couple of weeks ago a direct sales consultant with one of the home party plan companies emailed me to ask me for some advice. After I read her email my mouth about dropped to the floor. After talking back and forth with her for a few days, I asked her if I could share her “home party issue” with the readers of my blog along with my answer (advice) on it.

This consultant emailed me to tell me that she demonstrated a home party at a particular party hosts home (she is with a home decor company) and that 11 small children under the age of 8 were at the party mis-behaving and that the parents did nothing to simmer them down or to control them. She told me that the party host was NO help on the issue either.

Apprently this group of “children” thought it would be funny to dump food all over the room (they started a food fight with each other) and they ended up breaking the host’s living room stained glass lamp and they broke 2 items that the consultant was demonstrating. In addition…two of the older children (7 and 8 year olds) took a guest’s purse and threw it into the kitchen trash can to “hide” it from her as they thought it would be funny. In the trash can was all kinds of trash, food and coffee grounds which stained this woman’s $150 purse! OH MY HEAVENS! She went on to tell me that these kids did other naughty things during the 2 1/2 hours she was there.

She wanted to know if anything like that has ever happened to me at a home party and if so, how did I handle it. Well, no…not with kids…but I have been at home parties where the ADULTS got out of hand and acted like little kids! ugh!

I told her that I always ask my party host during hostess coaching sessions if there will be small children attending the party. If so, I recommend to them that they have 1-2 adults there to monitor the children and perhaps take them in another room to watch a movie or out into the backyard to play so that they don’t disturb the guests.

I told her that if this had happened to me, I would of quietly asked to speak to the hostess and pull her aside into another room to discuss the situation that was going on. I would of told her that guest’s are feeling uncomfortable and that perhaps she should talk to all guests and ask them to simmer down the children or she could ask one guest to take the children into another room or outside until the demonstration was over. If the host would refuse or ignore the problem at hand, I would cut my demonstration short and wrap up the party as quickly as possible.

When people book parties they need to be respectful and that includes having too many unruly children attending a party with NO responsible adult supervision watching & entertaining them. This certainly was not the demonstrator’s fault. The party host and the guests (parents of these children) are 100% responsible for this disasterous party. I understand that sometimes parents can’t find babysitters so they will take their children along. With that said, these same parents need to be MONITORING their children at the party and not have them running loose through the host’s home terrorizing other party guests. geesh!

Anyway, has this ever happened to you? If so, how did you handle it?

Shelly

Ever send your resume in through a high traffic job board posting and not know what the person on the other end is looking for, or if they are even the person that is going to decide whether or not they hire you?

Getting your resume to the decision maker requires a little bit of skill in investigation, networking, and playing dumb….Yep that’s right playing dumb will get you past the gate keepers.

In this scenario what how Sales Rep Cindy navigates her resume into the hands of the decision maker and quickly gets an interview.

Step Number One.

Target a specific company that fits your industry that has a good reputation and begin doing research online. Try to find job postings that will carry keywords that you can relate to on your resume, try to find as many contact names, email addresses and phone numbers on the website as possible, and bookmark the contact us form if applicable. Most websites have a contact form if you need to fill out a complaint or have questions about products and services; this area is also great for jobs seekers.

Step Number Two:

Once your resume/cover letter is fine written to the tune of what the company does and how your skills and qualifications match what that company’s website obtained, you now ready to email, fax, and make phone calls.

Step Number Three-Email:

You may have collected some emails from the website that are not HR related, they may go to the VP of the company or a customer service rep, maybe a receptionist. It doesn’t matter; blind copy all of them so that everyone gets a copy of your resume. You may get a response back that says that you sent your resume to the wrong department; the responder may give you the name and contact information of the right person to send it too.

In a perfect world Bob the responder might say “you sent this to me by mistake I work in the Sales Dept not HR, you need Donna Smith in HR her email address is Donna.Smith@xyzcompany.org and extension is 4533. Good Luck. But in most cases Bob in Sales won’t respond he will think it is just spam, delete it, and move on or perhaps use your email address as a marketing lead.

Step Number Four-Phone:

***Notice the emails you collected online contain names domains like Bonnie.Lewis@xyzcompany.org

You have sent in your emails now it is time to call to follow up to the only number listed on the website. Whether Bob responds to your email or not following up with a phone call is the key. You call in and Bonnie the receptionist answers, you say to Bonnie that you applied for a position in her company and wondered if she received your resume. Bonnie will say “yes I received your resume and forwarded it the HR department, I’m just a receptionist I don’t do the hiring”. You respond by saying “Bonnie I apologize for sending you my resume, I was unsure of who was the decision maker on the hiring (play dumb), I do appreciate your efforts in sending my resume to the HR department, can you tell me who is in charge of the hiring in HR?” Bonnie replies, “That would be Michelle Stafford” Would you happen to know her extension or can you direct me to her voicemail?

In most cases Bonnie would just send you to voicemail, but the good news is you are now getting somewhere. Cindy leaves Michelle a message “Hi Michelle, my name is Cindy, I recently spoke with Bonnie (name drop) about applying for a position within your company and I was wondering if I could have a moment of your time so I can ask a few questions about your hiring process? Please give me a call or email me with the best time to reach you, my number and email address is……..

At this point, you have sent in your resume to everyone except Michelle; however you left her a voicemail and gave her a call to action, partnered-networked with Bonnie, and now know the name of the person who will make the hiring decision. By using Bonnie’s email address it is not too difficult to figure out Michelle’s email address, so now you can send your resume and get it in front of the decision maker.

Please stay tuned, in my next post I will explain the features and benefits of following up with HR and how to sell yourself over the phone and get an immediate face to face interview.

I hope this information helps and good luck with your job search.

Bryan Moore
10 Years-Executive Recruiter
Blog: http://careerprobryan.blogspot.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/CareerproBryan
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/careerprobryan
Email: careerprobryan(at)gmail(dot)com

If you are thinking about joining one of the Direct Sales companies it is very important to check out the leader of your team to make sure that he or she is the perfect leader for your business needs.

What do I mean? Well…is most cases (not all) you will want to choose a leader that displays certain business qualities so that they can help you to succeed in your business. A good strong Direct Sales team leader will have certain qualities that you need to look for before signing up and joining a particular team.

Today let’s take a look at a few qualities that I feel are important.

1. Leads By Example: Does this leader go out and book & hold parties? Do they attend company sponsored meetings, conventions and training events? Are they out there working the business in a professional manner?

A good team leader will be out there booking parties, recruiting new team members, attending company sponsored training events and they will have a good strong business that they are actively working.

A bad team leader will be one who sits at home and pushes their team members to do all the “work” while they sit at home and reap the rewards.

2. Longevity: A good leader will have been in the business for several years and most of these leaders intend on working their business as a full-time career. The more time a leader has worked in Direct Sales the stronger their “training skills” will be and this in turn can help you to be a successful consultant.  

3. Leaders Availability: A good leader will make him or herself available to you as often as possible when you need help with your business. Don’t get me wrong, they won’t be available 24/7 as that is unrealistic and you shouldn’t expect that from them…but they will make themselves available several times a week to assist you.

4. Professionalism: A good leader will behave and act like a professional when they are around their team members, party hosts, customers and while attending business events.

If your potential leader has a bad reputation in not assisting his or her team members in a timely manner, pulling out of party bookings often, canceling team meetings often or other things that one “might” consider to be unprofessional…you might want to “join” another team.

I want to give you a personal example of professionalism that I encountered about 12 years ago when I was considering joining a particular team. I called up the team leader to “interview” her as I wanted to make sure I would be on a good stable team. During this phone call she whined & complained to me that her current team members were lazy and not applying themselves and even mentioned a few by name. This was my very first time speaking with her and that immediately set off “alarm bells” with me as NO team leader should be gossiping or putting down the members on their team to other people. I quickly decided to join a different team after that 30 minute phone conversation. I do highly recommend that you “interview” your potential upline’s team leader before signing on the dotted line as many Direct Sales Companies do not allow you to switch teams once you have joined.

There are many qualities a good strong team leader should have but the four I outlined here in this post I feel are the top four you should be considering before joining anyone’s team with any of the direct sales companies.

What are your thoughts? What do you look for in a good quality team leader?

When it comes to promoting a small or large business online it is very important to get involved with article marketing. Article marketing gets you valuable incoming one-way web links to your site along with valuable new traffic. In addition…article marketing is one of the most cost effective ways for you to market you business online and to set yourself up as a leader in the niche that you represent.

For those who wish to market their businesses online via article marketing, here are a few important tips to remember when you begin this marketing journey.

1. Article Length: The length of your article will depend on where you plan on having it published. You will find that the majority of article directories require a minimum of 250 words in length. I personally recommend 400-500 words as a good length to strive for when writing your articles.

2. Article Topics: The topics you write about should pertain to the Direct Sales business that you represent and the content of your article should match the links and information that you include in your author’s resource box. When you are writing articles pertaining to your business you can really set yourself a part from other consultant’s in your same company by marketing your business online via article marketing. Topics can be geared directly towards the type of products you are trying to market and/or towards the Direct Sales or Home Business Industry as a whole.

3. Consistency: You will need to be writing articles often and I recommend around 10 new articles a month so that you consistently have fresh new material going out across the internet on a consistent basis. You most likely won’t see a lot of results in the first month or two when you start this type of marketing and most article marketers start seeing great results after 4-6 months.

4. Proofread For Typos & Grammar Mistakes: When you write articles they should always be proofread 2-3 times for typos and grammar mistakes. You can not rely on spell checker to catch all of your typos and grammar mistakes. First impressions are everything and I don’t know anyone who likes to read an article that is loaded with typos and grammar mistakes. If you can afford it, hire a ghostwriter or assistant to proof all of your articles before you publish them live. Often times a fresh set of eyes can catch mistakes that you the writer can not catch.

5. Author’s Resource Box: An Author’s Resource Box should be included at the end of each and every article that you write and publish online. This box gives the reader important information about you, your business and your expertise. Your resource box should be several sentences in length and include 1-2 web links to your business web sites that are related to the article you just written. It is extremely important to double check the links you include in your resource box to make sure they are correct as broken links do you and your business absolutely no good.

This article was written by Shelly Hill ~ Owner of Work At Home Business Opptions and is exclusive to this (my) web site. Please do not reprint it! Copyright 2011, All Rights Reserved.

Are you marketing a Direct Sales or MLM business on the social media networking site called Twitter? If so, There is a right and a wrong way to do it.

Every day I get home business owners sending tweets to me and I don’t even follow them on Twitter. These tweets are considered SPAM if they contain your home business information and/or links in them and if I didn’t ask you directly for the information it is indeed spam!

Just recently I had a consultant with a Direct Sales company who I am not following over on Twitter send me 2 Tweets and BOTH of them contained her business information. The Tweets were:

@Ravish30 I heard you were looking for a job. Did you know our company (company name) is hiring?

First of all…I am not looking for a job, not sure where she got that information. Second of all, I am not following her nor is she following me. She simply sits on Twitter and looks for certain keywords and then spams out her message to hundreds of people who are NOT following her. (I checked her Tweet Stream…all of her tweets are @ mention business spam).

So, I tweeted back and called her out on this spam. She replies back that it’s not spam to give people info that her Candle Company is hiring. Sadly, a lot of consultants believe this and it simply is not true.

Any time you send your business info via email, tweets, private messages, etc. and the person receiving the info from you did not specifically ask you for the information it is indeed considered spam! Spamming folks over on Twitter is not the way to grow your Direct Sales business. Matter of fact, people are tired of Twitter spam and have been reporting people left & right for this practice.

My suggestion…Stop spamming folks on Twitter immediately! Networking is about you trying to make a connection with another person and it is about you acting like a professional while networking. Obviously sending spam tweets is not accomplishing either of those 2 purposes.

Shelly