Where will my customers come from? What to do with your list of friends and family.

OK, you have your list of friends, family and everyone you can think of written. What are you going to do with it? Ideally you will have a mentor, someone who has gone before you and can help you with this. If you do, great, if not you're going to have to make it on your own. Either way, the next step will help you. If you're really confident and are sure that you know what to say go ahead and start calling. However, if the first couple of calls don't go the way you'd expected, stop there and don't continue until you've figured out what to change.

I want you to make another list. This will be a list of things people could do to help you. It might look something like this:

1. Join me in the business.
2. Host a party or event for me.
3. Attend an event I'm holding.
   
4. Partake of my service or product.
   
5. Refer their friends to me.
6. Help me with advertising - put up a flier or send out an e-mail to a group.
   
7. Suggest venues for me to display my business or places where I can network.
   
8. Provide feedback on what I'm doing, encouragement, or suggestions.

The next step is to match the people on your list with the ways people could help you. Try to figure out what would be the best outcome and what might be a not so good outcome but probably more realistic.

Here's an example. Linda is a friend who has children and might enjoy some additional part-time income. You'd love for her to sign up for her own direct selling business and join you because she'd be good at it and you'd enjoy working with her. Wait a minute though, she's a busy person with 4 kids and is already struggling with what she has 'on her plate'. While you don't want to judge for her, a more realistic thing to expect of her than 1. might be 6.

Now, before you rush off to call, relationships work better face to face so don't ask for a big commitment over the phone. The first phone call is about planting a possibility and asking a person to begin thinking about what you have to say. Hopefully you can set up an appointment. More on that later...