Today, I want to share some outsourcing tips for network marketers. Outsourcing is when you hire other people to do tasks, jobs or work that you don’t want to do or don’t know how to do yourself. As I see it, outsourcing is a huge key to success in ANY business, even in MLM.
One of the biggest mistakes that new home business owners make is trying to do everything themselves. This includes network marketers. Truth be told, you only have so much time in a day to work on your business and it’s absolutely foolish to spend your $100 per hour time working on $10 per hour tasks. Let that sink in for a moment.
Let’s take a moment and talk about what the most productive tasks are:
- Prospecting
- Showing the plan
- Following up
- Training Your Team
- Finding new customers
These are the money producing activities that you should focus most of your time on (at least 80 to 90 percent of your time).
All other tasks are not created equal and should be avoided, done by someone else, or done during non-productive time. Some example tasks include:
- Cleaning your office
- Watching training videos
- Sorting files
- Studying your company’s products
- Doing ANYTHING that doesn’t generate revenue
So, what should you outsource and how should you do it? And what if you are on a tight budget? I want to take some time and answer those two questions below.
First of all, you should outsource certain things such as:
1. Social media
2. Editing videos
3. Following up with leads
4. Training non-serious team members
5. Housework
6. Any other task that takes up time but doesn’t produce revenue
Let me give you some examples of what you can do to outsource more tasks in your network marketing business:
1. You could hire someone to do your social media posting on Facebook and Twitter.
2. You could hire someone to help you create videos to train your team so you don’t have to train people one on one.
3. You could hire a housekeeper or maid service once a week to clean your house
4. You could hire someone to help you or do your follow up campaign for you
5. You could hire a virtual assistant to help you with non-money producing activities
6. You could hire someone to write blog posts for you
7. You could hire someone to create an advertising campaign to generate more leads
8. You could hire a bookkeeper to help you with your business finances
And much, much more. This is just a short list of things to get you thinking about what you could potentially outsource!
Now, you might be thinking, Chuck, I’m on a limited budget and can’t afford to hire people to help me. My response is “I used to think that too!”
I’m just an everyday hard working person like yourself. I’m not rich yet, either. But I do know that there are MANY websites online where you can hire people to do projects for you for as little as $5. Just go to Fiverr.com and see what you can have done for $5. It will blow your mind.
On an average month I spend $100 to $200 to outsource projects to free up my time. This gives me more time to focus on the money producing activities in my network marketing business and other businesses.
I encourage you to do the same thing. Make a list of all the tasks that must be done each week and then put a check mark by all the tasks that aren’t money producing or critical or could be done by someone else. I think you would be amazed at how much work you could delegate to someone else for a very reasonable fee.
Why not try it? Once you do, you will never revert back to your old ways.
What are your thoughts about outsourcing more in your network marketing business? Leave a comment below to share your thoughts. I look forward to hearing from you.
Chuck Holmes
20+ Year Network Marketing Professional
Top Earner & Top Recruiter
Email: mrchuckholmes@gmail.com
P.S. Learn how to grow a successful network marketing business. Secret tips, training, and practical ideas. Free training delivered by email.
Outsourcing is wisdom at its finest. If you take a look at top corporations, they outsource many of their projects. It just makes good sense. You had mentioned outsourcing things like blog posts. You don’t have to always come up with the right words; take it from a writer who suffers from the dreaded writer’s block from time to time; secondly, you get a new aspect. Readers will notice a new style which just may draw blog visitors that you may not have received when you were writing the posts.
There are many tasks that can be outsourced.The key is contracting someone you can trust, and can do the job proficiently.
I find that the more I outsource the better my business does.
When it comes to outsourcing blogging, or social media posts, I recommend that you always check them just to make sure that what is being written is in line with your strategies, and the company’s protocol. I know that some people have outsourced blog posts, and they have the person do the posting. Reading it later, they find the person has posted something that goes against their morals, or the structure of their business. Outsourcing is great, but check to make sure the work is done to your satisfaction.
Yes, you definitely need to check everything that you have outsourced. It’s just a smart business move.
I never really thought about the potential benefits of outsourcing blogging, but you do make a valid point here. Every writer has their own unique style and sometimes having a fresh voice come in and write on a specific topic can attract new people to your blog space. I have made the decision to outsource two blog posts a month just to test out the concept. If I see new interactions and discussions being generated from this new person(s), then I am likely to up the amount of the contribution to free up more of my time and benefit the business simultaneously.
This is a really great guide. I must say that once I started to outsource the task of following up with leads, I found I had so much more time on my hands to attend to other tasks that could generate more revenue. I still handle reaching out to certain leads that I feel would benefit from a more personal touch or leads that I am fairly certain are truly interested. However, by handing that role over to someone else I’ve been a lot more productive and it has definitely made me consider letting go the reigns of other tasks so that I can do more for the organization.
Even outsourcing just a few things can really make a difference.
One of my biggest problems with outsourcing is trust. This is where we need to take a chance at times.
As you said just outsourcing a few things really helps. The key is to find things that are not as important, but still need attention. Allow someone else to do the task and then check to see if it is done to your standards. It is also important that you don’t have standards that are far above what you are paying that person/s. I have seen that a lot in freelancing that there are some who want $30 an hour quality, but only pay $8 an hour.
When you outsource, you need to really consider pay versus quality and find a happy medium.
I agree that outsourcing can be difficult because it is hard to trust people. I have been the employer and freelancer and I agree with you that there needs to be a happy balance.