The Importance of Staying Qualified in Your Business

Most network marketing and direct sales companies have some minimum requirement that you need to buy to stay active.  How often you need to meet this minimum requirement varies by company.  It can be monthly, quarterly, or even yearly.  Companies that don’t trust you to remember have something called autoship.  Other companies just have some amount (measured by dollars or sometimes points) that you need to order monthly to stay qualified.  Why do companies have these requirements?  How can you make sure you stay active?

There are several reasons that companies have these requirements.  One is that when you sign up to represent the business, the company wants to make sure that you have an opportunity to learn as much about the products as possible.  By requiring you to purchase something within a certain time frame, they encourage you to try and/or consistently use their products.  After all, you should be a product of the product!  Generally you are getting these products at a discount.  If you are serious about the business, you won’t mind the minimum requirements.  If you are just in the business to get the discount, this quickly becomes apparent when you don’t meet your minimum requirements.

How often you are required to meet a minimum activity level determines the type of system you need to remind yourself.  If your company uses autoship, you really don’t have to do anything (except make sure there is enough money on your card to cover the purchase!).  The company will automatically send you whatever product(s) you decided to order when you signed up for autoship at the time you designated.  Autoship is nice since you don’t have to worry about remembering to place an order. It is not so nice in that you have to remember to change the autoship if you find you want to change what you order monthly and there is generally limited flexibility to change the time that the shipment takes place.

If you have a quarterly or yearly requirement, or if your company does not use autoship, you need to be a little more proactive.  Mark your calendar (with a reminder) when the order is due.  If there is no specific time in the month that the order has to go out, decide at the beginning of the month when you plan to order and put that date on your calendar.  Most of the time you can decide what you want and just hold it in a shopping cart until you are ready to order.  If you company has this capability, decide when you want at your leisure (maybe in the beginning of the month) and just leave it in the shopping cart.  That way, if you find yourself in a time crunch, you won’t have to rush and try to find something to order.

Whatever system you use, it is important to stay qualified in your organization.  If you don’t stay qualified you may risk losing commissions or your position in the company.  Take your business seriously and buy and use the products you represent!

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