The Marketing Solution'providing answers to questions that need asking'

Work from home careers in direct sales work best when you use ‘leverage’. Leverage is simply the term for being able to get income from work done by others. This article explains the qualities needed.

Leadership in work from home careers

In 1985 Wess Roberts Ph.D. wrote a management classic Leadership Secrets of Attila The Hun, which became a New York Times Best Seller.

He uses the documented life of Attila The Hun as an allegory for the secret to Leadership. In a work from home company the idea of ‘leverage’ is key. Leverage is what makes a business a business as opposed to being self-employed. Leverage is an income stream that is based on the work of others and which would continue even if you personally stopped work. To do this you need to have systems and leadership.

Wess Roberts identified 17 qualities that are required in all true Leaders:

1. Loyalty – Loyalty comes first because this is what will foster trust in your business associates. There is a distinction between disloyalty and disagreement. Disagreement based on what someone believes is best for the team should be listened to. Disloyalty is disruptive and needs to be dealt with as quickly as possible.
2. Courage – This quality is needed for a Leader to continue in the face of any challenges. It also means you must be able to excel in times of difficulty and times of prosperity.
3. Desire – All writers on success agree desire is key to success. The same goes for Leadership. You need a strong desire to influencing people and outcomes. You are in the business of influencing people to become business associates, if they fail to detect desire in you it is unlikely they will follow you.
4. Emotional Stamina – This is the ability to recover from disappointment, having a clear perspective and the emotional strength to persist in the face of difficulty.
5. Physical Stamina – This is about being as fit as you can be as opposed to some ideal of what a body should look like. For example I as a disabled entrepreneur will never be able to use all the equipment in a gym and at times I am unable to exercise. However I do exercise on a daily basis in some form.
6. Empathy – This is the ability to see a situation from another person’s perspective. Empathy should never be confused with sympathy.
7. Decisiveness – All Leaders have to be able to make decisions quickly if needed by weighing all the facts and deciding on a course of action.
8. Anticipation – This is learning by observation and experience. It is what enables you to decide the level of risk you should take.

Take the opportunity to join a community of professional Internet marketers where the training never stops and the Leaders give.

In this second part of our examination of work from home careers and scams we explore why some are effective and therefore dangerous.

A work from home company needs care

Most people establish a work from home company of some form when they start a home business. If you set up any form of legal separate company then you are in the public record along with what services you offer.

This was how I was caught out when I was a raw Internet Marketer. I started my work from home career and was looking for ways to send traffic to my Internet site. As has now been proved I was becoming aware Google’s Adwords was falling out with the network marketing community.

I had heard of a technique called Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as a way of getting ranked in Google’s organic searches. What I was unaware of at the time was ‘white hat’ and ‘black hat’ SEO. White hat I now know is the legitimate methods like Blogging, video articles, article marketing etc. as means to drive traffic to your site. Black hat is the shady methods used to trick Google into getting you listed in search engines.

Here is how I believe my new part-time career had been scammed. The company rang me out of the blue, knew which opportunity I was with and said they were endorsed by them (I later found out this was simply a lie). They had a slick line and even an online demo (I now believe it’s a rigged demo) where I entered my opportunities normal conversion rates and, ta da magically it said I could get 1,00O visitors a month. There was the hook, I had entered the figures not them.

The of course this was followed with a ‘time limited’ offer and I would get the package for $500 less, this was probably the normal price anyway. So yes I fell for it. Why do I now claim it was a scam? Firstly because by business opportunity later issued an alert against them and the pressure tactics they used. Secondly someone far more knowledgeable about how SEO works explained their approach would not work, it sounded plausible but in truth was the opposite. They asked me to pick keywords, again so they could say ‘well you picked the words’, when an ethical company would have helped me pick the keywords to fit my niche market.

The cost to me was well in excess of $1,000, the question is would the people in that company ‘mug’ me in the street for $1,000? Probably not, they are probably decent people looking to make a living. Here’s the other thing, they were dealing in electronic cash as opposed to real cash, my credit card.

Nearly all serious fraud involves electronic cash, the people committing the frauds simply fail to see taking money in this way as stealing. However they would see taking $1,000 cash as serious theft.

In conclusion they failed to deliver on every promise, refused me a refund and blamed the whole thing on my choice of words. So if something sounds too good to be true it probably is. Check the company out and ask for names of other people you can personally contact to check their work.

Take the opportunity to join a community of professional Internet marketers where the training never stops and the Leaders give.

Work from home careers rely on trust. It is therefore important that you are able demonstrate trust to potential clients/business associates.

Your work at home job and establishing trust

If you have established a new work from home company you will be looking for clients/business associates.

One of the key things your business associates will be looking for is trust. This is because people go into business with people they know, like and trust.

Getting known is a separate set of posts in itself. Briefly it involves marketing in various forms. If your work from home job involves using a computer then most of this takes place on line. Getting known is the easier part; Twitter is a good way to get known. Twitter is more like dynamic search engine, think of it like Google in ‘real time’. Tweets are being sent all the time on different topics, if you follow people who tweet about your market niche you can get known,

Getting liked is the key to being trusted. A good way to get liked is via social networks.

Work from home careers and getting liked

Some social networks allow people to leave testimonials for you if they like what you have to say, Linkedin has a testimonial exchange system inbuilt, they let you know when someone has left a testimonial and you can reciprocate, ecademy is very similar. People who leave comments on your Blog are also providing testimony. Emails from business associates are also possible sources of testimony (in this case you need their permission to republish).

For social networks you belong to that allow people to publish testimonials then placing them on a separate page on your Blog called Testimonials helps establish trust. Also your involvement in the social networks you join is an indication of if you are liked and trusted.

The psychology of testimonials to your work from home company

The reason testimonials are powerful is their psychological effect. If you were asked to be a business associate with someone with no online reputation and someone with an ongoing online reputation which would you choose? I am guessing you would choose an active person. Visiting a Blog last updated a month ago does little to inspire confidence.

Therefore if you choose Blogging as a marketing platform then take action at least 4 times a week preferably more. People trust people whom other people trust, so trust is your currency in social media marketing. This is why testimonials brought together in one place so people can see them help you so much.

Join one of the world’s foremost Internet marketing communities and gain the education needed to market to your full potential by entering your details in the box below.