Right time, right place

Have you ever wanted to be in the right place at the right time? Well you are! Marketing Director and Distributor Management Board Member Wes Linden looks back on his 7 years in the business and explains why there has never been a better time to be involved with Telecom plus.

“There are people that joined this business 7 years ago with me. Some of them today, are very glad they did. Others joined 1, 3 or 5 years ago, and also, are reaping the rewards of their efforts now. There are many others who joined, and did a bit, or did nothing, and then moaned, whinged, and said they weren’t going to work until everything was perfect in the Telecom plus garden! As a baby business, there were the occasional teething problems. A lot of people quit or just stopped working. Sadly for many of them, they’ll look back now and think “if only I’d stuck with it”, and have now possibly missed their chance of ever achieving any freedom in their lives.

If you’d have told me 5 or 6 years ago, or Trevor and Karen, Clive and Di, Robin or Steve, that in 5 years time, we would have a company that offers free calls 24/7 anywhere in the UK, and can save customers money on their line rental without the need for a £23.50 smart box; plus we’d have 2 of the most compelling mobile phone deals the UK has ever seen with great choice free handsets (we only used to have one - that cost £99.99 plus £35 connection plus £15 for voicemail!!!!); plus we’d offer the UKís cheapest domestic gas and electricity; plus we’d offer unlimited, unrestricted broadband access cheaper than pretty much every other provider; with over 99% of the marketplace still available; plus an imminent Business Club which will offer great savings to businesses.plus we’d have generic company training at over 20 venues throughout the UK, with an Opportunity Presentation or two (or three, four or five!) taking place nearly every night of the week... plus we’d have a company that consistently gets great publicity articles in the major broadsheets and shares magazines (NUMBER 1 in Europe!!!) to give us the credibility we desired, at a time when most of the population are worrying about what they can do to prevent them having to retire at 75 we’d have bitten your hands off, and even your toes and possibly your entire feet!!!!

If you’d said that a penalty for the fast and exponential growth, was the occasional blip, and the odd period when the company has to pedal faster to keep up with the demand, we’d have accepted that too.

Why should we accept this? Well, because it means that you are “in” now, at the beginning. Let me make that clearer .YOU are in at the beginning. With over 99% of the UK marketplace still to aim for as customers, and the 7 million baby boomers now coming up to retirement realising that relaxing through their golden years is no longer an option, and the younger generation realising they need to do something different than the traditional 9 to 5, 45 year career plan in order to get ahead (not to mention being able to buy their own place!), this is such a good time to be “in” the business.

Occasionally, people say to me - “I wish I had joined when you joined”! I always tell them that if they work their business consistently and persistently for the next 2, 3, 4, 5 years, then people will be saying exactly the same thing to them!! That, and the obvious financial benefits in both residual income and share options, will be your reward for seeing it through - for riding the waves with this fantastic company. For accepting the occasional challenge, in the same way that when you make a mistake on a customer form, the company accept your mistakes! For being a pioneer and helping this company grow to the 1 million customer mark over the next few years and become a billion pound company.

I remember many people who have fallen overboard since I joined. Some of them told me they were going to “become rich” and that they were going to be “massive players”. I often wonder how they are getting on now, and how they feel when they hear of our success in the daily national newspapers. I wonder whether they think that the reason they had for “putting their tools down” and folding their arms 4 or 5 years ago, because they couldn’t cope with the company growing, and the occasional teething problem that went with it, was in hindsight a bad move? Do they still feel quite so strongly about the invoice being a day late; their customer call being made to wait on the line for too long; their milkman telling them it’s a pyramid; or the £23.50 square smart box we used to have, not being programmed correctly for their Aunt Milly!?! It’s in moments of decision that your destiny is shaped....

I wonder how those who turned down a stake in The Body Shop, ebay, Betfair or Orange in their early days feel? I wonder how people feel when they see their lottery numbers come up, and then remember they forgot to buy a ticket that week? I wonder how Tottenham Hotspur feel about the fact they didn’t take the Russian multi-billionaire Roman Abramovich seriously, when he wanted to take over the club, seeing their neighbours Chelsea set to win every trophy there is? The world is full of nearly-men and missed opportunities”.

Back to today - what a great time it is to be involved. We know that early in your business, you’ll have teething problems yourself. You’re not sure how to handle certain queries, you worry about what to say, you’re disappointed someone has said no, you are upset that one of your customers received their modem a bit late, your guest didn’t turn up to the COP etc. etc. It happens to us all. In fact it happens to everyone, and still happens to me and the other Leaders today. The people who you see winning the prizes, and getting the promotions, have normally had more people say “no” to them than anyone else! They’re not lucky... it’s a simple equation - as the golfer Arnold Palmer said when a journalist commented to him that he’d had a lucky shot in a golf tournament: “It’s a funny thing, the more I practice the luckier I get”. But we’re here to support you, as are the COE Trainers at your local centre, and your local COP hosts. So talk to us!

If you are suffering from a challenge with anything in your Utility Warehouse business, don’t bottle it up - if you need help speak to your upline, or your upline Marketing Director - we are here to help. Do you know who your upline Marketing Director is? They have a vested interest in your success and will be happy to hear from you. They have a wealth of experience that you can benefit from too. If you have not yet made contact then call Executive Services and ask to be put in touch with your upline MD. They’ll pass on your details to him/her and they’ll contact you pretty swiftly.

2006 is going to be a great year for us, but as the saying goes “you gotta be in it to win it”! The trade-off is that occasionally we need to work together and help the company through these periods of massive growth, whilst helping them to grow “more massive” (great English huh? That is why I dropped out of university!). Make sure in 2010 they’ll be saying “I wish I joined when you did”!!!

Labels: distributor-opinion

posted by Jeremy Tromans at 6/15/2006 01:54:00 AM