There’s No Money on Your Side of the Desk

A lot of distributors in our industry are spending many long days behind their desks. They’re entering orders, keeping the books and creating to-do lists—and doing it all over again the next day. But the truth is there’s no money on your side of the desk. You will never become wealthy sitting behind your desk doing $20-an-hour work day-in and day-out. If you want to achieve wealth, you have to go out and get it.

There is plenty of money to be had. Promotional products and printing comprise a nearly $200 billion a year industry. This means we are in one of the top ten industries in North America. The fact is, most people reading this are within an hour drive of $250 million—$2 billion worth of business—and I firmly believe there is no excuse for not making $500,000 per year in your pocket—unless you choose not to. Each day you spend sitting behind your desk is a day you’re choosing not to make more money.

So what do you need to do to start earning more money? It’s about choosing the right activities—wealth-building activities. At Proforma, we call the wealth-building activities that increase your top line growth the $500-an-hour work. Everything else we call clerical work, $20-an-hour work, which just gets in your way of achieving your maximum potential. As a business owner, you should be focusing on these four activities to increase your sales:

• Earning new customers
• Selling more to the customers you have
• Hiring and managing sales representatives
• Buying out your competition

There are different levels of sales achievements that may help you determine which mix of the above activities you should be focusing on. Sales reps should focus on just the first two activities, while business owners should focus on the right mix of all four activities for growing their sales. Start by analyzing where your sales are now, where you want your sales to be and which of these activities you can start with to get your business on the right track towards growth.