MLM IS IT FOR YOU

All network marketing business builders hope to sponsor new downline associates who are enthusiastic and highly motivated to build a big business. I was fortunate to find an exceptional prospect like that about three years ago. Tom was not the usual business prospect. He was energized and determined to make money. His goals and dreams were big. He had an aura of “can’t fail” all about him.

Tom worked hard his first year, and by all accounts he was doing the right things. He prospected, followed up regularly, and demonstrated a tireless work ethic toward his business.

After a year, Tom’s work had not paid off. He wasn’t building much of a business, nor was he making any real money. There were a couple things about Tom’s work that were significant.

During his first year in business, Tom used a combination of co-op and pay per click advertising to generate a lot of new prospects for his business.

In spite of having such a large pool of prospects for his network marketing business, not many of Tom’s prospect’s joined.

Watching Tom attract so many good prospects, while sponsoring so few of them, was frustrating for his upline leaders. We knew this guy had huge potential. We talked to him at length, and it appeared that everything he was doing was in line. Something was going right, because he was attracting qualified prospects in significant numbers.

All of the new home business prospects that Tom attracted were sent through the same online prospecting system as everyone else’s, and they received the same detailed information about our business as all the others.

What was going on?

After working that hard for a year, Tom became discouraged and decided to move on to something else. Once he let us know of his decision, we took the opportunity to contact some of his prospects directly.

Tom was a very friendly and affable person who started out with a strong desire to build a big network marketing business. After talking to some of his prospects, though, we started to understand why so few of them had chosen to work with him.

- he was going over the top with promises of fast wealth, pitching the opportunity with so much hype that prospects felt they were being sold on a scam

- he was so intensely focused on “closing” and sponsoring his prospects that he actually came across as desperate – his prospects picked this up right away and were turned off

Before getting started in his network marketing business, Tom was a salesman in very competitive industries like cell phone service and home improvement products. He had been taught the importance of making a strong, compelling presentation and going for the order immediately. In those industries, it was a known fact that if you didn’t get the sale on the first call, the customer would likely buy from someone else. So, Tom had transferred this type of thinking over to sponsoring his prospects.

You cannot approach a network marketing business like this. Rather than applying pressure and trying to “sponsor them now”, you have to establish a rapport and build some degree of relationship with your prospects to be successful.

Sadly, Tom didn’t catch on to this, and tried to build his network marketing business as if he was chasing a sales quota. He worked very hard and people noticed this about him. However, all of that was thrown into an approach that caused many of his prospects to run the other way, rather than be “sold” on a business opportunity scheme.

Let’s all learn to approach our prospects as individuals with unique goals and dreams. Never push or try to apply traditional sales closing techniques – it just doesn’t work out.

That what makes a network marketing business ideal for many people – it isn’t necessary to be a salesperson. You want to be a leader and mentor and help people find what they’re looking for.

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Tags: home business, MLM, network marketing, online business