Here it is…two weeks since I last posted. As a matter of fact, it feels like I haven’t done any work at all during this time! We have been getting ready for Thanksgiving, had family come in from out of town, kids on school break, and my nephew got married Saturday.

And Christmas is around the corner? Whew!

Most people face the challenge of how to divide a limited amount of time between an unlimited number of activities and obligations during holiday times.

How do we enjoy the holidays and our families and still keep our home based businesses running?

“Letting it Go” with the thought of resuming your business activities January 2^nd is not a great idea. You will lose the momentum you have built and it will take some time to get yourself going again.

So make a plan NOW to manage your business during these often hectic times. It’s never too late!

Prioritize your biz activities.

First, write down everything you do while working your business.

Then make a list of the must do activities that keep your business bringing in business.

This would be things like your marketing activities…adding friends on Facebook, sending emails on Direct Matches, whatever it is you do to reach potential business partners and customers.

On days when you don’t have time to take a breath, give yourself a goal of completing at least one of your easiest, quickest activities. Don’t worry about the other stuff…email, newsletters, and organizing your desk will wait!

Remember the Slight Edge philosophy. Doing a little bit each day keeps driving you TOWARDS your goals. Doing nothing keeps you right where you are then starts sliding you back into doubt and failure.

Occasionally, I like to share an “MLM Letter” Michael Dlouhy sends out to people who have signed up to receive them.

I wanted to share this letter because it is such a common “excuse”.  I know, I used to think this same way!

“If you’ve been in network marketing very long, you’ve run into plenty of prospects who are totally focused on ONLY joining a company where they can sell a product they love.

I tell them, “Look. We have 30 products. You don’t have to use them all. You don’t even have to like them all. Matter of fact, we have a Woman’s Formula that helps balance out the hormones. Guess what? I don’t use the product. I don’t use that one. My wife does. She loves it. We’ve got hundreds of women who buy that product. They love it. I don’t have to use it.“

And That Makes Them Realize How Stupid It Is -
- that they have to love the product. Right there.  And if it’s a woman – guess what?¬ Our company¬ has a Men’s Formula! It’s for the prostate.
And last time you checked, you didn’t have a prostate, because you’re a girl. But guess what? I’ve got a lot of guys that buy that product.

Another one I’ll talk about is our product that helps balance blood-sugar. I ask them, “Do you know anyone who has hypoglycemia, diabetes, low blood sugar, a sugar problem?”
“Yeah.”
“Great. Do you think that person would like to know about a product that’s all-natural, it’s been proven to help re-build the pancreas, and¬ will help them to use less insulin, and maybe even get them off of insulin?”
“Oh, yeah!”

You Don’t Have To Have Diabetes To Sell the Product, Do You?

Make it so ridiculous, they get it. I’m telling you, this is magic. People will come to you and they’re totally focused on finding a product that THEY love.

But that is NOT the way to build a long-term, successful, profitable business. When I hear that, I’ll tell them, “Well, then, go get diabetes. Go get diabetes, and this stuff will help you fix it. OK?

And of course, they laugh. It’s a ridiculous solution. But it makes them realize that the attitude that they MUST love the product is also ridiculous.

To get them into your company, tell them why YOU joined. Why did you join this company, this team, this sponsor.

I did a call the other day with a lady who is married to a heart surgeon. If I told you what they have to pay in insurance for him to stay in that business, it would blow your mind. Basically, he’s working for the insurance company.

So they need another income. They have to get something going. The first thing she said was, “Well, I’ll have to try the products first to see if I like them.”

And I went right into the Women’s Formula. I went right into diabetes. And I asked her,
“Do you have diabetes?”
She said, “No.”
I told her, “Well, you don’t have to go and get diabetes to sell a bunch of this product.”

And she got it. She joined on the spot. She figured she’d just try the product but instead, she got the idea. Now she’s in the business.

Do I ask people to join? Do I push them? Do I twist their arm? Do I say, “Get in now and you’ll be rich by Tuesday?”

No. I present the case for my company & our team.

The prospect makes their own decision. Mostly, they ASK if they can join. It comes from THEM. How could anything be more powerful?”

Can you think back now and remember hearing this sort of logic?

Or perhaps it is you who thinks this way.

You are either in an MLM for business or to generate enough retail sales to pay for your product…that you “love”.

If you are in MLM with the intention of generating a serious income, then you have to think like a business person.

You can have the best product introduced to mankind, why, it even raises the dead!  But your compensation plan, policies and procedures, and upline support are what are really behind your check.

Look for the product everyone is going after.  You don’t have to “love” it.  You don’t have to “believe” in it either (provided it’s not a scam!).

What you have to do is make money.  You have to make money in a way that is easy and duplicable for the people you sponsor into your business.

Believe In Your Success, I Do!
Karen
mentor.karen.j.miller@gmail.com

Do you ever feel like you are chasing down your prospects or some of the people in your downline? Does attempting to work with them feel like you are pushing a rope up a hill?

How often has someone expressed interest in what you have to offer, only to ignore your calls and emails? Or how about those people who were so enthusiastic when they signed up in your business, but are nowhere to be found a month or two later?

The thing that makes me shake my head is when someone signs up for my free ebook and gives the wrong telephone number. OK, so maybe some were typing too fast and hit the wrong key, or transposed numbers. That’s understandable. But others just simply do not give their correct contact information.

Why do they do that? Why do some people dip their toes into the water only to turn and run like hell in the other direction?

Part of it is FEAR.

MLM is a wonderful industry where AVERAGE people can make ABOVE AVERAGE income.

MLM is also an industry where most of us enter without knowing anything about the business. The “vultures” know this and start circling around the fresh meat that so trustingly entered the arena of Big Hopes and Dreams.

Because the MLM industry is open to anyone, it unfortunately attracts the scammers and “Pyramid” schemers. The pitch always sounds GLORIOUS and GLITTERY. The REALITY is that only the people at the top make money, most people get ripped off, then the company disappears in a few years. POOF!

It’s no wonder so many of us become jaded and skeptical. How many times do you get burned before you stay away from the fire?

But running scared from the potential scammers will also keep a person running away from potential positive business or training opportunities.

Another, more significant reason people run or hide, is TIMING.

Each one of us grows at our own pace…in our personal development, in our commitment to build our businesses, and in our personal lives.

A person may contact you for information, but still feel some insecurity about being successful. As a protective mechanism, he/she will avoid contact or avoid taking action.

You might have sponsored that someone into your downline who seems to have evaporated into thin air. He or she may not have a strong enough belief in themselves, or may have family members who are filling them with negativity and doubt.

Whatever the circumstances are for the individual, the TIMING for them is not right.
TIMING is not right for them YET.

Trying to Motivate someone who’s TIMING is not right…yet…is like trying to push a rope up a hill. Or have you heard the expression, “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.”?

Tom “Big Al” Shreiter has a saying: “Only take the volunteers. Look for the ones with their hands raised.”

This doesn’t mean you give up the ones hiding. Some may never come back to you for help again. Let it go.

But many others will be looking seriously for help when the TIMING is right for them. That may be in a month or it may be in a year.

So how do you increase your chances that these people will return to YOU?

That is where the beauty of an autoresponder comes in. If your prospects or downline have signed up to receive information from you through your autoresponder (such as a weekly or monthly newsletter), then they will continually have your name in front of them.

Always, always, always offer valuable content when using your autoresponder to keep in touch with folks on your list. This is not the time to pitch your business opportunity…it’s a major turn off and sets off salesman alarms.

Valuable content consists of sharing marketing and advertising tips, leadership skills, and personal development information.

A carefully constructed informative newsletter is an efficient tool that takes only 20-30 minutes. This leaves you with plenty of time to work more closely with the prospects and people in your downline who have their HANDS RAISED.

Believe In Your Success, I Do!
Karen
mentor.karen.j.miller@gmail.com

If you are writing as part of your online marketing strategy, you are eventually going to venture into ezinearticles.com territory.

The articles on Ezine Articles are often picked up by Google, provided the keywords and content are up to snuff, and appear on page one of searches.

You must be offering quality content to your MLM business colleagues.  Your article must not be one big pitch and you are not allowed to include links to your site in the body of the article.

Every article has an “author’s resource box” where you write a short blurb about yourself.  You should focus on how you can solve your reader’s problems AND you are allowed to put a link to your site there.

Once you submit your article, the editors will review it and send you a list of “problems” you will need to correct before your article can be published.

Once published, you can shout to the world about your accomplishment.

Digg, Tweet, & Stumble it, and by all means, announce it in your blog.

So here is my chance to Toot my own horn!

I recently had my first article published in Ezine Articles titled, “Beware!  The Dangers of Facebook!”

I invite you to visit my article and leave a comment there.

Don’t let time get away from you.  If you are writing for your blog, you most certainly have the skills for writing an ezine article.

At Mentoring For Free, we have an entire series on writing for ezinearticles by our resident expert, Richard Dennis.  It’s worth checking out…just ask and it’s yours.

Happy Writing!

Believe In Your Success, I Do!
Karen
mentor.karen.j.miller@gmail.com

I’ve written about setting goals many times.  Most of us already have the idea of how important setting goals is to achieving our success.

Many people actually know how to write them.  Goals have to be specific, measureable, and have a specific timeframe to be met.

Then why do so many of us fail to succeed?

Wrong formula?  Not enough self help tapes?  Not committed enough?  The dog ate your homework?

Well, according to Tom ‘Big Al’ Schreiter, the secret is in our motivation.

No big surprise there!

The real secret is in the kind of motivation…it’s got to be emotional!  It has to grab you in your gut and get you twisted over it!

Tom has written a special report teaching his goal setting techniques.  You can get it here:  “Setting Goals Is Easy.  Achieving Goals is Difficult.”

Following is an excerpt from Tom’s report… 

Dear Friend and Subscriber,
You’ve heard the gurus, the so-called experts, the trainers and the local big mouth after six beers. They all say the same thing:
“You gotta set goals. That’s the key to success.”
Right. Sure.

If setting goals is the key to success, then we’d all be super-successful now, right?
Well, we aren’t.
You see, it’s easy to set goals. Every year we set goals for the new year, to earn more money, to exercise, to lose weight, to be more loving, to win the local tennis tournament, to wake up an hour earlier, to sponsor more people, to spend more time with the kids . . .

Hey wait! These are just a list of some of my goals that I didn’t achieve.
And that’s the story of our lives. We all set goals. That’s easy. That’s no problem.

The problem is that we seldom achieve these goals. Does this sound like you? Like your downline? Like your prospects?
I bet it does. Because failing to achieve our carefully planned goals is just human. We mean well, but we consistently underachieve our goals.

Why is this?

I think that we secretly make a list of all of our
shortcomings and then set goals to fix them. Unfortunately, there is a reason we have shortcomings in our lives.

We have shortcomings because those things
are hard for us to do!

Are you ready to do something REALLY difficult?  This may get scary!

“Fear of loss is always greater than the desire for gain.”

Download Tom’s free report.

If you need some help getting started with your goals, I’m always here to help.

Believe in Your Success, I Do!
Karen
mentor.karen.j.miller@gmail.com

When you first got into MLM, I’ll bet you were like most people.  You were new to the industry, had no formal training, blindly believed your upline sponsor and trusted your company’s leadership implicitly.

I’ll bet you never thought about distributors having…or being entitled to…a Bill of Rights.

I’ll bet you never thought that there was an MLM Distributor Rights Association or that there was a Network Marketing MLM WatchDog.

Now that you’ve been working your business awhile and probably have some questions, you may not know quite where to turn for answers.

The MLM WatchDog, founded by Rod and Marcie Cook, is a great place to start.

Rod & Marcie have dedicated their efforts into making sure the MLM industry gets fair representation.  They are also committed to protecting their readership from being scammed.

I have included below the Distributor Bill of Rights as found on the MLM Distibutor Rights Association.

Read it carefully.     

 

Distributor Bill of RIGHTS

1. Distributors have a right to own and operate their own independent contractor business. The company and the government should recognize that a distributorship is an independent small business with all of the rights and tax benefits of any independent small business. By entering into an agreement with any company, each Distributor is entitled to specific and undeniable rights to protect and preserve immediate and long-term residual income.
2. Distributors’ personal business relationships shall be honored and protected. Distributors’ downlines that are personally sponsored and personal retail customers are part of the distributor’s business. Companies will recognize the sacred nature of the sponsor/distributor relationship. Distributors have the right to expect company’s efforts to support and sustain that relationship, and do nothing to compete with or harm the Distributors business. No restrictions should be placed on any legitimate business relationship, regardless of a competing company being involved or not.
3. Product usage by a distributor’s personally sponsored downline and customers is considered as retail sales of that distributor and is commissionable. The use of the company’s products within the sales organization is called “internal consumption.” Whether a distributor or a customer receives a discount is immaterial, as in the case that factory or wholesale outlet sales are still considered as retail sales.
4. Distributors have a right to a fair and balanced contract. Distributors shall be protected from termination without just cause. Distributors have a right to automatic renewal without material breach of contract. Distributors have a right to a process and system of fair and independent recourse.
5. There cannot be any restrictions on the distributor’s spouse or family conducting any other legitimate business of their choice. The company has no right to condition their distributors’ business based on any third party that is not a signature party to the independent contractor agreement/contract. Such attempts may be illegal.
6. Distributors have a right to sell, transfer or will their independent contractor business to any party that would qualify as a distributor under normal conditions. This is a provision that also helps protect the independent contractor status.
7. Distributors have the right to expect that their company and employees be honest and treat them courteously and respectfully; and submit to likewise treat them with mutual respect.
8. Distributors have the right to expect that their company has taken all reasonable steps to insure that their products are properly represented and meet any and all legal standards, have taken all reasonable steps to protect the proprietorship of the products and they are shipped in a timely manner.
9. Distributors should have the right to join any legitimate association of their choice.
10. Loyalty is expected from both Distributor and Company to each other.

Does your company’s contract and policy and procedures follow the principles in the Bill of Rights?

Have you even read your contract and policy and procedures?  If you have, do you understand the legalese?

Do you fully understand what could happen to your business if your company has a termination clause, or some other clause not in concordance with the Bill of Rights?

Who owns your downline (aka “your list”)?  If you left your company, are you allowed to contact your downline to introduce them to your new opportunity?  Or will you get sued?

These are questions you have to have answers to.  It means the survival of your business…the one you’ve worked so hard to build.

I can help you find those answers. 
All you have to do is ask.

Believe in Your Success, I Do!
Karen
mentor.karen.j.miller@gmail.com

In the world of business, whether it’s MLM or a conventional type of business, it is crucial to be able to attract people to your business.

In MLM, often our biggest focus is in finding leads.  We need to find people who become customers and those who we will sponsor into our business opportunities.

Have you ever been approached by someone who uses the “Just take your medicine” approach?  Or maybe you’ve been trained in this method?

You know the “Just take your medicine” sales approach.

Think of when your kids have been sick and needed to take that pink sticky medicine you have to keep in the fridge.  No matter what you tried, you always got more of it on you than in your kid.

After pleading with your child to “Just take your medicine and everything will be all right.”, you give up and call the doctor.

The doctor tells you to put the medicine in some juice or pudding and your child takes it just fine.

Just the other day, a salesman called me trying to get me to buy some online advertising.

He went on & on for about a half an hour showing me the website and all of the features it had to offer me. 

He finally got to the part where he showed me the advertising space on the website.  He must have talked another 10 minutes about this.

After about the first 5 minutes, the main thing running through my mind was what was he trying to sell me and how much would it cost.

I also thought about how it sounded like he was reading a script and couldn’t answer some of my questions clearly.

The point is that I wasn’t listening so much to the explanation he was giving me about all of the bells and whistles.  I stopped paying attention.

He never once stopped to ask me what I needed.  It was only until he was done with his pitch that he asked me if I was interested in his offer.

He was trying to get me to “just take my medicine”.  In other words, just listen to his sales pitch and everything would be alright.

He was trained to think that he knew what was best for me, the customer.  He was not trained to listen to me.  He was not trained to listen to what I needed and then tailor his sales pitch to meet my needs. 

Just yesterday, on our Mentoring For Free Marketing Skills teleseminar, Bob and Anna Bassett taught about this very issue.

Bob and Anna interviewed Kaleem Abdulah about how the book “The Secret of Selling Anything” by Harry Browne impacted his sales techniques.

In short, you “hide” the medicine in pudding.  You learn to be a listener.  You ask your prospects what they need, what they are looking for.

Have you ever asked a prospect “What are your greatest challenges?” and then just sat back and listened?

Or have you been trained to get your prospects to “just take their medicine”?

If you’d like to hear this exciting training audio, send me an email requesting the “Secret of Selling Anything” audio and I will be happy to send it to you. 

Believe in Your Success, I Do!
Karen
mentor.karen.j.miller@gmail.com