We are taught many different ways to talk to prospects in the hopes of bringing people into our business opportunity.

Many times we are told to be enthusiastic.

I remember being told once that if I wasn’t having success, I wasn’t enthusiastic enough or I didn’t have a strong enough belief.

A lot of people are taught the method of Firehosing.

Firehosing is when you spray your prospect with an enormous amount of facts and enthusiasm for your opportunity.

This approach is so forceful, that you drive more people away than you attract. 

Even though you see this happening, you have probably been told that the ones fleeing the scene just weren’t interested and you need to keep finding more people.

There is limited truth in that.  Of course, not everyone you speak to will be a prospect for your opportunity.

But you should be having some success in what you are doing.  If you feel like you are turning people off, you probably are.

When Lee Iacocca became President of Chrysler, he asked an important question:

“What does the customer want?” 

This principle is easily applied to Network Marketing.

When we approach a lead about our opportunity, it is important to find out what they want!

The big mistake is being so arrogant in thinking that your lead wants or needs what you have.

No one likes to have things pushed down their throats.

Not politics.
Not religion.
Not parenting techniques.
And certainly not business decisions.

How do you know what your prospect wants or needs?

In Harry Browne’s The Secret of Selling Anything, he tells you.

Ask!

Learn the skill of asking the right questions and then listen to what your prospect has to say.

Once you know what your prospect wants you will be able to tailor your presentation and services accordingly.

Be careful not to give too much information all at once.  You will be confusing your prospect and you will create doubt in his mind.

Answer the first question or need.

Then, ask again, Is there anything else you want to know?

Creating a two way dialogue is more natural and feels more relaxed for your prospect.  People often take months to make a decision to join an opportunity.

Be patient, communicate, and turn off the hose.

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

Recently I have been getting a ton of calls—recorded calls, no less!—offering to sell me endless prequalified leads for my MLM home based business.

They are using web harvesters to pick my phone number and other contact information off of my website.

I don’t mind being called by people.  After all, that is why my number is posted here.

But I do want to talk to real live people and I do not like being pitched.

Believe me, once I hear it is a pitch, I hang up!  If you are a real person calling with a pitch and expect me to return your call, I won’t.

It is best to generate your own leads. 

1. Network with like minded people who are already interested in MLM. 
2. Offer something of value for free that will help your contacts in building their businesses.
3. Build relationships with your network.

Of the people you help, a handful will likely want to join you in your business.

1. These people know, like, and trust you.
2. They are motivated and coachable.
3. You know they will be committed business builders.

This is the essence of
“Work Smarter, Not Harder.”

Build your business with these people and you will have a low attrition rate, a smaller group of people to train and support, and a group of people making good income for themselves and You.

If you think buying leads is a good way to build your business, listen to this recording from my mentor, Michael Dlouhy.

Selling Leads Is a Scam.

Believe In Your Success, I Do!
Karen

Network Marketing is NOT just a Numbers Game!

People are people not numbers.

They are also not just a prospect or a lead.

They have goals, dreams and desires. They are mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, grandmothers, and grandfathers to people who love them.

Prospecting 104….Painless Principles in Generating Your Own Marketing Leads

The answer I have found to the question “So, now what?” is that you have to build relationships.

All of the traditional methods of lead generation for building an online business (making the List, buying leads, paying for coaching) worked well for many people who made a lot of money.

These methods are also typically aggressive and more suited to people comfortable being salesmen.

The olde school methods have also burned out a lot of the population who have grown wary of such heavy hitter recruiting tactics.

Fact #1 about People and Sales:

Roughly 70% of the population hates being pitched, sold to, and closed.
These same people hate to sell and close.
Think about it…
Why do most people dread the prospect of dealing with a car sales person?

The best method I have found to generate my own leads is to build relationships first. 

A great “ice-breaker” to meet new people is to give away for free something of value that will help others build their business.

It may seem strange to give away training for free when so many people are making money offering training systems. 

But think about it.

Most successful businesses give things away.

• Most people have had free samples of teriyaki chicken at the mall food court;
• Or we have enjoyed free samples of perfume in magazine folds;
• Or free samples of hand lotion in foil packages. 
• Remember how the Avon lady had those tiny lipstick samples?

Online marketers usually have a sign up form to receive a free training series or a free newsletter.

Blogs, You-Tube videos, and online articles are common examples of free giveaways network marketers use in their online lead generation activities.

Offering free training or information gives us an opportunity to meet and network with a lot of like-minded people.

As we get to know each other, a handful of the people we are networking with will become our business partners.  Everyone else will become valued business associates.

In the words of Zig Ziglar, “You can have everything in life you want, if you help enough other people get what they want.”

Believe In Your Success, I Do!
Karen

Prospecting 103…the Professional Coach

Still can’t get it? Better head for some one on one Professional Coaching, Sister!

Yes, there must be something so terribly wrong with me that I need to plunk down a couple of grand to have an expert coach me through this process that is so idiotically simple for everyone else.

Fees do vary amongst the selection coaches who specialize in working with network marketers teaching us how to talk to Cold Market prospects.

How they offer their programs, content, length of time for training, and stipulations for personal individualized help also vary widely.

And they DO honor major credit cards.

Well, fortunately for this single Professional Mother of three, I didn’t have the cash OR the credit to take advantage of this golden opportunity.

So now what?

Now that everyone you know, care about and love…heck, even the people you ran into at the mall…are in the Prospect Protection Program, what do you do?

I have been fortunate enough to have learned the difference between one of these coaches and a Mentor.

Noun Singular mentor (plural mentors)

1. A wise and trusted counselor or teacher
Verb to mentor

2. (transitive) To act as someone’s mentor

A Mentor will build you the Person as the central part of what they offer you.

A Mentor will give without having any expectation of you the Person aside from your personal growth.

In the book, The Slight Edge, by Jeff Olson, the author talks about finding a mentor in Chapter 9. He says your mentor is like your hero.

You should seek out a mentor who is an expert in the area of your own goals and aspirations and focus on him/her.

Working with a mentor is learning through modeling.

Believe In Your Success, I Do!
Karen

Prospecting 102-B…
the Cold Market Lead Generation Method Continued

Legalized Stalking

The other Cold Market method of generating leads is to follow the “3 foot rule” whenever you are in a public place.

Were you told by your sponsor that all you had to do was relate your enthusiasm for your products to people and they’d be lining up to buy it?  If you weren’t getting sales, your belief and enthusiasm were to blame.

This form of Legalized Stalking works something like this.

When at the mall or grocery story, you start talking to everyone within hearing distance about your great home business opportunity or your fantastic products that are so terrific they raise the dead.

If you continue with this for any length of time, soon the security guards are going to see you coming and block all entrances to you. If you still get in, people will begin to spot that hungry look in your eye and start running, not walking, for a place to hide.

Of course, you’re not doing anything wrong, those poor people just don’t know how badly they need what you have to offer.
Oh, don’t they now?

Were you also told that you have to “Hear a 100 ‘no’s for every ‘yes’ you get”?

What a bunch of rubbish!

The Cold Market left me a little frigid too, so I abandoned the Legalized Stalker plan along with buying useless leads for making cold calls.

So NOW what???

Believe In Your Success, I Do!
Karen

Prospecting 102…
the Cold Market Lead Generation Method

The List? I’ll have none of that, thank you! Buy Leads, you say?

So, once I announced to my upline that I refused to call my family and friends for prospecting, I was given two options that involved entering the COLD Leads Market.

These are the other inhabitants of the planet who don’t know you from Adam.

First, I was presented with a list of sources that sold leads. Even prequalified leads!

Oh joy! Here is THE answer! An unending supply of people who actually WANT to talk to me and know about my business! Oh…Really?

I found out in the nick of time the real truth behind buying leads. BEWARE! Before you buy even one lead, or if you’ve bought leads and are getting nowhere, you must understand how these leads are generated and sold…and resold…and resold.

Have you ever been online and been offered a chance to “win” an iPod or computer? All you had to do to be entered into the contest was to fill out a short survey. You might have been asked about making extra cash or something similar.

Since you wanted to be contacted if you won the prize, you didn’t think twice about leaving your name and telephone number. The fine print was so minute and long, you didn’t bother reading it.

If that wasn’t you, there are thousands of people who complete such surveys every day.

This is just one way companies selling leads packages get the leads for you. They are not interested in your home based business opportunity…they just wanted a free computer!

So now what??

Believe In Your Success, I Do!
Karen

Prospecting 101…
the Hot and Warm Market Leads List

Spare yourself some grief…
don’t even make the List!

I remember being told to make The List. You know. The List of 100 of your friends, family members and acquaintances.

The better you know them makes them your HOT Market Leads.
The less well you know them, makes them your WARM Market Leads.
Cha-Ching!

I really, REALLY felt uncomfortable calling these people. My Dearly Beloved, gathered there that day, unsuspecting targets….yikes!

But I obeyed and did as I was told…afterall, I had agreed to be “teachable”.

This went on until I called my nephew one fateful evening. I was getting my little ones to bed, and he was making Spanish rice 800 miles away.

We chatted a bit…then…I started telling him about the fantastic opportunity I had found…and the simple training system they had…just call everyone you know!!!

He immediately said: “Is that why you called me???”

I felt like a creep! At that moment, I vowed NEVER, EVER to prospect my Dearly Beloved AGAIN!

Let me tell you something.
Your friends and family love you and care about you dearly. This makes them the worst people to approach with your opportunity.

Your friends and family are just as skeptical as everyone else and they do not want you to get hurt, or taken to the cleaners.

There is also the hard truth that some of those closest to us do not want to see us succeed because they don’t want to get left behind. They may not even realize they feel this way. But they do and they will not be one of your supporters.

Whatever the circumstance is, stay away from The List, or you will find yourself a member of the N.F.L. (No Friends Left).

No matter how much these folks like you and love you, anyone will get tired of being pitched and will avoid you…even your cat’s vet!

So now what?

Believe In Yourself, I Do!
Karen

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

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

Have you ever wondered how one person can talk to 25 prospects and sign up 20 and another person can talk to those same people and struggle to get just one?

Another person took this secret and applied it to some prospective clients that had never bought from their company. These prospective clients turned into paying customers to the tune of over $180,000 in just 6 weeks.There are many various methods to identifying people’s personality types.  For me, the colors system is the simplest and most fun way to sort people out.

This secret when properly applied can allow you and any one who wants to use it to write their own check.

What is this secret?

Simply, the secret is learning the Colors Personality Typing System.

There are four basic personality types.

1. Yellow…always concerned with other people’s welfare and feelings; family oriented.
2. Blue…social animal, craves almost constant contact with people; loves to have fun!
3. Green…analytical, always wants more and more information about whatever it is they’re interested in; love to research.
4. Red…usually talks about themselves and their achievements; their way is the only way.

The bigger part of the secret is in actually learning how to listen and observe.  Only through listening can you learn how to apply the colors personality skills. 

Honing one’s listening skills takes practice.  Practice that is offered through Mentoring For Free.

What can it do for you?

So, big whoop.  You can categorize your prospects in a box of crayons.  What’s the use in that?

Understand please, that learning the colors system involves more information than I’ve shared here and it takes practice.

Let’s say you are talking to an interested prospect who is a blue.  You are a green.

You find importance in all the details and knowing every scrap of information.  So that is how you present your opportunity to your prospects.

Well, guess what?  Your fun-loving Blue prospect couldn’t care less about all of those details.  Blues want to see the big picture.  They want to have fun!

Since you’ve just bored Ms. Blue to tears with your analytics, her mind is off in another direction, and so is her pocketbook.

Want More answers?

If you are ready to unlock the full mysteries of this system so you can take advantage of its power?

Give me a call or send me an email and I’ll be happy to get you connected with our full training on the colors system.  Remember, all of the training at Mentoring For Free is, well, yes…free!

Wishing you the success of a lifetime!
Karen
k.j.miller.777@gmail.com