What’s the Buzz Irk?

There’s a lot of “Buzz” right now about Buzzirk Mobile. It’s supposed to be a cellular phone service that will let you use it to gain access to the internet via your computer. So the idea is that it’s one solution for your phone and internet service. Most people have two solutions for that. This technology as I understand is already somewhat available and is called tethering.

But I see several issues with Buzzirk. First is that announced they were ‘launching’ on July 1st. But apparently that launch only meant launching the company not the product. Second they seem to lack officers on their board.

Four positions and two people occupying two positions (here)? And their voice mail is full according to various complaints at this site. I take that site with a grain of salt, but so far I’m not sure this company is “Buzz” worthy.

Is a Party Plan right for your Network Marketing Business?

Party plans are those get togethers at people’s homes where the product is demonstrated live. The party is a sales opportunity for the company’s products and there’s no better to way retail the products. That’s because the product(s) is sampled at the home party. This gives people hands on experience with the product before they buy it.

But not every network marketing company can benefit from party plans. Party plans or home parties are best suited for products that have a “WOW” factor. Products that have instantly recognizable benefits are good candidates for a party plan. Products that have more subtle benefits don’t do so well. Skin care products do well in home party plans and certain other products do as well.

For example, I have been to an Ecoquest home demonstration. Ecoquest makes those Fresh Air air purifiers. The demonstrators brought an onion with them. They cut a piece off the onion. They told me to hold out my hand and they smeared onion juice all over the back of my hand. Then they told me to smell the back of my hand – which obviously smelled like onion. Then they had me hold my hand in front of the Fresh Air for 45 seconds. And then they told me to smell my hand again. WOW …no more onion smell. That product had WOW factor and it was well demonstrated. I ended up buying a unit on the spot but did not join the business side.

Party plans can be great for retailing the product. Retailing the product can bring in quick cash flow and some of those people might later want to be in the business.

Warm Market Interpretations

There is quite a lot of debate about the warm market in network marketing these days. Usually the ‘warm market’ conjures up the visualization of one sided conversations with friends, family, and contacts. And it conjures up scenes of broken or damaged relationships.

There are people on both sides of this debate. On one side, you have the ‘renegade’ folks who say steer clear of the warm market and focus on attracting prospects instead. On the other side, are people who still swear by the warm market technique.

One well known network marketer still gives this advice to people: build your business around the warm market. He has also made seemingly conflicting advice statements like ‘lead a large group of people’ and ‘you can’t market to strangers’. This particular individual is a multi-millionaire (many times over) so he must know something. Right?

Yet I could not reconcile in my mind how you can use your warm market (which is a limited group of people) and build a large team. At some point you’ll have to market to strangers. And I know perfectly well this person did not make his money marketing his company to friends and family.

In digging a little into this person’s background, I realized several things. First he has been at it since at least the 1980’s starting with old school Amway. (Did everyone get their start at Amway?). Second, he is a well known motivational speaker. I would imagine his wealth comes mostly from his speaking engagements. When you can draw thousands of people into an auditorium, that’s big bucks! That’s bigger bucks that warm marketing bucks.

Another thing I realized about his is how he defines warm market. He says to work on continually expanding your warm market. And he also believes that you should establish a relationship before trying to recruit anyone. That reconciles the “don’t sell to stranger” statement. But I’m still not 100% comfortable with warm market techniques over attraction marketing techniques.

What about you? Yeah, I know I didn’t mention his name. Who do you think I’m talking about?

Enroll Team Builders to Build your Organization

When you’re on a call, you probably have a set of question you ask. I have some open ended questions that I ask in order to find out more about my prospects. One such question is “Have you ever been involved in a home business before?”. If the prospect has, I will almost certainly find out whether or not he/she has had any previous exposure to network marketing. And from those conversations, you can find out what kind of experience it was for them.

A dream prospect will be one who is involved in a network marketing company already and has an existing large team already built. Perhaps looking for a 2nd option and this type of prospect can built your organization very quickly. Those don’t come around that often however, and for most people you will have to judge their ‘team building’ capacity. You can’t always tell for sure because some people talk a big talk and then never take any action. But lately I have been making a point to aim for team builders and it’s beginning to pay off for me.

Warm Market and Strangers

I’ve been on a warm market kick lately. Can strangers be part of your warm market? If you live in even a decent sized town, you have a never ending supply of strangers that you can see every day. The so called “3 foot rule” says you should talk to all of the people you come in contact with.

If you don’t mind striking up a conversation with strangers, it that a good idea? I think not. The biggest problem with this ‘3 foot’ approach is that it’s a huge waste of time. The vast majority of people you come in contact with are not going to be interested in what you have. And you have to spend a lot of time to find out if they’re interested (assuming they’ll talk to you). Since they’re strangers, you don’t know anything about them and won’t have a clue if they are interested in your business (much less a home based business in general).

To me, this is a tremendous waste of time. For all the time you spend doing that, the time would be better off spent talking to interested leads on the phone. The only time the 3 foot rule might make sense would be if you were at a network marketing convention or home business expo.

Warm Market and Friends

In the last post, I talked about the warm market as applied to your family members. Usually not a very good market for a variety of reasons. What about friends and acquaintances? This is a much larger group for most people. This is everyone you know the first name of. This group consists of neighbors, parents of your kid’s classmates, people you worship with, people in your club or organization, co-workers and business associates.

Your relationships with these people vary greatly. It could go from someone who you consider a very close friend to someone who you only see once or twice a year and even those you don’t patricianly like being around. This group is a significant group depending on how many people you know.

The plus side of this group is that you have easy access to them. The down side of them is that they may not be the least bit interested in your product or opportunity. As a result you could waste considerable time with people who aren’t interested. And as a result of that, you could mar your reputation with those people. Unfortunately, network marketing does not have the best reputation for some people.

The best way to approach this group is much the same as the family. Let it come up in casual conversation relating to “what do you do for a living?” or “where do you work?”. That question can open up your opportunity to let them know you work for yourself. If that concept interests them, you might be able to take the conversation a bit further. If they don’t seem impressed, then let it die.

I would not say throw out this group entirely. As a network marketer, you should think and breathe your business and this means be willing to talk to people around you that might be interested in what you’re doing.

In the next post, I’ll look at strangers as a warm market. In the meantime, looking for information on selecting a good network marketing opportunity? Download your free copy of How to Select the Perfect Network Marketing Company – and enjoy!

Warm Market and Family Members

The subject of working the warm market is talked about a lot in network marketing circles. Working the warm market to get prospects is a somewhat controversial way to build a business. There are those of us who believe working a warm market has many problems; not the least of which is a lot of wasted time. Then there are those old schoolers that still believe a warm market will be a way to get people into your business because they are easier to talk to. A warm market is made up of those people around you. I break the warm market down into 3 categories: family, friends/acquaintances, and strangers.

In this post, I’ll talk about the family part. Family are those people that are closest to us; related to us either by lineage or marriage. Most people with any sense avoid the family connection. Even supporters of the warm market often avoid selling the business or product to the family. Family members are perhaps too sensitive to sell. After all, who wants to ruin a family relationship with a business opportunity. Family relationship are close and it’s not like you just walk away from them if the proposition does not work out.

In casual family conversations, the subject what you do for a living often comes up. That’s is one opportunity where you can introduce it to a family member. If they are interested you can hopefully tell. If they are not, you just move on. But the family as a warm market has one major problem; it’s a tiny market. Even if you belong to a large family, it’s a very limited group of people and you can’t go that far with it directly (unless your family is a bunch of go getters). So forget the family as a warm market!

In the next post, I’ll look at the friends and acquaintances group. In the meantime, looking for information on selecting a good network marketing opportunity? Download your free copy of How to Select the Perfect Network Marketing Company – and enjoy!

Juggling More than One MLM

Most advanced network marketers have more than one network marketing company working at any one time. To some people, that might seem contrary to the idea of focusing on a business. For example, someone asked me how I manage to divide my time between 3 network marketing companies. This is from someone on my team who wanted to join a second one.

First of all, there is a timeline curve on the work you do when you first start a network marketing business. There is a lot of time being spent up front doing things like learning the comp plan, studying the company resources, listening to the conference calls. These kinds of activities tend to tape off after a few months and the curve lessens. That doesn’t mean you stop working that business, but rather you can work it more efficiently and therefore spend less time with it.

Therefore, while it’s ok to join another company, make sure you can allow for this curve. Make sure things are running smooth in your other company(s) before getting into a new one. For this reason, it’s probably not a good idea to get into more than one around the same time.

Also what you find is that a lot of the work you do is duplicatable. For example, I have a training autorepsonder that I built from scratch for my first company. That was a lot of work. But it wasn’t much work to tweak it (changing some words and URL resources) for my second company.

So there is nothing wrong with juggling more than one network marketing company and most network marketers do just that.

Download your free copy of How to Select the Perfect Network Marketing Company – and enjoy!

Network Marketing not Conventional Business

Network marketing is not a conventional business by most definitions. It doesn’t require much startup capital and it doesn’t require the usual difficulties of a business. By that I’m talking about things like administration, brand building, generating buzz, stocking product, shipping the product and so on. In most network marketing companies, such activities are taken on by the company itself.

Contrast that to starting say, a pet grooming business in your area. You would have to get the funding (large capital investment), find a location, get a land use permit, rent the space, get the space suitable for your canine guests and many more tasks just to get ready to open your business. Then you would have undertake some kind of marketing campaign to get people to come to your business. And since you’re just starting out, you probably won’t have the budget to hire help, so you’ll have to do all the work yourself. Yikes! Well a business like that could do well – over time. But it might be several years before it makes any money and word of mouth starts to help you out.

That’s just one example of a ‘traditional business’ but most of them share the same issues. The only thing network marketing businesses have in common is that, yes, you still need to market them. In all other respects, network marketing is very unlike other types of businesses, and that makes people forget it’s a business. Yes, it is still a business and should be treated as such.

Download your free copy of How to Select the Perfect Network Marketing Company – and enjoy!

What’s the Most Important Part of a Headline?

What’s the Most Important Part of a Headline?

I used it in the headline of this blog post. It’s the first 5 words (’the’ and ‘a’ don’t count)! Did you know that the first 5 words are the most important part of a headline? It’s their job to grab the reader’s attention and make them want to read more. Those 5 words should generate some sort of curiosity or interest and compel the reader to go on.

Why are the first 5 words so important? In many cases, the headline may appear in a list among other headlines. This would be the case with a blog post in an RSS reader or a classified ad on sites like CraigsList or BackPage. In those cases, the reader will be scanning the page quickly and doing sort of a ’speed reading’ exercise. Assuming the language is a western culture language, they’re be scanning from left to right. So you can see where you need to make those first 5 words count!

No waste! Here is a CraigsList tip. UPPERCASE the first 5 words (CraigsList allows this – BackPage does not). That will give the headline more visual oomph that sentence case and only make it stronger.

Hope you can enjoy and make use of this Friday tip. Have a great weekend everyone!