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Here is your prospecting ‘hot tip’ for February. When you talk to a lead you have not spoken to before, you know that one thing you need to do is break the ice. Usually this ‘icebreaking’ occurs by way of asking a variety of questions. Some of the things that people love to talk about are things relating to where they are. So take a moment to find out where the person is before you call them. How to do that? Look up the area code! Here is a Wiki page that will tell you where any area code is in the U.S.
This way you can say things like “How are things in your part of Virginia?” or “Wow, that sounds like a bad storm in Northern Michigan – is everything ok there?”. This can be a great way to bond with the prospect early in the conversation. This can help get them to relax and start opening up to you.
When someone says “I’m not interested” do you take that statement at face value? There are two approaches to this. Some people feel the prospect doesn’t really mean that and go on to try to sell them. Perhaps finding a way to generate interest. Other will simply take that at face value and move on. Does “I’m not interested” really mean “I’m not interested”?
Yes and No. Let’s say you approach someone on the street you don’t know and have never seen before about your business opportunity. If they say “I’m not interested” chances are they really mean it.
On the other hand, suppose you call a surveyed lead. The survey responses clearly indicated he was interested in a home based business opportunity. Yet before you even named your company or your industry, he says “I’m not interested”. Clearly there’s a disparity between what he is saying and what he really feels. Do you take this at face value? I do and here’s why.
He is not interested. He may still be interested in a home based business but he is not interested in what you are selling. Maybe there’s something about your approach he didn’t like or whatever, but he decided to say he was not interested so to me, that’s that. It’s likely true that there is something he isn’t admitting, but I will not go any further with him. Some will. Some will think he was saying no to something he did not understand and continue to dig. Me, I will just move on to the next person.
What do you do?
There are two main issues with working the warm market. For one thing, it’s not a good use of my time. Most of the people I know or have known are not interested in a home based business. As I mentioned yesterday, you might have one or two hiding in that circle of influence, but at what price do you find them? The cost is high: Time spent and wasted on the non interested people.
The second, and perhaps even bigger issue, is that you need a long term plan for your business. Your circle of influence is only going to yield you a limited number of prospects at best. What happens when you’ve run out of people to talk to? Now you can get more people to talk just by going out. If you live a larger city, chances are you see different people every day. If you live in a small town, that may not be the case (then you really do run out of people to talk to).
To take that into an example, say you ran out of people in your circle of influence and decide to take your act to the local mall. You stand in the mall entrance every day with your clip board in hand and attempt to talk to everyone that walks by (that would be the 3 foot rule in action). And at the end of the week after you’ve spent 40 hours at the mall, maybe you have one or two sign-ups (if you’re lucky). That is if you weren’t escorted out by mall security and told never to return. But that brings me back to the issue the cost of your time spent. And cost of time wasted on uninterested parties.
You see, you need a long term solution to bringing in ‘interested’ people to talk to. Working the ‘circle of influence’ warm market results in a lot of wasted time talking to people that aren’t interested in what you have to offer.
One thing that used to bother me about network marketing / old school MLM was the idea of working your warm market. The warm market being your so-called circle of influence: those people who you run across each and every week and also those you haven’t seen for a while. This would expand the warm market to the people you went to high school with but haven’t spoken to since gradation day. Fortunately the Renegade Network Marketer concept freed me from the notion of having to work a ‘warm market’.
Yet just the other day, I heard a well established network marketer telling the group to use the warm market approach. She cited a few stories of this type: Joe didn’t talk to neighbor Mary because Joe didn’t think Mary would be interested in a home based business. Mary went on to sign up under someone else and went on to be a six figure earner. Ok, in every warm market, there are potentially a few good prospects. Is it worth talking to all of them just to find a one or two that may or may not even be there?
This marketer was saying this from the standpoint of not turning our backs on any market. While that is a point to be considered, I think I would rather invest my time in people who have at least expressed some interest in a home based business. It doesn’t matter if I don’t know these people (yet), it’s easier for me to talk a stranger who has raised their hand and said “I’m interested in a home based business” than to talk to a friend who has not said anything about it all.
In reality, the subject comes up in conversation sometimes. What do you do for a living they ask me? And I tell them. When they find out I work from home full time, some of them become interested by attraction. That’s the closest I get to working a warm market.
Do you have a plan for your downline from day 1? Typically, there is the company training documentation and presentations to go through but that’s where a lot of uplines leave off. Or trail off and leave the downline to fend for themselves after that. What about giving your downline an actual plan they can follow? I always ask my prospects before enrolling them – are you willing to work with a marketing plan? Most of them say yes to that. Then I give them a choice: Either provide their own plan or let me provide the plan for them. If they chose the latter then they have to agree to follow it.
A key word in Network Marketing is ‘marketing’ and it is going to be a needed component of any successful network marketing business. I am convinced that the reason a lot of people fail in network marketing is they lack a marketing plan. Now there are those who won’t follow the plan – even though they agreed in advance to follow it. I can only do so much with those people. It’s the remainder of the people – those that are willing to work the marketing plan that I spend the most time with. Incidentally, I have yet to have someone say they have their own plan ready to implement. Clearly a workable marketing plan is lacking in the toolbox of most downlines and can only hurt their chances of success.
Apples
I was in a hurry this morning and stopped at a grocery store to pick up a few things. Included were a handful of apples. When I got out I thought my purchase seemed a bit expensive, but when I looked at the receipt, the four apples cost $5.04! And I live in Washington State, where apples are supposedly grown.
Now I am not writing this to complain about the price of apples but rather to draw your attention to the cost of things we need and use every day. Back in the day when I worked at a job and had an “employee” mentality, I would probably have looked at that purchase and said “Hmm, I may have to stop eating apples”. When you are an employee for someone else, your income is basically fixed. You only have “X” dollars to spend each month and you must make adjustment decisions based on the price of things and what you can afford. You must take your available funds and look at what each thing costs. Then you may have to decide to cut out or cut back on some things. It’s a mentality of lack and limitation.
When you are in business for yourself, it’s a different mentality. Now it’s, well if I want more apples, I’d better bring in more money because they’re getting expensive. You see, when you have a network marketing business, your income is adjustable, not fixed. You want more money, you work to get it. Notice I said ‘work’. I don’t mean to imply you can just snap your fingers and more money will magically appear. But you do have control over the impact of the price of apples (and many other things).
PS: I think I’ll look for a produce stand.
Yeah, don’t bother with it. I used to try to memorize each and every detail of the compensation plan so that when I got on the phone I could be articulate about it. Then I realized, why bother? First of all, most compensation plans are complex and memorizing each and every detail about them is probably not a good use of my time. Second, I usually need to send the prospect to the website to view the comp plan anyway.
So that led me to a different approach. I have a one line summary of the comp plan for the prospects I am qualifying. If they ask any specific questions about it, I just refer them to the web site to view the comp plan and invite them to get back to me with questions after they’ve viewed it.
Now I am not saying you shouldn’t be intimately familiar with your comp plan, but you don’t need to spout off each and every hook and detail of the plan to new prospects. If they look at the plan and get back to you with questions, then of course, you need to be familiar enough with it to answer them. But beyond that, let them review it for themselves and don’t bother memorizing it. A better thing to memorize are the probing questions you are going to ask them.
You’ve heard the P word right? P as in Plan. To some people plan = pain. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Now I am speaking of a business plan, but I use the word plan generically. And before you get scared of writing a business plan, just know that a business plan doesn’t have to be formal. It can be as simple as you like or if you enjoy complexity, it can be that too. It is what you write.
Notice, I said write. That means you need to write out your business plan. Network marketing businesses are no different than other businesses in that regard. A plan won’t do you any good if it’s in your head. Commit those thoughts in your head to paper (or a computer document). Committing your plans to writing, no matter how simple they may be, serve at least two purposes.
For one, the plans tend to get solidified by writing them down. If you keep them in your head, even if you think about them all the time and have good memory, there is nothing that makes them seem more real as when they’re down on paper.
The second thing they do is help keep you going and focused. In the rush of your busy week, it can be easy to forget why you’re doing things. It can be easy to forget the big picture of your network marketing business. When things aren’t going very well, a quick look at your plan will remind you why your doing what you’re doing and will also let you see what you’ve already accomplished.
If you have been on the receiving side of a network marketing person trying to get you onboard, did he/she remind you of an auto salesperson? In old school MLMs, the most successful network marketers were aggressive and treated their prospects a lot like customers coming into a car dealership. Personally I hate car buying. The culture is manipulate, manipulate, and manipulate until the person has signed the next four to six years away. Any person coming into a car dealership is considered fair game as long as they have some credit.
Unfortunately a lot of network marketers still operate in that mode. Think about how many times you hear from your car salesperson AFTER you drive off the lot. A lot of network marketers do the same thing: get someone to sign up and then move on; never checking back with the person again.
Fortunately there is a new wave of network marketers which I consider myself part of, that does not operate this way. A prospect is not shopping for a car to me. They are looking for a way to make money either on the side or full time. They are looking for a way to solve their problem (needing to earn extra money or move away from a job, etc) and I am here to help them do that. Maybe I can help them, maybe I can’t. Smart network marketers will say no to the prospect if they don’t feel they are a good fit. The reason for this is that if the prospect signs on, he or she will be someone who will need guidance and contact well beyond the initial sign up. The prospect needs to be someone the smart network marketer can work with, not just a 1 time bonus.
In network marketing, I run across at least two kinds of people. Those who are looking for a hand-out rather than just a hand. Starting your own business, you will need some help, for sure. But there is a big difference between getting help from your upline and looking for a situation where you don’t have to do any work. As far as I know, no one ever made any money in network marketing without putting in effort – lots of it in fact.
Still there are people out there who are looking for some kind of magic business. A ‘magic’ business where they can sign up, pay their money and then never have to do any kind of work. Since network marketing is often compared to franchising, let’s talk about what happens in that business model. No one can plop down their money to open a McDonald’s franchise, for example, and then just sit back. The franchise company is not going to stock your freezers, hire and train your workers, and cook your food. That is all work you would have still have to do to be successful in a franchise. And from what I’ve heard, McDonald’s franchises are quite expensive to open up – like in the million dollar range.
And because network marketing companies often cost so little to join (like this one at less than $50), some people don’t take it as seriously as they should. I try to sort out that issue first because I am not looking for people like that in my organization. I am looking for people what won’t quit after the first disappointment or the first time someone hangs up on them. I will be glad to lend a hand to people who want to work their network marketing business, but not a hand out.
