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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!
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!
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 2 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 taper 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.
I still put most of my effort into my primary company and the lesser one is a company I am customer of. So I can offer it as an option.
Download your free copy of How to Select the Perfect Network Marketing Company – and enjoy!
