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?