Prospects are basically the foundation of any business as they are the “potential” customers to the business. So just how do YOU find prospects?

Let’s start out with a definition of the word promote which is the most important word in finding prospects. The word promote means: to make known.

I was recently helping a person in my downline with her MLM business, which was not growing. As I asked various questions I finally found the “nasty bug” that was stopping her business from moving forward. She didn’t want to come off as being or sounding sales-y. This stopped her from promoting.

How does everyone else promote?
A politician promotes how he/she can make a whole community’s life better – so he’s/she’s making herself known to the public by promoting and making known to as many people as possible what he/she can do for them. If you’ve noticed, politicians promote on TV, radio, signs stuck in the grass or on telephone poles along a busy street or maybe speaking at various group meetings.

A college promotes what courses it offers. It might promote on radio, might promote to high schools or through sporting events. A stockbroker promotes that he can help his/her prospect make money. A local restaurant will promote via radio, or mailing brochures or discount coupons.

The worst thing you can ever do in your MLM business career is to think, ponder, worry or even get the idea that it’s unprofessional to promote!

You really need to know and understand promotion. The only way you can have prospects, therefore customers or distributors – is to promote. The only way for you to make money in network marketing is to promote. You can write down your dreams and goals and study them every night. But you’re as effective as a billboard in the middle of the desert. No one knows you exist until you make yourself known. So if you ever find yourself where your business isn’t growing or you don’t have enough prospects, enough customers, or enough distributors – what do you do? Promote!

Why do you promote?
The reason you promote is to create desire for your product. How would you know that someone desires your product or business? Well certainly if you sent a post card and someone called the number – that’s someone showing desire. Even if a person called and asks, “How much is this?” It would still be someone showing desire – or at least slight interest. If you called a friend and asked them to look at something and they said, “Send it to me.” That’s showing a desire. People sometimes refer to desire as “responses,” as in, someone responded to my promotion.

Different types of promotion
So now let’s talk about different types of promotion that create desire.

You could promote in:

• The Help Wanted, the Sales & Marketing or the Business Opportunity sections of a newspaper,

• Advertising section of magazines,

• Direct mail, such as sending out po
st cards to everyone in your zip code,

• Door hangers,

• Email, banner ads on the internet,

• Networking. I’m sure you could have guessed that I would name that one. But you would be surprised at how many people when mentioning all the ways to promote, miss that one. In fact, if you use traditional promotion with the mindset of just finding a network of people to work – you will fare far better than most who only measure their responses with how many people respond to their advertisement. You can turn one response from a promotion into thousands if you properly network.

One other place to find prospects is to promote to leads you purchase from a lead company. The advantage of this is you’re only paying for those who’ve responded and you’re not paying for all the people who didn’t respond. If I send out 10,000 post cards and get 20 responses, then I paid for 9,980 post cards that didn’t get a response.

The advantage of writing your own ads of course is being able to target your specific audience with your specific product or opportunity message. Which is VERY important and should not be underestimated. In contrast, when you buy leads, you’re buying general ads – perhaps people who’ve responded to wanting a home based business. The other down side to buying leads is that very often, lead companies resell their leads to more than just you – so you’ve got extra competition to deal with.

Three broad ways to promote
Now, it probably sounded like I just contradicted myself; I didn’t. I just saved you years of running in circles trying to figure the advantages and the disadvantages to generating your own leads or buying leads. This is the game. You must promote. There are three broad ways to promote.

1) Networking- which costs the least – you’re going to have costs of meals with prospects – costs of joining clubs and associations. So I have rock climbing club fees, I have mountain climbing association fees, horseback riding fees, mountain biking fees– these are like $50 – $100 dollars a year.

2) Buying leads is more expensive than networking, less expensive than generating your own – but has some advantages and disadvantages. Sometimes you get some hot leads – sometimes, you swear you’re calling a graveyard.

3) Generating your own. Most expensive, but has the advantages of targeting your prospects. Here’s a list of advertisements that I’ve run.

• Some people earn Ten thousand dollars a year. And some people earn One million in the same year. Click here to see difference.

• Need more money; NOW!

• Does it ever break your heart to leave your kids at daycare?

• Looking for a FUN business?

• Go to the golf course when it’s not crowded.

• The truth about making money. A lot of it.

• WEALTH FORMULA. Click here (banner ads)

• Wealth formula that takes a lot of effort – but retires you in 4 years.

• Extremely well paying position available to right person. Must have sales & marketing experience. Sales training a big plus.

• Immediate Need for Effective Sales Person. Unlimited earning and growth potential. Self-starter, sales writing skills and team player will be keys to success in this growing, high tech organization. Will be responsible for generating sales leads, preparing and giving presentations on company products and training sales team for development company. Great benefits. Great FUN TEAM! Fax resume to:

Be “in” business
The bottom line is you must be using at least one of these three methods. If you’re not, you’re not in business – you’re out of business. What you should be doing, if you see the big picture and want the very big income is you need to be doing all three. All the time. Ideally you start out by networking, which will create enough money to buy leads, then you’ll generate enough money from the leads you purchased to generate your own leads. My point is, as soon as you start making any money, reinvest it in promotion.

One other thought, don’t measure your success by just your immediate responses. Any marketer who is of any value knows that how you measure return on promotion investment is based on the “life of the customer.” NOT immediate return. Get one leader from a MONTH or 6-MONTHS of promotion and it can pay you for the rest of your life. People often ask me, how much money did you make your first year in network marketing– I tell them, “I don’t know, I’m still earning it.”

Much respect and admiration,

Tim Sales

www.TimSalesMLMTrainingNews.com

www.brilliantexchange.com

www.professionalinviter.com

www.mlmbrilliance.com

Tim Sales helps network marketers gain the confidence and skills to be an M.L.M success. Learn how to become a true network marketing professional and sign up for his free M.L.M training newsletter and listen to free training at http://www.brilliantexchange.com

Article Source: EzineArticles

A lot of network marketing professionals ask me what my “trick” is for getting prospects to actually watch a DVD, listen to a CD or review some literature…you know, something that introduces the prospect to your MLM business. So often, these network marketing business materials get passed out, prospects say they’ll review it and then you never hear from them again.

My experience is that you’ll get better results in your MLM business if you use the right technique before you even give that prospect a DVD, CD or piece of literature.

This technique is called “Closing Your Prospect Into Action.” The “close to action” step is part of a six-step formula I always use whenever I am prospecting for MLM business partners or people who could benefit from my products.

The “Inviting Formula” is taught in great detail in a CD set I authored called “Professional Inviter,” but for reference in this article the Inviting Formula is:

Greet

Qualify

Invite

Handle any Questions/Objections

Close to Action

Follow-up or Follow-through

Don’t confuse Close to Action with “closing techniques.” This discussion is exclusively about closing people into action during the conversation when you first introduce your MLM business or product and ask them to take a look. Not, closing someone to buy something or closing someone to sign a distributor agreement. Although similar, that is not what I am discussing here.

Pretend…or envision that you call a prospect and greet them with a fun hello and several other niceties – she in turn asks how you’re doing – so there’s a nice exchange between the two of you. You ask how her job is going and she says, “Oh…okay I guess.”

You: You don’t sound very enthused about it – is something not right?

Her: Well, I’m just tired of the same old grind. Day-in, day-out. I just really thought I’d be in a different place in my life by now.

You: I know how you feel. Where did you think you would be by now?

Her: Well – I certainly didn’t think I would spend my life working like a dog just trying to cover bills – I didn’t think I would marry the man of my dreams only to have us wave bye to each other every morning and rarely see him – just everything is a struggle; you know what I mean?

You: I absolutely know what you mean. Have you thought of doing something else? Do you see this changing anytime soon?

Her: Yeah, I’ve thought about it… but jeez, we’re just so invested in our careers – I feel trapped!

You: Jenny, you and I are very similar. What you’ve said about you’re not where you wanted to be – I can so relate to. I think you would benefit from seeing a DVD that is purely educational. If I order this for you – will you watch it?

Her: Yeah – what’s it about?

——POINT ONE——

You: It’s about what we’ve been talking about! It’s about not working like a dog and spending time with the man of your dreams! I’ll see to it that you get the DVD in the next 24 hours – you watch it – then you and I will talk about it. I want to help you solve this trapped feeling! Deal?

Her: Deal!

——POINT TWO——

You: Alright, I’ll overnight this to you. You will get it tomorrow – Tuesday. You watch it and let’s talk Wednesday about 11am – does that work for you?

Her: That works – thanks!

POINT ONE is the Close.

What you’re doing in the Close is “concluding” the conversation. Caution! Don’t jump ahead of yourself and give your prospect ALL of the great details about your network marketing company at this point. I’ve only found this distracts MLM prospects and creates objections for them.

POINT TWO is the Action

What you’re doing in the Action is creating agreeable steps to help the prospect get what they’ve stated they need, want or don’t want as it pertains to your network marketing business.

Jenny very clearly stated that she didn’t want to “work like a dog.” She wants to spend time with the man of her dreams and she doesn’t like feeling trapped. You smartly gathered this valuable information because you followed the Inviting Formula and very effectively executed the Qualify step. You didn’t prematurely blurt out a solution when she first said her job was, “Oh…okay I guess.” You used her exact words in the Invite and Close to action steps. It was like “magic.”

When these steps are executed EXACTLY as I’ve described you will not have or will very rarely have, “I didn’t watch it.” As a result, more prospects will be evaluating your MLM business and if your business is what they’re looking for…well, you’ve just found yourself a new network marketing business partner.

Tim Sales helps network marketers gain the confidence and skills to be an M.L.M success. Learn how to become a true network marketing professional and sign up for his free M.L.M training newsletter and listen to free training at http://www.brilliantexchange.com

Article Source: EzineArticles

It’s very difficult to achieve real MLM success if you are afraid of talking to people about your business. Use these four guidelines to achieve confidence when talking with prospects. They’ve worked for thousands in my own MLM business. I know they’ll work for you too.

Why do you have a “chicken list?” Because you fear you don’t communicate easily or well.

A “chicken list” is a list of prospects that you’re scared of calling. Often people think they will call their “chicken list” after they get successful. But, they need these people in their MLM business to create the success.

This is a “Catch 22.”

The phrase “Catch 22″ is from a novel by Joseph Heller, written in 1961, where a pilot who was afraid to fight in World War II feigned insanity. But the doctor he was feigning insanity to said that if he were truly insane then he wouldn’t mind endangering his life by going into the war.

On the other hand, if he were sane, then he would be capable of following orders to fight the war. Thus the phrase “catch 22″ came to mean, “a situation that trips one up no matter which way one turns.”

So, you need the people on your chicken list to create the success that you feel you need in order to contact your chicken list. How do you get around this catch-22?

Typically, your fear is based on you feeling the people on the list are somehow above yourself because of their status. But if you were to examine this more closely you would discover that it’s not that the people on your chicken list are any better than you, it’s that you don’t have confidence in your ability to communicate easily.

If you knew you could communicate easily and effectively without making any mistakes, you could…and would…call anyone without hesitation. You would have confidence. You would have certainty. And there’s NOTHING more rewarding than having that feeling.

Communicate means: a. To convey information about; make known. b. To reveal clearly.

Easily means: a. Free from worry, anxiety, trouble, or pain. b. Requiring or exhibiting little effort.

The reason I bring this up is that there is a group of characteristics an MLM business professional must have in order to truly have success in speaking with prospects. I call these characteristics the 10 Communication Qualities.

Once you’re fully knowledgeable about these qualities and have the proper and correct MLM training to learn them, you will be amazed at how much smoother conversations will go with your prospects.

The fifth communication quality on my list is to” “Communicate easily – no tension, strain, fakeness, sounding rehearsed, stuttering or hesitating.”

Let’s take up each one of these issues:

Tension & Strain: (The usage definition for tension and strain were very similar so they are combined here.)

a. To be subjected to great stress. b. A great or excessive pressure, demand, or stress on one’s body, mind, or resources.

Tension and strain (while communicating) are stress that is created by the mental activity of feeling unprepared or that you will sound “stupid” to others. If you’ve ever been asked to suddenly speak in public you know what this mental activity feels like.

It creates a very uncomfortable feeling. It’s a feeling of “being on the spot” and not knowing what to say. It is often the reason someone’s voice “squeaks and quivers” while talking. Tension and strain communicates uncertainty to the prospect or “new to the subject” and unprofessional.

The solution to tension and strain is familiarizing yourself with all situations that can come up on a call when talking to prospects. Be familiar with all situations that come up regarding your MLM business opportunity and also the products you sell.

Also know what you’re going to ask the prospect to do – invite for product or invite for business, send to a website or get on a conference call, etc. If you are very clear about what you’re going to do and say, you will greatly reduce tension and strain.

Fakeness: a. To represent falsely; pretend to. b. To fabricate.

People sound fake when they use a lot of fluff words like, awesome, incredible, unbelievable, fabulous, wonderful, special, state-of-the-art, etc. These types of adjectives demonstrate a clear bias on your part. I’m not suggesting you be a boring communicator – by all means, be excited. But you don’t have to use fluff or puff words to describe your excitement as they normally indicate a cover-up of real content.

Sounding rehearsed: a. One that is not authentic or genuine.

Rehearsing what you’re going to say is NOT WRONG. However, if you talk with a prospect before you’ve rehearsed enough – you will sound rehearsed; which IS UNPROFESSIONAL. If you’ve received a phone call from a telemarketer and you could tell he was reading from a script, it probably didn’t sound very genuine and as soon as you detected that he was reading from a script you wanted off the phone. That’s what you want to avoid causing your prospect to feel about you.

Stuttering and hesitating: a. If you hesitate, you do not speak or act for a short time, usually because you are uncertain, embarrassed, or worried about what you are going to say or do.

Stuttering and hesitating loops us back to the first issue I discussed above which is Tension and Strain. See, it is the fear of saying or doing something the prospect won’t agree with that causes us to hesitate and stutter. So the solution for stuttering and hesitating is similar to the solution for tension and strain – be very familiar with all the situations that can come up on your invite call.

I don’t know if you’ve realized the simplicity of this yet, but your willingness to talk to your “chicken list” or lack thereof is based on your ability to communicate easily. And to communicate easily, you need to become familiar with all aspects of your MLM business and company.

Tim Sales helps network marketers gain the confidence and skills to be an M.L.M success. Learn how to become a true network marketing professional and sign up for his free M.L.M training newsletter and listen to free training at Brilliant Exchange.

Article Source: EzineArticles

Do you consider yourself a confident, professional presenter? In MLM, this is what you need to be in order to consistently capture your prospect’s interest to get people to join your business or to sell product. What do you need to do to get yourself to that level? It isn’t that difficult. Keep reading for tips to help you get there.

In a recent MLM training article, I discussed how to present to your prospect without being too shy or too pushy. This new article is all about communicating easily; which has to do with you being a sharp presenter, and presenting your MLM business with professionalism.

Not winging it; but also not sounding rehearsed. No fumbling over your words. No being out of breath because you’re scared. No apologizing for being scared. Simply put, being a confident and professional presenter who delivers good content effectively. Sound hard to do? It’s not.

Unfortunately, too many people in the MLM industry don’t take the time to learn a few simple concepts. In presenting, right or wrong, your prospect will judge you, the business and the MLM industry based on how you present. Is it any wonder that the industry has a public relations black eye? Too many presenters in MLM “wing it.”

Communication Quality number 5 from my training series is: Communicate easily – no tension, strain, fakeness, sounding rehearsed, stuttering or hesitating.

If there were a word that defined this Communication Quality it would be articulate, which means: 1. to express oneself clearly and coherently; 2. to pronounce distinctly.

I’m not talking here about using perfect English. I can not claim to have mastered this Communication Quality from an English professor’s viewpoint. But I have mastered it enough to communicate to my audience. Sometimes things said with perfect grammatical correctness make no sense to the person you’re talking to. No, I’m talking about true communication, which is articulating words so they make complete sense to the person you’re talking to. If you’re speaking to a typical teenager in perfect English tongue, they will think you’re an idiot.

There are several things that cause you to speak easily and clearly. I’m just mentioning and defining them here, because if I wrote everything about them it would be a 10-page newsletter!

Here’s a list of things you need to be aware of that will cause your prospect to pay attention to you and truly learn from you:

VARY THE SPEED OF YOUR SPEECH

Your speed of delivery must vary; meaning you have parts of your presentation that are faster and other parts that are slower. Why? Because this is how you stress importance. The less important parts are gone over quickly while the more important parts are gone over in a slower fashion.

VARY YOUR VOICE TONE AND VOLUME

A varied tone of voice and volume are very important if you want to keep your prospect’s attention and have them understand what you say. It’s what gives your prospect a clue about what is important and what is very important.

CREATE STRATEGIC PAUSES

Extremely effective so the audience feels that you are speaking right to them.

USE SET-UP WORDS AND SENTENCES

Set-up words are words you say that prepare your prospect for what you’re about to emphasize. Like if I were to say, “If you learn nothing else out of tonight’s network marketing presentation…,” that would be a set-up sentence to emphasize what I’m about to say.

BUILD BRIDGES

Another topic is the use of what I call bridges. Bridges are words and/or sentences you use to transition from one topic to another. When you’re shifting topics, you need to use a bridge, otherwise your prospect doesn’t follow you and there’s a gap. Many prospects get lost in this GAP between topic 1 and topic 2. It’s not that they don’t understand topic 1 or 2, it’s that they didn’t hear you move from topic 1 to topic 2, and they don’t see how the two topics relate.

BE EASILY HEARD

You need to communicate with a volume that each person you’re talking to can hear easily, but not so loud that it causes the prospect to feel you’re shouting at them.

MAKE FREQUENT EYE CONTACT

Make frequent eye contact with individual people. I used to practice this at my kitchen table with stuffed animals. I would talk to one animal sitting at the table and then to another one. If you’re talking to a husband and wife, you should talk directly to the wife for 5-10 seconds and then directly to the husband for 5-10 seconds. When speaking to 10,000 people, you look at ONE person and talk to them for 5-10 seconds then pick out another person. Never talk to a crowd.

With admiration,
Tim Sales

Tim Sales helps network marketers gain the confidence and skills to be an MLM success. Learn how to become a true network marketing professional and sign up for his free MLM training newsletter and listen to free training at Tim Sales’ First-Class MLM Tools.

Article Source: EzineArticles

Scared of Public Speaking? Cold Calling? Talking to Strangers?

Diffusing live explosives can produce some enormous fears. But fear is not welcome while working on anything that blows up. It distracts one terribly. I was fortunate to have a Master Blaster by the name of Master Chief Hufty teach me how to overcome fear. Little did I know the number of times I would recall this lesson, nor did he realize he helped me become a better public speaker. I would like to share this valuable lesson of how to overcome fear with you.

Master Chief Hufty was probably the smallest physical man I ever met. He stood about 4’3 and weighed around 95 lbs. Yet he is the largest man I’ve ever met. In the military when one achieves something praiseworthy he/she receives “medals” to be worn at formal events. In non-formal situations he/she substitutes ribbons for metals. The ribbons go above the left shirt pocket and each ribbon is approximately ½ inch high and one-inch long. Master Chief Hufty had so many rows of ribbons they actually went over his shoulder and started down his back. He was the most decorated soldier I’d ever seen! To be educated by him was a true honor.

One afternoon we were working on a bomb and I freaked out….I’d rather not detail that portion of the story. But, Master Chief Hufty disassembled fear for me. He broke it down into digestible and visible parts so that I could “see” it and define each section.

When we (you and me) encounter unpleasant or alarming conditions our mind becomes a stage of conflicting voices. Some would define this as the Fight or Flight theory. Parts of us want to fight whatever we fear, and other parts of us want to run (flight) from what we fear. Master Chief Hufty called it “mind chatter.” Fear, especially sudden fear can cause the best in us to freeze. What is freeze? Freeze is stuck between fight and flight. If you neither fight nor flight you’re wasting your only asset – TIME.

To gain control of my thoughts again, Master Chief Hufty told me to repeat this sentence over and over, “First I do this, and then I do this, and then I do this.” By repeating this, I could slowly walk myself out of the “mind lock” by directing 100% of my attention to what I needed to do next.

Worst-case scenario for a bomb squad technician is obviously death. Dwelling on harmful outcomes only leads to that reality. Yikes!

Now let’s take a look at the fear of public speaking. As a network marketer this could take the form of conference calls, training and opportunity meetings. The fear is that you will look or sound stupid. What are the chances of delivering an intelligent presentation while mentally forecasting stupidity? Very low.

So what is the solution to fear of public speaking?
1. Be prepared. Know what you’re going to say. Never “wing-it.”

Before diffusing my first live bomb, I spent copious hours studying the anatomy of explosives. I furthered the learning process by role-playing for days with dummy bombs.

In our platoon we lived by the phrase, “The more you bleed in training the less you bleed in combat.” Bravery and success comes from confidence in ones own ability, not from placing oneself at risk. The same principle applies to public speaking.

Study your materials; prepare your notes; role play what you will say into a tape recorder. When you stand up in front of people just think – “First I’ll say this, then I’ll say this.”

2. Don’t focus your attention on you. Focus your attention on your audience.

If you’re scared – you’re thinking of you instead of your audience. Put 100% of your attention on your audience and what they most need to hear from you. Rarely does a speaker sound “stupid” if they’re focused on helping their audience.

You must earn the right to being a great public speaker. There are no natural public speakers. It takes practice, persistence and more practice to truly master the art of public speaking. If you will take the time to think through each step and learn how to bypass the mind chatter, you can improve your abilities to present a great conference call, conduct an electrifying MLM training seminar or host a successful opportunity meeting.

Much respect and admiration,

Tim Sales helps network marketers gain the confidence and skills to be an MLM success. Learn how to become a true network marketing professional and sign up for his free MLM training newsletter and listen to free training at http://www.brilliantexchange.com.

Article Source: EzineArticles