You want so sell? Learn to listen

[Millcon]

My husband and I are active in Network Marketing. What we found out to be a good strategy is this: Don't try to pitch (sell) when you are calling people for the first time. Ask them where they are in their lives, what they need. Then listen with sincerity and honest good will. Often people who are interested in Network Marketing (a home based business) are in a crisis. They need to do something but at the same time they are not in the best place to make decisions quickly. Give them time. Let them breathe. Treat them the way you would like to be treated. It pays in many ways.

[healthnuthere]

Great advice. I think my parents taught me that many years ago.

[successcoach]

Great advice!
This way you are not sounding like a used car salesman. When you take time to establish a relationship with the person, you will find if your opportunity is right for them or not. If it is right - you will have a new friend and you will be really able to help them. Also on the upside - much less rejection

[SavingsonTravel]

What if I had a way to make people come to me? I don't ever cold call out of the blue. I know what someone is interested in before I ever talk to them. How neat does that sound?

[silke247]

That's a great view you have, Dustin.

For those who don't know the term, we call that a "pre qualified" lead - we know the person is interested in a home business before we make first contact.

One way of doing this is having the right kind of ads when capturing leads.

Ezine ads have always been great for highly targetted and pre-qualified prospects because subscribers are there because they want to learn about Home Business. They read the articles. They scan the ads. If what you have is what they are looking for, you are onto a winner before you start!

My company uses advertising Co-ops and advertises offline as well as online with big campaigns in several magazines. We have found that the people who respond are the people we want, the people who want to take it seriously.

Once we find people who are interested -pre-qualified - THAT is the time to start building a relationship. It's worth taking the time to do as you will be working together to help each other succeed.

I spend about 80% of my time helping my current affiliates and front line leaders work their business, recruitng and retail, and about 20% on direct promotion. As we use a matrix network, all my personal recruits are placed under my leaders anyway. Everything I do benefits my downlines, which indirectly benefits myself.

This is why a relationship is so important.


Silke

[newdad]

Some great points made in this thread, however I think alot of MLMers get stuck in "MLM Mode" and zero in so much on MLM that they forget that most, if not all, of the concepts taught in MLM aren't unique to MLM.

For instance, I think it's funny that in MLM, there's always talk of a "duplicatable system". A "duplicatable system" doesn't necessarily have anything to do with MLM. Franchising is built around duplicatable systems. Business after business after business is built around duplicatable systems.

I recently came out of being a full-time MLMer. Now that I have a clear head, I look back and have to laugh at some of the things that alot of people teach. Alot of the really great stuff that is taught is just common sense, life stuff. Concepts and principles that we should be utilizing and applying in our every day lives anyway.

Ok so back to the topic at hand...relationshipping, communicating, listening...all real life stuff. Guys...this is stuff we should do regardless of any affiliation with MLM. If I ever got back into MLM, the course I would take is to avoid most of the training available to MLMers, and just be real with people.

[SavingsonTravel]

absolutely. The crazy thing about what you just said was I knew most of the mlm heavy weights were full of Bs. I don't get emotional anyway so I could tell hype from legit. God gave me this gift but so many are fooled. When someone is a heavy hitter what they did is not very duplicateable usually because first the market was probably different when they started plus they probably have a different drive and motivation and gift. That is why my organization is networking different talents instead of just people. We have closers, prospectors, business minds, marketers, internet marketers. We look at this and capitalize on what each can bring to the table and all work collectively.

Your comment about hanging with real people is my concept. I want to be able to go on trips and just hang out with the people I am involved with. People are what they preach and most mlm's preach dollar signs and people start seeing others as only dollar signs. Most of those people make me sick. Some just don't realize what they're appearance has become.

[DanPhx]