I just watched an old movie with Edward G Robinson in it. He played the owner of the first tabloid newspaper. His stories were breaking news not yesterdays story. The paper contained the news before the story even happened! When people asked him how he got the story he would reply, It is easy when you know how. He seemed like he was the most incredible newspaperman and his paper was selling fast off the stands.
Here is his secret. He was not the super news man everyone saw him as. He was not lucky or in the right spot at the right time. The secret is, he created the news. He would watch people and listen to them. Then he made the story happen no mater what it took to accomplish. If he knew someone went to a speakeasy he called in the tip to the police and had camera ready as the raid unfolded. He recreated crime scenes in his office to get the photos in the paper before anyone else and he always was out and about talking with people that were out of his league and that made others feel uncomfortable.
The story goes on and the cause of his own demise in the end was going too far. He did not care who got hurt or how far from the truth the story got.
So here is what I learned from all this. We can put ourselves in situations where what we have to offer may be needed. If your product is health related, visit nutritional education classes that towns offer. If your product if to help businesses lower overhead get to a Kiwanis meeting or attend a business networking club. The point is to seek and create the environment your business needs to thrive. Listen to whats going on and when your solution can be presented to help solve a problem let them know about what you have. If done correctly you will seem like the super network marketer, hosting people at will. To others it will seem like you are always bumping into people who want to buy. The secret is that you are creating your own good luck.
It happens. For some reason, real or created, you missed an event, now what? This would happen to me early on in my business. The day after the event those that went seemed to be on a different team. They talked different than before and seemed so pumped up. They were not calling me the day after to tell me what happened and sometimes I felt bitter, bitter at them for not letting me in and bitter at myself for not going.
You can be bitter or make yourself better, the only difference is the letter I. I had to call the team to plug back in. I had to get my energy back up. I had to make more calls and ask the team that was at the event to help me. Now that I understand the importance of events and conventions few are missed. It is the strangest thing, it is not the main speakers or the energy that moves me from big events, sometimes it is a word or sentence uttered over coffee after the main event is over. You see at events you are elbow to elbow with the leaders and people who are making it happen. That is where you need to be sometimes. That is where you get your questions and doubts resolved. You get that in a setting that is live. When you look the guy that is usually playing on a CD in your car square in the eye and he answers you directly something happens. At that moment you know that you can do this business. You know that the words they speak are real and that the people you have chosen to surround yourself with are moving on.
This is what you need to do to get back in the hunt. Call a trusted leader and tell them how you feel. Do not expect them to be able to give you all the details of the event because much of it is abstract. Yes they will tell you the major points and the newest product that was unvieled but the energy and feeling is reserved for those who attend. Make a commitment to attend the next event, the next small local meeting, anything to get back around the team. Better yet, set up a product preasentation or meeing in your home and have the leaders of the team come to you. If you set yourself on fire people will come from miles away just to watch you burn. Shake this one off and get back in the game. You can do this and your team believes you can too!
Want your business to be more productive? Have more fun! Network marketing business owners are independent contractors. They are a volunteer army. You are not their boss and really, who wants to be one or have one? Sure we need to act within the guidelines of the company rules but in the end each home business owner will run his or her company the way they want. That is what makes MLMs so appealing these days.
Making money is important and productivity is the key to that. So, how do we motivate, teach and get things done? Have fun. After an event or training session, offer to go out for a cup of coffee. There you can forget about bringing up the company or latest product. Find out who’s child is playing a sport, encourage dream building and fuel that fire. Laugh, play and bring out the inner child. It makes for a great time, a creative team and people that will stick around when the going gets a bit tough. Most MLM meetings are on weekends and in the evening and no one wants to feel like they are back at work. A happy team makes for a long lived and productive team. When people are showing up and working their business another thing happens. People start to make money. So let’s look at the two business models: The first is beating people down and demanding that they perform with long winded, cramped, meetings that go long into the week day night. The second, light hearted, friendly, warm gatherings that get the job done. Just writing that first choice made me feel stressed.
Here is the how to; Make time for the people on your team and include non work gatherings from time to time. I like to choose low cost events that children can also attend. Festivals are great for that. Get to know the family of your down line and take a sincere interest in them not because of what it will do but because it is the right thing to do. The benefits will come by themselves. You will end up with a thriving business, friends that you can count on and more fun times than you can imagine.
Last week a lazy morning turned into a trip to the Statue of Liberty and a stop at Ellis Island. Thinking that the children would enjoy the boat ride and get to see the statue up close, we packed a lunch and headed out.
I did not think that walking up the stairs into the main building on Ellis Island was going to have such an impression on me. There are pictures explaining the history there and although I knew immigrants pasted though there before being allowed into the America, seeing photos of children alone from the 1800′s stunned me. Imagine valuing freedom and opportunity so much you would send your child, alone to America, never to see them again, so that they could live a life in freedom and have the chance to succeed. The luggage of some of the travelers are still in the building, lost, forgotten or just left, the stories why, we will never know. It was all they came here with. They started with a few dollars and the dream of what lay ahead.
With no distractions and laser focus these young people started the businesses and companies that built the United States into the super power that it is. How is it that a 14 your old boy with nothing can build an empire and I have trouble telling someone about my network marketing opportunity? The answer is hunger. I am too soft, too comfortable and have way too many choices. I get distracted with TV and comforts. Now I am not saying that I want to live on the streets in NYC with nothing until I get my act together, but you see and feel what I am saying. Seems like all these posts boil down to the same thing, more focused action towards the goal and dreams.
Show a picture of the Statue of Liberty to anyone in the world and they will tell you “New York City America”. It means freedom and a better life. A large portion of the worlds population will never have the chance to succeed. Two- thirds of the world lives on less than three dollars a day and they swim, smuggle, trade and sell themselves to get to America. We have it so good here and at times I forget that. We are blessed beyond measure. I feel it is our responsibility to do something great with our lives.
Longfellow wrote,” life is like two ships passing in the night, you hear some sounds, you raise a lantern, see some faces and then we are plunged into darkness.” Do something with the life that God has given you. Do something with this opportunity that we have. Be great! Leave a legacy!
Want to be the next network marketing pro out there? Maybe you just want to be a betternetworker. The secret is to keep moving towards success. On a recent trip to a mountain top cave, I learned another great lesson about building my home business. There are a lot of similarities between crawling through a deep dark cave and networking. In the beginning every thing is bright and sunny. I was very excited to start my spelunking, just as I was excited to start my career in network marketing. You have seen it before, and maybe it is you. The first few weeks of a networkers business is full of hope and expectation. I remember thinking, How hard can it be? That is why the best time to get a new person started is in those first few weeks. If you can get them a check early on they are much more likely to stick around.
As I started my drop down into the cave, right away things changed. It felt strange to be out of my comfort zone. Although I hike and climb a lot, being underground gives me an uneasy feeling. It got dark for a few feet then I saw a light coming from a hole way up high. The light and the hole were out of reach and to get where I wanted to go I had to choose to keep moving forward. Then a bit further is I bumped my head, flinched and got some scrapes on my arm. The similarities to my network business were apparent and it made me laugh out loud in the dark cave. That was the inspiration for the video that can be seen at TheNetworkBuilders com and for this article.
You probably can figure out the rest of this story. It is like many other success stories, a great start, some trials, a period were you can quit or move on and in the end massive success. In this case the choice to press on took me to an exit to the caves on the other side of the mountain. The view was spectacular and something that few others have seen. I would have missed it all had my choices been less than I made.
What choices are in your life right now that you can use to move forward with your business? What are you afraid of that has kept you where you are? Make that call, say hello to that owner and do what you know it will take to reach the other side of where you are now. The view on the other side will be incredible. You can do it!
A walk across the Mid Hudson River Bridge cured my fear of the phone. My chicken list seemed very scary on the ride there but after crossing 200 feet up and a mile wide the list was easier to handle.
I went to the Mid Hudson River Bridge today. The Grand opening is this week and it was a good excuse to overcome my fear of the phone. The bridge was from an old rail line. In 1974 a fire destroyed it and it has stood 200 feet above the Hudson River, closed and unsafe. A few years a go it was refurbished and is now open to the public as a walkway to Poughkeepsie New York.
What does this have to do with Network Marketing you ask? If you are afraid of heights, the bridge is a scary place. Standing on a 20 foot wide path that rises a dizzying 200 feet over a mile wide river can be paralyzing. There is even an emergency phone at the halfway point for “mental emergency help”. The fear is very real and can stop a person in mid tracks, unable to move.
Sometimes picking up the phone to make a call to that one person on your list can produce the same reactions. Sweat, fear, the inability to think clear, run away thoughts of impending doom are all the bodies’ reaction to fear. You can challenge that fear and use it to become stronger.
The way to overcome fear is action. Do something else you are afraid to do and you will emerge from the fire bulletproof. Anthony Robbins refers to it as changing your state. You know the feeling, that high from doing what you thought you never would be able to do. It feels great!
So today I walked the edge of the path, 200 feet above the Hudson River, looking down and over the edge. My heart raced but at the end of the day, at the other side, I knew the ride home would be productive. The chicken list that was sitting on the seat of my car, the list that stared at me on the way to the bridge, the list that mocked me on the ride from home, was already beaten in my mind.
After challenging my fear of heights today, the phone calls did not seem as scary any more. Armed with the power of my inner self, the self that took on the bridge and won, was ready for the ride home and the chicken list. The answer the callers gave did not matter. The outcome of the calls did not matter, all that mattered was picking up the phone, dialing those numbers and getting a yes or a no. I was empowered.
So if you are afraid of the phone, take on a bigger fear, the smaller ones seem easy after that.
What do you fear more than making a phone call? Leave a comment at TheNetworkBuilders com. Then let us know how you did.
If you set the tone right up front the close is a natural happening at the end of your presentation. It comes from posture. Here are three tips to keep your posture way up when sponsoring prospects.
Seems that many of us that are professional Nertwork Marketers feel the same way when it come to the posture you show when working with prospects in the early stages of the game.
It is said that the close happens before you first speak to your prospect. If you set the tone right up front the close is just a natural happening at the end of your presentation. It comes from posture. Here are three tips to keep your posture way up when sponsoring prospects.
First tip is, don’t ask the prospect to do you a favor and watch your presentation. Your not there to get them to do you favors. That puts them in the power position. You want to keep posture. You want to show them your business, but never ask for them to do you a favor. You are the one doing them a favor by showing them a lucrative income opportunity.
The second tip is to interview your prospect. Ask them if they have ever been in a network marketing business before. Have they ever owned their own business before? See if they are business minded. Ask them questions to see if they qualify for your time.
The third tip is about calling prospects back. If you are tiring to get someone to look at your business, how many times do you call them back after they fail to return a call or blow you off when you call? The answer is two. Call back two times or leave two messages. If the response is less than positive, cross them off of your list. This is not a manipulative technique, it is business. How many times would you call back a contractor that was going to do work on your home? Would you keep calling him and beg him to work on your home? This is a real business and you will be more successful looking for the people that want it.
I wish you all the success you are willing to work for.
Sometimes when you are building your network marketing company, MLM or home base business you can hit a dry spell. Sometimes it seems like you just run out of people to talk to and that you have not hosted someone in a long time. It feels like you’re stranded on a desert island with your business. You feel like you are all by yourself in a hard rocky place, barren of life. You can’t get anybody to say yes. You can’t get anybody to look at your business.
Sometimes you just have to step back a little bit and look around. It can be really beautiful out on a remote island. Sometimes you just have to climb up a hill to see a little more and get a bigger perspective of where you really are. You may need to step out of your comfort zone of little bit more and reach a little bit farther out of your network and start pitching the business again and start looking for people to help. It is a huge place out there but sometimes you get a few of no’s and you focus on where you are and you start thinking about how hard and barren it is.
Building a Network Company, like being on a remote island, is an adventure. It can be exciting. It is all how you look at it, how you play the mind game with yourself and how you control your attitude. Me? I can’t wait to find the next barren island, and see what is just over the edge. I wish you success on your journey.
Building your MLM, home business or Network Marketing group out of town is needed for huge growth. Long distance sponsoring will happen if you build teams and help others succeed. Become a network pro.
My question for you today is, How far are you willing to go to build your business and be successful? While you should usually start your MLM, direct sales or home business with you’re hot market, eventually your groups will expand. As you go through your contact list you will reconnect with old friends. Some will live in other states. A recent trip took me to Freeport Maine to visit a good friend. I drove about five hundred miles from my home to meet him. It turns out that the business was not for him but you can’t be a profit in your own land and if you have those contacts you have to venture out of your own area and try. They say the expert is the out of towner with the briefcase, and it seems to be that way. Sometimes out of town groups grow faster than the one at home.
Now I am not suggesting that you start driving hundreds of miles without prequalifing your prospects. You should have more than one contact in that area and do your prep work to set the stage for your presentations before you leave home. Building out of town is a commitment to those people and you will be going back there often once the groups get started.
Network marketing is about giving and even though he said no for the time being, I was able to help him with my networking connections to solve some issues he was having with his traditional company. It certainly was not a wasted trip, he shared some of the most remote areas of Maine with me. It is absolutely spectacular in Maine, our children were playing together on an island that no one was on but us. The trip was absolutely worth it. As a business trip, this one was good. We made some more friends, we are helping people along the way and we are growing our business. I hope you will grow your business too!
What do I say when they ask me if this is Amway. SA8, Glister, Artistry Skin care and Nutrilite are household names and you should be proud of your company. What if it is not your company? Then what?
A question new network marketers often get in the early stages of prospecting is, What do I say when they ask me if this is Amway. The answer is simple. If Amway is your MLM the answer is Yes. Amway is a strong company with a solid reputation. Being a former Amway IBO I and can tell you that SA8, Glister, Artistry Skin care and Nutrilite are household names and you should be proud of your company.
If your network marketing company or home based business is not Amway, then the answer to the question is “No, why do you ask?”. The reason I ask that is because the prospect may have had a bad experience with a network marketing company or with someone that showed them the opportunity in an improper manner. If that is the case, I like to find out early and get in out on the table where it can be addressed. The second reason is because they may have heard a little about MLM companies and not really understand what they are. Lastly, they may be actively looking for a direct sales company to join!
Honesty is the best policy. Answer the question and move forward with your presentation. They are going to find out the answer sooner or later. We are looking for open minded people who want what we have and the network marketing pros will agree that asking questions and listening to what your prospect has to say is the key to your success.
I just watched an old movie with Edward G Robinson in it. He played the owner of the first tabloid newspaper. His stories were breaking news not yesterdays story. The paper contained the news before the story even happened! When people asked him how he got the story he would reply, It is easy when you know how. He seemed like he was the most incredible newspaperman and his paper was selling fast off the stands. 
With no distractions and laser focus these young people started the businesses and companies that built the United States into the super power that it is. How is it that a 14 your old boy with nothing can build an empire and I have trouble telling someone about my network marketing opportunity? The answer is hunger. I am too soft, too comfortable and have way too many choices. I get distracted with TV and comforts. Now I am not saying that I want to live on the streets in NYC with nothing until I get my act together, but you see and feel what I am saying. Seems like all these posts boil down to the same thing, more focused action towards the goal and dreams.
