I started my first MLM business back in 1980. The first
thing my sponsor told me to do…
You know already. Don’t you? You heard this lie too.
My sponsor said, “Make a list of all your friends and
family." And then my sponsor wanted me to start thinking of all the other
people I may know from church, or work and so on and so on. I was told to think
of everyone. Get a list of 500 people together and you are on your way.
I got my list. I didn’t have 500, so my sponsor told me that
I could just add some more people to my list later.
So, how did you do on your list?
Then my sponsor gave me phone scripts. He told me to start
calling my list and making appointments for the big weekly business meeting or
for a home meeting. After about ten calls I had one appointment. My friend went
to the business meeting with me, and like magic, he was interested in my
business. He was even more excited than I had been just a few days before. He
took home the starter kit with some instructions from my upline to not talk to
anyone until we had a chance to train him the next evening. When we showed up
at his home for the training session, the starter kit was on the porch with a
note that stated he was no longer interested in my business opportunity. My
friend never even took another phone call from me after that. Regardless of
what really happened here, it just wasn’t good.
I had so much fun calling my list, NOT, that I finally
decided it would never work this way. So then my sponsor told me about
sponsoring people in my cold market. That was awful too.
But, let’s stop here and look at what is happening.
You see the #1 big lie in MLM is the “Make a list of family
and friends" lie. Let me ask you this. Have you ever seen one of these “Big
Hitters" up on stage surrounded by family and the friends that they had before
MLM, probably not. Why is that so. If they are telling you to sponsor family
and friends and they tell you how everything you do should be duplicatable,
then why do they not have their family and friends from before MLM in their
downline?
You have wondered about that, haven’t you? I mean if the
system is supposed to work for you then surely it worked for them. Right? So,
if it doesn’t work, then why take this route. Well, the real answer is found in
lie #2, and that will be another article. Lie #2 is actually the stupidest lie
of all the MLM lies. I can’t wait to tell you about this one.
So, what’s the truth? The truth is the last people you want
to try and sponsor is family and friends. Now I know you are having a hard time
with this because this goes counter to everything you have ever been told.
Right? So what makes this the truth?
You see, the “Heavy Hitters" know that you have almost no chance
of making it in MLM because you can’t duplicate what works for them, so they
want you to show the business to people until you bring someone in who can
duplicate them. That is usually a red personality person. (Sorry, I have to say
it again, that’s another article to find out about personality colors.) They
expect you to fail. Now I know that it’s wrong for them to do this and I bet
you think it’s wrong too but it keeps happening. The “Heavy Hitters believe
that MLM is a sales business and that my friend is lie #3. That’s right, a
future article about lie #3.
Here’s what you should be doing with your list of friends
and family. Most people fail at MLM before they ever make any money. It doesn’t
have to be that way. First you have to be involved with a legitimate MLM
company with great products at a reasonable price. If you don’t have that you
will be doomed long term anyway. And yes, these companies exist. So, I guess
that means I have to teach you the five pillars of success as well, and you
guessed it, another article. Looks like I’m going to be real busy.
Then you hand write a letter to each and every person on
your list. Yes it takes time to do this. Set a goal, like two letters per day.
The letter will tell everyone that you have started a business to supplement
your income. Remind them that starting a new business is tuff and you could
sure use their help. Tell them about just one of your products, the best one.
Enclose a brochure of the product. Tell them how the product worked for you.
Ask them if they know anyone who might need this product, if they would please
pass the information on to them. That’s right, you are not going to try and
recruit them into your business or even try to sell them your product.
It’s very important that you did choose the right company
with a great product at a reasonable price. I do know that there are plenty of
companies out there that you could never sale their products at retail prices.
They live off of product sales to their distributors. That will be covered in
the five pillars article as well. You see, if your company doesn’t support
retail sales and distributors are not making any retail sales, you chose the
wrong company. Your fate is already decided and it’s not good.
Here is what will happen when you send out your letters. The
numbers will be different for everyone so I will just pick some example
numbers. The better you are known and trusted by the people on your list, the
better percentages you will get. For every one hundred letters you send out
five people will say “what about me, I would like to have a product like that,"
then you have five sales. If the product does what you told them it does then
you should have customers for life. You go back to them before they use up
their first months order and if they liked it, you can ask for referrals. Tell
them what kind of letter you will send to the people they refer. The letter
will be hand written again. You will let the person know that they are a
referral from your friend who thought they might like the product. And you will
include testimony about the product from the person making the referral.
Remember, everyone can make a huge list for you, as large as your own list.
They may only give you a few names at first but if you treat those people
right, then you will get more referrals and you can do the same program to get
referrals from the referrals until you have more sales than you know what to do
with.
Profits from the retailing of products is going to put money
into your business so that your have the funds to advertise and sponsor people.
Also, some of the people that like your product and refer several good
customers may be prospects for you to sponsor. When they realize that this is
not a sales business but a referral business, they may be interested. See, I
told you it wasn’t a sales business. All we did is work off referrals. We never
asked anyone to buy anything. Also, people that see you making a substantial
income from just your retailing now realize that they can do what you are doing
and make money too. Most people in MLM are not going to work hard enough to be
the six figure earners like you may want to be. Instead, they will be happy to
make $200 to $1000 per month.
Now, why would you try to sponsor friends and family when it
is almost impossible to do so to begin with and it will destroy your
opportunity to build a retail business that will support you financially while
you are trying to build your business through sponsoring.
After you get your retail organization built, then you will
want to know how to sponsor people and it is a lot easier than you think. Here
is a hint. Your target market should be people who are already in MLM or they
are considering MLM. This is a huge target market and 98% of them are
struggling to make more than they spend on their business each month. What
percentage of your friends and family list would have been in your new target
market? Not many I bet, so that is why it is so hard to sponsor them.
Don’t worry that it looks like you will be trying to sponsor
people that are only listening to you so that they can take a shot at
sponsoring you. Keep coming back for future articles and you will learn why
they are interested in your program. Remember too that 98% of everyone already
in MLM is going to fail because for starters, they listen to lie #1. So you are
already better off than them because at least you have income from your retail
sales. Also, many of these people didn’t follow the five pillars that I will
tell you about later so their fate is already sealed if they stick with their
program. They can’t even retail their products.
Stick with me. I will show a better way to build your MLM
business.
Future articles:
MLM Lie #2, the stupidest lie of them all!
MLM Lie #3, Could they be more wrong?
What color is your MLM prospect? This will change the way
you sponsor.
Without the Five Pillars, your MLM fate is already sealed.
And more.
For Free Mentoring on MLM my way, check out:
http://beahero.mentoringforfree.com/defaultMFF.aspx?u=beahero&madid=1031&mad=swarp
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