Most people who join a network marketing company are excited to start sharing the products and business opportunity with their friends and family. As they start that process they are also learning about how the business works and they expect to have everyone they know see what they see in it. Sometimes they do; but many times they will tell you they are not interested or they will wait and see what you do.
The typical response to this is to start to pull back a bit and only share with the people who you believe “need it” the most. Surprisingly you may find, as I did that they don’t have any interest in getting involved in something that can help them out of their situation. You were probably like me, in that you assumed they wanted to improve their situation. Unfortunately many people don’t. I had someone tell me that they could not get involved in a business and make $2000-$5000 extra a month because “they would lose their welfare benefits”. Yikes! I thought that was the point.
Now if you are still “in” at this point your sponsor or upline will tell you you need to start cold contacting. They will show you different techniques, on how to talk to people that you have never met before. That is where things got even more difficult for me.
Let’s back up a bit. I was a very introverted person who was afraid to talk to people I did not know and was not completely comfortable talking to my friends and family about the business. Sure the first few I was fine with, but when they thought it was a scam or a dumb business idea that would not work, I started to doubt it too.
This on top of my regular introverted discomfort led me to stop building the business for a while. Most network marketers will quit building the business at this point. Many won’t quit immediately, but will start to fade away. Some will buy the products and show up to everything because they enjoy the friendship but will not share the business with anyone ever again unless they are asked about it. Remember this last point.
I had sponsored some friends and family so I started going into management mode with that team. This was my way of avoiding the whole process of cold contacting. Too bad it did not work for long because this pattern of fear of cold contacting continued with almost everyone on my team. I thought we must only have enrolled introverts like myself. Luckily there were a few very assertive people who started to invite lots of people to see the business and things started to grow fast.
Eventually I did need to start figuring out the best cold contacting methods and had to teach them to my team. My desire to be a good leader helped me to overcome my fears, and I was even able to call people from the phone book and set one on one appointments with my team to show the business opportunity.
As I grew my business I was invited to speak at business seminars and share the opportunity in hotel meetings. These groups were larger than your typical house meeting with about 100-150 people. The seminars had 400-600. Of course I was nervous but it was a progressive process and eventually I became good at it and enjoyed it.
How does all this help you? Well most of what I have described is not how I build the business today. Two main reasons drive that choice. #1 people are too busy to look up from their cellphones for you to contact them and #2 people are more leery and on guard of strangers approaching them with any type of solicitation.
Today all of the methods of cold contacting have changed significantly due to technology. I mean lets be serious how many people go out and “prospect and contact” people in a shopping mall, car dealership or store any more? It can work but it much too slow and time consuming for most of us.
Over come the fear
The fear part comes from the possible rejection of you and your opportunity. You start feeling like you cannot be successful unless you get people into your business. So in your mind you start needing the next person you talk with to get in. That ends up coming through in your contact and approach and becomes a cycle of fearful, needful cold contacting that leads to no one getting involved in your business. You start sounding and looking desperate and nobody wants to join you on that adventure.
Now lets consider this: If someone out of the blue heard you were in this network marketing company that had great products and was looking to build a business that could replace their job income.
Would you be afraid to tell them all about your opportunity? I would guess not. In fact you probably would need to be careful not to unload everything you know about the business all at once and overload them. So what happened to the fear?
To me it always seemed different when they approached me about it than when I approached them.
What if there was a system that has qualified leads coming to you about your business opportunity instead of you going to them? Sounds a lot better right? Today that is possible through attraction marketing. I teach people how to flip the script on this old school way of cold contacting.
Today I have about 20-40 people who contact me daily to learn more about my products and business opportunity. I am no longer afraid to share the details with them, after all they asked me and they are looking. In the old school method where you ask people you don’t know if they would be interested in looking at a way to increase their income. Who wants to talk about that with a stranger?
You don’t have be afraid to share your knowledge with someone who is asking you about it. After all you are an expert in your business and they asked you for help about learning more. It is a great feeling knowing everyday people will be reaching out to me to get more details.
Network marketing is still a numbers game and not everyone who contacts me will join the business or even qualify. But it certainly increases your odds when twenty or more people start asking you for more information.
If you found this article interesting or want more details on how it works, please contact me and subscribe to my site for updates on more topics like this. I personally teach anyone on my team how to use this method.
Thanks for Reading!
Mark Balderrama
Online Entrepreneur
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