Network Marketing: Business or Hobby?

I’ve just posted an article about understanding the difference between those who treat their network marketing business as a hobby and those who treat it as a real business.

You see, starting a network marketing business is really easy. This ease of entry is both a good thing and a bad thing.

The bad part is, if you’re not careful, you’ll end up with lots of people joining your team with an “I’ll try it to see if it works” attitude.

If you’re building a real business, this is something you want to avoid.

As a team leader, you invest a huge amount of time and emotional energy in supporting, motivating, mentoring and training your team members.

So it makes sense to qualify your prospects early in the process. If you can weed out those with the “I’ll try it” attitude, you’ll be a lot further ahead.

Let someone else sponsor those weak prospects! You don’t need or want them on your team. They’ll drain your energy and waste your time.

The most important thing you can do in the prospecting stage is to make a decision: Is this person someone I want to invest my time and emotional energy in?

You need to qualify your prospects to determine if they are going to be serious about building a business.

Are they willing and able to devote the necessary time?

Are they willing to invest in their own training?

Are they ready to respond positively to training and to do things that are outside their comfort zone, that is, are they coachable?

These are just some of the things you need to learn about your prospects.

You might think that it is worth sponsoring anyone and everyone just to see what “sticks”. In fact, some organizations train their distributors to do just that.

I think this is a bad strategy. Let me explain why.

When you invest emotional energy in a new distributor, and they quit your business a short while later, it is a draining experience. A real downer. There are enough obstacles in this business to deal with without adding one that you can easily avoid.

And that brings me back to qualifying your prospects.

You can’t, of course, know with 100% certainty that someone will succeed in your business, regardless of how well you qualify them. But by employing some time-tested techniques you can filter out a lot of those who are all talk and no action.

I strongly encourage my team members to learn from the best. There is no point in trying to figure everything out on your own.

Mike Dillard interviewed one of the industry’s top recruiters. Click here to watch this very informative interview. And it’s free!

Note that I am both an affiliate and a user of Mike Dillard’s products.