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.
Business Advice I Learned From My Dog
We just got a new dog. Not a young puppy though. She’s about 8 months old – a rescue dog – and appears to be a husky/shepherd cross.
We got her as a companion to our other dog, a lab/boxer cross. You see, we just moved into our new home on a large acreage and felt that “Jed” needed a companion.
Not being interested in all the work and possible damage that can come with a very young puppy, we searched for and found a dog that was almost full-grown.
So “Tasha” joined our “pack”.
For any readers of this who are dog lovers, you might be familiar with Dog Whisperer, Cesar Milan.
His mantra is to be calm and assertive. You must be the leader of your pack in order for your dog(s) to respect and follow you.
And this is where my dogs have taught me some very valuable business advice!
Just like Cesar says, you must assert your leadership to your pack. So it is in business, you must demonstrate your leadership to your team, and those around you!
This is a simple concept, but not always an easy one.
This article is not about dog training, it’s about being a business leader. And so it is vital that you begin to establish yourself as a leader. But what exactly does that mean?
Here are some considerations.
First and foremost, decide what it is you’re trying to achieve. If you are going to be a leader, you must have a clearly defined set of goals and objectives that you are aiming for in order to lead others who are on a similar quest.
The other critical aspect of leadership is you must add value to those you want to lead.
Let’s briefly explore these two items.
Where are you going?
If you ask a lot of people who have a network marketing business to tell you their specific goals and objectives, you’ll find that the vast majority of them have only a vague idea of what they want to achieve. It goes something like this: “I want to be rich.”
This is not a goal, it’s a wish.
A goal is a specific target, within a given time period with measurable action steps laid out as to how this goal will be achieved.
This could be along the lines of, “In six months I have a monthly income of $____. To reach this goal I will generate X leads per week, and sponsor X new distributors per month. To do this I will spend X hours per day working on my business in the following activities: X% of time on marketing, X% on calling new leads, X% on training and X% on follow-up calls.”
There are actionable steps with success indicators along the way to gauge progress.
That’s quite a different scenario than the lottery mentality of “I want to be rich!”
The other critical factor I mentioned is adding value to those around you.
This one stumps a lot of people, especially people who are new in an opportunity.
They don’t feel they have knowledge to impart, or that they are too new and therefore come across as weak and indecisive.
Mike Dillard talks about “Demonstrations of Higher Value” (DOHV) and the opposite, “Demonstrations of Lower Value” (DOLV).
The only way you can establish yourself as a leader in the eyes of someone else is if you consistently demonstrate to that person the higher value they will find through their relationship to you.
The fact that you are reading this article is an example that you are acquiring knowledge. And this knowledge can be imparted to others as part of your DOHV.
One of the most important things you will do as a leader is to continually learn. Make a point of exposing your mind to new training material and self-improvement on a daily basis. That way you’ll not only keep yourself motivated, you will have new and exciting things to share with others, which will go a long way to establishing you as a leader.
The other part of this value is simply the ability to provide positive support to those around you, particularly those on your team. Giving encouragement, which can be in the form of challenging people in a positive way to do better, is another great aspect of leadership.
Of course leadership is a massive topic, one that many volumes have been and continue to be written about.
But the business advice from my dogs holds true! By being calm and assertive, and in the case of business leadership, assuming a posture of confidence, you will attract others to you simply because these are qualities people want to associate with and be close to.
One of the best books on this topic as it relates to network marketing is Mike Dillard’s influential work, Magnetic Sponsoring.
But even before you get the book, you’ll have access to 7 information packed videos that will reveal some startling facts about this industry.
If you’re serious about success in network marketing, the best business advice I can give you today is to check it out!
-
Visit My Editorial Page On WealthJournals.com 