Archive for April, 2009
Network Marketing Training – Part 1, Who Should Get It
Monday, April 27th, 2009Most of us get into network marketing as a way to earn income from home. Sometimes we do network marketing in addition to a regular job and sometimes our goal is to do network marketing full time. Whatever our reasons are, most of us do not have a background in sales and we choose our MLM company based on the presentation that we saw, the products or services that our mlm company offers, and quite often we believe the hype of how easy it is to earn a substantial income from home.
Training provided by the MLM Company
Our MLM companies and up line leaders will all tell us to attend the training provided so that we can become familiar with the products or services that our company offers. I agree that we all need to become experts in the products and/or services that our mlm company offers. If you had a regular brick and mortar store, you would want to know everything about the products that you sell. You would wouldn’t you? The same thing applies for a home based business as well.
What I can’t figure out is why we are encouraged to focus so intently on training that explains the compensation plan. I can only guess that our up line leaders and our MLM company wants us to strive to reach the top of that compensation plan and of course we are supposed to tell all of your friends about this amazing opportunity and show them how much money they can make from home if they join right now.
In the beginning
Let’s go back to who we are when we first looked at this network marketing thing. My background was in the burglar alarm industry. I was an office manager and before that I was a solder in the Army. So, I had experience in leading people and in business (I also have a 2 year business degree) but I didn’t have any experience in sales to speak of. I may have sold something over the phone from time to time if it would solve a particular problem a customer had with their alarm system but that was not my main job function.
What is your background? It’s really important to take a look at the skills you bring to your home based business. If you are a stay at home mom, you may have some really good organization skills, but do you know how to prospect? If you are in sales, that’s great because you may know how to prospect and even close the sale but do you know how to find your target market? For most people in sales, attracting your target market isn’t something they have to do. Their companies take care of that part of the business.
Can you wear all of the necessary hats?
When you own your own business, you have to wear many different hats. You have to be the boss, the employee, the salesperson, the bookkeeper, the financer, you have to be everything. Can you wear all of those hats? I know that you can but you may have to have some training in order to do it and put your home based business in profit.
Take a good hard honest look at your background and the skills that you bring to the table. Having a strong desire to make money from home is not enough to make it happen. Having a strong desire, a willingness to do whatever it takes, and being teachable is what it really takes to be successful at network marketing. If you are lacking some skills that are necessary to have a successful home based business, then get the network marketing training to make it happen.
Stay tuned for Part 2, where I will be discussing the different types of training. Until then have a great day and let me know if there is anything that I can do for you.
Let’s Grow Together
Secrets To MLM Marketing – 3 Way Calling
Tuesday, April 21st, 2009If you are new to network marketing or if you have been at the MLM game for a while but you aren’t quite doing as well as you would like, then you may be wondering what the purpose of 3-way calling is?
First, I probably should tell you what three way calling is before I tell you what the purpose is. Basically, it is a tool that you can use with your phone. First, you have to make sure that you have that feature on your phone plan before you can use it. What it does is it allows three people to talk to each other on the phone.
Three-way calling is used in network marketing because it is supposed to help you to:
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build credibility with your prospect
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validate you and your mlm products or service
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let someone stronger than you to do the selling and telling
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it is used as a training tool.
How does 3-way calling help?
Let’s look at building credibility first. What does it say to your prospect when you have to get someone else on the phone to close the sale? Whose credibility does it build? If I have to ring someone from my upline in order to tell my prospect about how good this MLM opportunity is, then that just tells the prospect that I don’t know what I am doing and have to run to the expert for help. Why would the prospect want to join with me when they know that there are better leaders out there?
Does it really validate you and your mlm product? Well, I don’t think that it validates you at all. You have already proven that you don’t know enough to build your own home based business. Does it validate the mlm product? Maybe, if you can actually get your upline to talk about something besides the money you will make. Actually, they may say something like: “the product is so good it practically sells itself.” Yeah, Riiiiiiight. If that were true, your network marketing company wouldn’t need you at all.
What about letting someone else stronger that you to do the selling and telling about the mlm company and products? Actually, 3-way calling will do this for you. That is if you can get anyone in your upline on the phone. Here is what really got to me when I did 3-way calls. If I was lucky enough to get someone from my upline to do a 3-way call with me, (unless they directly benefitted from me getting a sale, they wouldn’t be available) they wouldn’t ask for the money either. It was a case of the blind leading the blind. The real successful network marketers don’t call someone else to close the sale for them. They close the sale themselves.
3-way calling used as a training tool. Okay, I’ll give you this one. If you have a new mlm distributor that has no experience in network marketing, then having them listen to you make prospecting calls and do close attempts is a very powerful training tool.
I love using the phone to train others. I think a conference room environment is better with more people because you get the chance to hear more that one person’s story. But there are cases where I will train only one person at a time.
Why is the 3-way calling technique used in network marketing?
Most of us get into network marketing thinking that all we have to do is share our product or home-based business opportunity with all of the people that we know. When we are getting starting, no one says anything about having to do sales. When people find out that they may have to do sales in order to grow their MLM business, they immediately get visions of used car salesman in their head and want to run away. They want to quit their network marketing business before they even get started. So, I think, that the 3-way calling techniques was brought into network marketing in order to soften the blow.
Many people aren’t comfortable asking for the money and therefore shy away from doing sales. I have to say that if you don’t have good skills in sales, then asking for the money may be difficult for some to do. But getting the skills is way easier and a whole lot better for your home-based business than relying on someone else to close the sale for you.
Do you really think that it takes two people to close a sale?
Would you like it if every time you went shopping for something that you needed some explanation on, your sales person had to go and get an expert on the phone because they didn’t know how to explain the product to you?
No one likes dealing with the trainee. In network marketing, you are the owner, the sales force, the manager, the bookkeeper, you are everything. As an owner, you have to treat your home based business as such. Don’t give your power away willingly to someone else. Become the expert that the prospect needs you to be.
If you don’t have all of the skills needed to run your home based business successfully, then go out there and get the skills. Pick up the phone and call me if you don’t know where to go. I guarantee you that I can show you how to grow your network marketing business.
How do you close the sale solo?
If you are new to network marketing, you may be wondering how to close the sale by yourself when you have no experience and the only method you have been taught is to pick up the phone and do a 3-way call.
That’s a good question. First, become the expert. I don’t mean that you have to know everything. You only have to be an expert in your product or service. Really, trust me on this. If someone asks me about the compensation plan, (first off, they never ask me this because I only promote my product or service) I tell them that the more products I sell, the more money I make. That’s it. I will be the first to tell you that I really don’t get the meaning of all of those circles and legs and so forth.
The second thing that you have to know is how to overcome objection. Once you know that there are really only two objections that someone can give you, this task becomes much easier. I know what you are thinking. There has to be more than 2 objections. The truth is that there are only 2 that you have to worry about and every objection that you hear will be either one or the other.
Once you know this little secret, actually, it was kind of a big thing for me to learn. When, I learned this tidbit of information, it changed my home based business forever.
Here is what I want you to take away from reading this article. The network marketing industry is a great industry. Many people have made a lot of money in network marketing. However, it’s usually only a small number of people at the top, the so called “Heavy Hitters,” that are making the big bucks working from home. What is the difference between a “Heavy Hitter” and the majority of mlm distributors, besides the size of their bank account? It’s their skills.
Ask yourself – Does 3-way calling work? Maybe it does for some. It didn’t for me. I had to learn how to close the sale by myself because I couldn’t find an upline leader when I needed them and when I did, they usually didn’t ask for the money anyway.
If I could show you how to close your own sales, would that be worth an hour of your time to find out how to get that done?
