2009 June |

Why Network Marketing Is Like Running A Marathon

Amy Howard nearing the finish line at the 2006 Half Marathon of the Palm Beaches

Some of you may know that I am a runner. What you may not know is that I am also overweight. Those two things don’t usually go together but there you have it. I am an overweight person who runs. I am also a network marketer and network marketing is a lot like learning to run a marathon or in my case a half marathon. (I’m not totally crazy.)

How Network Marketing Is Like Running

Okay, maybe I am a little crazy to want to compare running to network marketing but let me explain. When you get started in network marketing, you probably don’t know that much about what it is REALLY like. You think it’s cool to be able to work from home and be your own boss but you don’t realize that it takes skill. You start off talking to your friends and family and anyone within 3 feet but then before you know it, you don’t know where else to go.

Running is a lot like that. I never had any problem running for a mile to a mile and a half but when I decided that I was going to run a half marathon, that’s when I realized I didn’t know how. Luckily my husband had already run a marathon and he was a big help getting me through the longer distances. But he and I are different, he is very tall and skinny and kind of like a camel in that he can run for a long time without water. Whereas, I am overweight, get thirsty easily, and have big boobs (if you are a woman and exercise, then you may know how much of a problem having these can be).

In network marketing it can be like that too. One network marketer can be very good at finding new people to talk to and another can find it difficult to approach people at all. One may be able to go the distance without having to make any adjustments, where another may have to find just the right tool to get the same result.

All Runners And Network Marketers Have To Have At Least 2 Things

If you are a runner, you have to have a good pair of shoes and decent stretch of road to run on. Those two things you MUST have. The road can be smooth or spongy or whatever you prefer but you have to have something to run on and you have to have a good pair of shoes to run in.

If you are a network marketer, you have to have prospects to talk to and a product to sell. The prospect can be a friend, a stranger, or whoever wants what you have but you have to have prospects and you have to have a product.

Things That Make Running And Network Marketing Easier

As I said, you have to have at least 2 things to run, a good pair of shoes and a place to run but there are some things (tools, gear) that can make running easier and more fun. Because I am committed to run a half marathon this December, I would like to make it as easy and as fun as possible. Things that help make my run easier:

Music – I prefer to run with music. It keeps my mind on something other than the run itself. Music gets me through the rough spots and it also helps me to keep pace and to breathe. I use an iPod Shuffle because it’s small, holds a lot of tunes and the battery lasts a long time.
The right clothes – running tech shirt, shorts that keep the legs from rubbing together, socks to keep the feet dry and comfortable, and a really good bra to keep the sisters where they belong.
Water – need to stay hydrated.
Heart rate monitor – just because I like to know how many calories I burnt and how long in stayed in the zone. (Soon to be upgraded to a Garmin 305 Forerunner so I can keep track of distance and speed as well.)
A running group – running with other people can be a good motivator and you can learn from what others are doing as well. I belong to the North Carolina Roadrunners Club.
A running schedule – in order to be able to run 13.1 miles in one shot, you will have to train for it. You can’t just go from 3 to 13 without putting a serious hurt on yourself. Having a training schedule will help you to stay on track.

As I said, you only have to have 2 things but there are some things that can make your life and your run a little easier and if you can afford them, why not use them. Can you make it to the finish line without them? Yes, but you can make it to the finish line faster with them. One thing I am definitely doing for this half marathon is lose about 40 pounds before I run it.

In network marketing, you only have to have 2 things, prospects and a product but there are some things that can make your business run better and smoother. Things that help me to grow my network marketing business:

MLM training – things are always changing in the market place (who knew what social media was a few years ago?) and you need to stay on top of the changes in order to take advantage of them. I am a graduate and continue to be a student with On Stage Marketing.
Good telephone service – if you are going to be using the phone to market your product, and you should, you will want to have a good phone plan. You may also want a good headset (to save your neck). (Mine has been updated with the use of a predictive dialer – I can make more calls in less time.)
A marketing campaign – having a prospecting script, a presentation, and a closing script will help you to stay on track.
A good schedule – it’s easy to get distracted when you work from home. It’s a real good idea to create a schedule for yourself so that you can stay focused.
Mentors, buddies, someone to talk to and role play with – being in contact with others that do what you do is always a good thing. It keeps you motivated and you can learn from what others are doing.
A plan – it’s a good idea to have a plan. You really can’t expect to make a 6 figure income using the Internet if you haven’t even learnt what the 5 components of a marketing transaction are.

I would like to say that you have to have MLM training in order to be a good network marketer but just as in running, there are some people that can just naturally do it. You don’t have to have any fancy tools or training to be a successful network marketer, you can make it to the finish line by prospecting only people you know but there are ways to make your network marketing business grow faster and easier than before and it all starts with a good foundation. MLM training. Until next time, have a great MLM day!

1 Comment

Amy Howard, June 30th 2009 | Tags: mlm tips, mlm training, network marketing, network marketing tips, network marketing training
Posted in Uncategorized

8 Days To MLM Sales – Day 4, Prepare A Presentation That Converts Prospects Into MLM Customers

Once you have a prospecting script, you will want to have some place to send your prospects. If you use the presentation that your MLM company provides, it more than likely will spend most of the call talking about how much money everyone is making and how this is the right product and the right time, blah, blah, blah. Not really the right message that you want to send to your potential product customers.

Hopefully I won’t have to convince you how bad for your business it will be if you only look for business builders. Once your new business builder joins your MLM and sees that they will have to work at the business, that the product doesn’t just sell itself, they will move on to the next network marketing company faster that you can say “hold on”. So, using your MLM company’s presentation call may not send the right message to your prospects, especially since you want them to purchase the product more than you want them to join your business.

Send The Right Message To Your Prospects

Today we are going to be creating a MLM sales presentation that you will send your prospects to. I want you to keep in mind that a presentation call is not designed to close your prospects for you. You still have to close them yourself. A presentation call is where you will present an offer and give your prospects enough information about your MLM product or service and position yourself as the expert with that product. Your presentation should also provide objections for your prospect.

Your MLM Presentation Should Be Relatively Short

Keep in mind that the average attention span of an adult is about 25 minutes. So you want to create your presentation with that in mind. Now I have been to presentations that have been longer in length and I have been to some that have been shorter in length. Don’t get too hung up on having your presentation come in right at 25 minutes just keep it in the back of your mind that you want to keep your prospects attention for the entire time. To have an effective presentation you have to have some important elements.

Five Components To Every Marketing Transaction

If you remember, during Day 3- Create A Prospecting Script, I shared with you the 5 components to a marketing transaction: Introduction, Offer, Value, Benefit, Close. Well, we are going to be using these again to create a presentation for your MLM product or service.

Five Sections To A Presentation

Let’s break down each of the components of a marketing transaction so that you can see what each section of your MLM presentation will contain.

1. Introduction – you want to spend a few minutes welcoming your prospects to the call, confirming why they are on the call, and introducing yourself.

2. Offer – this is where you say what your MLM product or service is, where is came from, the research behind it. (DO NOT talk about price here and DO NOT mention your MLM company’s name either.) This is also where you will explain your product packages, why and how they work.

3. Value – this is where you will be bringing in the value of using your MLM product or service. You still aren’t talking about the price of your product yet but you can talk about what a similar product might cost. You want to compare with something that is a lot more expensive.

4. Benefit – now is when you bring up the price of your MLM product packages and how you justify your price. Talk about what your prospect would still have to do with your comparison in order to get the benefits that you are offering.

5. Close – briefly highlight the offer, value, benefits, and any specials or guarantees that you included in your presentation. Then close up the presentation with a call to action.

As long as you remember to include all five of these components along with the “AIDA” getting your prospects attention, holding their interest, peak their desire, and get them to take action, you will have a winning presentation on your hands.

How To Deliver Your Presentation

Once you have crafted your presentation, you want to have people listen to it. You have a few options open to you. You could deliver the presentation yourself on a one on one basis. However, that would be slow and not much better than doing in home parties and it just wouldn’t be a good use of your time. You could also deliver your presentation live using a conference line. A live conference call will give you the best results but in the beginning you can also record your presentation.

I’m going to let you in on a little secret that is worth a couple hundred dollars. I found this after I already spent money on a teleconference line but I want to share this with you so that you can have an advantage that I didn’t. It’s called https://www.freeconferencing.com/. This is a great service to use to do live presentation calls. Another great resource is http://www.simplevoicebox.com/, you can use this service to record your presentation and send your prospects to listen to. Both are really good resources and are perfect for the beginning network marketer that doesn’t have a huge audience as yet.

Okay, I hope this information helps you to create your own presentation call so that you can give the right message to your prospects. This is the end of step 4 on our journey to MLM sales. If you feel a little stuck at any point, please feel free to contact me. I am here to help. Until next time, have a great MLM day.

8 Days To MLM Sales

Day 1-Identify Your MLM Product

Day 2- Identify Your Target Market

Day 3- Create A Prospecting Script

Day 5-Create A Closing Script That Eliminates Objections

Day 6-Warming Up, Why Practice Makes Perfect

Day 7-Getting Targeted Leads

Day 8-Putting It All Together For MLM Sales

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Amy Howard, June 29th 2009 | Tags: create a mlm sales presentation, mlm training, network marketing tips, network marketing training
Posted in "8 Days To MLM Sales" Course

Are You Embarrassed By Your Tiny MLM Checks

I couldn’t believe it…

She was so excited, Julie was in!

All of this after spending hours and hours cold calling people. Buying way overpriced leads. Inviting friends to hotel meetings. Handing tapes to “duds”. And what did I have to show for it? Not much. But now this was almost too easy.

However, I’m getting ahead of myself! Let me back up a second…

You see when I first got into network marketing, I knew NOTHING. Heck, I didn’t even know what network marketing was. A friend told me he had a system with some company and that we could make money. Next thing I knew, I was signed up and a certified Network Marketer.

Of course I didn’t know the first thing about recruiting or prospecting – so I was lost. I looked to my upline for answers and they told me what they did to bring in 6 figures. So, I did what they said.

Thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours later, I was frustrated and broke.

(Sound familiar?)

I knew I had to try something different. (And fast, I was about to lose my home.)

Lucky for me, one of my crossline friends called me and said I should take a look at something. He didn’t say what it was or anything just that it looked great it was exactly what we were looking for and I should check it out.

I didn’t believe him.

But who was I to argue? I had nothing to lose. So, I went to the presentation call even though I had to stay up past my bedtime to listen in. It was a long call too, 45 minutes but it was worth every minute. He was right it was exactly what I was looking for. I wanted to know how to actually get people to sign up in my business. And the guys in the presentation guaranteed that they could show me how to add 20-30 people into my business every week.

Frankly, I was a little skeptical but they did give me a guarantee. So, I figured the worst that could happen is that I would waste a few hours of my time. And since I had been spending so much time working the business and not getting any results, I figured it couldn’t hurt to listen. I went to the training.

That’s when the magic happened…

Within a week, I had made 24 sales and prospects were actually getting back to me (for a change).

One of them – Julie, the gal I told you about – was practically banging down my door.

That’s When I Learned The Secret To Network Marketing

It’s not in your warm market, or in the ridiculously expensive business opportunity leads, or in the ads in the newspaper, or in the self-replicating website that your company offers.

The secret is YOU! You have to have the training to be an effective network marketer. You have to know how to prospect, attract an audience, get their attention, and most of all, you have to know how to close your own sales. You have to master the technology to do all of this; the telephone, the Internet, and ad copy.

How do you learn to master all of these things and why didn’t they tell you this when you got started with your home based business that you were going to have to learn how to do all of this stuff? Why did they tell you that the product practically sells itself?

Well the reason your MLM company and your sponsor didn’t tell you that you would have to master things like sales and marketing is because if they did, most people wouldn’t get started. It’s easier to tell you that you have to get 2 (or 3, or 4) who get 2 (or 3, or 4) and like magic you are making more money than you ever dreamt about making. If they told you that the 2 people you did get probably won’t do anything to get their 2 people, or the next 2 people, you wouldn’t have joined the business in the first place. Instead, they tell you that they will help you to grow your MLM business. Unfortunately, they know about as much about marketing as your cat.

As for where to go to learn how to master using the telephone, Internet, and ad copy, you can learn all of those things from the same place that I did. On Stage Marketing and because I am a certified graduate of this training I will help you by coaching you and mentoring you personally.

And To Prove It

“On Stage Marketing Is Willing To Spend One Hour Of Their Time With You, Absolutely FREE, Live, To Show You Exactly How To Make It Happen. In Just One Hour, We Will Guarantee You Will Be Earning $50,000 Per Year Within 12 Months With Any Home Based Business Or MLM”

We understand that we can’t help everyone. We work with people live, not through videos, books, or tapes. For this reason, we strictly limit how many people we work with on a monthly basis.

You know what, let’s take this one step further. Just to make sure I don’t waste your time (I’m sure you have your doubts) I’ll do this…

If you are serious about wanting to grow you network marketing business and you contact me within the next 48 hours. Here’s what I will do. I recognize that you’ve probably been promised the moon and the stars by every network marketing guru under the sun. I’m sure you’ve heard it all and bought most of it. So, I’ll make it worth your time. If you make an appointment within 48 hours, I will actually show you how I can put $100 in your pocket just for spending an hour of your time with us.

It’s easy to get an appointment. Just pick up the phone and call me, Amy Howard at 919-277-1684.

Just think! You’ll never again be forced to suffer through another lost sale or the pain and hassle of trying to cold prospect the usual way again.

Don’t waste another day doing what you already know doesn’t work. Pick up the phone and find out how you can add 20-30 people a week into your business. Guaranteed! Call 919-277-1684 Now!

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Amy Howard, June 25th 2009 | Posted in Uncategorized