It’s been 3 years since joining my current Network Marketing (NWM) business. And for the longest it was a struggle to be successful with it.
Now don’t get me wrong, the company I’m with is fantastic. It’s a Five Pillar Company! (Contact me if you want to know what that means – no strings attached.) It’s so simple and such a “no-brainer” that others who’ve struggled in NWM have finally found the success they were only able to dream about before.
So why was it such a struggle for me to find that same success?
Relatively speaking, my entire experience with this company has been successful. After YEARS of absolute failure in other home businesses, I was finally, actually making money! But still not enough to start addressing the debt we’d built up just paying the living expenses over prior hard economic times. And every time something unexpected happened (and it will – that’s life), it made that debt grow. Bit by bit.
I knew there had to be a better way!
If you’re in NWM now, or ever have been, then you know the drill. Make a list, bug the devil out of every one you know, buy leads (of questionable value), and tear up the phone lines!
Here’s a word about leads. Just because you bought a list from a lead company, doesn’t mean that those people actually requested that information. Even if they’re telephone interviewed leads from a top advertising agency!
- Sometimes someone enters bogus information (I’ve suspected the ad agency of doing this on purpose just to make more money off its customers!)
- Sometimes the person didn’t know what they were filling out
- Sometimes they have no idea why someone is calling them to verify their contact information
- Sometimes they did request the info, but they’re really not serious, or not ready to actually start a business
- Sometimes they’re just looking for a job and not a business
- Sometimes they lie when you call… maybe they’re already tired of all the calls they’re getting
- Etc.
Also, keep in mind when calling leads that you are NOT bothering them. They requested the information and it is your responsibility to help them to the best of your ability. Weren’t you in those shoes at one time, too?
Now, I’m not shy, and am definitely not afraid of the phone or whoever is on the other end of the line. So, I’m good at dialing leads, setting appointments, doing presentations, all that stuff. But my results still weren’t what they should have been.
So I started wondering… I KNOW this works, and I see it work VERY well for others. Why not for me?
My support team could only help me with what they knew. And the “old school” methods (warm market lists & leads) that they taught actually do work in my business. As a matter of fact, those who were able to reach the bigger incomes faster, did so by working with their warm market – even if they’d never, ever been in a NWM business before! But those methods weren’t working for me.
I’d been utilizing training available from independent sources for a year already, and I knew all about posture and personal growth. I knew that if my prospects became my customers and/or business partners, they did so because of their belief in ME and my ability to help them be successful, too. So I knew the thing I was marketing wasn’t so much my company or my products as it was ME. And I had gotten pretty good at that!
Thing is, I’d also had a short gig as a web designer and promoter in my past. I was good at it, too. (But the minute I’m doing something I love because someone’s paying me to do it, so I HAVE to do it, then I no longer love it.) So I already had an idea that there had to be a better way for people like me. A “marriage” of those marketing methods and NWM.
What do I mean by “people like me?” Well… there are many components of the personality types that don’t do well with the friends and family lists.
For one, I’m from the South. The OLD South, where you don’t air your dirty laundry. For those of you unfamiliar with such old fashioned terms, that means that you don’t talk about anything that’s going on in you life that’s not “Pollyanna Perfect.” If you’re not making enough money to afford the basic living necessities, you don’t tell ANY body about it. If you’re not making enough money to make the mortgage payment, the ONLY person you can tell is your parents or grandparents from whom you’re begging a little bit of assistance. If you’ve lost your job and all the utilities are about to be turned off because you’re so behind, you don’t tell anybody but the preacher at church when you beg for a little help from the benevolence fund. And you are ab-so-lute-ly not gonna go down to the government offices and sign up for any kind of financial assistance – somebody might see you, and you’d never be able to hold your head up in public again. Even if you just want to make some extra money so you can take a family vacation, or do some renovations on the home, you don’t tell anybody. That means you certainly don’t start a home business and tell all your friends and family to come on and be your customer or start their business with you, too.
So if you’re prospecting in the Old South, you’re hard pressed to find people who will even make it through the qualifying process, because they’re gonna lie through their teeth that they don’t need anything like that because life is just rosy.
For another, to do well with warm market strategies, one has to have a Circle of Influence. Boy, are those loaded words!! Although we learned in geometry that any three points determine a circle, a Circle of Influence really requires MANY more persons to be considered a circle. And what does “influence” mean? According to Webster’s Dictionary, it’s the “power to affect others.” So to have a Circle of Influence, you would have many friends and family with whom you have the power to affect. That takes a certain personality type: not just a social butterfly, but an influential person who is “more than just an acquaintance” with many people.
Loners like me, who do weird things like acting, and enjoy playing computer games, or chatting to online friends, or reading a book (not romance, either, but fantasy and/or science fiction! Oooo! Real girls just don’t do that!), just will not have a Circle of Influence here among the Old South.
Now, I know it’s not just in the South, but you get my point that only certain personality types will do well with the warm market strategies. So we’re left with buying leads. I don’t care what anybody says, that’s the slow way to build. You’re calling people who don’t know you, so there’s no way you have “influence” with any of them.
So I’d had this concept dancing around in my head for a LONG time that there had to be a better way for people like me. There had to be a way to “marry” the strategies that I’d long ago learned and implemented for designing and promoting websites with Network Marketing. It required a better system than was being provided by my support team. AND it required online marketing skills that were most likely more modern and advanced than I had learned back then. That meant learning those new skills, AND training others on my team to utilize them, too. I may have had the smarts to figure it all out and create it, but I certainly didn’t have the time. I was working so hard at building my business that I didn’t dare risk my slowly building pay check to take time off to figure that out.
Besides, I couldn’t possibly be the only one who was thinking the same thing! Surely someone was working on such a system, if not implementing it already. So I started searching, and ended up stumbling on 3 very good systems at the same time. If these don`t sound familiar to you already, you’re going to start seeing them all over the place from now on:
- Mentoring For Free
- Magnetic Sponsoring
- Renegade Networker (and Renegade University)
As I suspected, the Internet had changed over the past 10 years and the skills I had were almost obsolete. I had a lot of learning to do as far as online marketing went. I learned. I implemented.
I am successful. Finally!
Here’s an analogy for you – my husband gets credit for giving it to me. I use to drive a 1989 Chevette that I’d paid $1600 cash for back in … never mind, I can’t remember and you don’t need to know. I drove that thing until it was on its last days. Then in 1997, I bought a 1994 Ford Ranger – you know… those cute little green trucks with the bed liner, chrome wheels, and sliding rear window that you saw all over the place? I HATED having to take on a car payment, but I just couldn’t depend on the ‘vette any more. And I LOVED my truck! That was an investment that needed to be made, and I never looked back.
Well, as much as I hated investing yet more money into my business, that was an investment that needed to be made and I’ll never look back.
So, if you’re one of the kinds of people like me who just is not gonna make it using the old school NWM methods, I know how you feel. If you’ve got a failure is not an option attitude, you MUST invest in yourself and your business. Learn these new strategies. In all these systems you’ll learn that the reason you’re struggling isn’t your fault. It’s the methods that you’re using.
