What’s Wrong With Opportunity Leads?

Posted on May 26, 2009 | 1 Comment

If you’re in Network Marketing, you’ve most likely utilized two common business building methods: warm market and opportunity leads. We’ll cover the problem with warm market in another post. Right now, I want to talk about opportunity leads.

Purchased opportunity leads are a waste of time and money!

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
  • Some are just freebie seekers
  • Etc.

So, you see, you don’t always get what you paid for. (Ask me for access to a recording of testimony after testimony of how purchased leads resulted only in massive debt for many!)

That’s why I started using internet marketing techniques to generate my own leads.

I know that the names & numbers on my list actually visited my site and filled out a form. Otherwise I wouldn’t have that info. I also know which advertising method lead them to my site. So when I do call, I have that info and can mention it during my “hello” so they remember me. (Hi, this is Danni. You visited my GottaHaveAPlanB website and filled out a form for more information about working from home…”)

Generating your own leads is the ONLY lead generation method that you should trust. It’s the only method that you know gives you valid prospects. Well… unless they lie when they fill out the form.

Let’s talk about another problem with leads:

Fear of the Phone

I know a lot of people are just afraid of picking up the phone and dialing those numbers. (Mike Dillard admits that he use to be a telephone chicken.)

You pick up the phone and hope that nobody’s home. The last thing you want is someone blessing you out for calling them when they don’t want to be bothered… 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? When I was working leads, I tried to remember that I use to be one. When someone called me, I sincerely wanted help. I was dead serious about finding a way to work from home, and with each call I was ready to do what ever it took to get all the information. Including going through all those interviews. That was my opportunity to prove how serious I was, but that I wasn’t gonna let them drag me into any odd business. I was picky.

You need to know that your prospects are just like you. There’s nothing to fear.

So, start generating your own leads, stop spending money with MLM lead companies that most likely are selling you bogus info, and don’t be afraid to answer someone’s request for help!

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Review of Mike Dillard’s Products & System

Posted on May 6, 2009 | Leave a comment

In some of my previous posts I’ve shared with you that I had been struggling in Network Marketing (NWM) for years. It took God’s backing me into a corner and hitting me over the head with a 2×4 for me to finally take the plunge again with my current company. With it, I finally have the training and support that I really needed to find the success that was eluding me.

That’s the short story.

That success was limited, though, so I plugged into some independent training sources and saw GREAT improvements in my results. The two best things I learned from them was:

  • Your pay check follows your personal growth.
  • Posture: people don’t join businesses, products, comp plans, or whatever. They join YOU. So you have to sell you and your ability to help them succeed.

But I still hadn’t found what I was looking for. Because I’d designed and promoted websites in the past, I knew there had to be a better way! There had to be a system that used real online marketing and promotion for building a NWM business. Instead of trying to create that system myself, I started looking around for an existing one… and stumbled on several. (Thank God, because I REALLY didn’t want to do all that work to create it! LOL)

I’ve always been the type to help people avoid frustration and heartache if I could. In my current endeavors, that translates into helping people avoid scams, save their money and their dignity. So whether or not you work with me in my current business is irrelevant. This is just a means of helping you find the right business for you, and be successful once you do.

That in mind, the source I want to share with you now was created by another home business failure, Mike Dillard.

Now, I’ve read many so-called-reviews of Mike’s system and products online, and I can tell you just by reading them that the writers don’t know what they’re talking about. They’ve never actually gotten their hands on these materials and studied them! In my review below, I’ll give you enough information to know the difference between these products, general information about what’s contained in them (without giving away the bank), and what each product is intended to do for you.

Let me give my honest opinion of him straight up. Mike desperately needs an editor because his writing skills are very lacking – but not desperately so. His sentence and paragraph composition are barely acceptable, and he has serious problems with grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Every once in a while, I did find myself having to stop & “translate” what he wrote into something that made sense – just enough to get the concept of what he meant. That aside, with these products, he shares some very valuable skills that he worked HARD to learn for himself. If you choose to take advantage of his knowledge, it’s well worth your time and money.

As I said earlier, Mike was a NWM failure. If you’ve ever tried one, you’ll recognize the problems he (and I) had: make a list of all your friends & family so you can start hounding them to the point that they start avoiding you, then start trying to get them to refer their friends & family to you, then start buying deadbeat online leads and hounding them. He didn’t like doing any of that. He’s an admitted telephone chicken! So he started studying with professional, successful marketers about how it’s really done. From that he developed a few different products for different purposes.

Mike’s first product is called “Magnetic Sponsoring.” This is written for those in NWM. It takes him an entire book to tell you that if you’re struggling, it’s not your fault, you’ve just been told to sell everything except the one thing that matters: YOU. When people join someone in a business venture, the thing that matters most is the person who told them about it: YOU. It’s not the company or the products or the comp plan that matters. It’s YOU. So you should be working on yourself and selling You, Inc. Maybe it just seemed basic to me, but not to you. So, if you’re in a NWM biz already or just considering one, you might want to get this book to decrease your learning curve on this concept alone. This book is $39 dollars and you earn a $20 commission.

Another product Mike has for those in NWM is “Black Belt Recruiting. ” This is a 6 CD set that demonstrates how to recruit in a professional manner. The trainers in the videos: Mike Dillard and Mark Wieser, one of the industry’s top recruiters. If you’re struggling with this, you really need this one. Just hearing how the pros approach in a manner that doesn’t provoke objections and overcome those that do come up is awesome. You’ll have quite a few “ah ha” moments! This CD set costs $147 and you earn a 40% commission ($58.80).

Now here come a couple of products for those who may not be in the NWM industry.

Mike’s “Building On a Budget” (BOAB) will be a harder read for those of you who are grammar snobs like me. But if you can get through it, you’ll learn some marketing techniques that will help you no matter what type of business you’re considering (or may already be doing). These are real sources to use, how to set them up, and tips and tricks to use them for better online marketing results. This book costs $39 and you earn a 40% commission ($15.60).

Last is a more thorough course for online marketing, “MLM Traffic Formula.” Yes, it’s geared toward MLM/NWM, but it applies to any marketing efforts, no matter what kind of business is being marketed. It contains step-by-step methods to create your online marketing tools to generate more traffic to your website, no matter what the subject is. This is not the marketing resources that you learn in BOAB, but how to create your websites, lead capture pages, blogs, and such (the tools) for which you’re generating the traffic that results in sales. This book costs $997 and you earn a 40% commission ($398.80).

Bottom line is that if you can get past Mike’s poor grammar and poor writing skills, his system not only provides a way to make money on the Internet, it also teaches you how to do just that. The best benefit of MS is that you can make handsome profits marketing just these products. Of course, it’s only one-time sales and not residual as with NWM…

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