Tag Archives: leads

The Myth of Automated Marketing Systems

The internet revolutionized network marketing and spawned affiliate marketing. Many have been lured into believing that they’d be able to automate their marketing, thus creating automated income. A couch-potato’s dream come true! They’d be instant millionaires!

The Rise of Automated Marketing Systems

Sometime in 2008, I came across these names: Mike Dillard, Ann Sieg, Mike Klingler, and a few other “lesser-knowns.” I bet you could name a few more. They popularized the notions that:

  1. Other marketers are a lucrative target market. This is true. Because 98% are failing. As Dillard will say, this industry is like the blind leading the blind. Many companies (mine included) have been slow to realize, much less adopt the massive possibilities that the internet offers.  Therefore, too many of that 98% don’t know HOW to make money in this industry and certainly can’t teach their team what they, themselves, don’t know. If the company doesn’t offer it, they turn to the internet to learn – either from the Gurus directly or from their minions.
  2. You need a product or service to market to these other marketers “on the front-end” to make your fast cash, and then market your primary business on the back end for the long-term residual income. This is partially true. Such “front-end” products and services can be tools, training, and/or systems that fill in the holes left by those companies that still haven’t figured out how to put the internet to work for them and their representatives.
  3. You’re the next guru millionaire if you can create your own “plug & play” system(s) for your team. The key concept is making your team “system-dependent” instead of “you-dependent.” This is true, too. And you’d be ever better off if you market your system to the masses, instead of reserving it for your team or company – like these gurus did.

Out of these concepts came Carbon Copy Pro, Lead Net Pro and similar programs. All of these programs promised to teach the masses their “fool-proof” methodology, promising that you’d be the next MLM and internet millionaire. Anyone who enrolled and requested more help or complained that things weren’t working, were advised to plug in, learn the materials, and put it to work – take ACTION!

As if you weren’t doing that.

The Fall of Automated Marketing Systems

This leads me to the first big lie that these gurus based everything on, and used to milk everyone:

these “plug-and-play” systems are NOT fool-proof.

Not everyone has the same skill set, nor the same innate abilities, nor learn in the same manner. Any teacher will tell you that there are different modes of learning and not everyone can read instructions or watch a video and understand the material well enough to successfully imitate it. Even if they “learn it”, that doesn’t mean they can “do it.”

For instance, there are a lot of folks out there who’d be forced to walk around in rags if they were forced to make their own clothes. Many would be walking instead of driving if they were forced to be their own mechanic. In this day and age of technology, there are too many who can barely turn on an electronic device and use it as intended, but certainly wouldn’t be able to do anything more – EVEN if “taught” how.

Complicated Sales Funnels

Complicated Sales Funnels

That’s right. They expected the Average Joe to be able to create these complicated sales funnels and automated marketing systems, AND learn how to successfully promote them, so that masses of Average Toms, Dicks, Harrys, and Sues who stumbled on the site(s) would automatically

  1. believe that this anonymous Joe could actually help them be successful, and
  2. open up their wallet and get out their credit card – sometimes repeatedly to purchase whatever “magic key” was being sold next.

These gurus had so many people convinced about these “magic keys” in spite of one key component that even they often mentioned:

People will only buy from those they know, like and trust.

It can take a LONG time to create website traffic, turn viewers into leads, and leads into sales. Just because they come to your site and see the “copy & paste” content that you and everyone else in your company is using, doesn’t mean they’ll believe you and trust you enough to pull out the credit card. In other words it takes a long time to build trust via the internet and automation. And because too many people have gotten burned by these empty promises, it’s only gotten harder.

Sure it works for the guru! They’ve got their in-your-face success to point to and say, “See! It works!” Until the Average Joe has such irrefutable evidence of success, though, he’ll have to find other means to convince his visitors that he’s real. AND that he can help.

So, what can Joe do to cut through all the white noise of internet marketing?

Here’s the second lie the gurus taught:

you should never pick up the phone.

Certainly not until your leads had already bought your product, maybe not until they plugged into your system, and sometimes not even unless they upgraded to a certain level – sometimes “all the way in!”

The fastest way to earn trust is to pick up the phone!

When someone visits your squeeze page and actually fills in the form, get in touch with them. It doesn’t make you look desperate, but it does fulfill your visitors need for actual communication. Our population is tired of the “press 1″ automated system we live in and is craving some human interaction!

Do NOT depend on your drip email system to do all the communicating.

Not only is that all one-sided so you don’t know what your visitor’s needs are, but they’ll stop opening your messages within a week. Because they’ve already forgotten whatever your promise was that you failed to deliver on. Next thing you know, they don’t even remember how they got on your list, so they either unsubscribe or report you for spamming.

There are way too many people who want to hide behind the anonymity of the internet, and way too many of those are knowingly running scams for the Toms and Sues to be very trusting anymore. How can you tell if the person behind the website is genuine and operating a legitimate business, or offering a legitimate product or service anymore? And how can you tell if that person really is running a prosperous business (as they claim) and can teach you the same?

Contact them. If they’re not willing to talk to you – or better yet, do a screen share or video chat with you – and show some proof of legitimacy, they don’t deserve your trust. Nor your business.

And a word for those of you who aren’t making the big bucks yet and feel like you don’t have a story to share, share your teammates stories until you have your own. That’s what teams are for.

This is a People Business!

No matter what your company or team’s product or service is, you better remember that your real product is PEOPLE! You have to build relationships to build trust. Treat them with honor and respect. Better yet, treat everyone as if they’re the most important person in the world. Because

  1. To them they are.
  2. To God they are. Enough that He sent His Son to die for them.

The bottom line is:

Automation works, but not for everyone.

Anyone who tries to sell you their program to automate your business and tells you “it’s fool-proof, anyone can do it,” yet their system doesn’t include any other methods, RUN the other way, fast! The only thing that’s fool-proof is picking up the phone and communicating with your prospect. You’ll quickly learn their needs, and their innate strengths and weaknesses to help steer them to the method that will work best for them. Even if your preferences are opposites, you and your mentor should always be able to help anyone on your team to implement the method of choice successfully.

Keep in mind, though, that even if you are going the automation route, you still gotta be willing to pick up the phone and talk to people!

Network Marketing Success Requires Duplication

I joined my primary company in October of 2005. After being in several network marketing businesses (without even realizing that was the industry I’d stumbled into), I was finally taught what this industry is and how it works.

Unfortunately, my team only knew how to build using purchased leads.

Calling Leads

Calling Leads

See, I was never afraid of the phone and actually enjoyed talking to people. Even if they weren’t interested in the network marketing industry, I would help them by directing them to alternative sources of “work from home jobs” that were legitimate. But I was really “living the nightmare.”

For 3 solid years, I spent 6-10 hours per day, 5-7 days per week on the phone. I lost count at over 75 enrollments, but was still struggling to keep 20 active customers. And none of them stepped up and purchased, much less called leads. Although purchased  leads worked for my “upline” and it worked for me, it didn’t work  for my enrollees. Because they were afraid of the phone and talking to people.

What I was doing wasn’t duplicatable.

I learned other teams were incorporating 3-way calling into their businesses: from the initial prospecting call to the business presentation through the closing and training phases. But my team didn’t.

I requested training on how to do it, but it never happened. Why?

Maybe they couldn’t teach what they didn’t know. Neither could I. OR they just weren’t willing to be available to their team at a moment’s notice. And because our system of training new people wasn’t simple, and certainly not easy to follow, there was never any duplication.

The only result I had to show for all my work over those 3 years was a serious case of burnout. I couldn’t go on like that. I had neglected my home, my family, and myself. My little girl may as well have not had a mom.

In 2008, I quit buying leads and started learning how to do real internet marketing. Of course I fell  for every “front-end” marketing system that came out between 2007 and 2009.

I learned a LOT about internet marketing, and they were formulated on a good idea: market products or tools to other marketers on the front end to get yourself into “profit mode” fast. Then through relationship building, market your primary business on the back end.

That didn’t work either. Why?

No training & support.

While they hyped up an “easy to use system,” newbies were expected to learn and implement it all on their own. That is a STEEP learning curve!

Again, It wasn’t duplicatable.

Since then I’ve looked at other “front-end” marketing systems that promise results and haven’t been the least bit interested in any of them. Why?

They’re not duplicatable!

Because they’re missing at least one of these necessary components:

  • a means to generate a high quantity of high quality leads – lots of targeted, qualified people who are actually interested in what you have
  • 3-way calling
  • real training and support
  • an easily duplicatable system to plug into
  • real products or services (to keep the FTC from shutting it down) to market for fast profit
  • a means to build relationships, so that it’s at least possible to market something on the back end

I’m sure you’ve heard it said that people join people – not systems, not companies, not products, and certainly not a faceless, possibly fake-named person they never get to speak to. Sure the systems and companies and products are important, but those mass-marketed systems were missing the human touch… The relationship that allows people to get to know each other, and know whether or not the person they’re communicating with has any integrity.

I never found anything that worked until another marketing friend introduced me to Doc King and Cindy Mayo of “Powerhouse 1-2-3.” I joined them in one of their businesses and finally learned how 3-way calls work and how it is incorporated into an easily duplicatable system.

From the initial call through the training process through the back-end marketing of the business of your choice, there’s a real team with real 24/7 support, a real method of finding leads, real 3-way calling,  real training, and real tools to market on the front end to get you into profit mode fast.

And knowing what I know now, I’m starting over with another team with my primary company – a team that incorporates these components into their system for real duplication that was never possible before.

Being with the PowerHouse123 team also taught  me to hone my business-analysis skills. While they taught me easily duplicatable systems and introduced me to some tools that can be used to build ANY business, they also reinforced the concept that just because someone is making money, that doesn’t mean the business they’re using to earn that money is a good, ethical business. And just because someone can “show you the money,” that doesn’t mean they’re in possession of a good business mind. In other words, leading someone to the money, doesn’t mean they’re a good Mentor. More on that in another post, though.

Duplication is absolutely necessary for success. If you’re ready to find a team that can show you how, either visit GotToHaveAPlanB.com and fill out the form on that page, or call me at 678-696-1696. Yes, I’m a real person who answers the phone.