Telephone prospecting secrets of Tom Paredes.

Transcription

1 Telephone prospecting secrets of Tom Paredes. The following is the complete transcript of an interview conducted with telephone prospecting legend, Tom Paredes, by Tom Big Al Schreiter in Tom Paredes is a well-known author and professional network marketer. He agreed to share his techniques regarding his special telephone recruiting methods. Tom Schreiter: This is Tom Big Al Schreiter. I m in the studio today with Tom Paredes. Tom Paredes is the author of MLM War Stories, a bestselling book on generic recruiting for multi-level marketers. He s also the author of Network Marketing Techniques That Work. It s a tape album that he s developed because he s an international trainer and speaker and gives seminars throughout the world. He has about eighteen years experience in multilevel marketing, and he s been a really good friend for the last fifteen years. One of his specialties is talking on the telephone. Now, there are several ways of working the business. Some people use party plans, some people use referrals, some like in-home meetings, some like hotel meetings. Everyone, whether he does mail order or advertising, has a technique that he likes to use that works best for him. Now, for me, I m a phonophobic. I m probably one of the worst people ever on the phone. But I use the other techniques that work for me. But that s why I like talking to Tom Paredes because he s a pro on the phone. Now, some people use the phone for cold calls; others use it to maybe follow-up, making phone calls to people they mailed information to from a mailing list. Some people use it for direct response ads, to follow up, or maybe referrals. Some people even use it for training and relationship building. There are several uses for the telephone. To use it correctly, we re going to talk to Tom Paredes today. The first thing we d like to talk about is prospecting. Now we know that working your warm market, people you know, is best because they don t have a problem with trust. You have that out of the way, so they can listen to the facts about your business opportunity. But once you ve finished your warm market, then where do you go? Some people have already used up their warm market; they ve talked to everybody. Some don t even have a warm market. Maybe they re born from orphan parents or something. Other people may have just moved to a new community. Or maybe you re young, eighteen years old, and your Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 131

2 warm market is a bunch of 18-year-olds and maybe they don t have the business acumen or desire or direction that you have right now. So, you re going to say, Gee, I need to build a brand new warm market. And it looks like I m going have to use the telephone. And that s where Tom Paredes comes in. So I m going to switch over to Tom here and ask him, Tom, when you use the telephone, one of the first things people say is, Gosh, I m afraid when I talk people, they may be giving me objections, they may not trust me. How do you go about building a relationship, getting kind of a warm connection with somebody over the telephone that you don t know? What kind of techniques, what do you say to people when they say, Well, I m not sure. And they kind of clam up and don t tell you what they want. Tom, what kind of things do you use to help people get started? Tom Paredes: Well, first of all, a lot has to with the person I m calling. For example, I wouldn t call somebody off the Yellow Pages, or somebody off an ad or something like that unless I had some connection with them. For example, if I have a name of a person who s in network marketing already, or somebody who is possibly looking for an opportunity, I would first of all want to create curiosity. T.S.: All right, that s a good point. Instead of trying to sell right away over the telephone and tell them all about your opportunity, how long the company president has been a company president, and how big the bank account is, the very first thing you do is to build curiosity. You do this even before you present your company and talk about the marketing plan. Why do you want to build curiosity first? T.P.: Well, because if they re not curious, they re not going to listen to you. So, obviously the first thing to do is to build that curiosity so they say, "Hmmm, maybe I want to listen to this guy." T.S.: Okay. Once you build the curiosity, people say, How do I do that? Do I give them a riddle or a tough question? How do you get people where they re kind of hanging on the edge of their phone, wanting to hear what you say next, or maybe want a follow-up phone call? What techniques do you use to build that curiosity with people? T.P.: Well, let s take for example, if I call somebody who is from a mailing list, or maybe an ad they ran or something like that. I ll say Well, Tom, I saw your name in this magazine, or I got your name from a list, or whatever, and I understand you re in network marketing. How are you doing with it? And you say things like, Well, you know I m not doing real good with it, or I m doing great. It doesn t really matter what you say. But if you say for instance, Well, I m not doing really good with it. I ve been doing this for a year now and it s really not where I want to be. The next thing I may say would be, Well, you know, I learned some skills from a friend of mine who s been doing this for a while and one of the things I learned well, let me just share a couple of things that Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 132

3 might help you out. So I immediately try to give you something that you can use. I ll say, for example, Do most people like to sell, or do they hate to sell? And the answer is always that they hate to sell. T.S.: I can believe that. I d say just about everybody would say that. T.P.: And the second thing is that most of us are sales-resistant. Have you ever gone to a place where they have commissioned sales people? When you walk into the store, immediately the salesperson comes up to you and says, May I help you? And what do we say? No thanks," or just looking. So, you know, we really are sales-resistant. If most people that we meet are sales-resistant, then we have to find a way to approach them without us appearing to be like salespeople. One of the things I like to do is when you create that curiosity, we talk maybe about one of the important things is having the skills to be able to build an organization. And that s really what people want to do; they want to build an organization. So I say a few things to them that might get their attention like, I think it s important to be able to have the skills to build an organization, don t you? And they always say, Well, yeah. And I say, I also think that if we had a way of doing this where people would only have to follow instruction instead of selling, that would be easier, wouldn t it? And they say Yeah. Think for example, the guy who works at the burger joint. The boss says, I ll give you minimum wage and all you have to do is take these frozen French Fries and put them in the grease. When the bell rings, take them out and put them over here. If you can do that, I ll give you minimum wage. And the young man or the young girl, says Hey, I can do that. All of us can follow instructions. We don t like changes. So if we can do that, it s a lot easier than teaching somebody how to sell. When we get done with that, they re kind of curious. What are you really talking about here? I really didn t say anything. All I talked about was learning some skills and having people follow instructions instead of selling. T.S.: So, you pique their curiosity, you don t go right into the company, don t talk about the product or the marketing plan, you start talking about skills and learning to develop the skills. Now, if they re brand-new, obviously they want to learn the skills, and even if they ve been in multilevel marketing for a while, they re probably interested in learning a lot of new skills. So when you create that curiosity, what happens then? What happens on that second call? Because you have created that curiosity, what do you say on the second call? Do you continue with the curiosity, or where do you go next? T.P.: Well, when you create the curiosity, you visit with them a little bit, and that s it. You hang up. And you may make another call later, but most of the time they call you because you have them pretty curious. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 133

4 They ll call you back and they ll say, Hey, that was really, really interesting. Or, if you want to do this in the first call, they ll say, Hey, that sounds really interesting. Can you tell me a little bit more? They obviously want to learn some of the skills. And you say, Well, I d love to tell you, but why don t we do this? Why don t we set up an appointment, it will take about 25 minutes, and we ll visit some more? because you don t want to tell them the presentation right there. The purpose of the fist call is to create the curiosity. The second call is to do your presentation. T.S.: Okay, to create that curiosity, it sounds like that s going to be the key or else you won t even have a second call. To create that curiosity, you may talk about skills. Now, I ve heard you speak before and you say, One thing about skills: it doesn t matter what company you're associated with, if you don t have the skills, you re not going to be successful. It doesn t matter what kind of products you have; it doesn t even matter what type of compensation plan. It also doesn't matter how much the compensation plan pays if you don t have the skills in building a downline. So you really settle heavily on learning the skills that will make you successful no matter what you do, and use that as the keystone to get people curious on the very first call. Is that right? T.P.: That s right. I say that the skills are the most important thing. However, that doesn t mean the company isn t important. That doesn t mean the products aren t important. Those are all important. But the most important thing is to have a downline in order to build a downline. If you can t build a downline, it doesn t matter what company you re with. It also won't matter whether your products are good or not, if you don't know how to build a downline. Simply put, that just won t matter. T.S.: Well, I can see where this would set you apart from a lot of other people that telephone a prospect. Imagine an ordinary prospect. They may pull out a newspaper like USA Today. In it, there are maybe fifty or maybe even one hundred different ads for multi-level programs. It would be pretty hard to believe that a person would call just one ad and that s it. I m sure they d probably call 10, 20, 30, or 40 or maybe even all 50 ads if they were interested in looking for a business opportunity. Most of these people, when they respond, when they talk to the prospect, they re going to say, Join me. My company s better. The first letter is higher in the alphabet or lower in the alphabet. Or maybe say, We have the only product of its kind. But if you re a prospect, after you hear things like, We have the only product of its kind about 30 times, it loses credibility because you hear it all the time. Everyone who has talked to this prospect has probably said, Gosh, we have the best compensation plan, and the best products, and the best company president and we ve been around the longest and we re the greatest. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 134

5 After you hear that so many times, you become immune to it. So you shock them by talking about learning skills, something they really want, and creating a desire in them to learn these skills. You ll stand out quite a bit different than the other 49 callers out of 50 who are all trying to sell a feature, their product, or their compensation plan. Your second step is: you re going to create a desire to make them want to come meet you, talk to you on the phone further, maybe send them some more information. You re going to create the desire so they come to you. And when people come to you, it s a little bit more of a comfortable relationship over the telephone. Any tips on how to create desire? How to get them on that second phone call to say, Gee, I really want to meet with you, to visit with you and get that information. What would you do? T.P.: Well, sure Tom, let me just back up here just a little bit here, about going back to creating the curiosity. When you talk to a lot of these people, they talk about how great their company is, how great their products are. When you start saying something like for example, if I say, Tom, I just got involved in this great, terrific company, and we have a fantastic product. Immediately you translate that into, What do I have to sell? And you hate to sell. So why do I talk to you that way? Well, because that s the way I learned from my upline, who really didn t understand this business. But it s really not his fault because he learned it from his upline. And it goes all the way up the line to someone who no longer is in the program but we re doing the same thing they were doing. And that s what happens with a lot of people. They re doing the same thing over and over again, and they re talking the same language. They re talking about the company and the products to get people in, instead of creating that curiosity. The secret is that, the curiosity is created by talking about something different like how construct a network. In other words, how to build a downline. That s what everybody really wants. If you can build a downline, the rest is easy. You will be able to sell the products, talk about how great the company is, and so forth. The next step we talk about is how to create desire. Think about it for a minute. People will not do this business unless they can picture themselves doing it. They see a polished guy who comes along, gets up and talks about the nice fancy car he has, his big house and all this other stuff. While those are nice things, most people won t see themselves doing it. I mean, how can a person who makes five bucks an hour say, Oh yeah, I can see myself making $100,000 dollars a year. They just can t see it right then. However, we create desire by talking about our story. That s why the first step in the presentation that we do is we talk about our story, who we are as a person. There are three different parts in our story: Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 135

6 We talk about our childhood, our teen years, and adult years. I talk about when I was a child, I was a very, very, very skinny kid. When I was in the sixth grade, I remember changing schools three different times, and it was very embarrassing for me to do that. I was skinny and also a minority. It was just very, very, very tough. So when somebody says, Wow, this guy was shy! And he no longer is shy? Maybe there s hope for me. Then I talk about my adulthood, how I had a lot of debt and was always figuring out what I was going to do to pay my rent and so forth. That person I am talking to would say, Wow, that guy s just like me! Maybe there s hope for me! Now they can see themselves do this business. Once they see themselves doing this business, you may now talk about dreams. The curiosity is created throughout the story. T.S.: So you tell your personal story in the phone call. Obviously, it helps people realize, Gee, you re just like me! If they hear you talk about something personal, they re going to be a little bit relaxed to talk about the same. Do you create the curiosity on your first phone call and then talk to them about the desire on the second phone call? When do you go through your story with the prospect? T.P.: That would be on the second phone call. This really is just a very short call, probably about seven to ten minutes. Normally I m talking about my upline, because you can t really talk about yourself on the phone when you re creating curiosity. I ll say something like, I have an upline who has taught me a lot of these skills. For example, in my case, I talk about my upline, Tom Schreiter who has taught me a lot of things. Some of the things I ve learned is how to construct a network. People say, Wow, I want to learn these skills. Now they have that curiosity. We move to the second step, which is creating desire. I start off by saying, Hey, let me just share something about who I am since you have no idea who I am. I was born in " And then I start my story. T.S.: So the second phone call, you cover your story. You re going to create a desire so you meet for a presentation, or maybe set up a later presentation over the telephone because it s very, very long distance. What would you do in the third phone call? You ve already made the first phone call which was to create curiosity. The second one creates a desire. You gave a presentation and you have a third phone call on your system. What do you cover during the third phone call after the actual presentation? T.P.: The third phone call is actually to answer any questions that they may have about the presentation I gave them. Because once I do the telephone presentation, I send some information to them. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 136

7 Now, there are different ways you can send information. For example, you can mail a packet of information to them which is about the compensation plan, about the company and some of the products. Those are things they ll want to know anyway. Or you can fax this information to them. That way they can have it right away. During the follow-up call, I ask them questions like, What did you think of the information I sent you? You can also answer some specific questions they ask. T.S.: So, you don t send them any information after the first phone call. You just use that to pre-screen them and to create curiosity. And after the second phone call, once you ve created a desire, then and only then do you invest money to mail information and literature to them. Is that right? T.P.: That s right. You know Big Al likes to use the "two-on-one" method that also works really well on the telephone. Sometimes I have my sponsor or a downline distributor with me on the phone. For example, a distributor would have his sponsor with him on the second call. Nut usually they don't have their sponsor on their phone during the first call. So they re talking about their sponsor who has taught them the skills to build a network. And now this person is curious to see, Who is this person? I want to meet this person! And we set an appointment on the second call to say that, Oh, maybe you can talk to them and maybe pick their brain and be able to get some ideas like how to build the business. T.S.: So, it s a little bit different that most people who say, Gee, if I get somebody on the phone,and if they just show just a sliver of interest, or if at least they weren t mean, I ll mail them a whole bunch of literature. It is of course just a waste of literature and this is merely supporting the postal service. So, what you do is pre-qualify and get all the non-qualified people out of the way so you can spend more money, more time, and more effort with the people who are most qualified. Is that right? T.P.: That s right. And we have to identify these people quickly. Unfortunately, a lot of people who are new to the industry don t know how to do this very quickly. What they do is immediately they get somebody on the phone, Oh sure, go ahead, send me the information. And they re really not interested. They just want to get you off the phone. So you start sending everything that you have and you sometimes spend $20 in product and $1,000 on literature. T.S.: That s true. When I have a salesman on the phone talking to me I say, Please send me the literature. I m in a hurry right now to get him off the phone. You re probably right. People who just request literature are probably not the most interested parties. I guess you have to test it and listen to what they say. But many of us probably send out literature way too early in the presentation. Is that right? T.P.: Yes, that s true. I like to qualify a person first and then after I give him a presentation on the phone, then I send the information pack to him. If you send the information right away, you know they're not going Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 137

8 to get excited about the products you have or the company president that they don't even know. You want them to get excited, whether they can do this thing or not. So in the story, it s designed to create desire. They re going to say, Wow, I think I can do this. And then when you talk about the dreams, Wow, I guess I can reach those dreams. T.S.: You have a person in your organization, Lauren Whittmore, and she s one of the best people I ve ever heard over the phone. Whenever I talk to her on the phone, I just guard my wallet. She s that good. She really relates to people, and she s one of those people who, when you meet her, you instantly create a relationship. You become comfortable with her right away. She s very, very good, especially over the telephone. I was talking to her about how she handles her phone calls from people who are answering the ad that she ran. She handles it something like this: She says to the prospect, When you answered my ad, there must have been something that attracted you toward it. What were you looking for or what did you like about it? So before she even presents her company or opportunity, she starts asking the prospect what in the ad attracted them to make that phone call. What were they looking for? After they ve mentioned that, she asks a few questions such as, Have you ever been in multi-level marketing before? And she listens to their story. She asks, What happened? And of course, they say, Well, this didn t work out. My sponsor stole my dog. The company went out of business " something like that. And she says, Well, how did you feel when that happened? All of a sudden, the emotions and the feelings come through that somebody s actually listening to them, and they tell how they felt when the sponsor stole their dog, or when something didn t work right with their company. And then she asks, What did you do before that multi-level marketing experience? And what did you do before that? She finally comes down to say, What are you looking for in a multi-level marketing opportunity? So she s gathering information and creating desire. She s listening to what they re interested in and she finally ends up by asking, Well, why do you want to do this type of business? What do you have in the way of dreams? What do you want to achieve? And they start talking about their dreams. And after a twenty-minute phone call with Lauren, you feel like you just talked to a sister because she has that type of personality. People create that instant type of relationship with her. When she gets done with her phone call, she s learned a little bit about her caller's drams, etc. What s more amazing about Lauren is that after 20 minutes of her just asking a couple of questions and listening, most people are saying, Well, this sounds really good, Lauren. How do I get involved with you? She hasn t mentioned the company, the product or anything like that and they re ready to join. So she builds a relationship over the phone, and Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 138

9 she has that magic type of personality that works. But for those of us who don t have that magic sort of personality, what you re saying is that we can create first of all the curiosity, second of all, we create desire, and third, we follow up on that presentation. It's that simple. Now you mail or fax them information, if it s long-distance and you can t meet them personally. What type of information would you send a person to do a presentation? Would you send them an audiocassette tape, a video, some literature? Tom, what information do you send somebody who, let s say answered an ad? What would you send them? T.P.: In the presentation, I do talk a little bit about the compensation plan but I don t go into detail. I mean, I don t tell them all the different levels, and all the different breakaways, and all the different things about it. So I give them just a concept, an overview of the compensation plan. I send them some information about the marketing plan in detail, a complete brochure on the marketing plan. I also don t talk too much about the products. I just give them an overview, a concept, of products or services in general. I send that information to them. Some of these programs have car bonuses, house payments, or whatever. I send them information on that. So, those are the things that we send. T.S.: What magic words do you listen for in a prospect? Obviously, when you re talking to people over the phone, you re doing some sorting, and you re saying, These people are just curiosity-seekers or tire-kickers, or wasting their time. And some of these people here who really have that desire will really want to go for it. What key words do they say, or how do you pick up in a telephone conversation, so you can tell the level of desire and commitment of that person? What do you listen for? T.P.: I listen to a lot of things. Emotionally speaking, I want to know some of the things they have done in the past and the things they have not done and why they haven t done it. Most of the people who haven t really succeeded in multi-level didn t fail because their sponsor left them and they didn t do anything. The reason they failed is because they didn t really have the skills. They were doing it basically wrong, and they were trying to do it the wrong way. I know that there are a lot of different ways to build a business, but I think the thing is they really didn t have anybody to teach them. Everybody has different ways of building, but they never really had a mentor to teach them. That s one of the things I try to get across. T.S.: Do you look for any success patterns in the past? Do you want to know if they have been successful in other things, or do you look for failure patterns? What do you use to kind of sort through people to see if they re that type of person you would like to invest time in your business and help him become successful? What do you look for? Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 139

10 T.P.: Well, you know it s funny that you mentioned success patterns or failure patterns. Really, what I look for in a person is his desire. Let me give you an example. We all know who Thomas Edison was. He had gone through a lot of failures before he came up with the light bulb. If I were to talk to him during one of his failures, what would have happened? I would have said, Forget this guy. He s a failure. But if I met him after the fact, I d have said, Yeah, he s a success. So it s really about desire. He did have a desire and he was not going to quit. This is the kind of desire factor I look for. Let me just back up a little bit here, because when I talk to the person to create the curiosity, then the desire, notice how they come in different steps instead of trying to get them all at once. To illustrate this, let me give you an example. I believe that it s easier to talk to somebody if I have a relationship with him or her. If I don't have a relationship with the person, then it s like selling. I was at one of those convenience stores early one morning to get a cup of coffee. It was raining. I mean it was raining cats and dogs. It was just pouring down. I walk into this place and just between the raindrops, I still got wet. I looked at the clerk and I said, Man, you re lucky. I was the only guy in the store. I said, You re a very lucky guy. I mean, I just left the highway there and I saw a telephone guy on a pole getting all wet trying to fix the phone lines. And I don t know if I d want that kind of job, but here you are inside, nice and dry. And he looks at me and he says, Yeah, but I m not going to do this all my life. I looked at him and I said, Really? What are you going to do? He said, I don t know. I think I ll start my own business. Here s one mistake that most MLMers make. They pull their business card out. They get their brochure out and start chasing this guy around the store. Hey, I ve got this great opportunity for you. And it s great. It s tremendous. And this guy starts backing away because he has that sales resistance. So I said, Okay, great. He didn t know what he was going to do. A couple of days later, I come back again. Get another cup of coffee and I said, Hey, did you get that business of yours yet? Of course, he didn t get it. He said, No, no, not really. And he just kind of laughed at me a little bit. A couple of days later, I went back for some more coffee. He says, Tom, I ve seen you three times here at three different times. What is it that you do? He's wondering because I was in my shorts a couple of times, and one time I had a tie on. It just depends on what I m going to do that day. Then I continue, Well actually, funny that you mention it, but... See now he s coming to me. He s asking me what I do. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 140

11 I said, I actually help people who don t have a lot of money, start their own businesses. Now, why did I say that? Because, he s looking for a business and I know he doesn t have any money. He s a clerk at a store. So he says, Really? Doing what? And I said, Well, I ll tell you what. Why don t we later get a cup of coffee and we ll talk about it. I ve created that curiosity and now wants to know what I do, but I didn t tell him. As you have guessed, I meet him a couple days later for a cup of coffee. This lasts for about ten or fifteen minutes. I started asking him about his family and how s he doing. By the time he gets done, he says, Tom, what about that business of yours? The fifteen minutes have passed, so I suggest, Well, why don t we do this, why don t we set a time, and I can give you a presentation. You can see that I haven t strung him along, but I ve created that relationship with him. I ve also created that curiosity. And then when I get ready to give the presentation, I ll create the desire. It's the same way you can do on the phone. I m just giving you an example of how and why we make that many phone calls. We would like to build that kind of relationship. T.S.: Your philosophy is, you don t have to sign up everybody, and you don t have to sell everybody over the phone. You re better off instantly sorting through people to find those who are most interested and then making several phone calls with them to build a relationship. So you re not in a selling situation. You re sort of communicating some good ideas. You ve found a way of building relationships with that person and it becomes a lot easier, right? T.P.: That s right. You know a lot of times what happens is that, if we try to sell people right away, they may be hesitant to do it, or they may drop out. So we have to build that relationship. It s like building a foundation of a house. T.S.: I notice that when you train new distributors and you put them on three-way phone calls with you, you don t give them a script. You tell them, Don t mimic the words. A parrot could do that or a tape recorder could do that. Simply mimicking the words is not enough. What the prospect is really listening for and buying is your desire, your personal enthusiasm, and not what you say. They probably don t remember very much what you say, but they remember how they felt about you. So, how do you get your personal desire and enthusiasm to show through over the telephone? What techniques do you use to let people know you re sincere, excited, and you re there to really help them? How do you make that show through the phone? T.P.: Well, first of all, you have to have enthusiasm and you have to have excitement. Long time ago I remember seeing a show called Taxi. I don t know if you ever saw the show and I won t go into the whole story of this guy named Jim. He had applied for a job in sales. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 141

12 They had given him a script and he memorized the whole script. The script came out something like this: Hello, Mr. and Mrs. (blank), my name is (blank). And in the blanks he was supposed to fill in their name and fill in his name. But he memorized everything. Distributors always want to take notes and record stuff. I say, Don t do that. Just listen to it because I m going to say it more than once and at different times. I want you to feel this, what you re saying, and have it come from the heart, not come from the head. Because if it comes from the head, it s going to be too logical... " It's not that it might not work. But it just may not work as effectively as if you really believe in what you re doing. You know, they always say, Well, I really have to believe in what I sell. That s true. You should believe in what you re selling. And what you re selling to them is yourself and the opportunity. And you can do that very well by not memorizing things, but by having them come out, kind of like being ready all the time with an answer instead of waiting for or thinking what s going to happen, and, well, let me see, what does that script say? T.S.: So if you want to build desire and enthusiasm and have that come through the telephone, you might encourage your distributors to use the products first before they even get on the phone to talk to people about them. This way they can develop the confidence in what he's saying about the company, the products, and confidence in what they do. You might encourage them to listen to some training tapes and to spend some time training with you to see that they can actually do the business and if they can follow the step-by-step formula. But when distributors show this type of belief over the telephone, it really doesn t matter too much what they do say. Does it, Tom? T.P.: No, not really, because they get really excited. I remember I had a distributor once who had some people over at her house. She's so excited, she s just jumping up and down saying, I m so excited! I m so excited! When I go over there, I find out the people are new distributors and they have their distributor kits in their hands, saying, We don t know what we re doing here. We signed up, but this lady is just so excited." So excitement does play a big part. T.S.: The best example I ever saw of that was at an opportunity meeting. There were about 170 people and it was this summer. The person who gave the meeting has been in the business for probably about ten years. He was a very, very excited individual and he stood up there and did an absolutely stealth job. Nobody knew what he was talking about. Nobody had a clue why he was up there. But he was pretty happy doing it. Halfway through the opportunity meeting, his wife jumps up and she interrupts him and starts talking for a while, while he looks blankly into space. And she talked, and talked, and talked, and then he jumped over and talked, and then the meeting was over. I just put my head in my hands and thought, Boy, this is probably the worst opportunity meeting I Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 142

13 have ever seen. There were probably about 40 or 50 guests about the 170 people in the room. When the meeting was over, I looked around, and all the guests were signing up. And I couldn t believe it. They don t have any information about the company, the compensation plan, or the product. It was the most unorganized, "misinformational" meeting I ve ever seen. But they were signing up because they said, Well, if they can do it, I can do it too. They seem to be enjoying themselves and they ve been doing it for 10 years. Everybody here seems excited. I want to be part of it. So, it s more the feeling that comes through, rather than the actual script, right? T.P.: That s right. That excitement just really makes a big difference. It's what people remember. T.S.: On three-way phone calls, you do a lot of three-way training. Like I said, I m phonophobic, so it s hard to even get me on the telephone. Let's say you re calling a prospect during a three-way phone call. Maybe a prospect left a message on your voice mail saying, I m answering your ad, or something like that. The prospect needs to be called back, so you get one of your new distributors on the phone with you and you do a three-way. When you do a three-way, who does most of the talking? Who does the listening? Do both of you talk? Do you take different sections of it? How do you handle a three-way, or what do you say to your new distributor on the line with you, before you actually make the phone call? T.P.: Well, the first thing I do is I tell the new distributor on the phone, I just want you to listen. A lot of times they don t want to say anything anyway. They re scared to death of the telephone Now, after we work on the phone a little more, I ll say something like, I ll tell you what. I m going to introduce you as another associate, and all you have to do is say, Hi. That s it. Then I start talking. After they ve had me do it a few times, I ll ask them a question and they ll respond to certain things, although it takes a little while before you get to that point. But I just kind of break them in until they become a pro on the phone. It s a gradual process. It's like if somebody doesn t know how to swim and you throw him in the water, he may drown. But what about if it s icecold? You know it s a shock to them. So you want them to stick their foot in there first a little bit. T.S.: Okay. So on a cold call, or an ad response, I can see where that would work. What about when they re calling their people... their referrals? You have a brand-new distributor and he says, Let s call my aunt. He s going to pick up the phone and call his Aunt Mary with you on the phone. You know your new distributor just wants you to say three magic words so the aunt joins. How do you set up the phone call with the distributor first? Do you talk to him about who s going to do the talking? Who s going to do the Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 143

14 introduction? How do you work it when they re talking to their warm market and you re on the phone with them? T.P.: First of all, when they re on the warm market, they re going to talk to their friends. Normally I m not there on the first call. What they do is they call their warm market and say, for example, Hey Tom, recently I met this guy named Bob. He is an expert in how to develop residual income. Now, I don t know if you know what residual income is or not, but there s two kinds of income. There s linear income and residual income. Now, linear income is when you do a job, you get paid. And when the work ends, the pay ends. For example, you re a mechanic and you fix a car. You get paid. And if you want more money, you have to fix more cars. If you re an obstetrician, you deliver a baby and you get paid. If you want more money, you have to deliver more babies. If you re a salesperson and you sell a product, you get paid. If you want more money, you have to sell more products. Now, that s linear income and most of us are used to that. Now, residual income is when you do something right one time, you get paid for the rest of your life. My friend Bob is an expert at that and I want to set up a time when he can visit with you for a few minutes. T.S.: Neat. So the very first phone call they can do by themselves, and all their job is to create curiosity, just like we did with a regular ad, correct? T.P.: That s right. But it s also very important how we do it at this point. For example, if I live in an apartment complex and I call my neighbor, or my friend, or my family member next door and I say, Hey Tom, listen. I found a way to make a lot of money. And I want you to listen to this. Well, you re going to be listening, and thinking, Well, gee Tom, if Tom knew anything about making any money, he wouldn t be living here with me. So you probably won t listen to me. Or if I said, Well I recently met a guy named Tom, and he makes a lot of money. He has a big red Cadillac and a big house. And you might look at me like, Well Tom, why do you think he has those kind of things? Because of us! So, we have to create that relationship. And when I make that call by using that approach, what I m really saying is that recently I met a friend. He s a person named Tom. After only a short time, we have become very close. I m talking about a relationship that we have. And all I want you to do is to meet this person. It s going to be my job on the phone to create that curiosity. He s just basically humoring you, so I m not a salesperson when I get on the phone. It s kind of like, Oh, here s another salesman, or saleswoman. T.S.: So now their prospect is really looking forward to talking with you on the phone on the second call. T.P.: That s right... because I am not a salesperson. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 144

15 T.S.: You re not a salesperson, you re somebody with information they would like to have. T.P.: That s right. And, I m a friend. T.S.: Okay, let s go to the second call. The second step is to create desire in the prospect. When you make the second call, how does it work on a three-way? Does the new distributor introduce you? What do you say, and what do you do in that second call? T.P.: It depends on who the call is going to. If it s going to be to a family member... T.S.: Let s talk about the aunt. T.P.: All right. It goes to the aunt. First of all, I ll talk with the aunt. Then I ll say, Just so you know a little bit about who I am, let me tell you a little bit about myself. And then I start with my story. And, when I get done with my story, that story is designed to create curiosity. T.S.: Okay. So you talk about your personal story, and after the end of your story, do you cover it much more or do you go right away into saying, Okay. Let s give you a presentation in person, and mail you something. What do you do after the story? T.P.: Well, okay. Once I get done with my story, I have to bridge from there to the dreams. And what I say are things like, You know, Tom, one of my dreams was to wake up in the morning without an alarm clock. You know, I know that a lot of people hate to wake up to an alarm clock. Every morning I used to wake up to an alarm clock, and I d get up early and turn it off. And now, I still get up early sometimes, but I don t use an alarm clock anymore. My eyes just open up. And that s the way to wake up, when your eyes open up. I don t know what some of your dreams are " I ve already shared my story with the person. I ve already shared one of my dreams, and I m asking you, What are your dreams? You notice how everybody wants the same dreams? They want a new car, a new house, money in the bank, savings account. They also want to put their children in college. So those are most of the dreams that people have. We would then go into the presentation part and once we talk about those dreams, the dreams are creating that vision. And vision is the way things can be, not the way things are. But first of all, they have to see themselves being able to do this. T.S.: So, Aunt Mary says, Gee, I would really like to have a new car, and I would really like to put my kids in private school. And she tells a little bit about her dreams. After that, do you make an appointment for presentation or mail her more information? T.P: I then continue giving the presentation. After I finish the presentation, then I send the information. These are just parts of the presentation. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 145

16 T.S.: So you give them an overview, then you send the actual detailed part of the presentation in the mail. How about the third call when you re going to follow up for the information. You re the old pro, you have that brand-new distributor, shaking with the phone in their hand, and you re calling up Aunt Mary because she received the information. She may have received a catalog in the mail, or maybe an information on the marketing plan, or a description of the compensation plan. What happens on the third call when you re doing a three-way with your new distributor and his Aunt Mary? T.P.: I call Aunt Mary and I say, Hey Aunt Mary, this is Tom again, and I was just curious, did you get the information okay? Can I answer any questions that you might have? And, it normally goes like this. They ll say, Yeah, I had some questions about, well, this particular product here. Well, that s fine. Anything that she knows, I know because I ve read the same information she has. Or, if she has a question about the marketing plan, I ll answer specific questions like that. But one of the things she s going to remember is, God, I heard this guy s story, and if he can do it, I can do it. She sees herself doing this. She sees herself following a set of instructions to get her there. It s just a one, two, three, four, or five sets of instructions. So she sees herself doing it. The follow-up call becomes more of a relationship-building call, not just a call on answering specific technical questions she might have. T.S.: The real key that makes you so successful over the telephone is telling your personal story. Use the story to build a relationship with them. Use the story to relax them, because they hear you telling your personal story. You re not selling them something and you re not saying this marketing plan has this percentage or that percentage. You use the story just about everywhere throughout your presentation as the foundation. Let s talk a little bit about your story. If your story is so powerful, what makes it powerful and what makes people relate to it? It takes away their sales resistance, and they pull out ideas of what kind of visions they should have or desires, goals or dreams that they should have. How do you present your story? What are just the basics of putting together your personal story and what do you want to include? Obviously you just don t want to go through all the facts and bore them. Which facts do you pick out and which parts of your personal story do you want to tell the prospect? T.P.: Okay, there are four things that everybody wants, regardless of who he is and where he is. Everybody wants to have a self-worth. T.S.: All right, they want a personal worth. T.P.: Right. They want to be an equal. T.S.: Everybody would prefer being equal. They don t like being discriminated against, I m sure of that. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 146

17 T.P.: That s right. And everybody wants to have freedom. Now freedom, sometimes we have to think about this because people think only about financial freedom. Well, I talk about absolute freedom because really, freedom has two components: time and money. You can have a lot of money, and I know some people who are physicians, who have a lot of money, but they don t have a lot of time. So they really don t have absolute freedom. They only have financial freedom. Or, you could have a lot of time and no money, but you re in the same boat. So I think freedom is a very key thing. And then, there s of course love. People want to be loved. However, when you talk about freedom, you really can t talk freedom unless you talk about financial freedom because people really don t understand freedom. Freedom is abstract. T.S.: Okay. So we re talking about worth, equality, freedom and love. T.P.: Right. T.S.: Those are the four values you try to relate in your story. T.P.: That s right. T.S.: And in showing how powerful those values are, you have a particular story about this doctor in San Antonio that you talked to and who makes a lot of money. I d like you to share that with our listeners because that really shows the power of these values much more than a compensation plan or a few dollars. Tell me about the doctor in San Antonio. T.P.: Okay. Let me just mention the things everybody needs. Everybody has physical needs like food, shelter and so forth. Everybody has mental needs, to learn new things. And then we have social needs. We all want to hang out with our friends, and go to parties and so forth. And then we have a spiritual need. And that has to do with things like leaving a legacy and so forth. So if I talk just about money and that's all. It's just about material things. I touch on just the physical, see? But I can take these core values and transfer them. If I tell my neighbor, Hey John, come on over here, I want to talk to you about love and stuff. He s going to think, Well, you re nuts, Tom. I don t want to talk to you. I can also transfer those core values to touch on the spiritual. And I m doing that through my story. Take this doctor, for example, a good friend of mine. He has a very good job; he has his own practice. So he really can t see himself with a little suitcase, knocking on doors, peddling products. T.S.: Okay. He s probably making half a million dollars a year. T.P.: He makes a lot of money. So the thing is, he can see himself doing this kind of business because this kind of business is going to give him that freedom that he wants. It's not just the financial freedom. It's that "absolute freedom" we're talking about. So when we take our story, we transfer these values to touch on the spiritual. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 147

18 For example, I had a daughter who had some problems a while back. I was able to spend a year with her, be with her, take her to school, pick her up. You know, pick her up for lunch and so forth because I had the freedom to do that. Now, if I had had a job and that s all I had, even if I made a lot of money, I wouldn t have been able to take off to do that. T.S.: Let s go back to that doctor in San Antonio. Most people say money motivates, money motivates, money motivates. But this doctor made half a million dollars a year, and your one key sentence that just transcended all this money talk was, You know, you have a couple of little daughters. And your two daughters, well, they ll forget all the sweaters and socks you buy them over the years, or all the different types of shoes, but they ll always remember the family vacations you take together. And the doctor thought about it for a moment and said, You re right, because he does not have time freedom. He had the money, but not the time to spend with the daughters. So, our personal story brings out these values, these qualities that get people to think, and they think emotionally about, Gee, what could happen in my life? What could it be? Our personal story has to bring out these qualities. Tell us a little bit more about putting together your personal story. T.P.: Okay. So we want to have the personal story and, like I said before, the three stages: the childhood, talk a little bit about your childhood, the teen years, and your adult years. And as you talk, for example, you re transferring these values to touch on the spiritual. So you don t really want to go into too many details. I m 44 years old, and it could be a long story. There are a lot of things that have happened. So, I want to talk about certain things in my story that relate to these values. T.S.: You re talking about transferring values, and that s all kind of hard to grasp. Give me an example, just a part of your story and what value you re trying to transfer or explain or get somebody to feel. T.P.: Here it is: I was born in Brownsville, Texas. I don t know if you know where that is, but that s on the border of Texas and Mexico. My mom came from Mexico, and she came here at the age of 12. My dad was a laborer and had a seventh-grade education. They always worked very hard, but they could never really get ahead. They worked for very little money. But my parents always talked about education. Education to them was the key to be able to do something with your life. And so every time, I went to school, they always asked me for homework, and of course they wouldn t know because they didn t understand my homework. I grew up always thinking that education was going to be the key for me. Of course, I graduated from high school with a C+ in ornamental horticulture. T.S.: Let s imagine you stop your story right here. What values have you transferred? What type of relationship have you built with the Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 148

19 prospect with just these basic facts? That you grew up in Brownsville, that there wasn t a lot of economic activity, and that you graduated from high school thinking education was they key, but you had a C+ average. What have you transferred, what have you actually told the prospect that they ve kind of assimilated right now? T.P.: That I m just an average guy, just like them. If I talked about other things such as what I have done instead of who I am, then that doesn t become very duplicable for the person. They think, Well, in order for me to be able to talk to people I have to be making x number of dollars for the company. T.S.: So, you talk about that part of your life and it puts the prospect at ease, understanding you re an average person, instead of saying, Gosh, I have this type of house, this type of pool, this type of lifestyle, this type of car " On the way to the studio today, I rode in Tom s new car. He s got two of them. Talk about being jealous! But if he talked about those types of things, most people would say, Gee, I can t relate to Tom because he has this type of financial income, this type of lifestyle. So you go back to the basics, saying how you got started. Let s go past those high school years. Tell us a little bit more about your story and what values are you trying transfer to the prospect. T.P.: Okay, one of the most important things is, you want to be able to transfer the values of the freedom, the worth and the equality. When you re talking to people, you don t talk specifically about worth, equality, freedom and love. You do it through the story. We can take the story and just kind of break it apart, but really we re just telling people who we are. And people really say, Wow, this guy is just an average guy. I can do the same thing! Let me just take a part of my story here in 1984 when I got married to my second wife now of 12 years. She had all the qualities I was looking for in a woman. She had a job, which is probably kind of nice, had a new car, and she had some savings accounts. I was not in network marketing in 1984, but I had been in network marketing before. I told her, I have a dream of one day doing something special with my life. And I just want to know if you believe in that. And she goes, Yeah, I do. And it kind of threw me for a shocker there and I said, You do? And she says, Well, yeah. Let me tell you what I had. I had all these big dreams and nothing happened was just another year that came. Nothing happened there either. Things actually got worse. In 1986, after being at all these different jobs, I decided to start my own business because after all I had a high school diploma with a C+ in ornamental horticulture. And, that didn t work either. And now, we re Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 149

20 starting to go into debt. The highlight of our life was primetime TV, and eating ice cream at 8 o clock every night and so forth. And every single year, we made the same New Year s resolution. In 1987, it's the same thing. In 1988, it's the same thing. In 1989, after we've gone through all these failures, we got back into the industry. In 1990, things really started happening for us. So when people see that as part of the story, they say, Wow, this guy went through a lot to get there. You talk about the struggles that you have. See, there are three stages in this. There s the dream, the struggle, and then, of course there s the prize. T.S.: A lot of people listening to these tapes are probably going to have the same impression or feeling I had when I first listened to Tom talk about doing a story to a prospect over the telephone. I thought talking over the telephone was a matter of having some trial closes, some features and some benefits, going through different steps to get the prospect closed or making commitments. And it was none of this old structured sales presentation or script or manipulation. All Tom did was relate and tell his story. Now, to compare the difference, I know many people who try to manipulate and to sell people over the phone, and sometimes they sell people, but only for a very short time. Through Tom s technique, he has found that people are able to duplicate what he does. Because they don t have to memorize a sales script, they don t have to worry about rejection because they re not asking people to make any sort of commitment. They re just relating their own, personal story, and letting people make a choice if this is something they want to do. And it sets them so far apart from all the other sales people trying to sell people something over the phone. The prospects find it refreshing, the curiosity and the desire it builds, and when they get the presentation, it s almost an after-the-fact. The presentation is just something that comes in the mail. They want to be with these types of people. Have you noticed that a lot in your downline, Tom? The people you teach this technique to, do they like doing it? They don t quit and they don t get telephone burnout? Do they enjoy visiting with people over the phone? T.P.: Yes, because people like to talk about things they know the most of. And what do they know better than themselves? Once we do the story, then we cover a few things like, what are some of their dreams, and how are they going to achieve these dreams? We add a little bit about what the industry is about, and then we talk a little bit about a couple of concepts maybe that you have in your program, your marketing plan. But it s just the concepts. In a 25-minute phone presentation, about ten minutes is your story and the rest is going to be on the concepts. And Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 150

21 what people remember is that they can do this because they saw your story. So if a person is going to talk to people on the phone, they re going to say, Gee, I already know most of the presentation. T.S.: Well, for a bunch of people who are absolutely terrified of the phone such as me, here s some good news: you don t have to use the phone to build the business but conversely, some people use the phone 100% to build their business. They don t even leave their living room. Tom and I have a friend named Carlton. Carlton Hurdle lived in Goldsboro, North Carolina, not a very large town, but I asked him one day, Carlton, how do you build your business? And he said Well, Tom, I get up in the morning and I play basketball until five in the afternoon because I enjoy playing basketball. And then at 5 o clock, I get on the phone and I work from five in the afternoon until 1o'clock in the morning. They re still awake in Hawaii at 1:00 in the morning our time. He built his entire business strictly over the telephone. So you can build relationships, you can create a brand-new warm market, and you can build a terrific downline organization strictly over the phone. Now, Carlton uses a lot of Tom s techniques, which is telling his personal story, and building a solid relationship. Let s move on just a little bit farther on the phone about building that relationship. You can use the telephone for training through conference calls where many people get on at the same time. But when you actually help somebody get started, you re going to talk to them over the telephone, probably three-way, with their sponsor, and you re going to build a relationship with them. What do you say, and how do you go about training them over the telephone? Where do you start? T.P.: Okay. Let me just back up for just a minute, Tom, when you said that people are terrified of the phone. I just don t agree with that. I think they re terrified of the phone because they re terrified of what they re going to say. Take for example, teenagers. You have teenagers and I have teenagers. Are they terrified of the phone? T.S.: No, they actually have one growing out of their ear. T.P.: Yeah. When we were teenagers, we were the same way. I remember being at a phone booth when I was a teenager and I d be on the phone there. It would be raining outside but I would be there for hours. So it s not that we re afraid of the phone. We re afraid of what to say. That s why going back to the story eases people, because they already know they re familiar with that information. It makes it a lot easier for them to start talking about a presentation. T.S.: So what you re saying is that, if all we have to do is tell our personal story even people who are afraid of the phone such as myself, won t be afraid of what to say next because we know what happens next, because it s our story. T.P.: That s right. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 151

22 T.S.: If they were to ask us how we got here today at the studio, we could tell them what road we drove down, what stop lights we crossed, and how we got out of the car. Because we experienced it and it happened to us, it s easy for us to recall what happened next. So telling your personal story over the phone relaxes people, because they know what to say, what comes next and it s very natural for them. You can turn phonophobics like me into professional phone people. T.P.: That s right. And, you know, it s really funny, I was talking to one of my distributors who comes from India. She came to this country and she didn t know how to drive. Her husband taught her how to drive in the mall parking lot. And she s dressed in her sari, you know that s the outfit that they wear in India, and she has a job with a cosmetic company. She talks about it now, years later, Can you imagine, me out there in a sari trying to teach the American women how to put make-up on? Well, she became very successful with that company. This just goes to tell you that people will do whatever it takes, and when she talks about her story, it all goes hand in hand with what we re doing here. T.S.: Okay, the key to the telephone, with your system, is your personal story. So, let s take our listeners through a sample personal story. We ll just take an imaginary person here, and, let s say I m John Doe. Well, I might start my story off by saying, My name is John Doe. I m 45 years old, and I was born in Main Town, USA. And when I was growing up, we lived in a small house... And you just take them through the story step-by-step, right? You talk about the childhood. Why do you do the childhood first? T.P.: I talk about how I was very shy and very skinny. And, that has to do with people saying, Well gee, he was shy, and he was very skinny, and now, he s not skinny, he s not shy. So, people say, Well, maybe there s hope for me. T.S.: So, you talk about maybe some inadequacies or shyness, things that you ve overcome in childhood, because not everybody grew up rich with a silver spoon in their mouth. T.P.: That s right. T.S.: So, you relate a little bit about the childhood because sometimes you have traumatic experiences there. T.P.: That s right. T.S.: We re embarrassed in school. T.P.: Sure. T.S.: Maybe we don t have the clothes we want or aren t able to ride that bicycle. And people will relate to that. You go on to the adolescent years, a little talk about John Doe s adolescent years. Why is he going to talk about his years in high school and college, for example? Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 152

23 T.P.: In high school and college, you re going through the struggles of keeping your grades up, and maybe that was hard. You talk about some of the challenges that you overcame during your teen years. And people say, Well, he had challenges when he was a kid also, and adolescence, so maybe there s hope for me. T.S.: Challenges could be getting that first automobile, or that first date, or maybe getting the money together to go to college. Those would be the challenges. T.P.: Sure. T.S.: Let s go on to early adulthood. Why would we talk about early adulthood? T.P.: When we talk about the adult years, we talk about things such as maybe you re married, you have a baby on the way, or something like that. You re always struggling to make ends meet. And, a lot of people can relate to that. Maybe you started getting into debt, and you started getting accumulating more debt. People can relate to that. Now not that everybody would have that. Take for example a doctor. His story is going to be different. I mean, his story is going to be his struggles that he had, his challenges when he was going through medical school. His would be totally different than mine. But the whole point that I m making here is that we re telling our story. Let me give you an example. This has nothing to do with religion; it s just an example. If a person were to be able to talk to somebody about the Bible they would have to know the Bible. But what happens to a person, who becomes a Christian today, at age 40? What would they know about the Bible? Not a whole lot. What could they talk about? I mean, they couldn t talk about all the books in the Bible. They couldn t talk about the theology, and the Hebrew and the Greek, etc. because they don t know. And that s going to take time to learn. When a person comes into this program, into your network marketing business, they can t talk about all the products and about the marketing plan. They don t know all that. So what they talk about is who they are and their personal testimony. And that s why the story is very important because we re actually sharing about who we are with other people. T.S.: So the point of it is, you can talk about your personal story, you don t have to know all the facts about the product, all the facts about the compensation plan. In other words, you don t have to wait until you become an expert at your business to begin prospecting. T.P.: That s right. You start right away. And the reason you can start right away is because you re telling people who you are. That s the first step. It s the most important part of your presentation, your story, because that is designed to create the desire. People will say, If he can do it, I can do it. And then the rest is just giving them a couple of concepts, giving them some information, and they go home. What do they go home with? The Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 153

24 information, Okay, but they go home and they think about what? Gosh, that guy. If he can do it, I can do it. That s why I keep coming back to that, Tom, because people see that. They see themselves doing it, and it just makes it more believable for them than saying, Oh, well, yeah, this guy. Of course he can do it. You know, it s kind of like the David and Goliath story. David killed this big giant, and what do we say now? Yeah, well, you know David. Yeah, but David was a little guy. And he went up against this huge giant. But he had a dream. He wanted the princess and all the money to take care of her. And nothing was going to stand in his way. His friends, family members and his co-workers tell him, David, you can t beat this guy. It didn t matter to him because he had a big dream. But you see he would have never done that if his dream were not big enough. And so that s the second part of the presentation after we create the desire; we have to build that dream up very big, and that s why we talk about things that they relate to, that they understand like cars, and houses and money, because that s part of the dream. T.S.: So if their dream is strong enough, you don t have to worry about all the little challenges that occur on a day-to-day basis in their business. If there s a backorder it s not going to ruin their business. If there s a customer who didn t like the product and if there s somebody who tells them no, all these things are pretty minimal, kind of little side issues. If their dream is big enough, you don t have to go back and keep re-selling them and defending and paving a way for them that s going to be errorfree. Just build a dream big enough, and they ll stay motivated and focused on their goal, right? T.P.: That s right. They will do whatever it takes if their dream is big enough. And you know a dream can be big enough but they have to believe they can reach their dream. And that s why we go back to creating that desire of the story because with the story, they say, Well gee, I can do this. And if they can do this, then they see their dreams, that they re actually becoming a reality. T.S.: So, while the rest of your competition is teaching people how they can get 2% more on level four, you re actually helping them build a dream, what they really want to ultimately use the money and time for out of their business. Getting them a bigger vision. So once they have that bigger vision, it really doesn t matter if they have that extra 2% or 10% on level four. What really matters is if they can build their business and reach their dream, right? T.P.: That s right. I mean, there are certain companies whose compensation plans really stink. They don t really have a very good compensation plan. But they have a lot of people in it. Why? Because of the relationship that they have built; because they feel they can reach their dreams. And it doesn t matter that the company doesn t pay that much. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 154

25 T.S.: If they can reach their dreams? T.P.: If they can reach their dreams. T.S.: They re going to be happy. T.P.: Yeah. If I said to you, Tom, I ll give you two million dollars if you get into the ring, or let s say $15 million, let s make it pretty good. $15 million if you get into the ring with Mike Tyson and stay 15 rounds. Would you be able to do it? T.S.: I don t think I could run that fast, Tom. T.P.: So, it doesn t make any difference if they pay 40% on the 35th level or 80%. It doesn t matter. T.S.: If I don t believe I can do it, it doesn t matter what the pay plan is or what the products are. T.P.: It doesn t matter. T.S.: As far as telling the story, I of course believe I can do that. I d like to say that people join because they know you, they like you, and they trust you. And build that relationship. And all three of those factors have nothing to do with the percentages paid or a secret ingredient in one of the products. So let s move on to ad responses. A lot of people say, Okay, I m going to have to build a brand-new warm market. My present warm market has been used up all ready. And I m going to run an ad in the local paper. If you understand that you re trying to build a relationship with these people, it s going to change your strategy when you run ads for people. Instead of running an ad saying, We pay 10% more on level four or Join us because we have the letter J in the middle of our name you re going to run an ad looking for people that you can build a relationship with and train. It s going to change your focus. Instead of having lots and lots and lots of responses, and mailing out packs and never talking to them, you may want to have a bit more focus, sort through and work with a couple good, key people. Let s imagine you run an ad in the paper and somebody calls up. You re going to have to immediately build some curiosity, create desire and later on give this caller a presentation. So, we re going to do a little role-playing here. Let s imagine for a moment that Tom Paredes here has run an ad in the paper and he s looking for somebody to work with in his multi-level marketing business. And he s not looking for everybody. He s not going to try to sell everybody. But he s going to look for a few good, key people. So his ad is in the paper. And I m going to be the prospect that picks up the phone. So I m ringing the phone right now and hopefully Tom s going to answer. So, ring, ring. T.P.: Hello. This is Tom. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 155

26 T.S.: Hi. I m calling about your ad in the paper. My name is Tom. Your ad talks about building your own part-time business. What s it all about? What s the name of the company? T.P.: Okay, let me ask you a question. Have you ever been in involved in your own part-time business? T.S.: Uh, well, no I haven t, actually. You know, I work a full-time job and I don t think I m going to get a raise or promotion any time soon. So I was looking for something part-time, but I don t want it to cost a lot of money or something like that. So what s this all about? T.P.: Well, let me just give you a brief overview. Let me ask you a question. Do you know the difference between residual income and linear income? T.S.: Uhhhh? T.P.: Let me give you an example. T.S.: Okay, good. T.P.: Linear income is when you have a job. Like right now, you have a job, I assume. And you get paid every week or two weeks. T.S.: Right. Every two weeks, I get a paycheck just like clockwork. T.P.: Just like clockwork. T.S.: It s not much, but I get that paycheck. T.P.: Okay. And if you want more money, you have to do more work. You know. So whatever your job is, you only get paid for the amount of work that you do. T.S.: Correct. If I stop working, they stop paying. They ve made that pretty clear to me. T.P.: And that happens with any profession. Look for example at doctors and lawyers. Even salespeople. I mean, salespeople sell a product or a service. And they get paid. And if they want more money, they have to work, sell more product or more services. T.S.: That s right. T.P.: So, really, we try to get away from that sales thing because you know, I don t know about you, but you know I am sales-resistant. I don t like the idea of selling. T.S.: Oh, I like that. So tell me more. T.P.: And so what we talk about here, what we have is a way for you to earn residual income. T.S.: Well, how does that work? What s this residual income thing? T.P.: Well, residual income is when you do something right one time. You get paid for the rest of your life. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 156

27 T.S.: Oh, you mean, like cut a hit record with my great singing technique here. So if I have a hit record, I ll probably get royalties the rest of my life. Yeah. I understand what that would be. Sure. T.P.: Okay. And that s residual income. But you know the thing about this is that we also teach you the skills on how to get that residual income. You know I m really glad that you called, but obviously for me to sit here and talk to you on the phone is going to take a little time. Why don t we do this: why don t we block some time out, let s say about 20 to 25 minutes, and, what s a good day for you? Are the weekends good? Or during the week better for you? T.S.: Oh well, I would like to learn about that residual income. So could we talk right away, or tomorrow? T.P.: Well, unfortunately today I can t do it because I have some other calls. But tomorrow would be a good day. What about in the afternoon I give you a call about say... when do you get off work? T.S.: Oh, five o clock. T.P.: Okay, you probably have dinner about five or five-thirty so let's just say about seven. T.S.: Okay well here s my number. It s , and I ll talk to you tomorrow night. T.P.: Okay, thanks. T.S.: Okay, what has Tom done during this call? It s very simple. He hasn t sold me on the company, he hasn t sold me on the product, and he hasn t sold me on the opportunity. As a matter of fact, he hasn t sold me anything. There is of course a scheduled phone call tomorrow night. So what he s done is make me a bit more relaxed and we can talk about residual income later on. I m not so sales-resistant. I understand he doesn t like selling. So, here comes that call tomorrow night. He s probably going to tell us a little bit about his story then. So, it s seven o clock tomorrow evening, my phone rings, I pick up the phone and I say Hello. T.P.: Hello, Tom. How you doing today? T.S.: Pretty good. Just had dinner, been looking forward to your call. T.P.: Great. How s that job today? T.S.: Oh, same as it s been every other day. That s why I m looking for a part-time business. T.P.: Looking for a part-time business. Okay, well, since you don t know me, Tom, let me briefly tell you a little bit about who I am. And that way you kind of get an idea of, Who is this guy that s calling me? Okay? T.S.: Okay. We re going to stop right here. Tom s going to tell his story, and after he goes through his story, I m going to feel a little bit more comfortable. He s not going to be some con artist. He s not going to be Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 157

28 somebody trying to sell me something. I m going to be much more relaxed, it s going to be a friendlier conversation, I won t be quite as acid, or trying to pin him down on objections and information. I m going to be comfortable with him and who he is. So, instead of him coming right out and selling me, he came out and told me who he is, who I m dealing with. So, Tom finishes up his story, and I say, Well, you know, that s a nice story, Tom. And, then what? What does Tom say next, because he s gone through the story, and I say, Well yeah, that s a nice story, what do we do? T.P.: Okay, after the story, then we talk about some of the things like, What are your dreams? I end up with one of my dreams, and of course I always like to use the telephone dream, because people have jobs that always have the alarm clock they have to wake up to. So I always end up with that, and I say, Tom, what is one of your dreams? T.S.: Well, I d say, Well, one of my dreams is, to maybe have my own business and be able to get in an RV and go traveling all across the country and camp out. I d like to do that for a whole month every summer. T.P.: Great. What other dreams do you have? T.S.: Well, a better dream would be to fly around so I wouldn t have to drive, and my wife wouldn t have to do the dishes and clean up everything in the RV. Or, I guess a better dream would be to take a one-month holiday every summer and see the United States; to maybe fly around instead of driving a big RV. T.P.: Okay. What else would you want? T.S.: Well, gee T.P.: If you could open up your eyes, let s say tomorrow, and anything that you ever thought about, that you can do anything, what would you do? T.S.: Well, I d probably want my son to go to the best college in the United States. Now, I know that it s going to be a lot of money, but I would like him to go there and have that opportunity. Maybe he d want to be a doctor or a lawyer. He s pretty smart in school, and I want to give him the best chance possible. T.P.: Great. I m writing these down, Tom, because you know, these are important dreams to you, and I just want to make sure we cover them. I don t want to leave any of them out. So, anything else come to mind? T.S.: Oh no, that s pretty much it. At his time, the prospect realizes, Gosh, I still don t even know what type of business we re in, but I ve already told Tom my dreams, my goals, what I want to do in life, we have a pretty good relationship. So where do we go next, Tom? Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 158

29 T.P.: See, and the reason he s telling me this is because I ve shared with him first. If I wouldn t have shared, he wouldn t have told me anything. But, I ve told him some pretty personal things about me, so now he s almost obligated to tell me some of his dreams. And when he tells me his dreams, I say, Tom, let me ask you a question. With your current income, can you reach all your dreams? T.S.: And I have to say, No way. I can barely reach this month s mortgage payment. Don t have a lot of money to start a part-time business, but I m willing to put some sweat equity and effort in, and maybe learn some new skills, whatever I need to do, because I just can t live like this the rest of my life. T.P.: Okay. Now, we ve created a problem. He can t reach his dreams. Now, we have to give him a solution. So now the solutions come up, and I say, Well Tom, you know, there are probably different ways to reach your dreams. But let me just cover four of them briefly with you. First of all, there are investments. You know what that takes. Capital. And you have to know what you re going to invest in. Second thing would be maybe a second job. That s what you re kind of looking for now. A second job, or maybe your spouse could go to work. I don t know if your spouse who works or not, but I know there are a lot of spouses are working now, and people still need the money. Or, you can start a business. Of course, whenever you start a business, you know, people are always thinking like, Oh jeez, start a business? I'm going to just digress a little bit here. Let s say for example, one of your prospects, on the other line, is a waiter or a waitress. And you say, Hey, listen. I found a great business opportunity. Well, they have no idea what you re talking about. They re waiters or waitresses. They make minimum wage plus a couple of tips. They don t know what a business means. They think of business as investing money. If they knew business, they would probably own the restaurant. So we don't want to throw words that can scare them off. That s why we use words like residual income, because they understand money. They understand the residual income. So, we can start a business, I m saying here, but that takes money. And of course, it takes sometimes a lot of money, and we ve got to make the right decisions, and sometimes the business goes out of business. Or, we could start to build a network that would give us a residual income. Now those are four basic options. T.S.: Okay. And, then where do we go from there? Here we have all these possibilities, and I m thinking, Gosh, I still don t know the name of the company, I still don t know the products, what am I going to do? T.P.: Okay. So now we ve given you some options and said, for example, Tom, let s just look at a traditional business. Let s take a pen. Let s say the manufacturer takes 40% to produce the pen. And then it goes through a broker, from the manufacturer, to a wholesaler, maybe Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 159

30 there s some advertising there, there s a retailer, and then it goes to the consumer. And that right there is 60% is what the middle person takes. I like this building the network thing and getting the residual income because in this situation, the scenario, the manufacturer takes 40%, but the network of people take that 60%. And the network consumes about 80% of the products or services that they use. Only 20% is sold. Now, here s the word sold. When I talk to my neighbor, maybe my neighbor says, No, I don t want to join this program. But I want to buy some of these products or services. Or, my mother doesn t want to do this, but she wants to buy some of my products or some of my service. That s what I m talking about selling. I m not talking about knocking on doors and selling the product. Now, let me ask you Tom, (and here s where I give you examples)... T.S.: All right. T.P.: Do you ever use any shampoo on your hair? T.S.: All right, so if we are talking about a personal care company that carried personal care products, I d probably say, Yeah, I understand that. T.P.: Or, Do you ever use any phone cards? T.S.: If I ever make long distance phone calls just like everybody does, then some companies sell long distance phone cards, yeah I could relate to that. T.P.: So, I give the examples of some of the products that are out in the industry, and they say, Well, yeah. Now, Tom, if you were to start a company today, would it be better to start with one product or a variety of products? Most people say, A variety. Sometimes they say, Well, I don t know, it depends on the product. If they say that, I would say something like, Okay, if you were to start a grocery store today, would it be better to have one product or a variety? and they say, Variety. Now, would it be better to start with a product or service that people use on a daily basis or once a year? They say, Well, daily would be better because they d use it up and I d get more money, you know? I say, Okay. So after I ask him about these products or services, then I say, Would you like me to talk to you during the remaining time that we have here about how to shampoo your hair or how to dial a telephone? Or would you like me to talk on how to create a residual income? And they always say How to create a residual income. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 160

31 T.S.: Okay. And then you allow the literature and the tools of the company to give them the actual presentation about the products and compensation plan. T.P.: Yeah. And let the company do that. But what I talk about after that, is I say, Briefly, I want to cover a couple of concepts with you. And the concepts will be, for example, in your marketing plan you cover some of the highlights. Maybe you have other type of bonuses, a couple of bonuses. Don t cover all the stuff, just a few of them. T.S.: Okay. Let s take a look at mailing lists, or ads. Whenever you get a bunch of responses, people say they get discouraged because not everybody wants to join. There are a lot of curiosity-seekers out there, and let s just use an example here with someone who bought a mailing list. Maybe the mailing list had phone numbers and they tried calling these people, and allegedly, all these people responded to an ad looking for more money. If you get 100 leads, the biggest mistake an amateur would make is to try and convince all 100 people to join. What you re looking for are just those few people out of that list of 100 that you can relate with and work with successfully. So let s just take a hypothetical list of 100 people and you re going to cold-call them off this list because they ve answered some ad. And out of 100 people, there are probably 30 of them you ll never reach. You might get their answering machine, their phone disconnected, you ll never reach or talk to them. Maybe another 30 you do reach, and they just say, Hey, I m not interested. Maybe they don t like the sound of your voice, or maybe things have just changed in their lives. Maybe they just got a brand-new raise or a big promotion at work. They re not interested in part-time money anymore. Well, that leaves about 40 left. Well, out of the 40, maybe half of those, another 20, they re just brochure-collectors. And there are a lot of people out there who don t know how to say, No, I m not interested. And they ll tell you, Please send me some literature, just to get you off the phone. We ve all probably experienced something like that. What s left? Out of the 20 people left, 10 of them that you talk to will probably claim they ve never answered an ad and they re not interested. They claim they don t know how they got on the list, and they wish you d never bother them again and never cross them again on the face of the earth. That leaves you about 10 people left out of that 100 who would be worthwhile to build a relationship with, to do a follow-up with, and send some literature to. The biggest mistake you can make as an amateur recruiter is to try to mail and reach and convince all 100 people. What the professionals do is quickly sort through the 100 to find those 10 that they can spend some quality time with, and those are the only ones that get the literature. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 161

32 So instead of trying to mail literature to everybody, and just getting maybe a response of, Oh, it s okay if you mail me literature, I m just not interested. What you really want to do is to locate those ten. That s where your effort goes. Because if you can get those 10 people to visit with you over the phone, and tell your personal story, even if it takes 25 minutes, that s quite a bit of time out of your week. So focus on sorting through quickly. Now, here are a couple of tips on how you can very quickly sort through people. What kind of phrases or things do people say on the phone, Tom, that just tell you right away that they re really not going to be the type of person that you can successfully work with in the business? What kind of phrases or things have you noticed on the phone? T.P.: I was making a call a few weeks ago and I m talking to this guy, and he says, Is this going to take long? Because my wife doesn t want me on the phone too long because we re getting ready to watch a movie. Maybe this guy s not a very good prospect. T.S.: I think that would be a pretty subtle hint. T.P.: Or somebody says to me, Well, you need to talk to my husband, but he s not really in a very good mood today and really he s not in a very good mood any day when he talks about network marketing because he hates it " Then you would know. T.S.: Or they start off by saying, Is this selling? Do I have to do any work? Do I have to invest any money? If they start whining right away, it s probably not going to get any better. Is it, Tom? T.P.: No it s not. It just kind of goes downhill. But there are reasons why something happens for a person. I have one distributor who was making a phone call to a person who had responded from a mailing list. She said, Well, I m calling " and so forth, and the lady said to her, Well, I m not interested in this kind of business. Most people would have said, Okay thanks, and hang up. Sometimes you might want to ask them, Well, why? They may have a reason. For example, one lady mailed a catalog of products, with a price list. She did a follow-up call. And the lady says, All the products are too expensive. Most people would have said, Oh okay, sorry. And left it like that. But my distributor said, Well, you know, the prices I sent you, were retail prices. Do you know you can get them cheaper if you are a distributor? And the lady said, Ohhh! Now, it opened the door for some more conversation. So, sometimes we have to ask a couple of questions. T.S.: So sometimes a no is not a no, but by talking to them, they ll tell you very quickly if they just want to say no and get off the phone, and no because something happened to me, or I m depressed, or something s bad today. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 162

33 T.P.: Right, by asking those questions. If you get a name off a list, they re either in the business and they re not happy, or they re in the business and they re happy but they re open-minded. They re looking for something. If they re unhappy, it s because they re probably not making any money. And if they re not making any money, it s because maybe they don t have a sponsor that s teaching them the skills on how to build a network. There could be a lot of reasons. Maybe they are happy, but they re hearing some rumors that their company s is going to go out of business. Let s say they ve been in the company for six months. The company goes out of business. He has some people already sponsored and may have some people ready to follow him to another business. T.S.: Okay. Well, we want to thank Tom for coming in the studio today, and for those of you who are listening, believe me when I say that anybody can do it on the phone, even phonophobics such as me. If you can remember to tell your personal story, half the battle is won. And please, please, please, focus on the few people you have a relationship with that you can talk to comfortably over the phone and don t worry about the ones you can t. Thanks again, Tom, for coming into the studio, and we wish you good luck recruiting. T.P.: Okay. Thanks, Tom. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 163

34 Making your web site easy for prospects to remember. Webmaster Craig Tucker recommends that your domain name reflect your Unique Selling Proposition. This will make your web site s address easy to remember, and the inclusion of keywords in your domain name will help with search engine rankings. Not familiar with Unique Selling Propositions? They are simply the reasons that your prospects will want to deal with you instead of your competitors. Here are some examples from Craig: A. There s more to life than 9 to 5, at: Easiermoney.com B. How much money do you need? You can: Writeyourowncheck.com C. Wake up every morning with a smile, visit: NewMoneyNewLife.com D. Is there proof of a better life? There is at: ShowMeTheMoney.com E. Is your fortune making system broke? Visit: Fortunemakers.com F. Is your paycheck to small? Visit: Biggerpaychecks.com Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 164

35 Free classifieds There are plenty of sites on the Internet that accept free classified ads. However, be warned that spammers will harvest your address from these sites and your mailbox will be filled with junk offers. If you are willing to take the time to plow through and delete the junk messages and advertisements, free classifieds can still bring you plenty of leads. Your cost? Just a bit of your time. How many leads can you expect? That depends on the quality of your ad. If you haven t written advertising before, take the time to go to the local library and read a few books on copy writing. You ll improve your response and gain valuable skills in attracting prospects from the masses. Where should you go first? The Internet is a constantly changing environment, but these are a few good places to begin your free classified ad placements: This is one of the most popular sites on the Internet. Make sure to read some of the current free classified ads to get an idea of your competition. You ll want to stand out from the crowd on the Internet. Again, a very popular site. There are over 19 million AOL users by far the largest ISP today. There are always new free classified ad sites springing up on the Internet daily. Just go to your favorite search engine to get the latest updates. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 165

36 Search engines You ll want to be at the top of the various search engines when prospects search certain keywords. Unfortunately, that s almost impossible nowadays. But even if you re not at the top, you should still register your home pages with all the popular search engines. Here are ten search engines to start: And easy way to register with these and hundreds of other search engines is with the program, Submit-Wolf. This $99 program can be purchased at and it will automatically register your pages and keep records of when and where you registered. This is important as many search engines will give higher rankings to current submissions so you may want to resubmit your pages as often as monthly. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 166

37 Use a guest book to build relationships and get feedback from prospects. If you have a your own web page, how do you know how prospects really react to your site? Are they happy with your site? Do they find it interesting? Do they find it hard to contact you or find the information they need in order to join? A great way to find out about this critical prospecting information is to have a guest book for visitors to leave their comments and impressions. You ll want to motivate your visitors to leave their comments by offering a free report, a product sample, or some sort of bribe. Don t have any ideas for your guest book? Want to get a free guest book for your site? Go to: to get your free guest book or to see what other ideas your competition is using. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 167

38 Can prospects find your web site through the most common Internet search engines? While most of your prospects will come to your site from your own promotions, search engine traffic can be a welcomed bonus. It s hard to stay at the top of the search engines as the rules change daily. However, better search engine placement can mean more prospects to your site. Go to: and you can check how high you rank at these eight search engines: Altavista.com Yahoo.com Excite.com WebCrawler.com Lycos.com Magellan.com Msn.com Infoseek.com Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 168

39 Web design, free stuff, great ideas and more. If you re going to prospect on the Internet, you want to measure up to your prospects expectations. Here are some sites that are loaded with html tricks, meta tag builders, marketing tricks, free stuff, cool examples and more. Visit these free resources to make your prospecting more efficient (Resource of over 100,000 publications and catalogs.) (Make sure to visit their message board.) Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 169

40 Use message boards and forums to post interesting messages to attract prospects. Most message boards and forums detest advertising but they love interesting and helpful messages that participants post. Use a little imagination. Why not be of service to the readers of these message boards and forums? Help with their questions. Offer valuable resources to help them in their businesses or search for businesses. Then, make sure you have a great signature file to end your message. If you don t have a good sig file now, go the that section in this manual and compose your benefit-rich sig file now. To save time in prospecting with this method, don t randomly surf the Internet looking for message boards and forums. There is an easier way. Simply go to: and you ll be able to locate over 300,000 forums and message boards from this page. You ll certainly find many that will meet your interests and criteria for your business. There are lots of ways to search for your best forums. An easy way to start is to go to the search box at the top of the homepage and put in some keywords related to your business or products. Once you ve found some good sources of potential prospects, take some time to get a feel for the group and you re on your way! Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 170

41 This is a great site to complement your prospecting. Here are just a few of the features of this mega site. You can search the white pages nationally for someone s telephone number. Maybe a prospect leaves a name but no contact information. This is a great solution. You can do reverse searches. This means that if you have a telephone number, you can look up the owner of that phone number assuming that it is a listed number. You can search for businesses nationwide. You can search public records. You can do searches by state. You can even search for someone s . Bookmark this site as you ll use it often. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 171

42 Conduct a contest to let people know about your products and opportunity A few years ago a friend of mine ed me a message then went something like this: Go visit register to get some free information on my company and they ll put you in a drawing for a brand-new Mercedes they are giving through a sweepstakes on their website. The company will pick one winner from only those people that register through the website. The drawing will take place on November that s just three weeks from now. There are also a few secondary prizes that you could win. This is hot. What have you got to lose? Take a few minutes to register now. You never know, you could be the lucky winner! --Richard What do you think I did? Of course, I went and registered... several times! And so did tens of thousands of others that dreamed about driving a free brand-new Mercedes. The site got more hits than it could handle. The company and its distributors got a ton of leads. How qualified were the leads? Well everyone that registered at least wanted a shot at a free Mercedes. The problem is, this particular company didn t sell Mercedes. Anyway, the basic idea was good. So I thought, How can I use this idea? and more importantly for you, How can you use this idea? Here s what you can do. Hold a sweepstakes. One with no entry fee, of course. All you need to do to enter is to , send or phone your name, address, phone, address and your prize selection. Have a choice of prizes. For example, if you represented a nutritional business, your prizes could include: Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 172

43 1) A 30-day supply of your unique energy and meal-replacement product plus the 7 Secrets on How To Get More Energy Without Any Extra Effort Special Report & Audio Combo (Value $47). 2) A 30-day supply of your unique, patented, one-of-kind, guaranteedto-shed-the-pounds product plus the Losing Weight Made-Easy Special Report & Audio combo (Value $47). 3) A 30-day supply of your unique skin-care line plus the How To Make Your Skin Look 10 Years Younger And In Only A Few Days Special Report & Audio combo (Value $57) Why the prize selection? Well, first your prospects will have to read about each one to make a selection. This will create a lot of interest among potential buyers. Second, you ll get a ton of valuable information about your prospects and your products. By keeping track of everyone s prize selection, you ll find out which is your hottest product. So how is this type of sweepstakes profitable? After the winner is drawn, notify all the entrants of who the winner is, thank them for entering and then offer them a consolation prize - they can have any one or more of the prizes at 50% off (or whatever special you come up with). Plus they get a special gift with each order -- like a copy of the best-selling book How To Get Rich Without Winning the Lottery. In other words, everybody wins! Everyone who reads over the prizes will become aware of the products you offer. The ones who register sorted themselves as more qualified prospects. You ll build your database for future follow-up. You re going to make some retail sales, gather some customers and start building a relationship with some potential future distributors. Remember my friend Richard earlier? Do you think it was easier for him to approach me about his network marketing business or to simply let me know about a prize I could win by visiting a website? Pointing me to the website of course! Letting me know about a free contest was rejection-free. And besides, he was doing me a favor by letting them know about the contest. Do you think your distributors might be more willing to talk to people about a sweepstakes instead of asking them to buy your products or join their network marketing business? Could you and your distributors advertise this contest using signature files? Something like: Contest -- WIN a FREE PRIZE! Visit Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 173

44 Use an e-zine to pull prospects and build trust. Savvy network marketers who actually make money on the Internet know that if you want to attract qualified prospects to your website... You should write a free weekly newsletter (also known as an e- zine). Here s why. Prospects are skeptical. It is a little bit harder selling a prospect your product or even signing him up as a distributor over the web than it is doing so in person. As in real life, on the web it all comes down to trust. Everyday we get bombarded with, Don t talk to strangers on the web, or Be very careful when buying through the mail, especially on the net, or Don t give out your credit card over the net, or Don t pay for it, everything on the web is free. All these warnings are meant to protect you from those unscrupulous people who want to take unfair advantage of you in some way. Unfortunately, they also prevent you from buying something that could benefit you. As a prospect, how do you break through the warnings? You first build a relationship with the distributor. You get to know them. Do they really know what they are talking about? Can they be trusted? And so on. On the web this can be coined as relationship marketing something network marketers have been doing long before the Internet even existed. It means establishing trust with your customer before asking them to buy. This requires multiple exposures. That s why you often hear that most prospects join or buy on or after the 5th exposure or 7th exposure or whatever number somebody makes up. Bottom line is they buy only after some trust has been created. Now from your point of view, being the distributor looking for new customers and distributors, you need to find a good way to create relationship marketing with your prospects, preferably a low-cost way. But now, let s assume you have a web site that showcases the benefits of your products and the benefits of your support team. In this manual you ll find several ways of getting people to visit your web site. The buzzwords for these are push and pull-through technology. Pull-through Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 174

45 technology means you depend on the prospect to contact you. Pushthrough technology means you contact the prospect. Television advertising, Internet spamming and direct mail are all examples push-through technology. Obviously not all push-through technology is great. But it s push through technology because it contacts you rather than wait for you to contact it. So, when is push-through technology good? When the person requests it. In the Internet world this is called opt-in which simply means the person consciously requested to be included. On a credit card application, when you check the box indicating that you are willing to receive certain types of advertising, this is considered opt-in. Online newsletters or e-zines are another example. However, sending an ad to lists of people willing to receive advertising will not build a relationship with them. Sending an e-zine once or twice per month to subscribers does create that relationship. With e-zines, you have an opportunity to communicate with your list which gives you a chance to build a relationship. Your subscribers get to know who you are and often you ll get to know who they are. If they don t like what you have to say, they can easily unsubscribe. The people who continue to subscribe like what you have to say or at least they consider it valuable enough to continue their subscription. Even though they are not paying for the subscription, they are spending their valuable time time that they could be doing something else, like eating lunch. Therefore, you have to make it worth their while to continue reading what you have to say. If you have something valuable to tell them, they get in the habit of knowing that what you have to say is valuable. The entire time, they get all this for free. So when the time is right for them to buy your product or service, or even better, join your network marketing business, the fear of getting ripped off is minimal. Plus, they ll feel like they are buying from or starting a business with a friend versus a total stranger. Think about it. When you advertise yourself or your product, you can come off being pushy. You are asking people whom you have no relationship with to buy from you or to join your network marketing business. True, sometimes you get the order anyway. And there are ways to maximize this. But they are never as good as establishing a trusting relationship with your reader and then asking them to buy or join. It s a lot easier to ask a stranger to subscribe to a free e-zine than it is to ask that same stranger to part with their money to buy your great product or join you in a network marketing business. So whatever you have to offer the world, you should first consider coming up with an e-zine that is targeted to attract the kind of people you want to have as customers or leaders in your network marketing business. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 175

46 Let s say you sell weight-loss products. You need to be attracting people who are looking to lose weight. Your e-zine could include: useful low-fat recipes easy-to-do fat-burning exercises weight-loss motivation tips lists of foods to avoid jokes about thin people how to get more energy from the food you eat a guest column from a nutritionist weight-loss testimonials tips on how to burn off body fat, hour-by-hour tips on how to lose the bulges - and save money too! and so on. Naturally, once in a while you ll include an offer for a free sample of your product, special offer for a 30-day supply of your product or a free copy of How to Get Rich Without Winning the Lottery. Offer anything to get the subscribers who are ready to buy product or join your network marketing business to raise their hands and let you know who they are. Let s say you re looking for business prospects. Your e-zine could include: tax tips success stories and case studies motivation techniques advice resources marketing ideas how to raise capital a guest column from an accountant Think about that right now. Who are your ideal customers? What information do they need? What are they reading now? Who do they presently consider to be their gurus or experts? What are they currently buying? Where can you find them? And so on. Make a list of these types of questions and get the answers to them. If you don t know, research it. Ask your friends, upline, downline colleagues, competitors, and anyone who will stand still and listen to you. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 176

47 If you want to see what is available in e-zines, go to: and subscribe to a few e-zines. Maybe you don t want to do your own e-zine. But you may want to advertise in other e-zines. Go to: to get an idea of current rates. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 177

48 The most affordable & effective way to get qualified prospects on the Internet For six months I kept a record of my incoming messages to see how many included a signature file and how many didn t. I figured, since using signature files is one of the most effective and affordable ways to attract qualified leads on the internet, most people would use them. Boy was I wrong! (Unless you consider less than 15% to be most.) This means one thing. 85% of you are working much harder than you need to be! For those of you unfamiliar with a signature file, it s a few extra lines of text you see at the end of some messages. Once setup, it automatically adds itself to the end of every message sent. Why is this so important? I m going to let you in on a long known fact among successful Internet marketers. Most sales on the Internet originate with an . is the catalyst for your website s sales. If you are offering a product or service on the Internet through a website, then in reality your website is an infomercial or an ad for your product or service. In which case, Your is the ad for the ad. A signature file is an accepted form of advertising without spamming. I have never had a complaint from anyone (including radical anti-spam groups) about my signature file. Always look for the signature file in any messages you receive. Why? You ll find valuable resources and learn great Internet marketing techniques by visiting websites listed in signature files. Information you probably never would have found by any other means. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 178

49 In network marketing, like most businesses, the fortune is in the follow-up. Here s why. A person might not have a need for your products or services today, but they might at some point down the road. When the time is right for them to buy or to join, they ll end up buying or joining. The next person to make them an offer. So will that next person be you? If you are using a signature file, the most powerful and affordable follow-up technique in existence, then the odds will be in your favor. Every time anyone gets a message from you, they will be reminded of the product, service or opportunity that you offer and all this will happen without any extra effort on your part. Many people save or print their messages for future reference. When these messages are reread, they will also read your small ad (signature file) and once again, they will be reminded of your product or opportunity This is just too effective of a marketing tool to overlook! As a network marketing leader, you should have a few proven and tested signature files to share with your distributors. If your upline doesn t have any, then test a few of your own. Once you ve found a few that produce results, have your distributors add them to the bottom of their messages. In a matter of hours, your organization will be armed and soon thousands of prospects will be notified of your opportunity, product or service. The interested prospects will get back to the distributor using the signature file. The distributor can then sell the prospect some product or even sign them up as a distributor. It s simple, cheap and it creates results. The next time you check your , go to your read folder and search for past messages from your downline. Now, go through them and count how many did not use a signature file. Keep counting... What you find might make you sick. Thousands of messages were sent to your distributors over the past few months, and each was a missed prospecting opportunity. This is a simple error in judgment that, compounded over time, can be devastating to your business. But fear not, you can fix it and you can do it right away. Simply take the time to teach your distributors how and why we should use signature files. So, how do you set up a signature file? With so many programs available, it is impossible to highlight them all, but you can learn exactly how to set this up by opening the mail program you are using do the following: Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 179

50 Clicking: Help Then clicking: Find And then type in: Signature File A good rule of thumb is to have several signature files handy, a few for your opportunity and a few for your product or service. Include a signature file at the end of every message you send, both personal as well as business. You never know who might be looking for what you have to offer. Here are a few pointers for creating signature files: Stick to one topic per signature file. Don t complicate the offer. Use a proven headline. To increase credibility, include your real name and your phone number. Instead of saying goto Or visit give your prospects a reason to visit your website. Here are a few examples of effective signature files: A 46 year-old San Francisco public affairs manager shows people how to get an extra paycheck in the mail every week by doing something they already do everyday. Details finally revealed at wwww.remarkablelife.com Find out how to lose five pounds per week without exercising at Get FREE prospects for your MLM business at 7 Secrets to Getting More Energy FAST mailto:[email protected] for a FREE Report. Yes, It s Possible to Eat All Day and Melt Away the Fat. Find out how at Here s another trick you can use to get results. Make your signature file look like a P.S. in your . P.S. For a FREE copy of the best-selling book How to Get Rich Without Winning the Lottery, reply to this message with Free Book in the subject and include your postal mailing address and phone number. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 180

51 Goto.com Search engines. Everyone wants to be at the top of the list for his favorite keywords. Unfortunately, with more than 100 million+ people on the Internet, not everyone can be first. So the race is on. Some experts search the meta tags of the sites in the top position. Other gurus subscribe to the latest newsletters on how to optimize their sites for better positioning. No matter how close you monitor every detail, you ve invested a lot of time. And then you find out that on many search engines, the paid advertisers magically show up near the top on every search. Well, that s capitalism. There is one search engine that openly admits to selling out to the highest bidder. In fact, they even show you the price of the top bids. That search engine is Goto.com. If you go to and type in the search word network marketing here are the results: 1. Risk-Free Rock Solid Opportunity Finally, a company trusted and respected by 85% of all Americans. Brand name recognition so powerful your prospects will be lining up the join. Join by December 31st for 1/2 price! (Cost to advertiser: $1.13) 2. Earn More Than Your Doctor Using The Web! Financial freedom in 12 Months or sooner! Use this simple formula: C + SS + PA. Awesome company, sponsoring system and plan of action - All are outstanding! (Cost to advertiser: $1.03) 3. Free MLM Internet Marketing Course Learn how to market your MLM opportunity on or off the Internet by registering for free 12 lesson course worth $250! This is a limited time offer. (Cost to advertiser: $0.99) # Order Taking Telephone Call Centers Inbound telephone call center specializes in advertising response, E-commerce, 800 # catalog & direct mail order taking and credit card processing by "live operators" 24 Hours, 7 days/week. (Cost to advertiser: $0.80) Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 181

52 5. Valunet - Your Total E-Commerce Solution Valunet provides you with the best online networking solutions from virtual hosting and network management to file restoration. A member of ValueNet. (Cost to advertiser: $0.64) 6. Secret Bible Food, Awesome Weight Loss Secret Bible food producing awesome 10 day weight loss. (Cost to advertiser: $0.63) 7. Business Opportunity Home-based business opportunity to provide online computer training and computer products. 2 self-replicating web sites are also provided. Online computer training. Affiliate. (Cost to advertiser: $0.55) 8. Global Village Champ - Ultimate Consumable Founding representative is developing 2 significant lines this year. Call for truth and support. mkt-link-gazette.com (Cost to advertiser: $0.50) 9. Non-MLM Business Opportunity Before you invest your hard earned money in a business, you'll want to see this! best21stcenturybusinessopp.bizland.com (Cost to advertiser: $0.50) 10. A Key to an Awesome Network Marketing! Get a free Web site and best tools to help you built your network marketing online successfully. teamusana.com (Cost to advertiser: $0.45) 11. Own Your Own E-Commerce Computer Store! Build your own technology-based business and earn a great second income! More than 15,000 products and services. In association with HandTech. (Cost to advertiser: $0.43) 12. workathome.com/fun We teach people to become successful by employing our proven step-by-step Automatic Marketing system with what we consider to be the best long-term home business opportunity available. (Cost to advertiser: $0.36) 13. Join the Marketing Pros! Why are the world's leading advertising agencies, media companies and marketing specialists becoming members of IMP? See for yourself. (Cost to advertiser: $0.35) Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 182

53 14. A Key to an Awesome Network Marketing! Get a free Web site and best tools to help you built your network marketing online successfully. (Cost to advertiser: $0.35) 15. Network Marketing is Booming on the Web. Learn how we're sponsoring 1000's monthly worldwide without mailing anything, without faxing anything, without calling anyone! get started free. No obligation. (Cost to advertiser: $0.35) 16. World Direct - Neways Representative Cosmetics and toiletries free of cancer - Alternative Products With Superior Performance. Neways is a Multi-Level Marketing company : Retail opportunity ranges from 30%-55% commission! (Cost to advertiser: $0.33) 17. Attention Amway, Quixtar Network Members We build your downline for you before you join. (Cost to advertiser: $0.32) 18. Free Network Marketing Recruiting System Take our free online course on working MLM at home and being your own boss. Learn to earn $60,000 a year from home using network marketing, we'll show you how. soar.to (Cost to advertiser: $0.32) 19. Free E-Commerce Sites Free shopping cart, free secure hosting, free Web builder. Complete 49 lesson e-commerce course to help you market your site. (Cost to advertiser: $0.30) 20. Money Making MLM Secrets Exposed! We're giving away valuable tips, secrets and techniques to show you how to make money in any network marketing program you choose! We spill the beans right here. (Cost to advertiser: $0.30) 21. Promote Ebuysrus.com and Make Money Get free internet, free Web hosting and all the tools. Receive cash back and commissions. all for $15 per month. Turn key operation. (Cost to advertiser: $0.30) Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 183

54 22. Awesome Internet Business Opportunity The best things in life aren't free! But if you're looking for a way to have them, please look over the information provided at this Web site! wealthcreators.net (Cost to advertiser: $0.29) 23. Hand Technologies - E-commerce Model Distribute name brand PC and technology products. Web services, ISP, affiliates, online computer training. E-commerce opportunity in technology consulting, sales and service. (Cost to advertiser: $0.28) 24. The Tap Root System and Life Force Preview our amazing system for free, while I pre-build your downline. Build a successful online business in 30 minutes a day. (Cost to advertiser: $0.27) 25. Extra $200 - $500 in Your Pocket Monthly A free affiliate program with generous commissions and great free benefits. Thousands have already registered and benefited. Quick, simple, no-obligation, online registration. (Cost to advertiser: $0.27) 26. Network Marketing: Lucrative Pay Plan! Earn high residual income, weekly and monthly paychecks, car and house bonus, superior consumable product line from a stable, publicly traded, 15 year old company! opportunity.goldmyne.com (Cost to advertiser: $0.27) 27. Network Marketing The truth about network marketing. (Cost to advertiser: $0.26) 28. Global Home Business On The Web Free affiliate program will put money in your pocket starting today. We provide your own free Web site and free internet income course to show you how to maximize your income on the net. (Cost to advertiser: $0.26) 29. Join Gold Rush Online for Free Money! View banner ads on your desktop and make money while you work or play. As long as the ads are rotating, you are making money. The more you and your friends view, the more you get paid! (Cost to advertiser: $0.26) Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 184

55 30. We Help You Build Success With Usana! Discover how Usana's exceptional products and compensation plan, combined with our worldclass support can help you realize your personal and financial goals. (Cost to advertiser: $0.26) 31. A Great Mommy Business Click here if you would enjoy a business helping children. We offer healthy (nutritional) alternatives that improve concentration and focus. We also suggest study and learning resources. (Cost to advertiser: $0.26) 32. WebPosition Gold Dealer / Reseller Opp. Only Web promotion software that optimizes Web page rankings, submits, tracks your search positions, monitors traffic and more! Free trial download. (WebPosition affiliate.) (Cost to advertiser: $0.26) 33. Success and Health Develop a six to seven-figure income, taught by the heavy hitters of a home-based business. Send for our free report by filling out our information request form. (Cost to advertiser: $0.26) 34. Web Marketing Experts Spill the Beans! Highly successful Internet marketers spill the beans at a new private Web site. Click now for instant access and watch your online profits soar - guaranteed! (Cost to advertiser: $0.25) 35. Amazing Network Marketing Success Maker Network marketing day planner, contact manager, and organizer; helps make prospecting, contacting, and business management easier. Works for everybody, no matter how new or experienced! (Cost to advertiser: $0.25) 36. MLM Bullet Launches USA Sept/99 As seen on 'Entertainment Tonight' and CNN, spokesperson Muhammad Ali supports aid projects: ultimate consumable. Founding rep developing 2 significant lines this year. (Cost to advertiser: $0.25) 37. New Vision International Within the last three and a half years, almost a million consumers have joined the New Vision revolution. Now offering online sponsoring, we're poised for explosive growth! nvionline.com (Cost to advertiser: $0.25) Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 185

56 38. ProSTEP For MLM Pros Build your business - and your bonus checks - with new distributors! You need ProSTEP. Use what the top guns are using! (Cost to advertiser: $0.25) 39. Wow! Watkins on the Web Join our growing group of associates and get listed in our directory free for over a month. originalvanilla.com (Cost to advertiser: $0.25) 40. PassionFire International PassionFire, A Leadership/MLM/Network Marketing Training and Christian Resource Site, focuses on training and empowering MLM leaders for massive success. Free e-zines. (Cost to advertiser: $0.25) Since you see how much each home page paid for its position, you can make a choice on how high you d like to be when a prospect searches for the keywords, network marketing. You can bid high enough to be #1, or you may choose to bid just high enough to be in the top ten positions, and then let your headline attract your prospect at a lesser cost. The cost per prospect may seem high, but consider this: Are you now paying more than $1 per prospect with your present advertising or efforts? Key hint. You might pick a less popular keyword and get top positioning for only $0.01 a click-through. Think of a related keyword or keywords to your product or opportunity that others have not bid on. For example, at the time I m writing this, here are the top bids for the following keywords or combination of keywords: business opportunity $2.31 weight loss $2.85 residual income $0.30 MLM $1.11 entrepreneur $0.83 fast cash $0.16 new job $0.14 Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 186

57 How popular are certain search words and search word combinations? Go to the following page: Then, click on the link to "Search Term Suggestion List. If you type in MLM in the search box, you ll get the following report: Suggestions for: MLM Searches done in November 1999 Count Search Term 2687 mlm 192 mlm opportunity 145 mlm software 86 mlm lead 81 mlm network marketing 70 mlm home business business opportunity network marketing 69 business money sale mlm distributor classifieds 64 mlm resource 60 home business mlm network marketing 54 mlm company 49 mlm training 42 mlm home business opportunity health nutrition 36 free mlm software 33 mlm program 32 mlm leadership 31 opportunity mlm multi-level network marketing sell sale 30 mlm marketing 29 free mlm 28 mlm business 28 mlm mailing list 25 change mlm 25 mlm business opportunity 22 mlm classifieds 18 mlm attorney Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 187

58 18 mlm survivor homepage 18 mlm business opportunity homebased sale networkmarketing multilevelmarketing advertising marketing franchise classifieds 17 mlm scams 16 christian mlm 16 mlm magazine 16 mlm audio tape 15 advertising marketing income mlm money 15 free mlm lead 14 coffee mlm 14 network marketing mlm 14 mlm truth 14 mlm discussion 14 mlm directory 14 mlm primerica 14 mlm survivor 13 mlm lawyer 13 mlm on the web 13 mlm site 12 free mlm opportunity 12 recruiting mlm on web 12 mlm list 12 mlm advertising 11 business opportunity mlm 11 mlm telemarketing 11 mlm uk 10 futurevision mlm 10 mlm and crestco 10 mlm canadian 10 mlm file 10 mlm law 10 multilevel marketing multi-level marketing mlm chain letters 9 mlm scam 8 fibonacci mlm 8 home business business opportunity home business opportunity mlm multi level marketing network marketing networking business employment 8 streamline mlm Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 188

59 8 mlm australia 8 mlm leadership training 8 mlm chat 8 homebased network mlm 7 business mlm 7 prospecting tip in mlm 7 new mlm 7 mlm university 7 mlm review 7 mlm insider 7 mlm gifting 7 mlm downline software 7 mlm discussion group 7 legal info on mlm gifting 7 excel & mlm 7 home based business mlm 7 mlm article 7 lead mlm 7 japan mlm 6 best mlm 6 best mlm company 6 mlm prospect 6 mlm multi level marketing 6 mlm japan fax list 6 mlm income 6 mlm health 6 mlm companys 6 mlm book to help you make more 6 mlm association 6 mlm advantage 6 international mlm 6 uk mlm 6 top mlm company 6 software for mlm 6 software - mlm 6 selling an mlm distributorship Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 189

60 6 scams and mlm 6 promote mlm web 6 mlm tracking software 6 i link mlm 6 greatest mlm opportunity Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 190

61 Investigate your competitors. Everyone has competitors. And some of your competitors do a better job of getting prospects to your site than you do. One of the favorite ways to direct prospects to your site is through the use of links. Other sites on the Internet will offer helpful links to their visitors. You could be one of those links. Back to your competitors. If some of your competitors have many Internet sites linking to them, find out why. It s easy to do a little investigation work. Let s say that your competitor s site is Go to and type in the following search: link: Your search will show all the sites that have links to your competitor. Neat, eh? Now it s time to investigate why these various Internet sites linked to your competitor. Did your competitor offer a contest? Did your competitor offer free training tips? Did your competitor offer reciprocal links? The final step is to contact the Internet sites that link to your competitor. Offer them the same benefits your competitor offered. This process of contacting each Internet site takes effort, but in time you can greatly increase the number of Internet sites that send prospects to your home pages. And finally, don t forget to offer a free report, a gift, or some reason for your visitor to leave his name and address details for future follow-up. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 191

62 How a little booklet can create new prospects. Take A Tip From The Tabloids. Why is it that some of the largest weekly papers in the country are the very same ones that almost no respectable person would admit subscribing to?! If people are ashamed to talk about subscribing to these tabloid newspapers, how did they get so big? Easy answer: Impulse buying, combined with hot topics. If you ll notice that these same papers are jammed right next to all the candy, gum and sugar-laden treats in the world, you ll understand the attraction of these tabloids: call them Junk food for the mind! Smart marketers have learned that a lot more sells at the checkout line than the latest report of an alien invasion from Mars. If your product pushes the average consumer s hot buttons in some way, there s a good chance you could sell there too! And it s not as difficult as it sounds. Just go to any grocery store and buy some food. You probably do that once a week anyway. Look for the little books and small magazines and you ll probably see several talking about herbs and nutritional supplements. These booklets discuss the topic in general and always manage to sneak a page in telling you where to order more. People snap these things up... if they didn t, you wouldn t see the stores wasting their precious shelf space at the checkout line. Remember, everything in the checkout aisle is designed to squeeze those last few dollars out of your pocket in impulse buying. The store isn t there to educate anyone. So they make money on all those little booklets. And don t forget, the publisher s making money too! They re making money in several ways in fact. They re making money just selling the booklet. Because they re either selling the ad space or have set up a separate company to sell the vitamins, minerals, herbs, etc., they re making a back-end profit on the deal as well. Every 5 th, 10 th, or 100 th person reading the booklet is going to buy what s sold in the advertisement on the back. The magazine can afford to let the low pressure informational sale make them some money later because they re making money if only a very small amount -- on the sale of every book. And then they re getting other marketers of air filters, water filters and other health-related products to rent their list of buyers. More money with no extra work. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 192

63 Compare what they do to what most networkers do. They re passing out tapes and brochures at their own expense hoping that 5 th, 10 th, or 100 th person will buy. Before, you always considered these booklets your competition. You probably saw them and snarled because you felt they were taking sales away from you. Now let them be your instrument to profits! You can probably do the same thing on a shoestring budget if you want to. Here s how. You see a booklet like we ve just described selling information about an opportunity or a product that your network marketing company sells. You see that the booklet is selling the same thing. Here s what you do: Think of where you could distribute a similar booklet. Can you get shelf space at the local convenience store? Could you get a coupon in every newspaper the local paperboy delivers? Will your local barbershop carry your booklets? Would a salesman give away your booklets to every prospect he calls upon? Consider the gas station, Chinese restaurant, hairdresser and auto parts store. They all have some counter space for impulse buys and want to make money. You can even use them to help the school band. Instead of selling $1.50 chocolate bars, they can go back to all their contacts and sell them your booklet. You may be able to even sign the band up as a distributor and let them get the sales credit for the product sales coming from the booklet. This may work so well in generating monthly income that they never sell a candy bar again! This strategy can be used with any nonprofit organization. Maybe your distributors like the idea so much that they want to purchase copies to give away. Or they ll form a co-op with you to create these booklets so not all the money is coming out of your pocket. Distributors always need third party sales information to hand out. And this looks better than a catalog. Perhaps they can go out and do your leg work and find their own stores that will sell the booklet to. In that case, you may leave a blank rectangle allowing any distributor to place his name and phone number in the back of the booklet. What do you write about? What s your hottest selling product? What about your company s free car program or travel incentive? What do people want to buy already? Hint: It s probably the thing with the most brochures and testimonies in your distributor kit. It could be the latest health breakthrough or the stand-by products that always sell such as weight loss products. I ll wager that there s probably enough information just in your brochures, distributor kit, training tapes, catalog, and company website to write one of these little booklets by condensing all the generic information you ll find on your product(s)! Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 193

64 You re not writing a Ph.D. dissertation on the subject! You re just writing to inform people who want the tabloid version of things! So give them good information in small bites with easy words! Any other information you need to find is easily available in many books and magazines or at the public library. You don t have to set up laboratory. Keep things generic because you re making an informational sale. Keep things honest and low key. How to get it done cheaply. The first key to cheap is writing it yourself by lifting key ideas from the information you already have and putting it in your own words. Next, get a downline member, friend, or student (business, computer, secretarial or English who can do it for class credit), to put it onto a desktop publishing program for you. Keeping prices low. Shop this project around till you find a good price. An out of state printer may help you save enough sales tax to more than pay for the shipping. Some printers will specialize in booklets, magazines, etc. and be able to do the job much more inexpensively than others. Marketing concepts to keep in mind. Probably your worst mistake will be to forget what already works best for you and your fellow distributors. You ll try to do something new! But if you have a proven approach, why ruin it here? You ve got to recover your money, so use what works! Remember that at the end of your booklet, you want a short advertising section. Maybe you have some space left on the back page for one or more coupons and you want to bring up the business angle. Perhaps you d say something like, Find out how you can get paid every time we sell a copy of this booklet! They could easily do that by selling these inexpensive booklets themselves. You can CODE these booklets so you know which source distributed them and put any new preferred customers under them. That reminds me, have a place on the order form where you can write or stamp a confirmation code so you can track your orders. Remember, this strategy primarily sells product. From your base of interested prospects and customers you should find plenty of willing distributors in your program. Yes, you can make new profits and find new customers and business builders if you take a tip from the tabloids. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 194

65 Which group would you like to belong to? Making a decision to join your network marketing business should be easy for the prospect if you make it easy. It can be quite overwhelming for a new prospect to make a decision based upon the company, the company founders, the mission statement, the products, the complicated compensation plan and your entire upline support strategy. However, you can make your prospect s decision much easier by showing how it makes more sense to join your company than not to join your company. How could you do it? Just use any of these easy-to-understand mini-statements to show the prospect why he should join your company now. There are two types of people in the world: Those who get paid to take vitamins, and Those who don t. Which group would you like to belong to? There are two types of people in the world: Business owners who are getting rich, and People who make business owners rich. Which group would you like to belong to? There are two types of people in the world: Those who make car payments, and Those who don t. Which group would you like to belong to? There are two types of people in the world: Those who pay too much income tax, and Those who don t. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 195

66 Which group would you like to belong to? There are two types of people in the world: Those who get a monthly bonus check in their mailbox once a month, and Those who don t. Which group would you like to belong to? There are two types of people in the world: Those who have lots of energy and enhanced health, and Those who don t. Which group would you like to belong to? There are two types of people in the world: Those who make monthly mortgage payments, and Those who don t. Which group would you like to belong to? Get the idea? Make it easier for prospects to join than not to join your business. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 196

67 Bigger than a business card. When a prospect shows interest in you or your business, many times you re late for an appointment or have other obligations. You don t have time for a short answer or explanation as your prospect might be getting off on the next floor from the elevator. Or, what if you have a shy distributor who doesn t have the confidence or the skill to effectively prospect cold contacts? What tool could you use to solve these problems? Try giving your prospects a copy of Are You Walking Past A Fortune?. The simple 24-page Are You Walking Past A Fortune? mini-booklet will show your uninformed prospects the great benefits of a network marketing career. They will picture themselves receiving monthly bonus checks for doing what they ve always done -- sharing a good deal with their friends. What s best about the 24-page mini-booklet is that it explains word-of-mouth advertising, alternate distribution, and never once brings up the dreaded pyramid idea. How many people can you recruit using these mini-booklets? It depends on who you are and who you give them to. If you pass them out to alcoholics in the gutter, don t expect a big return. If you give them to qualified prospects, then you may get a new accountant to handle your higher bonus income. And remember, who you are is a big part of the success of this method. If you are the alcoholic in the gutter, expect a lower interest from your prospects. Try giving your prospects the mini-booklet with confidence instead of apologizing for taking their time. By educating your prospect with this mini-booklet, you can build a large list of pre-educated, pre-sold prospects for your business. You ll want the personal confidence that comes with having plenty of prospects. At only $24 for a package of 60, this mini-booklet is the least expensive recruiting tool you can buy. And they only cost 24 each in quantities of 500. (Order from KAAS Publishing at ) It s the perfect handout for shy distributors to attract new prospects daily. If you d like to read the complete brochure online, go to Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 197

68 Tell a story. Did you ever talk to prospects and they appeared bored, or worst yet, they weren t even listening? Frustrating, isn t it? If you want to capture your prospects attention, you ll need to tell a story. Most stories instantly grab your prospects interest. Maybe it is the soap opera gene in us or simply that humans have an intense interest in what happens to others or in gossip. I don t know why, but stories will stop most prospects in their tracks. Here are some beginnings of stories to give you an idea of how to grab your prospects interest. Example #1 My secretary always hated her job and me. And then one day she shows up with a new car. I didn t think she earned that much. Well, two months later she takes her two weeks vacation and stays on vacation for an extra two weeks without pay. So I m wondering, how can she do this? It got worse. She demanded a two-day work week or she would resign. What s going on here? And then I found out that... Example #2 Did you ever check out your social security benefits? Well, I did. And it was shocking. My monthly retirement benefits will only cover half of my mortgage. I guess I can live in half of my house and rent the other half to some strangers. And what will I do for food? I didn t know I was working 50 weeks out of the year to qualify for starvation. So I asked my next-door neighbor how his retirement was coming along. He said, No problem. I have a secret. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 198

69 And then he explained... Example #3 This was so embarrassing. I didn t even recognize my own mother. I m going to be the joke of our family reunions. It happened like this. I m walking behind this lady. I had no idea that she could be my mother I mean, this lady was only half the size of my mother. Well, then I really embarrassed myself... Example #4 I used to warehouse my babies in childcare while I commuted to an underpaying job. Then one morning while stuck in traffic, I said to myself, This is crazy! That night I called up my good friend, Mary. She got her paycheck in her mailbox once a month and I wanted to know how. Mary told me... Once you ve attracted your prospects interest with your opening story, you ll be more relaxed and your prospects will actually hear your presentation. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 199

70 Prospecting... as easy as catching fish in a fishbowl. Why try to tell your future by looking into a Crystal Ball when you can do better looking into a fish bowl? Every week some local restaurant is trying to entice business people to eat lunch at its establishment by offering a drawing for a free lunch. These business people dutifully place their business cards in the fishbowl hoping for a free meal. After the big prize drawing, this fish bowl is unceremoniously dumped in the trashcan so that next weeks drawing can continue. Want prospects with real business experience? No problem. Find several restaurants in your area catering to the business lunch crowd and start using the fish bowl strategy. Each restaurant will attract business people from its local area so you won t get lots of overlap by going to multiple restaurants. Ask the manager, What do you do with those cards after the drawing? You ll hear, I just throw them in the trash. You say, Let me take them off your hands! Prepare to leave with numerous cards in your hands, pockets, brief case, etc. What s on a business card? Name, company, business address, and daytime phone number. Sometimes even a home phone number. And usually there s at least some hint of their occupation. How do you approach these people without getting the restaurant in trouble? Try a short note like this: Dear, You FINALLY Won! Remember dropping off your business card to get a free lunch? Well, I m sorry to say you didn t get the free lunch this week, but you did win! You won the runner up prize sponsored by my company! Just for being adventurous enough to leave your business card, here is your coupon for a free (your premium), with a retail value of ($ ). This will Benefit 1 (use the top three benefits of your offer) Benefit 2 Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 200

71 Benefit 3 Call me at XXX-XXXX to redeem your coupon in five days, and I ll treat you to a dessert myself! Sincerely, Joe Networker What are you giving them? Maybe it s your recruiting cassette How To Start Your Own Mega Business For Micro Bucks. Maybe it s your company s latest health product tape with a discount coupon. Maybe it s a special report you can personalize on your computer for each person you call a Personal Entrepreneurial Briefing. It s a prize designed to tell you if the person has a spark of interest in what you have to offer. Since people are too busy even to claim small prizes of this nature, be sure to call them to offer to drop by with their prize the next time you re in the area. Repeat your offer of a free dessert too. This technique will help you start getting daytime appointments with business people if you re keeping your evenings free for more presentations or simply want to be home at night more often, like other business people. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 201

72 Self-appointed success A big part of sponsoring success is the mental game. It is hard to be a great recruiter if we don t already see ourselves as a great recruiter. It s the problem of what comes first, the chicken or the egg? If we are just starting, most times we see ourselves as a struggling, beginning recruiter. This self-image will quickly be read by our prospects, and they ll resist joining a beginner in the business. Once we are already successful, then it is easy. We see ourselves as great recruiters because we have a large and successful business. Our self-image is one of being a successful recruiter. Unfortunately, we can t become a successful recruiter with a beginner s self-image. So how do we change our beginning self-image so that our prospects will want to join us? The secret is self-appointment. Instead of waiting for your outside circumstances to confirm your success, why not simply appoint yourself as already successful? Tell yourself that you are already a successful recruiter. You don t have to wait for permission from other people, approval from your peers, or any other confirmation. You simply appoint yourself as already successful. Tell yourself: I represent a great company. I can explain the benefits of joining our company. I give prospects the facts they need to make an intelligent decision to join or not to join. It is up to them to make a decision based upon their present circumstances. I am a great recruiter because I do a great job of presenting the opportunity. You see, you don t have to have a large downline to already be a great recruiter. Being a great recruiter is a state of mind. You are a great recruiter if you are presently doing a great job of presenting your opportunity. Being a great recruiter is not something you reach by accumulating a certain number of distributors. Being a great recruiter is something you are. It is a state of mind. It is an accomplishment of certain presentation skills. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 202

73 The following is the type of thinking that you ll want to avoid. This thinking will reinforce a poor self-image and hurt your success when giving presentations: I hope one day tobecome a success. Some day I ll become a great recruiter. This prospect didn t join. I m a failure. I ll be successful only when I reach the next level. I ll be successful when other people tell me so. Here is the reality. Becoming a successful recruiter is only a state of mind. You can create that state of mind by telling yourself: I m a successful recruiter. By telling yourself that you are a successful recruiter you are already there! You don t need anyone else to confirm this. You simply create this state of mind by choosing to do so. Prospects like winners. They want to follow someone who knows where he is going. Tell yourself now: I m a successful recruiter. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 203

74 Offer training. Which offer is difficult to sell and which offer will have prospects beating down your door offering to give you money? G. Computer for sale. Only $500. H. Computer for sale. Only $500. Includes two days of personal training. A. Bulldozer for sale. Only $25,000. B. Bulldozer for sale. Only $25,000. Includes three days of training. A. Cake decorating equipment. Only $300. B. Cake decorating equipment. Only $300. Includes one week of free cake decorating classes. A. Home exercise equipment. Only $800. B. Home exercise equipment. Only $800. Includes five sessions with personal trainer. A. Home movie video equipment. Only $500. B. Home movie video equipment. Only $500. Includes six hours of personal instruction on how to create great home movies. A. Business opportunity. Only $49 for a distributor kit. B. Business opportunity. Only $49 for a distributor kit. Includes 48 hours of classroom instruction on how to build a successful business. See a trend? In every case, offer B is easier to sell. In today s rush-rush society, people don t want to read long, boring instruction manuals. They don t want to waste time with trial and error. Prospects want personal attention and personal training to quickly achieve their goals. Once we recognize the desire for training, sponsoring gets easy. Why? Because we are giving prospects what they want. Several years ago I had the following experience. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 204

75 I observed a master trainer conduct an opportunity meeting. He spent very little time talking about the company, the products, and the opportunity. In fact, he hardly mentioned them! Instead, he told the prospects about the wonderful training he was conducting that weekend. This training would change their lives. They would have new viewpoints, great vision, understanding of the universe, and anything else they wanted. All they had to do was go to the training. Of course they had to be a distributor to attend this training, so every prospect in attendance quickly enrolled in the program. Well, the training was good. In fact, it was great! At the next opportunity meeting the new distributors talked and raved about their training experience. Their enthusiasm was so contagious that all of the new guests quickly enrolled as a distributor so that they would be eligible to attend the next training. This cycle continued and a large, trained, motivated group was built with hardly any mention about the company, products, or opportunity. This proved to me that prospects are desperate for training and guidance. I also learned that prospects would join even if they don t see a beautiful flip chart, video, or Internet presentation. By focusing on training, you ll get more distributors and less rejection. Few people have bad things to say about training and learning new skills. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 205

76 Using samples to attract prospects. You can give away targeted samples to attract the type of prospect you want for your opportunity. Usually people who buy diet products also buy diet books. Perhaps you could arrange with a local bookstore to give away a one-day sample of your diet product (complete with re-ordering information) to everyone who buys the latest diet book. Better yet, have them just give away a coupon you ve created so you capture their name and address in the process when they call for the free sample. Be sure to make it a big enough coupon that they ll take some action on it. For example in big print write the headline: (In small print) (In medium print) $100 in FREE DIET SUPPLEMENTS $10 off each of your next ten large bottles of Super Skinny Works perfectly to support any scientific weight loss effort! Complete money-back guarantee! Many immigrants who work in this country make lots of long distance calls back home to friends and family in their native country or other cities in the U.S. They may be excellent prospects for long distance phone service or prepaid phone cards. Can you place your banners in ethnic neighborhoods, recruit ethnic shopkeepers to sell the product, or run an ad in an ethnic newspaper to get customers for your service? If they re already using your product and would like to get it for free by selling it to others, you may not even need to give out a sample. Nevertheless, in this market, samples would probably work well. Sell organic cleaners? Can you find locally-owned carpet-cleaning firms, house cleaning firms, or janitorial firms, that would love to add their own water to these highly concentrated cleaners and cut their overhead? They can also become distributors and retail your product to their customers as the best value in their professional opinion. You can give away brochures for these entrepreneurs while they give away coupons for your sample... or you can give them samples to get them to sign up and do the selling directly. Sell automotive engine additives? You can always begin visiting the small local garages to tell them about the discovery and how they can make money promoting it. They may even put up a prominent display telling customers, Wonder Product used to save your money and your car s engine unless other arrangements made. A few pennies more now means less money spent in auto maintenance! and make extra retail Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 206

77 dollars from every oil change. Give the sample to the garage owners who can sell this product every day! What do you sell? How can you locate more new prospects? Find people who already sell to your prospects and have them give coupons or samples to your potential new distributors. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 207

78 33-cent follow-up strategy. The most expensive part of prospecting is getting the original prospect. The worst mistake you can make with a good prospect is to make just one contact. If you are limiting your contact with prospects to a single letter, a single telephone call, or a single in-person interview you re missing out on some great potential distributors in your organization. Timing is important when you contact prospects. Your telephone call could be during your prospect s favorite television show. Or, your prospect could be getting married in just a few days. Or, your prospect may be having a heated disagreement with a spouse or boss immediately prior to your contact. If you are unsuccessful with your letter, telephone call, or personal contact, what do you do with this prospect? Do you forget about this prospect and then venture out looking for new prospects? Well, new prospects are important. And, you don t want to stagnate your business by continually re-working old prospects. However, you can redeem many good prospects by continued follow-up. Your follow-up with prospects can be as inexpensive as a 33-cent letter. Create a good follow-up sales letter thanking your prospect for his time. Remind him about the great benefits your business has to offer and that he can take advantage of those benefits when the time is right for him. But what can you send your prospect for the second, third and subsequent follow-ups? Maybe send a copy of your newsletter. If you publish a newsletter to your group, make sure that you include plenty of testimonials, product reviews, and other news that your prospects will find interesting. Your prospects will not look upon your newsletter as sales material. Instead, your prospects will think of your newsletter as an opportunity to peak at the inside of your business. You could send a sample of your product, an interesting article about your business or product, a research report, a motivating tip or article, or let your imagination run loose. Repeated follow-ups with qualified prospects will slowly build a relationship that will make it easier for a follow-up appointment. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 208

79 No matter what you use for a follow-up, make it personal. Use the prospect s name. Use a short, easy-to-read sales letter. And always make it interesting. If you are spending $5, $10, or even $20 to get a qualified prospect, make sure you leverage your investment with frequent follow-up. A 33- cent letter doesn t cost much compared to your initial expense in finding a qualified lead. Your frequent follow-up will prove to your prospects that you are a serious businessperson, not a fly-by-night irresponsible hobbyist. Most prospects want to be involved with someone who knows where his is going. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 209

80 MLM mail order tips. It s happened to everybody. You get into multilevel and you start thinking big, real big. Why bother with working hard, doing single presentations, bringing guests to opportunity meetings, and taking time to train new distributors? That s too low-tech. Why not use the power of the U.S. Postal Service to recruit thousands of new distributors through mail order recruiting? It s fast, easy, there s no rejection, simple, and oh yes, very, very, very expensive. Mail order multilevel recruiting has been called the get rich, real quick method to multilevel success. It sounds sooooo good. Just relax at home, lick a few stamps while watching TV, and wait for the applications to come flowing into your mailbox. This is the ultimate shortcut to multilevel disaster. What usually happens? First, the starry-eyed distributor purchases some very expensive literature from the home office. If you re going to mail for new recruits, you might as well impress them with the very best four-color literature money can buy. Second, the new distributor, who hasn t written a letter since high school, writes the perfect motivational cover letter that will certainly out perform anything an expensive copywriter could produce. (Actually, an honest, from-the-heart letter really does work, but it s the typos and misspellings that usually kill the amateur effort.) Third, the new distributor designs a few pieces of literature, charts, business strategies, etc. to include in his customized mail package. Why not impress the prospects that you have the perfect plan? The local quick-print shop welcomes your extra business to cover his overhead. Fourth, all the relatives are invited over to the house for pizza. Only when they arrive do they find out it s really a fold-and-stuff-the-envelope party. After a few hours of licking envelopes, they won t feel like eating much pizza. At least this will keep unwanted relatives from dropping by over the next year. Fifth, there s the required bank loan for the postage. If it weren t for chain letters and multilevel mail order recruiting efforts, the postal deficit would double. I guess mail order recruiting is kind of a patriotic act after all. Finally, you wait and watch television reruns for the next several weeks, hoping for a return on your investment. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 210

81 And it doesn t come. What do you receive? Address corrections from that guaranteed wonderful mailing list you bought, solicitations from other multilevel mail order recruiters, and the first installment notice from your bank loan. On the bright side, you get one application from a prospect in the small town of Nowhere, Far-Away, Rumania. He wants you to travel 1,500 miles to come and train him on how to get started in this multilevel thing. Airfare is only a few hundred dollars each way, so hey, This mail order thing could really pay off, eh? Because of high costs, low returns, and bad experiences, most networkers try mail order recruiting just one time and then get sour on the whole concept of MLM. But despite overwhelming odds, networkers will continue to mail for new distributors. Is it a genetic deficiency? An evil message secretly recorded on subliminal tapes? Or can it be our we ll-try-anything- to-besuccessful spirit? For whatever the reason, the mailings will go on, and on, and on. Since the mailings will continue, what can we do to minimize the waste and maximize the returns? Here are three tips that you can use starting now. 1. Get A Mentor Your mailing will arrive in the same mailbox, at the same time, as the expensive mailing packages produced by Madison Avenue. Let s face it. You re going to be in direct competition with some billion dollar financed professionals. To compete, you must get all the information and education you can. A trip to the local library, or the outright purchase of a couple mail order books would be nice, but nothing substitutes for experience. Find a pro who is successfully mailing for network marketing prospects. In one hour he can give you a year s worth of book learning. He can share the techniques he uses to squash the competition, to stand out from the crowd, and to target his mailings to keep his overall costs manageable. If you can t find a pro to share his success techniques with you, be prepared to join the mail order crowd that finances the postal union. 2. Looking Good If your literature and cover letter looks like a fourth generation chain letter, it deserves to be treated like one - in the waste basket. Don t bother Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 211

82 investing postage and labor to mail wastebasket stuffing via first class. America s landfills are filling up. Nobody will believe in your million-dollar opportunity if it s printed on a fuzzy photocopy from your often-repaired office copier. At the very least, get a good quick printer to make a clear copy of your offer. 3. Mailing Frugally Don t spend too much money on the initial mailer. Use something inexpensive and simple on your initial contact. Then, if your prospect is interested, you can invest your dollars in mailing a first class package to a qualified, interested, hot prospect. Let s say you mailed a $2 printed package to 1,000 prospects. Total printing investment: $2,000. With a 1% return, you d have 10 hot prospects with a $2 literature package in their hands. Now, consider the difference if you mailed a 50 cent printed package to 1,000 prospects. Total printing investment: $500. That s an initial savings of $1,500. At a 1% return, you would again have 10 hot prospects, but you could invest the $1,500 savings into a terrific follow-up package to your 10 hot prospects. You could afford a follow-up printed package of $150 each! What kind of impression could you make with a $150 printed package? The point is: mail inexpensively for leads, then invest your printing dollars in follow-up packages to these leads. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 212

83 The object of your ad is to generate a phone call. Many ads sell, sell, and sell. These ads sell the business opportunity, the compensation plan, the products, the founders, the upline support and the terrific training. However, most of these ads forget one thing: The object of your ad is to generate a phone call. Few prospects will read a five-line classified ad and decide to join your business. Few prospects will look at an impressive graphic in a full-page ad and decide to join your business. When writing our ads, we must keep our objective in mind to generate a phone call. This will help us focus our ad copy and headlines. Instead of getting carried away with our terrific compensation plan and printing out the entire payout plan, maybe we can use that same space to put in a testimonial that will motivate the prospect to call. See the difference? When we know our objective, our ad design gets easier. And, our ad results get better. Want an example? Don t say: Our opportunity offers 2.2% more bonus on kryptonite products through six levels of directors. Instead say: Call now to find out how you can earn an extra $300 this week. Remember to ask for your free bonus gift. The first statement informs the prospect... sort of. The second statement motivates the prospect to make a call. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 213

84 Sure I want to be in my own business, but I can t afford the distributor kit. Your prospect may be short of cash, but he sure sounds like he has a lot of desire, right? He really wants to be successful in his own business. How motivated is your prospect? Consider the following summary of a story in Chinatown: A Portrait of a Closed Society (HarperCollins, 1992): Many immigrants start out as street peddlers for three or four years until they have saved enough money (between $50,000 and $100,000) to start their own small business. The book tells about Lin who earned $360 a week peddling vegetables, fruit, and umbrellas. His annual income: $22,000. What is amazing is that Lin saves $18,000 of his income and lives on the other $4,000. Lin has saved over $70,000 in four years so he can start his own business. Hmmm. I d say Lin is motivated and willing to make a few sacrifices in his standard of living to achieve his dreams. Now, back to our original prospect who couldn t come up with the $40 investment for his distributor kit. What do you think? Does this prospect have a strong, burning desire to be in his own business? Americans take too much for granted. We re spoiled. We want things, but aren t willing to pay the price. New immigrants to America also want things, but they are willing to pay the price. They are excited that they have the opportunity to pay the price. What do average Americans want? They want to be the boss, but refuse to stay late after work. They want to take exotic vacations, but refuse to save from their monthly paychecks. They want to own their own business, but only if it is free. They want to be an MLM leader with a five-figure monthly income, but they can t get away from personal activities to attend opportunity training meetings. No wonder average Americans have trouble building an MLM business. They must build the business themselves, and that s a gross inconvenience. That s why successful MLM builders look for the not so average American. It s easier to build a successful MLM business when somebody is working. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 214

85 What can you say to someone who claims to be motivated yet won t invest $40 in himself to start a business? Some things are just so obvious that people can t see the solution. Here is a real life example... Q. What do you do when your downline distributor can t afford to purchase products, sales aids, or training materials? A. You ask questions. Here is the conversation with an unmotivated, broke, and afraid-totake-personal-responsibility downline distributor. Big Al: You should at least invest $100 a month ($25 a week) in your business for products, sales aids, training materials, promotions, etc. Are you willing to do that? Distributor: Nope. Can t do that. I don t have any money. Once I pay my bills, there s nothing left. Can t you collect a few bonus checks first, and THEN build a business? Big Al: Life and business don t work that way. Let s look at your present situation. You ve worked ten years for the same company. You are an adult. And, you re telling me you haven t managed to save $100 total in all those years of work? Are you telling me you haven t had the business skill or ability to save a total of $10 a year? That s only one week s work on a paper route? Distributor: Yep. The situation is grim. But all my money goes to bills. If I had a few extra dollars every month, I would invest it in my business, honest! Big Al: How much do you pay for cable TV? Distributor: About $30 a month. But, I could never give that up. That s our only form of entertainment. Big Al: Do you ever eat out? Or, do you always cook your meals? Distributor: We eat out about twice a week for dinner. I know it s expensive, but sometimes we re just so tired when we come home from work. That s about $50 a week, but we do deserve a break now and then. And yes, I buy lunch two or three times a week too, but I consider it a good break from the boredom of the office. Big Al: Do you smoke or drink? Distributor: Cigarettes are $2 a pack, and I smoke a pack a day, but hey, I m addicted. I can t do anything about that. You can t expect me to give up smoking to build a business, do you? And don t get on me about my drinking. It s the only way I can unwind after a tough day. Big Al: What about weekends? Are they free? Could you take on a few odd jobs to have a little extra money to build your business? Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 215

86 Distributor: Yeah, weekends are off, but I have a lot of chores and duties around the house. It s the only time of the week I can catch up and get a bit of rest, and maybe get in a game of golf. Big Al: Golf? Do you pay for green fees and clubs and drinks and...? Distributor: I m not putting away my golf clubs to build a business. It s only three or four hours a week anyway. Big Al: So what plan do you have to free up $25 a week to build your MLM business? Distributor: That s what I m asking you. Tell me what I can do to get my business going. Nothing has worked so far. So what are you going to do about it, Mr. Sponsor? Commentary: None needed. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 216

87 How to get professionals to understand and get into your business. If a surgeon decides to quit operating, the money stops. If a dishwasher decides not to wash dishes, the money stops. If an attorney decides to stop suing people, the money stops. If an IRS agent decides to stop auditing people, the money stops. In almost every profession, when the person stops working, the money stops. But not network marketing! In network marketing, it s different. In the beginning, you do a lot of groundwork and foundation building, and you don t make a lot of money. If you were being paid hourly, you could complain that you were underpaid or getting less than minimum wage. However, most network marketing leaders look at this building period as a learning period. It s like going to school. But, instead of paying tuition, you can earn some money while you learn. Once you complete the groundwork and foundation, the money formula changes drastically. Now, you are getting paid bonuses every month, even if you don t work hard or when you take a vacation. So, in the beginning you do a lot of work that you don t get paid for, but in the end you get a lot of pay for when you don t work. That s why professionals want to get into network marketing. They like the residual income and the financial security it brings. On a sad note, there are some individuals who get into network marketing and build a foundation. But because they didn t feel they earned enough money during this learning and building stage of their career, they quit. Yes, they quit just before they go into the collecting stage of their careers. I guess the rewards go to people with persistence and vision. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 217

88 How to get your guests to stay AFTER your business opportunity meeting. What s the most important part of the business presentation? It s AFTER the presentation. That s when prospects can ask questions, sign up, fill out their orders, etc. So how can you keep your prospects from rushing home when your meeting is finished? Try this. About five years ago, I was in Hong Kong. I had the evening free, so I went to observe a local opportunity meeting. Every guest was given a ticket for a chance to win one of three door prizes. The door prizes were in three large, brightly colored boxes with flashy ribbons. When the meeting was finished, the speaker said, Thanks for coming to tonight s presentation. And if you are a guest, please take a look at your ticket. We re going to have a drawing for these three great door prizes. But first, let s take a 10-minute break to stretch our legs, use the restroom, etc. and then we ll have our big drawing. Well, the drawing actually occurred about 15 minutes later, but all the guests stayed. That gave their sponsors a chance to talk with their guests about that evening s presentation. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 218

89 Sales letter hint. When writing your sales letter, remember: Don t write about you. Write about the prospect. You re writing a sales presentation, not a report about you and your company. When you focus your writing on your prospects, they notice! They feel you understand them and their needs and wants. If you have trouble starting your sales letter, think about how you would start your normal sales presentation. Don t you talk about your prospects : Dreams? Goals? Worries and problems? Fears? Secret desires? For example, here are some topics you can start your sales letter with depending on the type of prospect you are contacting: How to stop warehousing their babies in day-care facilities and spending more time with the family. How to take advantage of small business tax breaks that are not available to jobholders. How to lose weight and make money without changing their present lifestyle. How to have the admiration of friends and relatives by successfully operating their own home-based business. How to travel and not have to ask permission for time off from work. How to fire their boss and command their own income. See the difference? Don t make the mistake of telling your prospects all about your million-dollar facilities, the wonderful integrity of the company founders, the miracle research that went into the product, and how the bonus plan pays an extra 1% on months that start with the letter J. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 219

90 Are relatives and friends hard to sponsor? Relatives know us too well. They can remember every mistake we ve made in the past and gleefully keep an organized diary of our mishaps. Relatives won t listen to us, they don t respect us, and they don t want to join our business. Right. Sure. Relatives are not very good prospects. Or, are they? Do you realize that every network marketer in the world is somebody s relative? That s right! They must be a relative to join. Now, they may not be your relative, but they are related to somebody. The same holds true with friends. Everybody is somebody s friend. So friends make excellent network marketing distributors. Okay then, what is your distributor really saying when he says, Relatives are no good. You can t sponsor relatives into network marketing. What your distributor really is saying is, I can t sponsor my relatives. They hate me. They don t respect me. They want to see first if I m successful before they join. I haven t learned enough skills to feel comfortable presenting my program. I feel I must sell them something instead of letting them choose what s best for them. I m afraid of rejection. And, my entire gene pool that affects my relatives is well... defective. Looks like your new distributor is refusing to take responsibility for his business. He is looking for people and things to blame for his failure. Well, failure is assured if the new distributor doesn t let anyone know about his business. You can t keep it top secret and expect your business to grow. You can t blame your lack of success on relatives. It doesn t matter who they are related to. What does matter is if the network business opportunity is something that can benefit others -- not you. Our only obligation is to let them know that the opportunity is available. They can refuse the opportunity, refuse to even listen to the opportunity, or even refuse to know what the business opportunity is all about. Our only obligation is to let people know that an opportunity exists. If they feel they have a need to check it out, that s great. Then they can decide if network marketing can help them achieve their dreams. They will make the decision based on what they want and need, not what we want or what some other relative wants. It s a personal decision. So, don t worry if they are a relative or a friend. It s usually to our advantage. At least a relative or a friend is somebody we can talk to. They Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 220

91 are a bit easier to contact than a total stranger. They will at least trust us enough to check out our business. That s all we ask. So don t go around saying you can t recruit relatives and friends. It s not your job to recruit them. Only to educate them if they request more information. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 221

92 Get the right technology. You don t need a secret phone in your shoe or anything, but you should at least get... Three Way Calling so you can let your upline do the talking (and business building) for you. Just call the customer service department of your local phone service and ask for this service. It s easy to use and only costs a few dollars per month. Voice Mail. This allows your prospects and customers to NEVER get a busy signal when they call you. This is another service provided by your local Ma Bell or equivalent. While you re talking with Prospect A, Prospect B can leave a message for you. Once you hang up with Prospect A, you listen for a beeping dial tone. If it s beeping, you simply retrieve your message and call them back. Sure beats a busy signal if you return calls promptly. I also strongly suggest that since you re starting a business that, for tax purposes and in order to look professional, you obtain A separate PHONE and FAX line for your operation. Getting an extra line or two adds some expense and overhead to your operation, so you may not be able to afford it right now. One day soon though you ll run an ad, and in the middle of the night, you ll get a call for a free report or hear the wailing of a fax machine in your ear, and then wished you had a separate phone line for your business! Try to get the separate line before that happens! What about Call Waiting? Consider this. Call Waiting simply interrupts your calls. If you re on a prospecting call, what kind of impression will you leave with your prospect if you say: Just a moment. I have another call coming. This may make your prospect feel unimportant. After all, you re willing to forget about your prospect to take any unknown call. Make your prospect feel important and give him your undivided attention. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 222

93 Making a prospect list once you ve exhausted your easy list. Who should you put on your list? One way is to go through the Yellow Pages section by section and ask, Who do I know who s an Accountant? Architect? Banker? Contractor? Or you could go through your high school yearbook, employee directory or phone book where you work, the list of people you send cards to during the holidays, or the membership list of any clubs or organizations you belong to. Look through your checkbook... which local business might miss you patronage? Basically, you need to identify what groups you already have an affiliation with. These are the kind of people who may have enough in common with you already that they d be good partners in your efforts. This list should be as comprehensive as possible. The more names the better. They don t all have to be your best friend, you simply have to know them some way for now. Remember, if you legitimately don t know anybody, you ll need to immediately start using the other prospecting tools located elsewhere in this manual. The key though is not to overlook those potential leaders right next door to you who are currently your friends or neighbors. There s the tendency to think nobody I know would be interested. Depending on how down in the mouth you are on a certain day you might even say everybody here is a loser; nobody around here has any desire. But you could be seriously wrong. A distributor friend of mine called me the other day to remind me of this fact. It seems that he d signed up his sister into the business. She hadn t done much because she kept thinking, nobody here is interested in network marketing. A few weeks later a large network marketing company went out of business. Their new leaders were busy scrambling for a legitimate and stable opportunity for their now homeless downline. They answered an ad for this lady s company and joined promptly under another distributor in the same company. They lived just a few doors away from this lady! If this lady had worked just a bit harder to work her acres of diamonds in her own backyard, she may have met these people, developed a relationship with them while they were in their former company, and suddenly found herself with hundreds of new recruits in her downline! Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 223

94 Just think, she could have seen her bonus check increase by thousands of dollars per month overnight. But it never happened because she thought mistakenly nobody here is interested! Remember as you re making your list, Somebody near me right now could be really interested. They might help get my career off to a fantastic start! Create A Second Special List. For now, everyone on your list is only qualified by one thing: they are a friend, relative, or acquaintance. You aren t worried about anything else at this point. Try to get 200 names to start with and constantly add to it as you meet or are referred to new people. Once you ve exhausted this list, now you can go on to create a new secret list that almost no network marketer ever uses. At first, getting names of 200 friends, relatives, or acquaintances seems daunting. But in any business, you re much happier if you have a steady stream of prospects to talk to. In MLM, as much as any business, if you don t have someone new to talk to, you re on your way to being out of business. The more names you start with and more names you keep getting in and the more people you can follow up with later, the more you ll enjoy the business. Let s Make It A Game: You can use this concept in a new group or with family members to help generate your 200 names fast. Family: Get your spouse and kids together around the kitchen table. Give everyone a large pad of paper and a pencil or pen. Tell them whoever gives us the most names of people for Dad (or Mom) to contact gets to choose his or her favorite restaurant tonight. Then everyone writes down the names of the storeowners you patronize, family friends, parents of children from school or daycare, etc. as outlined above. There ll probably lots of overlap from the lists, but you can purge the duplicates later. Right now, you just want to have that list! Local Group: Get all the new distributors together for a training session. Don t make the mistake of telling them to make a list and then actually believing it will get done! Allow time in the meeting for a name gathering contest. Have every new recruit make the list right there. Let the Yellow Pages or Occupation lists jog their memory. Have pads of paper and pens available. Give an award to the recruit(s) in the following category First to reach 200 names (get addresses and phone numbers later) Most names in allotted time Youngest new distributor with at least 100 names Oldest new distributor with at least 100 names Distributor with the longest hair with at least 100 names. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 224

95 Distributor with the least hair with at least 100 names. Come up with as many humorous winners as you can. The point is to help as many people be a winner as possible and get at least 100 names (or whatever level you choose). The real winners will be the ones with the most names and who will do the most follow up of those names. Give your winners an award that will help them go after those names! Some ideas: A Certificate to reimburse their postage for mailing 100 contact letters. A Certificate good for unlimited three-way calls until they have 5 first level active distributors. A Certificate good for 25 prospecting tapes. A Certificate good for 10 product selling tapes. A Certificate good for 4 hours of telephone prospecting training. The Super List that Nobody Uses! As you review the list of your friends-relatives-acquaintances ( FRA list for short), ask yourself, Who do they know that I don t who would be good in this business? You might get even more names by reviewing your FRA list and asking, Who is the most successful person they know that I don t? There are two reasons for asking these questions. One is that, believe it or not, not everyone will automatically join your program as soon as they hear about what you re doing. Don t let their indifference stop you. For all you know, they got informed that same morning they were being audited by the IRS. You d be distracted too! But when they say no or not now, your conversation should not end. Instead, you ask them something like this: Bill, I understand that you might not be interested in pursuing this right now. Things get busy at times, and now may just not be the right time for you. Can I get your opinion on something else for a second before I go? I was planning on calling (names from your list you think they know) about the material I ve shared with you. What can you tell me about them? Do you think they could be the kind of leaders we re looking for? [After they ve talked a while, hopefully they say Yes they could be a leader for you. If they don t say nice things, maybe you want to suggest that name to someone else to see if this prospect is worth your time. Believe it or not, once your business starts growing, you ll have more prospects Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 225

96 than you can have time for! You ll need to focus only on the very best prospects.] Bill thanks a lot for your time. See you later. Now you have someone to put on your go talk to list who s no longer just a cold name. When you call them, you now have a mutual acquaintance. You should bring that up right away to help establish rapport. Hi Mary! I m Joe Leader. I m calling because Bill Maybelater said you might be the leader our organization is looking for. I thought that was a pretty nice compliment... [Usually if you leave it at that, your prospect will say Are you a job recruiter? What s this all about? ] Once your prospect starts asking you questions, it s usually easier to talk to them. Don t Miss This Special Step: Suppose Mary is the leader you ve been looking for. She s excited, wants to rock and roll and is ready to get going. Your initial temptation will be to sign her up directly under you. But don t to that. Go back to Bill Maybelater and tell him about your good results. Tell him how Mary is ready to really take off. Tell him what he s missing by not joining with a hot first level worker like Mary. You might be calling Bill Maybelater Bill Nows-A-Good Time. He may rethink his original hesitancy and decide to join right on the spot. Remember to reward those who give referrals. What to do if you re truly shy! Yes, you love to talk about the geometric expansion of the downline. The very thought of the financial potential sends you into ecstasy. That s quickly cured by reminding you that all you have to do to experience that kind of downline growth is to tell your friends and family about it! Here s a method you should use if you re truly too shy to bring up the MLM subject to the people you know. a) Make the exact same list we ve discussed above with at least 200 names. b) Make the who do these people know list as we discussed above with as many names as possible. Hopefully another 200. c) Send the first 200 friendly letter that sounds something like this: Dear Friend, Relative or Acquaintance, Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 226

97 Recently I started my own home business to help me {include your personal goal here}. So if it makes me a little bit crazy or distracted while I m getting it established, please accept my apologies in advance. My business mentor told me to tell you about this wonderful opportunity to {benefits of your opportunity}. I told him/her that I would mention that to you later when I became an expert on the products and services we offer. Thanks for your support. If you need any {products or services you MLM provides} please be sure to give me a call. I m especially looking for folks who are potential leaders and who want to start their own mini franchise in their spare time. Thanks, d) If you re really brave, call up the first 200 after they receive the letter. You may want to send out 10 letters per week or more, depending on how much time you can devote. Follow these 10 letters with a phone call. If you re still shy about following up, maybe you could send them a postcard or newsletter later at regular intervals. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 227

98 Moving beyond friends, relatives & acquaintances: Local prospecting. Sooner or later, you ll run out of friends, relatives and acquaintances to call on if you had some in the first place who weren t already sick of your network marketing adventures. At least you gave yourself a fighting chance if you used the Who Do They Know? List. That way you were able to talk to your friends and relatives but did not directly ask them for a commitment unless someone they referred you to was going to quickly sign up. But what if none of that worked? What if you were dropped out of plane (hopefully with a parachute) into some town where you literally know nobody and only a few dollars in your pocket? How do you get started? OK, let s assume you ve tried all the usual techniques. You already see the signs on telephone poles proclaiming lose 30 lb. in 30 days. You ve seen the ads in the penny saver newspapers. You can t afford the real newspaper. You tried renting a room for an opportunity meeting and nobody showed up. Okay, how can you get some ideas for prospecting locally? 1) Purchase local family products leads cheaply from the businesses who are already constantly prospecting locally: encyclopedia sales, exterminators, photo studios, home repair contractors, vacuum cleaner door to door sales. Be sure to tell the person you want to buy the leads a long time. Tell them you want people who care about their family, not the lowlifes they run into. Return the lowlife leads they give you for a refund! You may even want to tie your products and services directly into the source of the lead. For instance, if your leads come from the local exterminator and you sell detoxifying nutritional products, that information could give you a clue about how to proceed. You might emphasize how common every day chemicals such as those used by pest exterminators could gradually build up in our systems and that some people want to take your supplements to avoid the problem. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 228

99 2) Too poor to buy leads? How about trading leads? Maybe you could give an advertising coupon to each of your prospects for several businesses. They could do the same for you. Find neighborhood referrals. Of course you should always ask for referrals (you know that) but you can pre-plan ways to get more referrals too! When you re going to make a presentation at 165 Sycamore Street, check out the City Directory or Reverse Directory for your town. Who lives at 163 Sycamore? 167? How about across the street at 164 or 166? Make a short list. When you actually get there, see if there s anyone at those addresses who looks like they re worth talking to. If they look good, circle their name. At the end of your presentation, if it s a no go, you can say something like this: I can t help but noticing that lives at Sycamore Street. Then you can inquire if they d be interested in the benefits of your products and services. If you re running short of new leads but did pretty well for a while, consider your existing clients. Check out a reverse directory for your city. Ask your clients about the people living in their neighborhood. Would it be OK to mention their name if you were to approach them? Would they be able to help you know if your product/opportunity would be a good fit for them? Can they vouch for their neighbors so you re not getting involved with deadbeats and axe murderers? Whenever you obtain a referral, use it for more leverage with your present client. If is interested, I ll be sure to let you know so we can sign you up as his sponsor if you like. Find social circle referrals. Unlike just a decade ago, many people don t even know or relate to people in their neighborhood or apartment complex. Their friendships are developed at work, school, or play. The more you know about your customer s work, education or recreation, the more you can ask them to visualize who they know from those place who might want the benefits you have to offer. This also works for distributors who develop a mental block and feel they don t know anybody. Who do you play golf with? Who do you know from boating on the lake? Who do you know from the Loyal Order of Water Buffalos? Who do you know from your children s day care? Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 229

100 Who do you know from the union? Who do you know from PTA? Who do you know from your child s dance class? Who do you know from your work with Band Boosters? Who do you know from your Volunteer Fire Department? Small Office/Home Office Groups. Many SOHO business people feel isolated and alone. If you can join or somehow aid an existing group or start your own group for these people, you may be able to find numerous customers or prospects because they desperately want your help and will reciprocate by doing business with you. Show them how to build their existing business, and then show them how adding your network marketing opportunity to their existing business can create additional ongoing income. Help them arrange speakers like a tax accountant to talk on how to get maximum home business deductions. A speaker from the Small Business Administration will also be helpful. A salesperson from the newspaper to educate them on what works best for other businesses that advertise. Health Fairs. Build your nutrition business by service. Get a qualified health professional in your downline organization (or find one who ll help without charge or for a small fee) to join you in staffing an information table at a public place for a blood pressure screening, a fat analysis, or other inexpensive (to you) but valuable free service. Publicize it through as many community calendar announcements as possible too (for free of course!). Have participants sign up for a free bottle of your product since you are sponsoring the event (check with your company you may only be allowed to use your business name, not theirs). Send all contestants the appropriate follow-up information from their test results and include information about your opportunity. Consumer Protection. Stop being the enemy. If your product or service lends itself to telling the public how to protect themselves, set up a free information booth to rescue them. All Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 230

101 brochures should have your contact information and, if allowed, you should have a contest or other way to capture their names. Examples: Financial MLM - How to get debt-free on your current income. Toxin Free Products MLM - Are Your Cleaning Products Killing You Instead Of The Germs? Magnets Is Stress Killing You? Educational Toys - Do You Want Your Child s Toy Box To Create An Einstein Or A Rambo? Immune Building Nutritional Products Have you heard about the problems with antibiotic drugs? Telemarketing. Only advanced networkers should try this adaptation of our market research idea. You re advanced if you know what the value of a customer or distributor is to your business. You re advanced if you have $500 per month to spend on advertising without taking that out of your grocery or mortgage money. If you can sell a new customer or distributor and - on average - know they ll be worth $ X to you, then this may work very well. The best way to approach this is to have people call a reverse directory of homes and take a low-key approach. See if people want a free report related to whatever your primary benefit is... or it could simply be your killer prospecting tape. Then mail it to them. You ll either try to meet them in person, sell them some product, or keep their name on file for a seminar (opportunity meeting) or to get referrals. Why is it so important to learn the value of a customer? Let s say that on average a customer or distributor is worth $300 to you in your first year. Then you know how much money you can spend to find such a customer. (This thinking works for any prospecting project by the way.) Imagine you have two telemarketers calling three hours per night, three nights per week. You pay them $7 per hour or a total of $126 ($ 14 x 9 hours). They find about 5 people per shift each who want a tape or 30 people per week, another $60. You re already paying over $180 per week for this operation for 30 good leads for you to follow up. Is it worth it? Let s see. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 231

102 If your gross revenues are - on average - $ 300 per year per customer/distributor and you get just one new customer, you ll be ahead $120 per week. Not earth-shaking, but at least you re in profit! Then take it from there as your group grows! You may even be able to reward telemarketers by putting people in their downlines. Want to start cheap? Do the telemarketing yourself with your free prospecting tape until you know how the numbers are running. You were probably only going to waste time watching television anyway. Or if you hate the phone hire someone to test the idea for a few hours. Then once you have the numbers down you can experiment with paying a base salary plus bonuses for new customers to lower your immediate costs even more. Note: Many localities have laws against autodialers. And many people hate them anyway. Using a live caller with a pleasant voice is usually better as long as you call at an acceptable hour especially if in the opening seconds of the call, they can legitimately say, Don t worry, I m not asking you to buy anything on the phone tonight! Service, service, service. Often your MLM is NOT the service local people or businesses first feel they need. But there may be a service in your community that you can do - often at a profit - which can help you build your business. What is it? Is your small community overlooked by the Welcome Wagon franchises? Is your community overcharged by the coupon mailers? Is there some form of advertising that needs to be done? Or some other way to meet lots of people by serving a need other businesses have? As an example, suppose you decide to create your own Welcoming Service since none serves your area. You may find plenty of businesses and organizations willing to pay you to visit potential customers for them. You drop off a free sample of their products or a coupon and give them the new prospect s name and address. Usually there s a fee of $2.50 per new household you visit. So if you provide this service for 10 businesses, you re being paid $25 per visit. Why can t your prospecting tape be in the welcome gift too? That way you ll be paid to meet new people and make money even if they say no! What kind of businesses could use this service? A few would be: Auto Repair Shops Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 232

103 Bakeries Banks Churches Dry Cleaners Florists Grocery Stores Pharmacies Video Stores There are a variety of sources of PUBLIC INFORMATION in any community that can tell you who s moving in to town: Tax records, Utilities, Real Estate Agents, Department of Motor Vehicles, etc. If you find that NEW PARENTS are your best prospects, you could offer to deliver baby related gifts to the new parents... birth listings at the county court house could keep you in prospects especially since the new parents may need to earn some more money! The point is, these other businesses in town could be paying you to prospect. Start your own side business. What about starting your own advertising delivery service where you deliver ads to 5000 homes in plastic door hangers along with an ad for your service? Suppose this service is already happening in your area. Could you offer to build a group under this person if they distributed your materials and you paid for their sign up fee and monthly product purchase? Your only cost would be the actual printing and product purchases, not the normal retail price. What service can you offer that your community needs but isn t being offered? Next time you re on vacation, check the yellow pages and see if there are ideas you can take home to make money. Does this sound like work? It is. But it s the kind of work that forces you to use your creativity and allows you the opportunity to be your own boss. Don t knock it till you try it! Become a radio event. Even local network marketing businesses can get radio exposure if they re credible enough. Turn on the local talk radio station. If some topic meets a perceived need in the community, somehow it gets on the air. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 233

104 There are stockbrokers and financial planners who are invited to give their market update. There s somebody with a green thumb asked to give the gardening update. There s some local podiatrist giving the bunion update. Why can t you give the home business update? There are different ways of doing this on the radio. When you re starting out and trying to get known, the best way may be to try just calling in to an appropriate talk radio show. Arguing with the host probably isn t what you want to do! Being invited to be on the air is what you want. Sounding like a Voice of Reason may help you develop enough rapport with the host to get invited. Don t play intelligent caller too long. They might get the impression they can retain your services for free. Ask the host off the air for an invitation onto the show. Let the host know that you re available on short notice in case another guest cancels. When you re advanced, you may be able to create a co-op with your downline and purchase a half hour of radio time. Don t think you have to be chained to a microphone forever. Some people find that the same prerecorded show aired again and again works as well the 10 th week as it did the first week! Their purpose is to give you credibility and get people to call you, not to give away free information! Free information is what gets them to listen and call. It s not an end in itself. How much does this cost? If you re good at getting people to listen, the station may give you the show and simply sell the commercial segments. If you have to buy the time, you may be able to make money selling advertising after advertising your own information. To get good leads and sales long term, it may take several weeks. Then you need to stay on the air to keep the momentum going. Like any large scale advertising campaign, you will probably want to tackle this only when you have a growing downline. Why is this? Radio time isn t cheap. You ll want to co-op this. But more importantly, you need leadership in your organization to handle product sales and follow up on prospects. One way to reduce your costs once you re making some good money from the radio is to see if the local station wants to sign up as a distributor. Want to take the show on the road? Show your next prospective radio station the results and see if they want to sign up! Afraid to talk in public? Find the local Toastmaster s group and practice on them. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 234

105 Radio can convert the uninterested! Just for kicks, go up to the prospect who s told you no every time you spoke to them about network marketing. Tell them, I know you re not interested in my MLM program, but wouldn t it be great if you could earn money every time Rush Limbaugh opened his mouth on the radio? Even the most hardened home business skeptic would probably say yes or at least say Yeah... but what s the catch? Well there s really no catch. Just have a unique product and get some bank to finance a $100,000 ad campaign and $1 million to get the product into production and, before you know it, you can be making money whenever a certain talk radio host opens his mouth. Without question, talk radio has the power to make companies who advertise there and break them when they don t advertise there anymore. Usually the only thing stopping anyone from making money from talk radio advertising is the little problem of not having a unique product or failing to come up with the $1.1 million credit line. That s really the only catch. But not having the product or a million bucks was no obstacle for one special network marketing couple. Let s call them Mark and Sharon. How Two Networkers Created Their Own RADIO PROSPECTING SYSTEM. About 5 years ago, Sharon got the freedom bug and launched her MLM business. She quickly built a strong business earning a respectable $3,000 per month, but then reached a plateau. Mark was anxious to see Sharon s business continue to grow and replace both of their incomes so, together they started looking for options. It s worth noting that Sharon and Mark had followed the Tried and True method of approaching their warm market. There was just one hitch for them though: Their warm market was much more responsive to the product and didn t care about the opportunity. It s nice to have 200 retail customers, but very few product users were becoming genuine business builders. They had learned a valuable lesson by this time, though. They had learned the value of Massive Action. Put another way, they d tell potential business builders It s not who you know, it s how many you Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 235

106 know! Any name on your prospect list could be a future superstar. But the secret to finding those superstars is to speak to as many people as possible to find the few who are truly interested. Where most networkers only aim to find one or two new prospects per week, 50 or so per year, Sharon and Mark wanted to talk to 50 prospects per week! How could they do that with no warm market left? They realized that there are lots of duplicate lead generation within the MLM industry. They didn t want to deal with MLM junkies so they were looking for a profitable way to reach out to people entirely new to MLM and nutrition. They learned from others who were achieving success using radio and were able to license the use of proven radio shows. They knew they would have to reinvest all of Sharon s $3,000 per month bonus check into this new marketing concept. Their result? Within 11 months their bonus check had gone from $3,000 per month to $20,000 per month! Given the expense of radio air time (not to mention production costs, editing, 800 number costs, call back costs, the cost of an answering service, etc.), are these leads really any better than those being generated by other less expensive advertisements? Mark and Sharon believe so. The fast paced talk show format allows them to achieve several goals at the same time: Present the product and the business opportunity Provide plenty of testimonials as people proof Educate while selling Get people to start knowing, liking, and trusting them By the time Sharon and Mark call back a lead, that person is much more likely to have started developing a personal relationship with them. And it s easy to talk with them because these prospects are calling for more specific information about product and are often ready to order at least a sample. The radio generated prospect is a much warmer lead than someone who s reading a national newspaper s classified ad section and calling 20 toll free numbers every week to keep the old mail box full of exciting mail. The radio format is simply more friendly and personal than any other form of advertising except perhaps a TV infomercial. However, radio is much less expensive. Radio generates new leads, not MLM junkies. These people are usually not on their 10 th company in 8 months and they re definitely interested in cutting edge products that s why they listened to the show. What Mark, Sharon, and their successful downline members have to add to the equation is their ability to show the prospect genuine concern and build a relationship. In case you re wondering, that s genuine concern for Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 236

107 the prospect s needs, wants, and fears not genuine concern for the salesperson s lining their own pockets! Some distributors can do that, others can t. Low Cost Leads? That Depends on You. What about the cost of leads? That s an important issue, but it can be misleading too. If you spend $1,000 to get 250 leads, your nominal cost is $4 per lead. But if those leads generate $2,000 in immediate revenue, they didn t cost you anything. So the ultimate cost of leads not just the nominal cost is what really matters in building a business. As far as nominal costs go, next to leads generated by TV infomercials, radio advertising is the highest price lead generation program. But it can also be one of the most productive if a distributor can convert a good number of his leads into sales and business builders. Sharon and Mark won t let downline members with low conversion ratios stay with the program... it s too expensive for them. While Sharon and Mark will be the first to tell you that the nominal cost per lead varies by station, show time, and many other factors, you can begin to assume that their ultimate costs are fairly low because of their experience turning prospects into customers. Based on having lots and lots of experience, here are their numbers: From 100 Radio calls, Up to 75 will try the product (Sharon and Mark are quick to add IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING and address their needs. You must address the needs of the caller, not your need to make a sale. A long-term commitment based on showing interest in callers must predominate their motives. This cannot be a me, me, me thing. ) From the same 100 calls, Up to 25 will decide to start the business. Note: Some people with the very same leads get no results! And for some people radio is not the solution they need! Fortunately, a network marketer does not have to have the same high conversion rate to make radio prospecting work. But such high numbers should be the goal. Is It Expensive? That depends. The Sharon and Mark always open new stations using co-ops. While every station is different, the average co-op costs $200 to $600 per month to participate. Sharon and Mark warn people up front: Don t expect to join the co-op and have your downline commissions pay for your participation after a month or two. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 237

108 It takes new distributors 30 to 60 days just to start feeling comfortable with the product line! The initial product sales may cover your phone bills at first but it takes six months to one year to get the best results. Unless all the distributors in the group can stick with it that long, they aren t allowed to participate. What Is The Average Profitable Radio Station? It would be wonderful to say that the perfect station is always AM, FM, talk or rock and costs only $100 per week. But the truth is that there is no real average station profile. Any station anywhere can work, but people have to test stations in their area for best results. For example, one downtown radio station they tested produced lots of leads, but this station reached a heavy beer drinking clientele. When Sharon and Mark called, instead of buying nutritional products, these people only wanted to debate the merits of nutrition! While this sort of station may be excellent for generating leads if you re selling Beer and Pretzels by MLM, it wasn t a prospect base interested in high tech nutritional products! One network marketer who is developing his business along parallel lines to Sharon and Mark started out with a one hour Sunday morning slot paying several hundred dollars per month. It was at a throwaway time slot at 7 am. The station manager sold it to him to pocket the money and never expected the fellow to renew. But the network marketer started making so much money, the station owner signed up and now the airtime is free. This was a California station with about 10,000 watts. It s an AM talk format, but at 7:00 AM Sunday when this program aired, everything is pretty much talk or elevator music. Sharon and Mark report that stations of any and every format can be used, however. If there s one common denominator about Sharon and Mark that tells me, it s that they have generally ended up avoiding both the highest price, most popular stations in town and the lowest price, least popular stations in town. Before You Sign A Contract Obviously, you need to have a radio show to air but we ll get to that in a moment. To get the maximum number of leads, you need a toll free number. If you re using a voice mail or answering service, their lines must be able to handle multiple callers at the same time. Whether you re using an answering service or voice mail system, you must capture the caller s name, address, and phone number. Exactly how many operators you need when using an answering service depends on the call volume especially during the show and immediately after it. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 238

109 You ll also need a system for distributing leads. That could be a full or part-time office assistant. Some voice mail systems will automatically distribute new leads as they come in. Some answering services let users download leads by fax on demand and the co-op leader then distributes them. Whatever the system, the callers should be followed up immediately... within hours. The radio station will not deal with a co-op. They want just one name on the dotted line. Don t put your name on a long-term airtime contract before you make sure the station is productive. You need to test each station short term before asking for a 3-month rate. Every contract should have an out clause. It allows you to stop advertising with the proper notice. This may be two weeks, three weeks, etc. This protects you if, for some reason, the station no longer pulls in the leads. Keep in mind you may simply want to change time slots, not pull your show completely if the station has pulled well in the past. You must communicate that if the leads aren t generated, you will go elsewhere! Format of show Sharon and Mark for the most part don t do live shows. Live radio can be filled with um s, er s, ah s and distracting gaps in the conversation. They want quick paced shows without these distractions for maximum effect on the listeners. They like pre-recorded shows so they can air at any time of the day or night. Each show is interview based. While Sharon and Mark are participants who give testimonies or respond to questions, the show itself is guided by a silver tongued master of ceremonies who has one job to keep things moving along. Sometimes the MC is from their downline organization. Other times, you may wish to use a locally recognized radio personality. Like a fast paced product showcase, the program has questions, guests, product testimonials, and also a smattering of business concepts thrown in as well. The key is to have lots of enthusiastic, credible voices, not a droning monologue! Coming In Under Budget If you run your fingers through the Yellow Pages and call some marketing professionals, you can probably create a very nice, professionally done show for $5,000 to $10,000 before you ve been on the air a single second, and the people you hire will be very happy you called. Now let s see how Sharon and Mark advise real people to get this same work done at significantly lower prices: Here s the work that needs to be done to get on the air. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 239

110 First you need a script. Since you want to use the testimonials and sales approaches that already work for your opportunity, the script writing part is probably adapting what already works for you. This is very important: DO NOT TRY TO REINVENT THE WHEEL! To keep the production costs down, you must use the show as long as possible. Therefore, to save money NEVER mention the time, date or location of the broadcast. Don t say, It s a wonderful 90 degrees here in Orlando and alienate all the freezing listeners in blizzard plagued Buffalo, New York by trying to run the program there later. If you re completely new to network marketing but you have money to burn on this project, you need to team up with an experienced downline builder who already knows what is working, that is, the customers hot buttons. The next cost is studio time to record the show. You can rent time at a freestanding recording studio, but Sharon and Mark go the smart route. They say to the station: We re going to be running our show on your station, what about letting us use your studio to record the show? Usually this greatly reduces your production costs. You may only be charged a nominal fee for the editing. Or, after negotiating the price of the airtime just as you re about to sign, simply say: Now that includes the studio time for preparing the show and editing, I m sure. If everybody in town the radio station you re using included is out to make you pay through the nose for studio time and editing, Sharon and Mark still have a way around that. The one exception they ll make to using ALL pre-recorded shows is to do the first one live, record it, and then edit out the stammering and pauses and then rebroadcast it. This requires lots of practice on the part of everyone who ll participate so that the show will only be slightly edited you can t start over on live radio. If your budget is tight though, this is a good way to reduce the cost of getting that first show on the air. Your Master of Ceremonies and special guests are usually right there in your downline organization if you take a moment to look. That too saves you money. If they re not in the radio co-op directly, you can help them by building under them with some of the prospects you get from the radio. Otherwise, you may be able to get a local radio personality whose voice people recognize and trust, for a fee. When figuring production costs, you re going to need several shows. Running just one show again and again bores people. Instead of them getting that second, third, fourth, or fifth exposure to your message that they need to trust you enough to call, they turn you off literally. Sharon and Mark have a clever way around this though. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 240

111 They ve found it s cheaper to purchase a full hour of airtime. Half-hour broadcasts cost about two-thirds of what an hour-long show costs anyway. Nevertheless, Sharon and Mark produce half-hour shows. Let s say they make four slightly different shows that we ll label A, B, C, & D. Instead of having 4 hour-long programs that the listeners feel they re starting to memorize, Sharon and Mark can mix and match different shows. They can even tell if one show is really bad for some reason and pull that show without having to redo an entirely new hour of broadcasting. Here s how they can mix and match the shows, for example: Week 1 - Shows A and C Week 2 - Shows B and D Week 3 - Shows A and B Week 4 - Shows C and D Week 5 - Shows A and D Week 6 - Shows B and C Now they can reverse time slots and run the second show first. It creates much more variety for the listeners than having just 4 one-hour shows. Using Sharon and Mark s methods of reducing production costs, that single show that some amateurs will pay $5,000 to $10,000 to have produced may cost as little as $500, one-tenth the cost! Since you ultimately want to do several shows for variety, you must use every strategy possible to save money! Feeder Effect Not everybody can participate in the radio co-ops. Though co-op leaders would like the money to reach more people, most people just don t have the skills to make it pay. So, for Sharon and Mark at least, it s unethical to take their money. Just because radio prospecting is for a few key business builders doesn t mean an entire downline organization can t benefit from the radio programs. This is what Sharon and Mark call the feeder effect of radio. The feeder effect comes from the fact that radio as mass media has lots of credibility. It s assumed that if you have money to get on the air, you must be a genuine business. The first feeder effect besides the automatic credibility is to make the usually unheard of MLM Company suddenly look really big. People in Sharon and Mark s company but in other lines have let Sharon and Mark know that they ve been able to use the radio program to build their own Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 241

112 downlines. They tell the prospect you ve heard about us on the radio. Many prospects go Oh, yeah! or Where can I hear that show? Naturally any downline member is free to do the same. Every organization has a prospecting tape or two or ten. They all have the same problem. Virtually anyone with a $20 cassette recorder can make some kind of prospecting tape and they do. Very, very few network marketers though are using prospecting tapes that are obviously real live radio programs. Again, the pay to play factor kicks in. Someone, somewhere in the organization had the bucks and talent to join the ranks of the big dogs and get on the air. If the distributor passing out the tape was the Master of Ceremonies or one of the guests with testimonials, the tape has even more power for the distributor. In that case the distributor may even say, Hey, hear my radio debut! Sometimes the feeder effect is so strong; you re tempted to go to your MLM Company to have them help you sponsor the airtime. Sadly, that just doesn t work most of the time. Sometimes companies like the results, but feel the show has to be more professional. Sharon and Mark have seen company executives spend thousands of dollars on radio shows that never really pulled as well as the grass roots shows that they could put together on a shoestring. The lesson: keep doing what you re doing and if the company asks, Can we help? just tell them to throw some more money in the comp plan or pay your phone bill! The key feeder effect comes into play though because Sharon and Mark use the radio leads in a particular way: as an incentive. For instance, Sharon and Mark will work a radio lead with a new downline member only after the new business builder has arranged several three way calls with their own warm market leads. Used as incentives, the radio leads go to encourage the most active downline members and reinforce their activity. Read this paragraph again-- that s incredible leverage for your business. Just don t give away the radio leads to people cold. Training New Distributors Training the distributors generated by radio advertising is much the same way as training distributors recruited using other methods. Until these new people learn the ropes, they won t be invited to participate in any sort of radio co-op, though they can use audiotapes of the shows and ask prospects to listen to the radio broadcast as part of their own prospecting. Because they work long distance, Sharon and Mark s training emphasizes: 1) Teaching new people what to say and why they say it so they can personalize it. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 242

113 2) Progressive Three Way Calls where the new distributor goes from listening passively to participating some and then handling virtually the entire call. At this point the distributor starts training his new associates. Pretty simple, but it works. Radio Can Bankrupt You. Yes, handled properly as Sharon and Mark work it, it can be extremely lucrative, but it CAN bankrupt you. There are lots of costs involved: 1) Production Cost of several shows 2) Cost of producing Good Shows 3) Air Time 4) Toll Free Number 5) Cost of picking up and disseminating leads (voice mail to assistant) The hidden costs are the unscrupulous people. Some people will verbally commit to the co-op, let you sign a contract, take your leads, and then never pay up. Despite a few bad apples, Sharon and Mark are at a point of subsidizing radio in their new areas and only taking the leads until they ve identified and trained leaders in that area who want to work the radio. Or they ll pay for the first month, and gradually scale back over several months. Or they ll pay for one or more of the co-op shares and not take the leads themselves to help subsidize the radio cost. This helps their downline get a good start and helps them keep the cost reasonable. Then they can go help someone else. They re trying to build deep. Another temptation Sharon and Mark tell their co-op members to avoid is the trap of sending out information. When you have dozens of leads with names and addresses in front of you, it s easy to be reluctant to call and just send them a tape that supposedly will do all the work for you. In this theory they ll hear the tape and voila! they sign up in the program. If that were possible, Sharon and Mark would simply make radio shows so powerful that people would sign up just from listening to them and they d never worry about building a downline! You wouldn t need a relationship at all! If it was possible to control people s minds with a radio program, why sell product? Just get them to send money in the mail cash, small bills! But that s NOT the way it is and, because that s so, you have a wonderful Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 243

114 opportunity add value to an MLM Company and a radio prospecting system! So they have a rule: Don t send any information to anyone until you ve talked to them on the phone. If you play your cards right, hopefully the first thing you ll send them is a receipt for their product order and a distributor application! How Long Does It Take To Get Started? You don t have to get a Ph.D. in radio to get started. Depending on whether you have to create your own first show or not, it could literally be as little as 30 to 60 days to scope out the station you want to use, negotiate terms, and get started. If you have to create a script, 90 days tops. That seems like a lot of time, but when you consider the lead time on print advertising or card decks, it s not too much more. And you ll have the luxury of working mainly with people who are not already network marketers -- they won t have to unlearn bad habits. Security We all dread building something because our downline or company could completely fall apart. After Sharon and Mark reached the $20,000 per month level with their MLM Company using this radio prospecting system, philosophical disagreements occurred. So they decided to retire from that company. Within a few months, after finding another company that fit their needs, they decided to build a new downline. Even though they ve had to create new shows and start a new downline from scratch, the skills were completely transferable. That s security. That s why MLM professionals are paid the big bucks, not because the products are totally unique or because the compensation plan has 1% more on the 27 th level. So what radio prospecting skills will you choose to build today? If you want to get started on radio, remember these basic points: 1) Adapt what already works elsewhere, 2) Don t start unless you can already recruit and train distributors. Radio generates leads -- it doesn t hypnotize people into joining your program, 3) Make it a program that would keep your attention if you were driving around town and turning the radio dial until you found something interesting, 4) Don t believe them when they say it will cost you $10,000 to make one show, Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 244

115 5) Start a co-op to fund your radio prospecting, 6) Follow up the leads immediately, 7) Use the leads as incentives, 8) Duplicate the system on another station as soon as you can, 9) Commit to 12 months of radio prospecting for best results. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 245

116 You are not responsible for other people s personal decisions. Want to present your network marketing opportunity in a relaxed, stress-free, and rejection-free environment? Try making your business presentation from this point of view. Your obligation is to let the prospect know about your network marketing opportunity. That s it. You are not obligated to make up the prospect s mind. You are not obligated to force or close the prospect. You are not obligated to determine what s best for your prospect. All you are obligated to do is to let the prospect know the facts. Then, it is up to the prospect to make a decision to join or not to join. Your prospect will know what is best for him. Many times a prospect will hear about your network marketing opportunity and it will not be a good time in his life to join. For instance, he could be getting married shortly. Maybe there is a problem at work or a family crisis. However, if you present your opportunity in a professional manner, and treat the prospect like an adult by allowing him to make a decision based upon his personal circumstances, when the time is right for the prospect, he ll think of you and your opportunity favorably. Remember, don t take your prospect s decision personally. You aren t responsible for making the decision about what is best in his life. You re only responsible for offering the prospect the chance to join your network marketing opportunity. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 246

117 Using a simple follow-up system. For a simple and inexpensive Paper Based System, you can go down to the office supply store and buy a cardboard box designed to keep index cards. Then buy dividers for every month of the year. Also purchase some dividers marked 1-31 for every day of the month. When you get a prospect you think you can work well with, put that person s contact information on the index card. The card should contain at least their full name, address, telephone, and fax numbers. If possible it should have some information about their background, goals, etc. You want enough information to remind you why you thought they might be such a hot prospect in the first place. Then if you want to call that person back in three months, put the card behind the appropriate divider. On the first of each month, pull out the cards behind that divider and start contacting these folks. At first, to keep up your activity, you may want to call them monthly. Then perhaps every three months. Some people will actually tell you when to call them back. They don t want you calling them while they re still content with their present situation, but just in case things change, they don t mind you calling back in a few months! If you re using this system to recruit prospective distributors, the idea is to build relationships -- not do the hard sell. If you remain in your company long term, what you ll find is that your prospects often keep changing jobs or opportunities. After several calls to the same person who keeps switching situations while you re making real progress, something amazing will happen. What you say will start to carry more importance to your prospect. Not because you ll necessarily be saying anything new, but because you re no longer just another voice on the phone. Because he or she keeps changing programs and you don t, you re suddenly someone who has the leverage of making progress in network marketing and the leverage of having built a relationship with that person. Sometimes this can happen in as few as 90 days. There are several mistakes you ll want to avoid while using this system. In most businesses, you re looking for paying customers. You primarily want a sale to happen quickly so you can pocket the profit. You can use this index card system to sell product if that s what you want to do. But I m suggesting you use it to cultivate future business partners. Your Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 247

118 calls should be friendly, regular, and low key. Sure, tell them about the new things that are going on at your company. But don t use these to make a fast sale. Don t put every name in your follow up file if you buy a mailing list. Don t confuse the 1000 names and phone numbers as all prospects worth following up for you. You should call them the first time to be sure, but you need to start sorting them. What kind of people do you work best with? Small business owners? People in your profession? Anybody but people in your line of work? People over 30? People under 30? People who are already successful? People who are itching for their first true success? Or maybe just the ones you have a good feeling about? Whatever the criteria, you need to start deciding who you d enjoy working with long term and who you think might be very stressful to work with. Call back the ones you think it would be fun to work with. Call the others one time and after you disqualify them, throw their names away. After awhile, you ll start accumulating a lot of names. Don t stop putting new names into your system. It may be easier to keep contacting people you ve spoken with before, but you need to keep looking for new prospects and new leaders at least a little bit of the time even after you re making an impressive income. As you start your career, you ll be looking for leaders to sponsor directly under you. As you keep growing as a leader, you ll be looking for new leaders to sponsor under other downline leaders like an MLM Matchmaker so that each leg is as strong as it can possibly be. The same thing can be done using Computerized Systems. If you were online and collecting addresses of your prospects, it wouldn t be difficult to send some semi-personal to dozens, hundreds or thousands of people each week for very little cost. It would be very easy to lose the personal element if you never contact them in any other way besides . But without falling into that trap, it s possible to purchase database programs that allow you to follow up on a regular basis just like a card system. The draw back with the card system is that it isn t alphabetized unless you have TWO BOXES and TWO SETS OF INDEX CARDS... one set alphabetized and one set arranged for planned follow up. That way if you ve planned to call Tom Jones in three months and he calls after two and one half months, you won t wonder, What happened to Card! Then again, how many prospects ever call you back? A computerized database that can be searched alphabetically and arranged to schedule tasks can solve these problems. Either way, you should follow up on the people you think you d like to be partners with. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 248

119 How to raise money for your sponsoring campaigns. Here s what you can do to raise $1000 in the next 30 to 60 days to properly start your network marketing sponsoring campaign without having to borrow money. 1) Write down every penny you spend for a week. In any given year, most people fritter away $5,000 or more and have no idea where the money went. If you practice writing down everything you spend money on, you ll likely spend less or at least identify wasted money and redirect it to your home business plan. Some financial planners say we can save up to $ 600 per year by simply putting the household s spare change into a cookie jar every night. If that holds true for your family, after 60 days you ll have $100 extra dollars for your home business! 2) Are you over-withholding on your paycheck? If you get huge refunds at tax time, you may be able to free up $100 to $200 per month for every exemption you re not claiming at work. You ll have to talk to your tax preparer and/or human resources officer at work to find out for yourself. This may be a way to get some extra cash. 3) Are you eating out too much? A family of 4 may eat out a couple times per week and spend 30 dollars a time (or more). Could you plan ahead and cut back, saving $30 per week? In 60 days that would be $250 for your home business. 4) Can you bring a bag lunch to school or work? It s not a problem to brown bag it to save money. I ve even found that the fewer processed carbohydrates I eat in the way of French Fries, white bread and buns, and sugary drinks saved me considerable cash and reduced my waistline at the same time. Maybe this suggestion will make you money just by helping you look more athletic, suave or professional (at least I m hoping that works for me one day!). Instead of buying expensive vending machine drinks, take a six-pack of your favorite soda to the office and stash it for when you re thirsty. Substitute a generic drink to save more money if you can find one that tastes real. You could be saving several dollars per day this way. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 249

120 5) Cut your own grass instead of hiring it out until your network marketing time is worth more than the gardener s hourly fee. 6) TV is eating you alive! So cut out this money destroyer! Here are the problems - a) It makes you a brain dead passive couch potato too lazy to get off your rump and do things you need to do in your life. Inactivity costs you money even if you re watching free TV! One person I know had an interesting way of breaking the habit. When he was a young man 20 years ago and realized his salary would never be sufficient, he decided to start a home based business in the evenings to supplement his income. But what about their TV time they wondered? They decided that for every half hour of TV they watched, they d put 25 cents per person into a piggy bank to donate to charity (Make that $2.50 per person per half hour today!). Once they started that rule, they found very little television to watch. Who knows? If you re a big TV addict, maybe you can finance your $1,000 this way if you pay your piggy bank faithfully! The point is, if you re a slave to TV, you ll never devote time to your business anyway. b) Stop renting videos! How many times have you simply wasted money on trashy videos or got so many you couldn t watch them all? If you have to watch a new video, go to the library and check them out for free or borrow part of a friend s collection if you don t mind being a mind numbed passive couch potato (see a above). c) Cut the Cable! You want another $50 to $100 in 30 to 60 days? Maybe you should cut off the Cable TV. How much money has it put in your pocket lately? How much has it taken out of your pocket though? d) Whatever you do, DON T MAKE UP FOR THE LACK OF TV BY GOING TO THE MOVIES. In fact until your business is up and running well, DON T GO TO THE MOVIES AT ALL! Get a free video from a friend or the library and have your soda and popcorn at home. 7) Stops playing golfing unless you re out in a cow pasture somewhere where it s free. This is just another money waster until your business is running well. I m sure you re tempted to think, But I could find new prospects here. Yes, you can IF YOU HAVE A BUSINESS TO TELL THEM ABOUT OR ARE LEGITIMATELY PROSPECTING. But for now you have zero, zip, zilch, NOTHING. If you re gone from the links two months and are starting to do well and get back for an occasional Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 250

121 game THEN YOU LL HAVE SOMETHING TO TELL THEM ABOUT but not before. 8) Reduce shopping time for clothes, etc. In fact while you re in this rapid cash accumulation phase, STOP LOOKING AT CATALOGS OF WANT TO HAVE ITEMS and STOP WINDOW SHOPPING. It will just tempt you to spend the money you ve managed to save so far. Before you buy something new while you re trying to fund your business, ask yourself: a) Do I really need it? Will this help me reach my dream? b) If the answer is yes... can you pay for it with cash? Could you get it somewhere else cheaper? Have you considered auctions, flea markets and other sources? c) Have I waited for 24 hours to see if the need suddenly wasn t so great? d) Is there a less expensive alternative I could use? 9) This will be a hard thing for many of you to do. But I suggest that if you really need the start up cash that you HOLD A YARD SALE or take your junk - I mean antiques - or whatever you think you can sell to the flea market. If you hate to sell in those contexts, go to the flea market some Saturday and see what s being sold there. Find the person(s) selling the things closest to what you have to offer and offer to sell them what you have so they can resell it. You can meet them during the week and never have to return to the flea market (but you ll make more cash selling it directly). They might even want to sell your MLM products if you mention them. You could get a distributor out of this! An alternative to the flea markets with potentially higher returns for some household items is using a consignment shop. a) What could you sell? b) How about that second or third TV? How about that second or third VCR? How about that second or third radio? c) How about those expensive power tools you ve never learned how to use and think only exist to be props for he man TV sitcoms? d) How about that old air conditioner sitting in the garage that still works? e) How about that old lawnmower you replaced last season? f) How about the kids old bikes they never ride anymore? Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 251

122 g) How about the kids video games they re too mature to play with anymore? h) How about the paperback books you ve accumulated over the years? (At the very least trade your old paperbacks for something you haven t read if you re a reading fanatic!) i) How about the kids assortment of stuffed animals, toys, infants clothes, and other outgrown accouterments of childhood collection which no longer appeal to them? j) Maybe you could sell the transmitter and receiver system you used to use to hear your baby snore? k) How about any old appliance that still works? l) How about selling that exercise machine(s) that is like new because you never used it (them)? m) How about selling that extra computer junk you have lying around but never use? n) There s bound to be something you can sell! I didn t even mention selling your old shoes, old suits and party dresses that have somehow shrunk with age! 10) If you really need to bite the bullet to free up money RIGHT NOW and every month thereafter, here s a radical suggestion. Remember you asked for it. Sell one or both of your cars to pay them off completely. Then buy a cheap functional car you can pay off all at once. Use your monthly payments, which you now no longer owe to a) Keep your junker(s) running and b) The surplus to fund your new business. Of course, don t use your car to impress people in that situation unless your grandma gives you her Mercedes for free. If you re really desperate I suppose you could sell your house and move into something smaller that would free up more money too... of course your spouse might threaten to kill you and being dead would then make it hard to operate a home based business! But you get the idea... this concept can free up monthly cash flow you can then use in your business! What if none of my suggestions applies to you and you are penniless? It would be better to get a part time job at a burger place, learn their system and work there saving every penny for a few months than go into debt. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 252

123 Remember, creating a viable home business that lasts a lifetime won t happen overnight. Better to discipline yourself for a few extra months working a part time job than go deeper into debt. No, this isn t the glamorous approach of embarking into an opportunity and going from rags to riches in a few weeks. This is the decidedly unglamorous approach that can save you from racking up credit card bills you ll take years to repay by trying to emulate the glamorous approach by faking it until you make it! Want more ideas? Okay, here they are... 1) Plan to resell some or all of your product purchases at retail the first few months to recover your capital plus earn retail profits. 2) Have your paycheck from work deposited directly into your account to avoid the temptation of walking around with lots of cash that disappears. 3) If your spouse is more likely to be the saver in the family - give the checkbook to your spouse! Still need another idea for some quick cash? OK, here s one that may work. Run a small inexpensive classified ad or distribute a flyer that reads: Spring Cleaning Any Time Of Year! Will clean out rooms, closets, basements, attics and garages and leave your room in immaculate condition and haul off the junk too for $20 plus landfill fee! Lots of people could do this as a small business perpetually, but it does soon get tiresome. Basically you re going to go to a messy room of some sort, clean out all the junk and leave the room looking nice. You ll use their vacuum cleaner to tidy up, and you ll straighten up everything before you go. Then you ll haul off the trash. You re probably thinking, For $20 I d go broke doing all that! Would you be surprised to know that you could probably do this service for free and still make money? Here s how: Once you leave with a truckload of junk, you don t go straight to the landfill. Instead, you take all the metals and plastics to the recycling center (or you accumulate a truckload and take it all at once). Collect your fee. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 253

124 You take old lamps, fixable furniture, and anything potentially collectible like old games, baseball cards, etc. to the antique dealers who give you the best prices. (If you re not sure what is collectible nowadays the answer is almost anything. Take a trip to the antique stores in town. Collect your fee. You take clothes to for-profit secondhand stores or consignment shops. Or you give them to some charity for a tax receipt. Collect your fee. You may be able to take other things like used golf clubs, athletic gear, fishing rods, guns, etc. to pawn shops or secondhand stores that will pay or let you trade for what you need there. Collect your fee. Old washers, dryers and other appliances may be sold for parts to people who specialize in fixing these things. Collect your fee. Salvage kids toys, games, etc. that are no longer used to take to thee secondhand shops. Salvage as much as you can and sell it to the appropriate buyers. Collect your fees. What s left you take to the landfill. Because you never know until you sort through things at home just how much you can salvage, you collect the full landfill fee. Here it s $27 for one pickup truckload. What if after salvaging items from three homes you have only one full truckload? Your cost is only $27, though you ve collected $81 for this service. Obviously if other people in town copy your idea and you find out that you re only making one trip to the junkyard for every few homes, you may take a chance and say, $20 per room with free delivery to the landfill we ll waive the $27 landfill fee! That s up to you of course, but you do have some flexibility. And the $27 you collected from some homes where you didn t go straight to the landfill isn t all profit. You still had to drive around town disposing of the goods to various buyers. You are still paying a landfill fee of some sorts. Note: If you don t charge something for your service, people will be suspicious and likely not call you. They ll be afraid you re casing the joint for a future robbery or something. Or they ll figure that salvaging everything is so profitable you should pay them for the favor of rooting through their garbage. You don t want your customers having either perception because neither is true! Let s say that for every house you serve you get $20 fee, $27 landfill fee, and you make another $25 on average from the salvage. (Maybe you ll make $100 or more depending on the finds you make but let s be conservative.) That s $72 per trip for a few hours work. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 254

125 You do four jobs per week or $288. You make two trips to the landfill ($54). Driving around to deliver all the other stuff takes another $30. You ve got over $200 to reinvest in your business. In a month you ll have your $1000. Maybe lots more. If you save proceeds and roll it into your MLM business these profits aren t taxable because you re going to devote them to future business expenses. If you can develop a good rapport with the people you re working for, you might even be able to sell them some of your MLM products for extra profits. OK, you ve read this material so what are you going to do about it? What steps will you take RIGHT NOW to begin generating an extra $1,000 in the next 30 to 60 days to start your business or sponsoring campaign? Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 255

126 What your prospects would really like to know. When I do my live workshops, I don t do any introductions and I don t spend any time talking about my credentials. I just start sharing prospecting techniques. The workshop participants don t care about my credentials. And, they are right. My credentials won t make them a cent. I wrote six books on how to sponsor distributors. Because I wrote those six books, not a single workshop participant will earn an extra dollar on his bonus check. Even if my credentials included a Ph.D. degree in Networking, my credentials still don t mean a thing. Why? Because the workshop attendees don t want to know about credentials -- they want to know about EXPERIENCES. Book theory or my personal bank account balance won t put money in the workshop participants pockets. Real life experiences, case studies, proven real world strategies and techniques are what distributors want to hear. The same principle applies to sponsoring. What don t your prospects want to know? They don t want to know how big your car is. They don t want to know how big your bonus check was last month. They don t care how many heavy hitter awards you have won. All these things are things you ve accomplished. Your prospects may not believe they have the same skills or abilities to match your accomplishments. So, what do your prospects really want to know? Experiences. They want to know how you helped other distributors become successful. They would like to hear about other people in similar circumstances who have been helped by you to become successful. If you re successful in networking, you should have lots of these real life experiences to share with prospects. Your sponsoring presentations will be easy. What if you re not successful in networking or just starting? What should you do then? Sounds like a great time to start building your successful experiences. Instead of sponsoring wide, wide, wide, why not concentrate on your best distributor? Put some extra effort into helping one of your distributors make it to the top. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 256

127 Once you have your first success story, move on to your next. You ll soon get the reputation of somebody who makes people successful. That s a great reputation to own. And, prospects will be attracted to you. It makes sense. Prospects don t care what you have done for yourself. They want to know what you have done for the people you have sponsored. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 257

128 What am I doing wrong? I m a distributor for a natural health products company. Many of my distributors hold Health & Nutrition Hours in their homes to introduce our company and our business opportunity to prospects. We send out a lot of invitations, but few people come. Worse yet, even fewer guests become customers or distributors. I know our products and opportunity are great, so what is the problem? Analysis: What you have is a marketing problem. The problem is not with your products or company. You ll simply have to promote and market your business more proficiently. If you were sending out lots of invitations and getting very few people to attend, then you d want to look at these three factors: Factor #1: You might be sending out invitations to an unqualified list. Can you find better-qualified prospects to mail to? For example, if you re mailing health invitations to overweight, confirmed alcoholic, chain smokers, you re going to have a problem getting anyone to show up. So ask yourself, Who would be great prospects for my business? Maybe your response would improve if you sent invitations to prospects who: Actively exercise Join health clubs Shop at stores that sell fitness wear Walk or jog on weekends Buy bottled water Like to bicycle Want to lose weight Use your imagination. Think of the ideal prospect for your business. Put yourself in that prospect s shoes. Where would you go, what would you do? That will give you clues to where you can locate better prospects. For instance, let s say that you decide that bottled water drinkers are the best prospects for your business. Why not follow the bottle water truck as it makes its deliveries? Then you ll know which businesses and residences are willing to invest extra money for better health. After all, they are already spending extra money on clean water. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 258

129 Once you ve identified this group of prospects, mail a sales letter with your materials or follow up with a telephone call to this select group. Or better yet, why not take the bottled water driver to lunch? Explain how your products complement clean water and how your products would benefit his customers. Arrange to have the driver leave behind a sealed envelope with your sales materials at each stop. Who knows? Maybe after your explanation, the bottled water truck driver might decide to become a distributor also. Factor #2: The sales copy in your invitation might be boring or ineffective. For instance, if you say, Come to a health lecture. -- that s boring! Why not put a little energy and creativity into your writing. Maybe you could say: Find out how you can have more energy than your teenagers! If you want your sales copy to shine, invest some time with a professional marketer to enhance your message. Or, invest some time in training yourself to become a proficient and effective writer. You are in competition with professional copywriters to grab your prospects attention. You are competing with television, radio, newspaper, sports events, family time, social time, hobby time and more. If you want to break through that clutter, you ll have to say or write something very, very interesting. Invest the time and money to learn this skill because you ll be reaping the rewards for the rest of your networking career. Factor #3: Who is doing the inviting? When a prospect receives an invitation, he immediately thinks, Who sent this to me? What is my relationship with this person? The closer the relationship, the more powerful the invitation. Or to put it another way, an invitation from Mom will always do better that junk mail. Focus your efforts on inviting people you know, and who think of you favorably. If that list is small, it s time to build that list of people who think of you favorably. It s easier to market to this list, so the bigger the list, the more guests you ll have. You can: Meet more people at work Meet more people at parties Take up new hobbies or activities Get married and have instant in-laws. You can also create a brand new list of people who think of you favorably by advertising and mailing to cold prospects. If you take the time to consistently contact these same people, you ll build a relationship with them. You can easily contact a cold prospect once a month by sending him an audiotape, a newspaper clipping, a newsletter, or a Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 259

130 sample of your product. It is easy to think up excuses and ways of consistently contacting people. What happens when you consistently contact strangers? In time, their circumstances change. Maybe a friend starts a successful business, a new baby arrives, or maybe they get passed over for a promotion. Now this prospect is motivated to come to your meeting because he is looking for an opportunity. Many times marketing is simply keeping you in front of the prospect and waiting for when the time is right. Remember, one of the words in network marketing is marketing. Most of your business challenges can be solved with good marketing. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 260

131 What can I say for an opening sentence when dealing with telephone inquiries? Answer: It s not so much what you say, but how you say it. For example, let s say that we have a magic phrase that works wonderfully. We say: I d like to show you how you can build a nice parttime income. This statement may work for some people, but not for others. Why? Because of who you are... and what you believe. If a sleazy used car salesman said, I d like to show you how you can build a nice part-time income. -- well, it wouldn t be too effective, would it? Or if a three-year-old child said, I d like to show you how you can build a nice part-time income -- the prospect wouldn t respond favorably, even though the right words were said. If you truly believe that you can help the person calling, it shows through in your voice. Now, for a couple ideas on what you could say: Thanks for calling. Which part of the ad interested you? Thanks for calling. What would you like me to tell you first? Thanks for calling. What type of opportunity are you looking for? Remember, there is no magic in the above sentences. The magic is not in what you say, but how you say it. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 261

132 When everything else fails in building a group, remember the Chinese Water Torture. One drop of water aimed at the center of your forehead while you re forcibly restrained is no big deal. Ten, twenty, even a hundred drops is no big deal either. But by drop number one thousand, you re on the verge of becoming stark raving mad. You ll do anything to stop the annoying drip, drip, drip! Anything! That s the exact reaction you want your prospects to have from your marketing efforts, except for the going insane part. What are the odds that a prospect would like to hear about you, want more information, listen to an audiotape, sign up on the spot, and become a fantastically profitable business builder in your group? Zero. That s why no prospect should be considered a bad lead until they ve been exposed to your marketing several times. There s no magic number of times to contact people. Different people all making money by sending out sales letters say different things. Some direct mail experts say to mail to prospects seven times over a period of 18 months one letter every three months. Others say to send them three letters within the first four weeks after they ve indicated some interest. You re giving them a special bonus for ordering by the fourth week so each of the two follow up letters reminds them that time is running out! That way the fear of loss is put to work in addition to any other motivations your prospects might have like to be healthier, save money, etc. Then these people say to repeat the process six months later if they don t buy. Still others say to mail an offer (maybe even the same offer) every two weeks for three months. Then they ll mail again on a periodic basis. The second and third both are more focused on making that first quick sale. Then these mailers will focus more marketing efforts on the buyers because they re more likely to buy again. Non-buyers will still get an occasional mailing. Because no two successful mail order theories seem alike, I can t help but say your successful marketing strategy will end up being like the Chinese Water Torture... drip, drip, drip, drip until you contact them at just the right time for them to receive your message. Sometimes it takes Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 262

133 two years. One mail order marketer said he opened the mail one day and received an order form that was 16 years old! The point of all this talk is that when you get the names of potential customers and distributors from your other local marketing efforts, don t just contact them one time. Even if you re only sending a downline newsletter, keep contacting them. Keep sending them offers. Keep letting them know you re there. Undoubtedly, some will try other products and possibly even other opportunities. If you keep them on your list month after month, you know 99% will be out of that opportunity (or have it go broke on them) within a short time. Then who will be contacting them again? Good, reliable, steady you! Your opportunity is still around. Your products are still working. When you re using the Chinese Water Torture follow up method, you don t have to be a genius in writing sales letters. You don t have to send out expensive glossy brochures every month. A simple newsletter will do. Be sure to have special offers and plenty of testimonials and proof for your products and business opportunity. It s better to spend the money sending twelve monthly newsletters to a prospect (less than $10) than sending one expensive video in the mail. Here s a simple outline for your newsletter... 1) Special Offer of the month insert for non-members. 2) Headline about What s New... be sure to state the benefit of what s new... not just the fact of something being new. What s the big deal about a powdered children s vitamin you can mix into juice? Your infants and toddlers can finally get the same supplements you take start them off right! 3) Testimonials and Success Stories... as many as possible to build credibility. 4) Product tips. 5) Achievements in the group. 6) Business Building tips. 7) Calendar of events... local and conference calls. Pretty simple? Yes, if you will do it! Because you re mailing to local people, there won t be much in the way of long distance calls or lots of travel unless you want to do try to work your business out of town. When at first they don t sign up, keep after them with the Chinese Water Torture! Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 263

134 Create a Class or Support Group One entrepreneur recently sold thousands of dollars of a brand new nutritional supplement that is expensive and highly technical. If it were on the shelf of a vitamin store in most malls, it would never sell because people would take one look at the price tag and say this is outrageous! Yet people buy lots of it. How did he make the sale? He took time to educate his prospects in depth. By the time the education process was done, they were clamoring to buy this expensive product. Of course, educating prospects about unique products is what network marketing is all about. We sell products that need more explanation than the generic products that clutter the grocery store shelves. So the reason a 20-hour per week network marketer can earn $20 per hour when everyone else in town is working for not much more than minimum wage is because of the educational work. Telling people the story one-on-one, week after week could get tiring. So sometimes it s good to create a class or workshop environment where you can tell the same story to a group. Sometimes your product or opportunity lends itself to a group demonstration in some way. The thing to remember when doing such a class is that people don t want to come and hear a lecture on Why You Should Buy Product X From Me Right Now! or Why you should join my company right now. Prospects don t want products, they want solutions. So what solutions do you have to offer? Perhaps your only problem is the need to spend a few moments redefining how you and your products/opportunity can solve people s problems. If your topic is generic enough and powerful enough, you might even get some community college or adult education organization somewhere who ll pay you to teach the course. And the community college will advertise the course for you! Another entrepreneur lives in a major urban area where there s an adult education program. They will promote his class on network marketing... along with dozens of other adult education programs...with no upfront cost! He charges $25 per student. The adult education center receives half the fee for whoever shows up and gives him a free meeting room. Don t forget, once you have a good presentation (his is totally generic), you can find people who ll pay you to prospect. Even if they just use their advertising money to get students for your class and you do it for free, you re still way ahead of the game! There are Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 264

135 many possible topics. Need help? You can often get it from your company s marketing department andor your local library or the Internet. Each of the following topics relates to actual network marketing company products or services or the business opportunity at the time of this writing: Boosting Athletic Performance Without Deadly Steroids! Tax Breaks Of The Billionaire s You Can Now Use! How To Get Out Of Debt Once And For All Without An Embarrassing Bankruptcy! Creating Multiple Streams Of Income For Your Small Business! The Truth About Getting Started In Mail order! How To Buy A Used Car Without Getting Ripped Off And How To Keep It Running More Affordably! How to start a profitable business with No Employees, No Debt, and No Huge Franchise Fees! How To Avoid Costly, If Not Illegal, Home Business Scams! How To Get A Free Exotic Vacation Every Year By Redirecting The Money You Already Spend! How To Preserve Your Family s Fondest Memories For The Next Generation How To Put the Profits Back In The Family Farm David vs. Goliath II: Marketing Ideas That Make Wal-Mart Cringe! Secrets Of Selling Success Boosting Your Children s IQ s While They Play! How To Easily Teach Your Child To Read In Your Spare Time At Home Before Age Five! How To Survive Corporate Downsizing Creating A Virtual Office For Your Home Business How To Be Your Own Frugal Gourmet 10 Easy Steps To Quit Smoking! How To Rejuvenate Smelly and Smoke Damaged Old Clothes, Books, Furniture and Rooms By Yourself and sell these throw away items for big profits Home Computers and the Internet For Morons 10 Secret Advertising Strategies for the Small Office/Home Office Maybe this list will help you come up with some powerful headlines for what you have to offer. Don t recognize these companies? It s either Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 265

136 because you don t know your competition or, worse, have limited how you describe what you do to conventional terms instead of being creative! Now, can you come up with some ideas for a class? What about a support group? Be sure not to make it too depressing. Your model should probably be something like Weight Watchers. You could call it a workshop or party. Weight Watchers started because someone trying to lose weight realized their progress was much more consistent if there were a group of people facing the same problem. They could do better as individuals if the group held them accountable. That simple idea created a weight loss empire that is still doing well today because of all the spin off enterprises that developed from the original concept. But many network marketers have used the same concept also: Just start your own Weight Watchers under a different name. One friend of mine found it was extremely easy to get people together to talk about the latest diet concepts, weigh themselves, have a pot luck dinner, and they would always place orders for more products! One company that sells cooking supplies uses a dinner party as their sales and recruiting presentation because people love to eat. And when they re happy, they buy things that they think will make them happy in the future if they repeat the dinner party experience. Another friend of mine hosts workshops where she teaches people to make archival quality family albums. Her husband shakes his head almost every time I see him and says people are over here all the time giving my wife money! I ve never seen anything like it! I guess you could say he s supportive of her business because it s putting their daughter through college and its only a brand new business! But it all comes from doing workshops. Best of all, people who attend the workshops ask her to join as a distributor! What kind of class, support group, or workshop can you come up with? Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 266

137 Bigger than a button. You can do more than wear a lapel pin or a lapel button to advertise your program. Why not think big? Really big? Why not purchase a magnetic sign that attaches to your car? 1) The signs are cheap. 2) The signs are seen by new prospects every day. 3) Once you pay for your signs, your advertising is free for the life of the sign. How much will your signs cost? About $25 for the setup cost and about $50 for a pair of signs (one sign for each side of your car.) However, make sure your sign is short, catchy, and easy to read. Your prospects might only see your sign for a second as you speed by. A good sign will have a good benefit or reason to call and your phone number. Want a couple of examples? Earn $300 a month part time. Call Free car for life. Call Earn money eating food. Call Look 15 years younger. Call I m sure you ll learn lots of great headlines that will fit your business elsewhere in this manual. If you don t have a local magnetic sign dealer, here are a few places to get some prices and ideas: 1) Trumark Stamps and Signs th Avenue S.E., Mailing Address: Box 5243, Stn. A, Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2H 1X6 Tel.: Fax: [email protected] 2) Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 267

138 3) ADS Signs (Texas) (972) ) 5) AMB Signs 15 Monument Square Dover-Foxcroft, Maine Phone: or Fax: ) Alpha Signs 1055 Woodcrest Lane Hazelwood, MO Phone: (314) Fax: (314) Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 268

139 Meet new prospects and build contacts online in discussion groups. discussion groups are different from newsgroups. Most groups don t allow advertising, but they all allow exchange of ideas and a chance to build relationships and contacts. At the time of this writing, there are over 90,000 different discussion groups registered at You can join one list or as many lists as you have time for. You may want to start by monitoring the business lists, the marketing lists, and the MLM lists. To make your time most efficient, remember to have a good signature file that tells about you, and hopefully you ll have your own URL so people can visit you at your personal web site. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 269

140 Death Wish Advertising The first thing Harry did was to take out an ad in a large metropolitan newspaper. With a circulation of over 400, Harry got the exposure he was looking for. B-r-r-r-r-i-i-i-i-i-n-n-n-n-g-g-g-g, b-r-r-r-r-i-i-i-i-i-n-nn-n-g-g-g-g! His telephone rang off the hook with responses. Harry had to take off a whole week from work to answer his telephone up to 16 hours a day. Who called? Prospects. But what kind of prospects were they? They were looking for jobs, instant income, quick paychecks and medical benefits with three weeks vacation time. But Harry is not a quitter. He hung in there. He explained to these prospects the difference between a job, a part-time job, and having your own multilevel marketing business. Harry siphoned some money from his savings account and mailed over 250 company literature packs to the best prospects. Harry s patience paid off. Over 40 prospects agreed to a face-to-face appointment to see the whole picture and see all the benefits of his own multilevel marketing business. And, a great percentage of these prospects (31) actually showed up at their appointments. Guess what 28 of the prospects said after seeing the complete multilevel company presentation? They told Harry, Hey, I answered the ad to earn money -- not to spend money. You want me to buy a distributor kit, buy some sales aids, buy some advertising, buy some products, buy some... is this some kind of bait n switch con game or fraud? I need extra money. I don t need to be giving you money! Well, those things happen. Sometimes you have to waste time and spend huge amounts of money for zero results. But, what about the other three prospects that Harry interviewed? They got excited. They purchased distributor kits. And, the three new distributors purchased a little product. Then, what happened? Nothing. Sure the new distributors used some of the product at home, but nothing else happened. Should they have recruited some new distributors? Maybe, but they didn t know how. They barely knew what multilevel marketing was all about after the one presentation by Harry. Should they have brought guests to meetings? They didn t have a clue how to approach, interest, and close an appointment with someone in their warm market. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 270

141 Should they have retailed lots of product? You got to be kidding! Their total multilevel marketing experience was writing a check to Harry for a distributor kit, sales aids, and products. Unfortunately, Harry was incredibly persistent. With well over $1,500 invested in this recruiting campaign, he couldn t afford to quit now. Harry spent the next four months training, baby-sitting, cajoling, begging, visiting, and pleading with these three new recruits. The payoff? Harry now has three distributors who occasionally order products. Why do I share Harry s story with you? Because this didn t have to happen. Nobody told Harry the real truth, the real insider s secret about advertising for multilevel distributors. Don t. The secret? Don t advertise for distributors. The process of converting a cold, job-hunting prospect into a distributor kit purchaser is hard. Then, it gets even harder when you have to convince the prospect that multilevel marketing is really a legitimate opportunity and that the prospect should just hang in there for a few months or years to learn the ropes. If you have money to burn, and enjoy endless verbal philosophical discussions with minimally motivated prospects, well then, I guess this could be as good of a hobby as any. But, let s get serious. What went wrong with Harry s plan? First, Harry wanted the maximum number of phone calls he could get. To do this, he advertised to the general population in a metropolitan newspaper. Let me ask you, if you spend 16 hours a day answering phone calls, how much multilevel business can you do on the side? How much training? How much leadership development? Not much. You see, Harry wasted tremendous amounts of his valuable time visiting with unqualified prospects because he advertised in the wrong place. Second, Harry advertised for distributors. Now, don t get me wrong, distributors are great. However, the Real, insider s secret on multilevel advertising is that the pros don t advertise for distributors - - they advertise for leaders. When you sponsor a leader, things happen. Leaders sponsor distributors and other leaders. They retail products, come to meetings, and give training sessions. You can get a good return on your advertising investment when you advertise for leaders. And quite honestly, if you Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 271

142 have enough sense to advertise for leaders, you will have enough sense to locate a publication that leaders read or will have enough sense to advertise in the proper category in a general circulation publication. Just throwing large amounts of advertising money away to any old publication means that you may be advertising to the wrong market. If you advertise in the help wanted section, you ll attract prospects looking for a job. If you advertise in the business opportunity section, you ll attract prospects looking for an opportunity. Certainly you ll get fewer prospects from the business opportunity ad, but they will be better prospects. You ll have to weigh the pros and cons for yourself. Higher quality but fewer prospects or lower quality but more prospects. The choice is yours. If you have lots of time and no one to talk to, your decision might be different than someone with limited time. Here s the difference when you recruit for leaders. I talked with one California advertiser who reported that:... Over the months, I recruited two good leaders -- and a couple of good distributors. One leader earns me $2,800 per month and the other leader earns me $2,200 per month. The distributors I signed up are fine, but you have to locate leaders to be at the top in multilevel. Copyright 2000 KAAS Publishing 272