It used to be that network marketing (called MLM) in those days, was really simple. Find a product that you loved, share it with others and grow a retail income. Talk to people about business and see if they wanted to make extra money each month. If so, get them the information they needed to make a decision and sponsor them into your business
I’m not saying that it was ever easy. Like any business done right and well, network marketing is not easy. What I am saying is that it was simple. Simple means that it was lacking in complexity. The actions needed were clearly defined and the order in which they needed to occur were also well delineated.
Let me tell you a story and you tell me if this sounds familiar.
Mary decides she wants a home business. She goes to the internet and types in “home business opportunity”. What comes up is over 52,400,000 entries on a Google search. If you are the lucky marketer of the day, one of the entries in the top 20 out of 52 million, is yours.
Mary finds your page and clicks through, landing on your capture page. She’s intrigued and curious. Even though she’s a bit nervous about giving out any personal information, she puts her name and email into the little box, looking forward to receiving a free report on how to start a successful home business.
You happen to be pretty good at follow through and when you receive Mary’s name in your auto responder you pick up the phone and call her. She’s excited to hear from you and you talk for 20 minutes. Mary agrees to look at some information about your network marketing company. To make a long story short, after a few more calls and emails, she joins your opportunity.
Now Mary is excited to learn how to do this business. In fact, she too wants to develop leads like you did, by being on the first page of Google and having people opt-in. Mary has little knowledge of the internet besides how to check her email. Here’s where it starts to get fuzzy….
You know that Mary has a lot to learn before she can generate leads on her own online. Luckily for her, you offer a coaching club and a lead co-op for your team. But you also know that Mary needs to have some quick success and that means getting in front of live prospects as soon as possible.
Mary’s education about how to build her network marketing business is a mixture of traditional offline prospecting methods combined with exposure as to how to marketing online. Mary is doing her own research and self-educating as well, and begins buying into programs that sound great.
Become the Hunted, Not the Hunter; How Three Friends Went From $0 to over $2 Million in One Year by Generating Our Own Leads; The Renegade Network Marketer.
Within six months Mary has become the victim of Fuzzy Thinking. Her network marketing business is stuck. She is unclear as how to best spend her time and thus much of her energy is inefficiently spent trying to master lead generation through social media, online branding and large quantities of online content creation. Occasionally Mary calls a prospect she met at the mall or the post office, and just as occasionally they are interested in learning more. She is barely covering her monthly qualifications and her team is not growing.
It is a well known fact that most of the top successful network marketers personally speak to at least 20 NEW prospects per week. Many speak to over 100. It takes awhile to be generating those kinds of numbers online. Yet Fuzzy Thinking keeps you from taking the necessary action to make these numbers a reality.
Fuzzy Thinking keeps you stuck. Fuzzy Thinking makes it very difficult to know what your action plan should be each and every day when you wake up. Network marketing used to quite simple. You knew what had to be done each and every day.
Well here is secret….
You still know what needs to be done each and every day. Now you just need to unwind yourself from the haze of Fuzzy Thinking. Are you generating large numbers of leads from your online effort? If not, you need to do two things today!
1. You need to find a way to talk to at least 20 new people each and every week. If you don’t know how to do this TODAY, get help immediately from your upline or a coach.
2. You need to work with your upline or a consultant to steamline your online marketing plan, so that you are both efficient and effective.
A well structured marketing system can be addressed in just a few well organized hours every day.
But right now you need to get unstuck in your network marketing business, and the easiest way to do that is to step back…assess what is working and what is not…get some help in areas that you are struggling…and recommit to interacting with at least 20 real live people who are open to learning about your business opportunity, each and every week.
Coaching both privately and in groups, Deborah is also a speaker, author, event leader and consultant. Creator of the Foundation and Framework Intensive, Question Master and Leader of the Entrepreneur Business Success Club, Deborah has been called an “Architect of Magical Business and Soul Structure”by her clients because she has a powerful ability to perform alchemy, changing passions and dreams into money and time by design.
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You’re right about that Deborah, network marketing has become more complicated. However,it’s much easier with the internet as you say also. At least we don’t have to go out putting flyers in letterboxes, and go to networking events in the hope that at least one of those people will be interested in what we do!
Deborah, you nailed it!! This is a great article and states the current problem with home business seekers so clearly. It is easy to get lost in cyberspace and learning technical skills without a clear online marketing strategy that gets attention each and every day.