Monthly Archives: January 2010

In this post I have the audio recording with me interviewing Debbra Sweet. This is part one to the interview, with the possibility of a part two of the interview the day we can conduct an interview. She goes into detail on what leadership is, how it can be implemented in business, and why network marketers and small business owners alike need to apply it to their business for success.

To listen to this interview, click on this link. If you have problems accessing the interview, be sure to email me at sheldon.marketing@yahoo.com.

In this post I’m sharing with everyone a audio recording of a conversation I had with a buddy of mine named Tone. We had a previous conversation regarding attraction marketing and leadership. The previous conversation covered facts on how network marketers are failing in network marketing because they don’t brand themselves.

This audio recording explains, based on our experiences and knowledge, why self confidence plays a big role whenever you’re networking with others, and how it’ll help you get more distributors a part of your team while also helping you to get more sales of your products. You can also download the audio for later listening. Check it out and hope you all find the information empowering.

When you’re in business for yourself, you have to make the right moves at all times to make sure you convert prospects into paying customers. First you should gain their consent through communicating to them, and then when you have their attention, get them to buy your product or service. Most people in sales know that through effective communication and from asking for the sale often, you can get sales. How about when you’re not working and resting for eight hours a night?

That’s the beauty of having ads. Whether they’re magazine ads, banner ads, or Google Adwords Ads, they do the work for you 24-7. However, traditional marketing tells you to make the best-looking ad that talks about how great a product or service is. This used to work in the past when ads were first used, but not anymore. One of the main reasons why this method is ineffective is because everyone is doing the same thing, shoving their products and services down prospect’s throats.

The traditional method of marketing can be very expensive for an individual marketer, and will surely put them out of business. However, when ads are used right, they will get you the right prospects calling or emailing you asking how you can help solve their problems. In fact, your ads can go as far as to getting you sales without ever talking to the prospect. How great is that? Very great.

If you already know your target market and what their biggest problem is that they need help solving, then writing the ad copy will be much easier, for what you need to do then, is convey the problem in the ad, then talk to them about what you can do for them and the benefits of working with you or buying your product. If you don’t know much about your target market, then the best place to start is through interacting in discussion forums or through reading product reviews from your target market.

By hiring a copywriter, you can make sure you have someone who will be able to write a set of effective ads for you. One site you can check out for hiring a copywriter is www.directresponsejobs.com. When looking to for the right copywriter, make sure he or she has some experience in writing ads. That way you don’t have to spend as much time training him or her on how you want your ads written and how to make them appeal to your target audience.

In order to best make sure your ads are giving you big results, be sure to have more than one version of your ad. This way you can find out what works and what doesn’t. For Internet advertising, you can have two banner ads running on one site, with both of them popping up at random times for prospects to click on. If prospects are clicking on one ad more then the other, but the other ad is converting prospects into customers, which ad are you going to keep? You’re going to keep the one that’s getting you sales, and get rid of the one that isn’t. That way, the ad that was getting you more sales can get you twice as many profits since it’ll be displayed more often.

I decided to touch back to this topic of removing prospect’s fears, for it’s an important topic to cover since a lot of network marketers are dealing with prospects that may have fear that’s keeping them from making a decision. Without customers, a business won’t stay around long, and so learning how to get new customers and keeping those customers around should be a top priority for anyone in network marketing or in business in general.

Do you want to know one of the most effectively ways that a prospect can become more confident in what you have to offer? The answer is, testimonials.  Yes that’s right. Testimonials are highly effective for getting prospects to do what you want them to do most, which is buy your product or join your business.

Why are testimonials so important? Because they tell prospects that other people have tried the product, was satisfied that the product helped solved their problems, and shows how confident other people are in the product you’re offering. People do not want to be the only one using a product. They need proof that other people are using what you’re selling and are happy with the results they’re receiving. Prospects want others to relate to their struggles and problems. To hear from other customers how satisfied they were using your products or services reduces or eliminates the fear, and makes the prospect more comfortable and willing to buy from you.

Remember this, a customer’s testimonial is a thousand times more powerful than what you have to say. A prospect may not always listen to you, but they will always listen to a happy customer. So when you have a customer, make sure to continuously keep your relationship with them well established. When you have happy customers, they’ll market your offerings for you. That’s also when you can call them and ask them for a testimonial, which they’ll be more than happy to give you.

Once you have a good set of testimonials, include them in your marketing materials, including emails and post cards. If you have a blog, have a testimonials section that has all the testimonials you’ve obtained. You can have a short testimonial on your business cards, only if you can fit one in.  You can even have a testimonials document that you can give to prospects of some of the best testimonials you have. With testimonials the possibilities are very well open.

Remember, prospects are much more likely to listen to happy customers than you. They’ll be more confident to buy by hearing from other people that has been satisfied with your products or services that’s not a part of your business. Think back of that time when you said you weren’t ever going to buy something, but then ended up doing so because a friend tried it and told you how great it was. Then when you bought it you was just as satisfied, if not more.

Let’s face it, when it comes to selling products to customers, we tend to spoil them a lot. Us as network marketers tend to give them total control, to the point where they are the bosses of us. Whatever the prospect says or does goes, which is what we do and what we’re taught at times from MLM companies. It gets to the point where, no matter what, network marketers start thinking that they need people to buy their products, and to join their primary opportunities.

That is far from the truth. We don’t need prospects; they need us. They aren’t in control of us, but we do give them that control. We let prospects ask all the questions and put the pressure on us. But that’s not how it should be. If you’re looking to be a leader, you don’t give prospects any authority to be in control.

By giving prospects the ability to be in control and asking all the questions to you makes you look weak. You can’t expect to get sales by just answering all of their questions. The reason why is that you’re not able to find out more about the prospects and their needs, and because then the prospect gets to decide for themselves if your product or company is right for them.

Let me give you an example of an experience where I was the prospect of a network marketer. Me I ask a lot of questions for I want to know what I’m about to get into is right for me, so I had a giant list of questions to ask the network marketer I was contacting.  I went through every single question and jotted down her answers on a notepad. Sure enough, she didn’t ask me any questions back at all. To add to that her answers were very long and broad. I had control of the whole conversation, and could have easily taken the conversation wherever I wanted to.

I was in control of if I wanted anything to do with the company or not, so the time she took answering the questions I asked was a waste of her time if I would of said no at the end. I could of lead her on for a long time with her possibly begging for me to join if she was desperate for new distributors, but I didn’t for I’m not type of person that expects to get everything he wants.

If you have that “I need prospects” mentally, and give that to everyone that you talk about your primary opportunity to, they can easily suck the life out of you. Some prospects test network marketers to see if they are strong or weak. The weak give prospects everything they need and want in order to make a decision, including brochures, compensation plans, free samples, etc. The strong find out first if the prospects are even worthy of giving them the information they ask for in the first place.

To put it in more perspective, the strong find out if prospects are worth their time. In order to find that out, you asks the prospects the questions, not them. You don’t have a lot of time to answer prospect’s questions all day long. By asking them the right questions from the start, you can find out within the first few minutes if the conversation should continue further. If prospects are being rude or sounding hostile when you ask them questions, end the conversation.  You don’t need rude or short-tempered people taking up your valuable time.

If a prospect asks you a question, always end the answer with a question of your own, or answer the question with a question of your own. That way you can still be in control of the conversation, and you can take the pressure off of you. Most importantly, you can take notes to what the prospect tells you in order to discover red flags or buying signals. Remember in network marketing, you’re in business, not your prospects. Run your business the way you want to run it. Never let anyone run it for you.

Your prospects have done it all before. They’ve bout all the books they could that promised them that they could make sales in the next two hours. They’ve paid thousands of dollars worth in attending seminars and found no valuable information from the speakers They’ve even tried products similar to what you’re selling that didn’t help them lost the weight they wanted, remove the dryness in their hair, or helped them to increase their stamina.

Prospects do have goals, or have dreams of where they want to be. I’m sure everyone dreams sometimes during the day, and for sure at night. But oftentimes, people don’t get to the end result that they want. In business, many people have dealt with that, and so do people in health and wellness, the beauty industry, and sports. People fail often, but with enduring the failure comes success.

When people fail, they hold a grudge on that experience, and will say they would never do such and such again. These types of prospects are cautious, and can be very difficult to deal with, for you can say all the right things to them but they still don’t want to listen to you. That flashback of their last failure pops up in their minds again, and holds them back from making a purchase. You can often times discover when a prospect is cautious when they express doubt through talking about a bad experience with a similar product they used midway through a conversation.

First off, what you should do when talking with a cautious prospect, is being a mentor. You’re trying to sell them your product, but first you must find out more about them. You can ask people what other products or services have they used, and they’ll tell you. Ask them then what results did they receive, and they’ll tell you that as well.

For example, when I worked at Apple, for the prospects I talked to that were new to Macintosh computers, I would ask them “Many of our visitors are PC users and are new to Mac. What has you switching from a PC to a Mac?” Prospects would always at that point express their displeasure of PC computers, saying that they crash often, are very non-user friendly, or would experience viruses. They would express their painful experiences with PCs, and I as an mentor for them would listen and build rapport to show them I understand their pains and that I’m there to help.

So you first be that mentor for them, you ask questions, and listen to their past failures or past pains. Then what you do is build rapport to show that you understand their pain. Justify their failures and then encourage them. Never should you criticize your prospects, even if it was their fault or if they were wrong. That’s a sure fire way to lose a sale and to decrease your reputation.

What you then do is show your prospects the many factors that are out of their control that contribute to their failures. In my case with Apple visitors their PCs did have the tendency to slow down, crash, or automatically install programs they never wanted in the first place. Some products are not user friendly, are difficult to use or understand, are low quality and break easily, have side effects that do more harm than good, or were just the wrong product for the consumer thanks to an unethical salesperson. By showing them the many factors, you’re telling prospects it’s not their fault, that you care, and that despite those shortcomings, they should not quit on their goals and dreams.

By this time the prospect is comfortable with you and realizes that you’re an expert that’s there to help them, and will listen to what you have to offer.  Tell them the benefits of buying from you and working with you. Tell you how they will succeed from using your products or working with you, and how you and your products differentiate from what they’ve used before. So if the last product they purchased was very difficult to use, tell them how easy it is to use your products, and the results they will get based on what they’re looking for. If there is a need you can help solve, it makes perfect sense to take advantage of that.

All network marketing companies have great products. They all have the compensation plan that can allow you to make an unlimited amount of income. Every network marketing company has the info of how great their products are and how it’ll benefit those who use them. However, what are the chances that a network marketing company will have info on the target market? Slim to none.

If you were to join a MLM company, they would tell you to find anyone and everyone to buy your product or to join the company. So basically you’re on your own most of the time to find the specific people that can use your product. Although you can make money getting others to join your company, it’s also a good idea to sell the products your company has. For not everyone you come in contact with will want to join your company, but they could use your products that you sell.

So if, for example, your network marketing company sells financial services, you need to find people that are looking to manage their money while at the same time make the money they earn work for them. How do you find those people? Well one method is finding out what magazines they read. Look for magazines that educate readers on managing finances, and subscribe to their magazines. You should be educating yourself with the same information that your prospects read, so that one you can blog about it or write valuable material your target market wants to read, and so you can position yourself as an expert in financial advise so prospects know you are the go to person for help.

Another reason you should look for the places your prospects read or find their information from is so that you know the right places to advertise at. Remember when advertising, substance matters more than the mere look of your ads. Create an ad that tells your prospects what problem you can help solve for them. That will get prospects calling you in a heart beat.

Lastly, what I recommend network marketers do is look at product reviews of similar products. One site you can check out for product reviews is http://www.amazon.com. Not all competitors are other network marketing companies. Some of those products your MLM company is competing against are from large corporations or small businesses. Find out what customers liked and disliked about other products. You’ll find out valuable information on how your prospects think, which gives you the ability to convey the right message to your target audience in your ads copies and when you communicate with them.

In my last blog post, I mentioned about how fear plays a role in a prospect’s purchasing decisions. I mentioned how fear holds them back and how trust should be earned in order to get a prospect to consider buying from you. In this blog post I’ll go a bit deeper in depth on a few way the fear can be removed or reduced in order to get to the last step, which is closing the sale.

To be very specific, prospects do not like to be sold to. They don’t want to talk to another sales person. They want to talk to a human being that understands their pain and can offer a solution to their pain. In order to open the door to where the prospect will want to communicate with you, you need to build rapport. What is building rapport anyways? Well building rapport is talking to your prospects in a warmly manner that makes them feel important, comfortable, appreciated, and more willing to talk to you.

You first build rapport with the prospect by a warm greeting like, “Hi Jane. This is Bob of _________. How are you doing today my friend?” This opens the door to the prospect to answer it in a warmly manner as well. Most of the time, they will ask how you’re doing as well, and say “I’m doing great, thanks for asking.”

As you’re talking to your prospect, you build rapport by saying warmly responses to their answers to your questions or responses to your statements. So when a prospect says that they’re trying to increase their profits without spending so much money, say something like “That’s a great plan. I understand what you’re saying indeed.” Then to add to that statement you can add, “I definitely want to help you achieve that goal.”

What are you accomplishing when you’re building rapport? Three things you are doing when you build rapport with prospects are you’re building their trust, you’re making them comfortable in talking to you, and you’re helping them to remove the fear. The real test comes when the prospect trusts you enough to tell you what’s bothering them, what they’re afraid of, and the reason they’re having a hard time making a decision. When you continue building rapport during this phase of the conversation, you’re showing the prospect that you care, that they are not alone, and that you’re here to help them.

When a prospect says they’re not ready to buy now, respond by saying something like, “I understand where you’re coming from. This is a big purchase for you and I want to help you make the right decision. What’s holding you back from buying today?” This is when the prospect will tell you the reason they aren’t willing to buy now, for at this point they are comfortable with telling you why. There’s many reasons from money, time, fear of what others might think, asking their spouse, buyer’s remorse, etc. If you had been listening to the prospect from the beginning, at times they may give you hints or tell you of their fears or doubts. It’s your job then to build rapport, and have a response that will eliminate that fear and doubt that will make them more eager to buy. If not, and the prospect is telling you when you had asked them for the sale, then build rapport, ask specific questions to find the problem, and offer a respond to eliminate that problem, and most importantly, the fear.

There are distributors in MLM home based businesses today that are probably urging to get a very good prospect that will buy from them. Some distributors may put all their effort and time into a few prospects that they believe will either purchase their products or sign up for their primary opportunity. Things may go good at first when trying to connect with them, but then out of no where either your prospects stopped returning your calls, or flat out told you that they don’t think what you’re trying to sell them will work.

Why is that? What makes a prospect interested at first in what you have to offer, and then all of a sudden they vanish never to return? What makes prospects all of a sudden tell you no when they had been leading you on as if they were ready to buy or sign up to your MLM business? These are questions anyone in network marketing is probably asking himself or herself. I can tell you that there can be many reasons for a prospect to change shift, more than I can explain in one article. In this post I want cover the topic of fear, which is one of the biggest reasons prospects change their minds.

I’ll tell you off the bat, fear is a poison that controls people today. With the massive layoffs that occurred within the last couple of years, people fear of losing their jobs. With the swine flu that occurred last year, people fear of catching it and dying. When someone purchases a product from a company that doesn’t work, they fear of buying from that same company again, let alone a product. So what if they were part of a MLM company that went out of business? You guessed it.

Your job as a network marketer is to help the prospects remove their fears. The thing you have to understand when doing that, is that some people have their fears hidden. They have them masked underneath because they don’t want other people to know about them, for they believe they will look weak if others did know. Most people don’t trust others with telling them what they fear. So if you haven’t built a relationship with them, they won’t trust you either.

To remove the fear from your prospects, you have to ask questions. Lots of questions if need be. First you need to build rapport and make them feel welcomed and happy that they’re talking to you. Get them comfortable by talking about everyday stuff first. Use a bit of humor to make them laugh or smile. Then afterwards, ask questions of their needs. Sometimes they will give you signals of their pains or past experiences. When you do that, you open doors to remove the pain and fear they’re having.

People want help from those willing to understand where they’re coming from. Take note that it takes time before a prospect will buy from you. It can take months before someone purchases from you or signs up for your business. During the whole duration you should be trying to build a relationship with them. Be a good listener and take notes of what your prospects say to you, and keep them on file so you can go where you left off. That way, your prospects will appreciate that you learning about them.

There’s marketing messages everything in the form of ads, emails, brochures, and television commercials. In the MLM industry, there are a lot of people posting marketing messages of their primary opportunities and links to click on their company sites. Being that there are several people doing that strategy to get prospects interested in their opportunity, it’s no wonder why one person is exposed to between 1,500 to 3,000 marketing messages daily.

If you listen to any expert in marketing, they will tell that there is a lot of clutter. And I mean a lot. But how some people are trying to get through the clutter are through blogs and articles. A blog is the central hub that contains one person’s library of information, while articles are topics containing valuable information for the proper audience. These are two methods people are using to also increase their search engine optimization (SEO) rankings, with some achieving success. While many are familiar with what SEO is and how it can benefit them by implementing it into their marketing strategy, many may still not know about Digital Asset Optimization (DAO).

Digital asset optimization is a very fast growing trend right now in online communications. DAO is about having your content spread across several sites, or “channels,” which then contain back links and keywords linking the content back to the place it came from. It’s like how a spider finds a place to set up shop at, and spreads it’s web everywhere so that it sticks to plants or walls while making sure everything stays connected. The same goes for your content. You can have a blog that you use to post content, then post that same content to several article submission directories with a link in the bottom of your blog, allowing search engines and prospects to find where the content originated from.

Articles are one form of DAO. Beyond that, news, images and videos are also what make this method of marketing valuable. You need your content everywhere in order to break through the clutter. People can better find out about what you do if you have images and videos of what you do and how you help others.

Websites, including blogs, are digital assets. Websites containing videos, images, RSS feeds, bookmark sharing features, and podcasts can all be applied into a good digital asset optimization strategy. A company or individual can be able to use all these formats to quickly spread the valuable content out to several sites like YouTube or Delicious, and also allow prospects to spread that content as well, while also allowing them to easily access it. RSS feeds, for example, is an excellent way for one person to easily subscribe to several websites that contain valuable marketing information to their liking, while having all of that content in one place for them to access it.

So how does all this help you to gain the awareness that you need? Easy. First you need a central hub, like a website or a blog. Second, you provide the valuable content for your audience. Third, you make your website user-friendly so people can easily find your information, subscribe to your information, and share it with other people. Lastly, you blast your valuable content all across the Internet that contain keyword rich descriptions of what the content is about, how it’ll help them, and links back to your site.

Follow these steps, do them consistently, and you should get traffic in no time. Beyond that, you will get people ready to opt into your newsletter, your RSS feeds, calling you wanting to learn more about you, or ready to buy. There’s nothing like having a prospect you don’t even know call you out of the blue saying, “Hi. You don’t know me, but I know you. I enjoy your valuable content, and I believe you can help solve my problem. I’m ready to work with you now. Here’s my credit card. When can we start?”

If you are looking to get prospects ready to take action, you have to make sure your message is a real grabber. You can do that best with a video. People can look at your posture, your enthusiastic voice, and your self-confidence. Make a video asking prospects three to five questions of their current situation they can say yes to, then tell them what they need to do next to get their problem resolved. This can be opting into your newsletter, giving you a call immediately, or purchasing a specific product you sell.

Lastly, if you’re looking for an easy and cost effective way to get your content out there quickly, here’s two products I recommend. I recommend Automatic Article Submitter and I recommend Traffic Geyser. Automatic Article Submitter allows you to create different variations of one article so that it looks like you’re sending three or more different articles to three hundred directories. That way, that means more content is blasted through the Internet, which means more traffic to your website through SEO.

Traffic Geyser distributes your videos to ninety different social media sites like Flickr, Vidder and Podcast sites. You’re also able to allow prospects to download your media by making it iTunes MP4 compatible.  Again this allows your target market to easily access and share your content with other people that they know, which is what you want.

If you’re in the MLM industry, and are looking to dive into Internet marketing, you definitely need to take advantage of this method of marketing. Search engine optimization is constantly evolving, and more people are starting to use it. And with digital asset optimization also entering the fray as a fast growing trend, it’s time to take SEO to the next level. Prospects love various forms of content, so give them what they want. They’ll thank you now and buy from you later.