Do You Know What Your Best Commodity Is?
To be successful in network marketing you must answer this foundational question. If you are going to build any small business – be it brick and mortar or any home based business – it is essential to know what your best product is.
If you listen to what most people in the network marketing industry say it seems safe to assume that the focus is on two things: product quality and the opportunity itself. Prospecting becomes an activity where the business owner tries to convince friends or strangers that his products are the best. Or that some aspect of his opportunity is the greatest. The best pay plan for example.
Granted these are important. But most prospects aren’t really interested in the quality of your products or the richness of your pay plan. That is because it is not immediately obvious to your prospect how any of this affects her. It may be obvious to you. But she doesn’t get it.
Why? Because she isn’t looking for your quality products or your great pay plan. So if she isn’t looking for your product, selling its quality doesn’t help you sponsor people.
If product quality – or your opportunity – is not your number one selling point then what is? To answer that all important question let’s ask another one.
What One Thing Are All Your Prospects Looking For?
Once you answer this question properly you will realize that selling product quality – or your opportunity – isn’t your best course of action. In fact you don’t want to sell your products at all. Not directly.
Confused?
To clear up the confusion let’s answer the second question. All your potential prospects and customers are looking for solutions to their problems.
So how do you build a successful home based business? You identify the problems your potential prospects and customers have and provide solutions.
Let’s look at two examples:
Let’s say that you know something about kidney health. Instead of trying to convince people that your product will cure their kidney problems take a slightly different approach.
Produce content that helps people solve their kidney problems.
Tell people – a certain niche of people – how they can improve their own kidney health. Maybe there are certain dietary considerations to keep in mind. Perhaps exercise can help. Perhaps drinking more water. Perhaps supplementing with certain nutrients.
Whatever someone can do to improve their kidney health… tell them. Help them heal themselves.
So are you healing the world for free? Not exactly. You are branding yourself as a trusted expert and advisor in a particular area of health. You are demonstrating yourself to be an expert to whom people can turn when they want solutions to their kidney problems.
And they will take your advice. When it comes time to buy a product that will help them, to whom do you think they will turn?
Here’s the other example.
Let’s say you know a lot about building an online network marketing company. Why not help other people achieve the same success? Tell them how to do it. Help hungry business builders begin the process of building their own successful network marketing business.
Tell them how to change their thinking away from traditional prospecting methods. Tell them where and how to build online content. Tell them how to build a marketing system that will draw prospects to them.
Again, you are branding yourself as an expert advisor who will help others achieve their goals and solve their problems. When it comes time to align themselves with someone in business to whom do you think they will turn?
The Best Thing You Can Offer Your Prospects
But I still haven’t fully answered your question. The question about what your number one commodity is.
Have you guessed it? It is not your product. Nor is it your opportunity. It is nothing like this. It is…
YOU.
You, as an expert and mentor, are the most important thing you have to offer your prospects. Show them that you are willing to help them solve their problems and they will seek you out.
By: Gregory Post
Posts Tagged ‘Network Marketing’
Network Marketing – Get More Prospects by Offering the Product They Want
January 16th, 2010Attraction Marketing Takes Over the Network Marketing Industry
December 29th, 2009
So you keep reading about Attraction Marketing but you can’t find an exact definition. Good thing you found this article then, right? That’s actually a little bit of attraction marketing right there. Something about the way I wrote this article made it appeal to you. In other words, you were attracted to it.
It’s not a magic trick. You were simply drawn to this article because of the way I chose to market a topic that a thousand or more other people have written about.
Attraction Marketing refers to a particular way of attracting other peple to you, your product or your service. Basically, you are injecting yourself into whatever you’re doing so that other people relate to you as a real person and not another faceless name online.
Look back at every single successful marketing campaign in recent memory and you’ll see that individuals and companies are all using some form of attraction marketing. The old days when listing advantages and hard selling used to work are over.
The most important fundamental concept of Attraction Marketing is that you are really selling yourself! Not the product. Not the service. And certainly not the company you represent. It’s all about you as a person who naturally attracts people by the unique way you talk, think, and look.
When you offer yourself and your knowledge through a successful marketing campaign and in an effort to genuinely help others, your world will turn into a steady flow of prospects, leads and sales. You can’t fake it. What you’re sending out online is a little piece of you that says “Here I am. Let’s talk”
Think about it this way: Say you’re buying something at the mall and a sales person is really pushing hard to make a sale. That kind of behavior actually repels customers. The same is true for sales people who just standing around looking bored and sales people who don’t pay attention to their personal appearance. Now imagine the last time you actually bought something because of the sales person. Did they start out with a conversation or ask if they could help you? Did they know a lot about the products they were selling? Did they sound polite even when you said you were only looking? See the difference? Even if we weren’t persuaded to buy anything at that moment, you were left with a good shopping experience. You’re also likely to come back at some point and buy something from that salesperson because he/she made the experience pleasant. In short, we are attracted to people who fulfill our basic need to be acknowledged, respected and treated well. Now apply that to online marketing. That is what Attraction Marketing is all about.
Here are some ways to apply Attraction Marketing in your own home-based online business:
Visibility – Every successful marketing campaign ever conducted made it a point to be visible to its market. That’s where the Internet and search engine optimization (SEO) comes in. After all, you need to be seen before you can help someone.
Value -Provide genuine value by giving people what they need (acknowledgment, respect and good treatment).
Leadership – Lead them through the process that will help solve their problem. Don’t push a solution on them; guide them to it. This has the double advantage of building trust and promoting satisfaction in the transaction.
By: Brian Horwitz
Network Marketing Success – 3 Tips to Stay Focused
December 28th, 2009
There’s been a booming trend lately with so-called internet marketing “gurus”: Big ticket seminars and product launches.
You know the kind.
“Starting in two weeks, you only have three days to pony up $10k for my exclusive product launch, and after that it’s too late to ever learn all the secrets to exploding your income online.”
Then, each day your in-box is pounded with JV/partner/affiliate promotions for the same launch:
“Use my link and I’ll give you an extra bonus”
“Oooh! Oooh! Pick me, and I’ll give you one of my products FREE!”
“No wait! Pick ME and I’ll give you my shirt, my first born, a new car, and a bunch of other stuff that’s really cool I swear.”
What we have here is a classic example of finding a niche and filling it. Only in this case, the niche is people with “shiny object syndrome”.
We get so caught up in trying to grow our business using the latest internet marketing tactics that we float from one new product to another, without ever fully implementing the strategies we learned in the last product we purchased.
We’re stuck on having “the latest and greatest” so that we’re not left out in the cold. Heaven forbid we might miss out on a couple of dollars, when in reality, we’re probably “dropping dollars to pick up dimes” as my momma would say.
“Mad Guru” disease is sweeping the Internet. These ultra pricey products and events are causing most of us to pull our hair out! Why are they so pricey? Many times, it’s because HALF (or more) of the ticket price is being paid out in commissions to affiliates!
And as long as the gurus are raking in the cash, they’ll keep serving the market. Why not? It’s lucrative for everyone who owns a “company store” – selling picks and shovels to the internet and network marketing miners.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot to be learned here. As a Network Marketer, I came online to grow my business using tools and strategies I learned from the Internet. I have created a successful niche and career for myself selling those same picks and shovels to network marketing miners.
You’ve heard it said before “sell the dream, not the deal.” And on it goes in the wild wild Web.
It really got me to thinking about my customers, and what I was sending them. Was I over promoting and under-delivering? I serve a network marketing community where every penny (and second) is precious. To waste the time (or money) of a stay-at-home soccer mom of four that’s trying to keep “the ends” together, juggle multiple family schedules, and have a little free time for her family is ludicrous!
When I went away for four days and came home to over 1400 unread messages in my inbox, it hit me.
The inordinate amount of time I was WASTING reading the same jv promotion over and over was insane: sometimes 2 or 3 emails from the same person in one day!
Frankly, I would have trouble sleeping at night if I pulled these same kinds of shenanigans. Call me nuts, but I’d feel guilty sending out that much email to my list!
It’s painful and shameful to admit, but I’m a recovering “shine-ob-ite” myself. I think I was subscribed to something like 40 different mailing lists – probably more, but I lost count. So, I got VERY selective. My time is more valuable to me now.
But more importantly, it taught me a lesson. As I was culling my in-box that day, I counted MAYBE 20 value added messages that weren’t blatant affiliate/jv promotions. Those subscriptions, I kept. The rest went bye bye.
I’m not ANTI-affiliate marketing. I’m not Anti-Internet Marketing. I’m not even ANTI-guru. I participate in affiliate programs, I sell products and offers to my list. But I also believe in providing substantial value for the return on investment.
The secret is no secret. Build relationships, be friendly, and stop selling everything that isn’t nailed down to your list.
To that end, here are 3 tips to keep you on track with your online network marketing prospecting:
Focus. Mark Joyner talks about that. See your target. Stay focused on your target without distraction, and hit it until you hit it. It may mean picking one of the programs you’ve already purchased, implementing it, and seeing it through to completion. It may mean unsubscribing from all the newsletters, mailing lists and marketing propaganda that are distracting you from hitting our goal. Whatever it takes, if success is to be yours, find one program, dedicate some time to it, and see it through until you get the results you want – or until you’re convinced you need something else to get you there. Stop living in fear. Over 80% of our decision making is motivated out of fear. This was a hard lesson for me to learn. I was constantly reading anything and everything I could to grow my business. The problem was, I wasn’t implementing anything, and couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t successful. Afraid I was missing something, I kept buying, reading and researching without implementing – so afraid that I’d miss out on the next big thing that was SURE to catapult my business. So step out of fear. Know that you have all the tools you need to be successful (because all you really need is you, anyway), and get started. Sure, there are things that will make you more efficient, but when you’re getting started, success is more important than efficiency – especially if you don’t have the money to spend. Be Courageous. Sounds simple, but it’s not easy. You can’t do it without focus and turning away from fear. Courage is feeling the fear and doing it anyway, according to the card a friend bought for me. Courage is stepping out in faith, beyond where the fear lies – maybe even in the middle of where the fear lies with the focus on a singular goal that you will not be dissuaded from – regardless of naysayers and life’s little happenstances. Once you’ve achieved steps one and two, step three reveals itself, tests you, and propels you toward greatness.
Look at your business, your down line and your goals. Where do you want to be? What are “those voices” saying to you that are paralyzing you in fear? What can you do to drown out the noise, take the first step, and create laser-like focus on your objective?Therein lies the answer to ultimate success.
By: Lisa Young