If you've recently joined or you're looking to join a network marketing company then you need to understand that this kind of business requires you to learn how to prospect for potential business partners. Furthermore, it should be understood that prospecting is the very "life blood" of every reputable network marketing company, and that without such an activity your business will literally be dead in the water.
Wikipedia defines prospecting as "the physical search for minerals, fossils "precious" metals or mineral specimens, and is also known as fossicking. Applied to network marketing, prospecting can be defined as "the physical and or cyber search for precious business associates."
I use the term "precious" because that's what these people are to you and your business. When you find a person who wants to learn all they can to build their own business, your business grows too. I have many such precious people in my business and they really are valuable assets to me because they're getting on with their own business building efforts. For example, I just checked my stats this morning to find that an additional 20 new affiliates were added to my team during the last 24 hours. 7 of these were from my own prospecting efforts and the other 13 came from my team (business associates). These team members have spent the time learning how to build their businesses, therefore, I consider them to be precious assets.
It's important to note here that prospecting is a numbers game, why do I say this? Simply because it takes many new prospects to find the few precious gems who will help your business grow. Typically of every 100 people you find only 5% will actually get busy with learning and building. Only 3% will go on to becoming financially independent, and only 1% will become very wealthy. The other 95% usually do nothing and then drop out of the industry for a wide variety of reasons. Therefore, you need to keep in mind that when you're prospecting you're looking for the few out of the many to build your business. Please note that these percentages are based on current industry standards which may change in the future.
So how do you go about prospecting? Here's a short list of the basics:
1) Prospecting begins with marketing.
Just as prospecting is the life blood of every network marketing business, so is marketing the life blood of every prospecting effort you undertake.You cannot prospect without employing a marketing strategy. In today's tech savvy world a predominant part of your marketing will be conducted online. This will include finding places to advertise online using both free and paid services, and creating your own website or blog where you'll educate your readers and recommend companies or products you are associated with. Don't worry, it's not as hard as you might think, however, it will require a little effort on your part to learn the ropes.
Marketing can also take place offline out in your community. This can include newspaper advertising, bulletin board advertising, business cards, and face to face contact with people you meet. Not everyone is comfortable with face to face contact especially with strangers, however, if you don't have a problem with this then use this strategy to your hearts content. I don't employ the face to face strategy (cold contact) with strangers but I do, on occasion, talk to people I already know. It may be helpful at this point to know that you can get training on any marketing method you wish to try. Most reputable network marketing companies will have foundational training and marketing aids available in their back office that you'll be provided with upon registration.
2) Capturing your prospects attention.
In order to capture your prospects attention you'll either need to be writing good content and posting it to your website/blog, or have some good lead capture pages which will capture your prospects details for further contact at a latter date.
If the idea of writing good content seems repulsive to you then you could always use the services of a ghost writer. They can charge anywhere from $5 to $100 for a good search engine optimized article, and the copyright is legally yours because you have paid for the service. Many savvy Internet marketers employ the use of ghost writers to free up their time for other important business concerns, and so can you. I sometimes use a ghost writer to save time and I can tell you from personal experience that they are a valuable asset to my business. That being said, I am actually writing this article.
I also use lead capture pages to capture prospects details. These prospects fill in their name and email address and I follow up with them through my auto-responder. I recently started a campaign which has brought in 1200 prospects who all receive follow up emails from me until they either opt out or sign up. This is relatively easy to set up and is a highly recommended prospecting strategy. Which leads me to my last point.
3) The fortune is in the follow up.
Sometimes a prospect who has just seen your lead capture page or website is not quite ready to buy your product or enroll in your business opportunity immediately. This doesn't mean they never will, they may just need a little time to think things over or check you out as a possible sponsor/mentor. Did you know that it takes 5 to 7 exposures to a marketing message before a person will actually take action? This is why following up with your prospects is so important. Your prospect may not be ready the first time they see your message, but they may be ready by the 5th 6th or 7th message.
If a prospect likes what they're reading on your site they may choose to opt in to your RSS feed. If they do opt in, seek to establish a business centered relationship with them by encouraging them to leave comments on your posts and then answer those comments by posting a comment yourself, even if it's just to say thanks for commenting. If you have a subscription form on your site you may want to post a comment encouraging them to sign up for more info, then your auto-responder can go to work following up for you. You'll need to write a series of follow up emails for this to work. As I stated earlier, if you're stuck for ideas on what to write employ a ghost writer.
Prospecting is not hard to do, however, you must be prepared to learn how to do it and then apply everything you've learned. Remember, prospecting is the life blood of every network marketing business, and marketing is the life blood of prospecting. Get these elements right and you'll be on your way to good success.
iAutoblog the premier autoblogger software
No comments:
Post a Comment