The 7 Great Lies of Network Marketing

Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 at 11:37 pm  
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The 7 Great Lies of Network Marketing
This book is a definite must read for anyone struggling with their network marketing business, or for those that are looking into network marketing for the first time.
For those already involved and having difficulty obtaining any success, it will help to expose what you are doing wrong, often because that is what your taught by your sponsors.
For those who are just starting to explore the world of network marketing, this ebook can save you from wasting efforts on techniques that just do not work.
This book has seven chapters:
  1. Everyone is your prospect!
  2. This really isn’t sales. We just share products with people!
  3. Anyone can do this!
  4. We’ll build your business for you.
  5. We have the best product ever!
  6. You just don’t have enough belief.
  7. The proven system.
Each chapter goes in depth on it’s particular “lie”. It covers the kinds of activities business builders engage in based on the particular statement. For example, in the first chapter, author Ann Sieg talks about how many network marketers push their opportunity on everyone they meet: their friends and family, doctor, lawyer, dentist, electrician, and the list goes on. She then discusses how this kind of activity has given network marketing such a negative reputation. She closes each chapter with a glimpse into the way network marketing could be done. In the first chapter, she mentions new ways to get prospects. She focuses on the concept of getting prospects to come to you.

Each subsequent chapter is more of the same, applying the same formula to that particular chapter’s “lie”.
What I like most about this ebook is that is does not feel like a marketing guide or a sales pitch. Her writing is extremely conversational, and that makes this ebook such an easy read. She uses many anecdotes from her own experiences to which all network marketers will be able to relate.

And did I mention it is free?
Click here to get your copy of The 7 Great Lies of Network Marketing.

Leverage Part Four: Get Your OWN Website

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009 at 10:30 pm  
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In my last installment, I discussed using your company provided website to promote your business. Today, I am going to talk about why it is so important to establish your own website.

As I mentioned in my last post, your company probably provides some sort of website for you to use in your business. It will have a url with your name in it somewhere (e.g. daryl.bizopp.com), but it will be the same content as every other website of your fellow distributors. This is a bad thing for a couple of reasons.

First, search engines like websites that offer unique content. If your site is the same as everyone else’s in your organization, you have no unique content. (I will go into this in further detail in later posts, but search engines are very important in helping to build your business.)

Second, business opportunities are plentiful. And the distributors in your organization are probably plentiful as well. I do a search and find a bunch of websites that are all the same. Sure, it is duplicatable, but it is uninspiring.

You need to stand out from the crowd. You need to show that you have something more than an opportunity. You need to show that you can  train and guide your downline to success. It establishes you as someone who knows what they are talking about. You can only do this by establishing your own web presence with it’s own content and with a unique, memorable name.

Let me give you an example:

Let’s say I have been looking for a network marketing company to work with, but I have no idea how it really works. It’s just that the thought of having my own business really appeals to me. So, I search the internet, read some blogs, read good reviews and read bad reviews. Then I stumble upon a website that has information about HOW to build a network marketing business. And it’s not located at daryl.bizopp.com, it is www.a-real-persons-name.com. And I start to think that I need to find out what company this webiste’s owner works with. Because they have the best opportunity out there? NO! I don’t really care what company they work with. I am interested because this person can help me build the business. They have crediblity and value in my eyes as someone I want to work with.

By producing this content and offering it free to the public, I have created prospects that WANT to join me, whatever my business opportunity. I am not chasing them down, asking for twenty minutes of their time to “show the plan”. They are coming to me.

Now that is what I call leverage.

Please leave me a comment to let me know what you thought of the article.

Until next time.


Leverage Part Two

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009 at 10:22 pm  
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In part one, we discussed the definition of leverage. In this installment, we will look at ways leverage is applied in a network marketing business.

If you have been involved in network marketing before, you have already heard the term leverage. It is one of the cornerstones of developing a successful business with a solid residual income. You have been taught to leverage your efforts by:

  1. Conducting house parties where you show the plan to a number of prospects at one time,
  2. Bringing prospects to a “second look meeting” where one of the organization’s top earners shows the plan, using his or her success and inspiration to lend credibility to your business opportunity,
  3. Using three-way conference calls with your prospect and your upline,
  4. Recruiting into your downline and through the power of duplication your downline’s efforts then benefit you through volume bonuses.

And the list goes on. Please, don’t misunderstand me. Literal fortunes have been made using the above techniques. But they all suffer from the same fundamental problem: they have to be repeated numerous times, with every new prospect you engage. It is leverage, but nowhere near the amount of leverage you can be using to build your own successful business.

So what is maximum leverage? When your effort produces prospects twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. When it produces prospects while you eat, sleep, spend time with your family, and go on vacation. When it brings prospects to you that are eager for what you have to offer. That is maximum leverage.

In my next installment, we will begin to look at how internet tools enable you to maximize your efforts to build your business.

Please leave me a comment to let me know what you thought of the article.

Until next time.

Leverage Part One

Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 10:11 pm  
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In this entry, I’d like to discuss the concept of leverage and how it relates to network marketing (or any form of marketing, for that matter) .

I thought it might be good to start off with what Websters had to say:

–noun

1. the action of a lever.
2. the mechanical advantage or power gained by using a lever.
3. power or ability to act or to influence people, events, decisions, etc.; sway: Being the only industry in town gave the company considerable leverage in its union negotiations.
4. the use of a small initial investment, credit, or borrowed funds to gain a very high return in relation to one’s investment, to control a much larger investment, or to reduce one’s own liability for any loss.

Well, one and two are great when you are trying to remove that tree stump in the front yard, but not all that helpful for what we are trying to accomplish.

Item three in the above list is getting a lot closer to what we care about: having people in our circle of influence see the immense value and potential in the network marketing business model and see that our business is the right fit for them.

Number four, however, is where we find the real power. Using a small investment of resources (e.g. time and money) to reap rewards that make our initial investment seem ridiculously inconsequential.

In my next installment, we are going to take a look at how leverage applies to building your network marketing business.

Until next time.