What Is The Difference Between Prospecting and Recruiting?

Posted on June 3, 2012 by Wayne

I never really understood the difference between prospecting and recruiting as they related to network marketing. Do you know the difference?

I was listening to a recording of one of my upline leaders in my network marketing company and he explained it very clearly.

Prospecting is about talking to people to find out about them. You are listening for any indications that they may have a need that you can satisfy.

Recruiting is the process of taking that potential interest and creating the belief that you and your business opportunity or product can satisfy that need.

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Are Network Marketers Freaks of Nature?

Posted on May 30, 2012 by Wayne

The idea for this post came from listening to the song Freaks of Nature by Kansas.

When you tell most people that you are joining a network marketing business they look at  you like you are crazy, like you are a freak of nature.

The Free Dictionary defines freak of nature as “a thing or occurrence that is markedly unusual or irregular.”

We are taught while growing up that we need to go to school to get the best education that we can so that we can get a good job. We work away at that job until the government tells us that we are old enough to retire. At that point we get to live comfortably on Social Security and our pension or 401k.

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Why It is Good to Be Uncomfortable

Posted on May 28, 2012 by Wayne

A Minute With MaxwellI joined John Maxwell’s A Minute with Maxwell a couple days ago to get his “word of the day” emails.

Yesterday’s word was discomfort.

John Maxwell says that you “need to learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable.”

Jim Rohn used to say “You need to do the uncomfortable until it becomes comfortable.”

We all know what our comfort zone is and we like to stay there. It’s safe in our comfort zone.

We don’t grow when we stay in our comfort zone though, especially when it comes to our network marketing business. For most of us, if we stayed in our comfort zone then we probably wouldn’t have even joined a network marketing company.

The problem is, once someone joins a network marketing business, the fear of being outside of their comfort zone kicks up, and they jump back inside. They will never do another thing with their new business other than maybe use the product once or twice.

In order to make something of our network marketing business we have to be willing, if not eager, to step outside of our comfort zone.

In my corporate life I was a software developer where I could safely work with just a computer and sometimes interact with other introverted software developers. That was my comfort zone. I didn’t have to do much with other people.

Then I got sick of corporate life and decided to go to massage school. This was not a small step out of my comfort zone. It was a flying leap out of my comfort zone. I forced myself into a situation where I not only had to interact with other people, I had to touch them and develop an energetic connection with them for a little while.

I’ve always been one of those people more afraid of public speaking than of death.

My first step with my network marketing business was starting a blog similar to this one. That was another step outside of my comfort zone. While not exactly public speaking, it is a step in that direction. I get to write in isolation but once I click the Publish button, it is out there for everyone in the world to see.

I had another opportunity to step outside of my comfort zone and face my fear of public speaking recently. I attended a big convention for my network marketing company in Orlando, FL a few weeks ago. I’ve written several other posts about it. During one of the breakout sessions I was asked to talk a little bit about what I am doing with my blog.

I think the room was set up for 100 people, so there were probably 70 people there that I talked to, including the VP of sales from the corporate office. I didn’t feel all that uncomfortable, probably because I was talking about something that I was very comfortable with.

Maybe that is the trick to dealing with the discomfort of being outside your comfort zone. There is some element of comfort in everything that you are likely to do. Find that element of comfort and use it to help you become comfortable with the rest of it.

Wayne Woodworth

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How to Succeed in Network Marketing – Some People Will, Most Won’t

Posted on May 24, 2012 by Wayne

John Kalench“Some will, some won’t, so what – next!”

John Kalench said this about prospecting people into your network marketing business in Being the Best You Can Be In MLM.

This advice applies to a lot of things. I experienced it recently myself. I went to an event put on by the leaders in my network marketing company a few weeks ago. Several people found out that I am building my business online and were curious. They wanted my info so that they could contact me when we all returned back home.

None of them have.

I was interested in helping them get online because it would help me drive up the search rank of my website and help me further refine how I train people, even though these particular people aren’t on my team.

When building anything, like a network marketing business, you cannot waste all of your time chasing your prospects. Check in with them a few times. If they are interested then they will join you. If they are not, put their contact info in your file to check back with them in a few months.

Never chase prospects.

For one, when you chase someone you look desperate. Think back to dating in high school. It’s pretty much the same thing and you will look as unattractive now as the chaser did back then.

More importantly, you will waste a lot of time chasing them that you could better spend working with your real prospects, the ones who will join your team.

I tell people when I talk to them about my network marketing business that I’m not going to push them to join. I could probably hype my business up and get them to join. The problem is, once they have joined I would have to keep hyping it up and pushing them to do every little thing they need to do to build the business.

I don’t want to work that hard.

That’s a big reason for why I am building my network marketing business online. I don’t have to spend my time talking to the people who don’t want anything to do with network marketing. The people who contact me are already interested, and those are the people I want to work with.

So, if you are like that, would like to build a network marketing business online so that you can make better use of your time too, check out my network marketing opportunity and send me an email. My email address is on my opportunity website.

Wayne Woodworth

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How Do You “Do” Network Marketing?

Posted on May 9, 2012 by Wayne

Don’t be a Lone Ranger, but you have to be different and stand out.

I spent a few days in Orlando, FL at a big network marketing event put on by the field leaders with my network marketing company. All of the big wigs were there, both from the field, and the top people from corporate too.

It was very cool.

The first night of the vent involved one or two Diamonds and Royal Diamonds sitting at tables and the rest of us moving from table to table, kind of like speed-dating, to ask them any questions that we have.

Peter, a Diamond in my upline, was at the first table I visited. Instead of me asking him a question, he started asking me questions about the things I am doing to build my business online, which then had the rest of the people at the table curious too.

I moved on to another table when that round was up.

The standard response to “how to build your network marketing business” from the rest of the tables, where they didn’t already know who I am, was to do what everyone else does. Build your list of 100 people, talk to everybody you meet (the 3-foot rule), and keep plugged into the system. Do NOT go it on your own and don’t be a “Lone Ranger”.

Then one person, I don’t remember who, said that to be successful in network marketing you have to be different and stand out from the crowd.

That isn’t something that you hear every day from an old-school network marketer. It makes complete sense from a business standpoint, of course. Why should people join you as opposed to all of the other network marketers out there who are building a business with the same company? I just had never heard another network marketer say it before.

And how do you reconcile “be different” and “stand out” with not being a “Lone Ranger”?

I think many in my network marketing company would consider me a Lone Ranger. I am the only one I know in my company who isn’t building the business in the traditional face-to-face way.

Everything I do starts online. I don’t meet people face-to-face. I rarely go to meetings. I don’t go looking for people to join my team. I don’t makes lists of people and I don’t use the three foot rule. I’m totally rogue.

Except that I’m not. I’m not a Lone Ranger in my network marketing business. I do stay plugged in to the company, more so probably than most. I also stay plugged in with what my Royal Diamond upline is doing. I talk to the corporate and my upline at least once a week.

So, I am being very different but I am not doing it alone. That’s the key.

If you are in a network marketing business, how are you different? How do you stand out from the crowd? Leave me a comment below.

If you are not in a network marketing business, how would you like to get started? Check out my network marketing business opportunity and we’ll figure it out together.

Wayne Woodworth

PS. If you found something interesting in this post, I would appreciate it if you could take a moment to click the “like” button and “tweet” button at the top of this post.

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Why Choose Network Marketing Over Another Business?

Posted on May 7, 2012 by Wayne

I already wrote about why network marketing is better than a regular job here. Now I’m going to talk about why network marketing is better than a lot of other businesses you could get into.

What Are You Going to Sell?

A business exists to make money. Sure, you may have higher goals for your business, but if there isn’t any money flowing into the business, it will eventually fail. To make money, you have to have either a product, a service, or both.

If you have a service business then you have either created a new job for yourself (see the post mentioned above for why that sucks) or you have put yourself into the position of having to manage other people who provide the service for you. Managing other people has a lot of headaches and your customers hold you responsible for your employees actions and performance. No thank you.

A product business is easier in some ways than a service business because once you have your product developed, it’s done. Just sell it. But what is your product? A widget needs to be designed, prototyped, tested, redesigned, and finally manufactured. That’s a lot of work that you have to do before you can ever begin to think about making money. It can also take a lot of money invested up front.

An info product is easier. That could be a book, ebook, online training course, or something along those lines. Like widgets, info products still need to be developed, and that takes time. I think everyone has something to say or that they can teach, but I don’t want to take the time.

With a network marketing business all those product development headaches are already handled. The company does the work of creating the products and keeping them up to date. You can join a network marketing company and skip all of that and go straight to selling and making money.

Inventory and Order Fulfillment

In a regular business, once you have your product developed and ready to sell, you have to have quantities on hand somewhere to ship to your customers. Large companies hire teams of people who’s entire job is to figure out how much product to have on hand at any given time and make sure that there is more coming from the manufacturer to replenish it before it sells out.

Once you have an order, and it is in stock, you have to package it and get it shipped. For a small business, you may box it yourself and schedule a pickup from a shipper. Larger companies arrange contracts with shippers like UPS and FedEx to get more favorable shipping prices. That’s right, more headaches.

With network marketing, at least the company I am with, I don’t have to keep an inventory. Actually, they strongly discourage us from keeping an inventory. They handle all of the inventory challenges and ship the orders.

Payment Processing

Payment processing is not something that I want to have to deal with. Taking payments in cash is easy enough, but you know that most of your customers are going to pay with checks or credit cards.

If all goes well with a check, it clears and you have your payment complete in a few days. If it doesn’t go well, you have additional fees from your bank for a bounced check. I hope you haven’t shipped the order yet.

Credit cards are even more fun. You have to have a merchant account to process the credit card payment. That costs you a monthly fee. There are a lot of rules that you have to be compliant with when you take credit cards. That means more fees.

Like with a check, if all goes well with the credit card transaction you will have money in your account in a few days. If it doesn’t, you don’t. Unlike with a check, a credit card customer can decide to refuse payment once they get their bill.

When you take payment by credit card, you pay a fee to the processor. If a customer decides to return the product then you have to refund the credit card, another transaction fee, and you end up paying those fees out of your own pocket.

My network marketing company handles all of that. The only money I have to deal with is my check from the company on the 15th of every month. Actually, I don’t even have to deal with that because it is a direct deposit. They money is just there.

Is Network Marketing Better?

In my opinion network marketing is much better. I don’t have to deal with product development headaches. They take care of maintaining inventory and shipping the products. They handle all of the payment processing. All I am responsible for is getting the order, entering it into the system, and collecting my cut on the 15th of every month.

Actually, there is a little bit more that I do. I handle customer service because they are my customers. If something goes wrong though, like those extremely rare instances where something isn’t quite right with the product, the network marketing company will deal with that for me. So, I get to have all of the pleasant customer service interaction, and pass off any negative stuff.

I also recruit new people onto my team to help increase our reach and our income. They work for themselves, so new people don’t bring management issues. My responsibility there is to coach the people who want to be coached.

Network marketing makes it so easy.

Wayne Woodworth

PS. Find out more about building a network marketing business online with me here.

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Residual Income in Internet Network Marketing

Posted on May 4, 2012 by Wayne

I am at a network marketing event put on by the leaders in my network marketing company and I will share some of the stuff I am learning here and my business opportunity blog.

What I want to share today is actually something that some new friends and I were discussing last night in the hotel. We were talking about how to build our businesses and make money. I like building volume through retail sales while they are focused on recruiting people. We couldn’t come to an agreement.

Their argument against retail sales was that your income is only as good as your last sale while by recruiting they have more people making sales. That’s when I realized where the disconnect was.

When you are doing the face-to-face network marketing, that’s true. You are only in front of a small number of people and for a limited time. If you just sell a product then that’s it. You’re done. They need distributors on their team to generate residual income.

I am an internet network marketer though. My pages and articles are those distributors that they are looking for. My pages are out there working for me 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That’s my residual income. The difference is that I create them and they don’t take a cut. The money all comes up to me.

To take it further, now that I have a monthly residual income through my own efforts, I can shift my focus to bringing on new people to my team who also want to build their network marketing business online.

So, don’t get me wrong, I am building a team in my network marketing business. It is just easier to start off with retail sales to build residual income. Once you know you have an income, you have a platform from which you can recruit new people to your team.

If this makes sense for you then click over to my busines website to learn more about how I am building my business online. If it doesn’t make sense, then leave me a comment below because I want to hear your thoughts and get into a discussion that we can all learn from.

Wayne Woodworth

PS. I have a follow-up article to this one on my main business website.

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Empower Network Boot Camp – Day 1

Posted on April 21, 2012 by Wayne

I am no longer affiliated with Empower Network.

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Why Choose Network Marketing Over a “Regular Job”

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Wayne

Traditionally, we are raised believing that we have to finish school and go to college to get a good education so that we can then get a good job and toil away the rest of our lives working for someone else.

It’s slavery with a paycheck.

Here are some reasons why building a network marketing business is much better than having a job.

The Boss

As an employee at a job you undoubtedly have a boss. He or she is the person who tells you when you have to be at work, when you have to work late, and tells you what to do every day. They are the person you have to ask if you can have time off for a vacation with your family or to see your kid in their kindergarten play. And they are the person who hands you your token raise every year, if you are lucky.

With a network marketing business, you are the boss. You decide when to work and how long to work, and what to get done each day. Do you want some time off to spend with your family? Take it.

There is an increased level of responsibility with this off course. You are solely responsible for your success or failure. You have to have the self-discipline to do what needs to be done to gain customers and build your team.

Not everyone can handle this kind of responsibility. Personally, I enjoy the freedom.

Promotions and Advancement

As an employee there are limited opportunities for advancement. You are pretty much stuck where you are unless either a position above you is vacated (someone quits, is fired, or dies) or the company creates new positions as part of an expansion. Either way, it’s generally out of your control.

In network marketing there is room for everyone at the top. If I want to be a Royal Diamond in my network marketing business, all I have to do is make the decision and then qualify. I don’t have to displace anyone and it is completely in my control.

Income Limits

All of the jobs that I have worked at have had specific pay ranges associated with them. Once you reach the top of that range all you can hope for is a nominal cost-of-living increase. You could always try to increase your income through advancement, but we’ve already talked about the chances of that happening.

The only job I know of that doesn’t have that limit is in commissioned sales. With a sales job, if you want to make more money, then you sell more product.

It’s the same with network marketing. As a distributor in a network marketing business you are essentially an independent commissioned sales person.

Network marketing one-ups commissioned sales too, at least with my company. I get retail profit and a commission percentage. Officially, I buy the product from the company at wholesale and sell it to my customers at retail for a retail profit. I also earn a commission on each sale based on my distributor rank. It’s very cool.

Your income potential is unlimited.

Job Security

Your continued employment is often out of your hands with a job. Sure, there are some things you can control, like showing up for work on time everyday and getting your work done. There are also a lot of things out of your control, like downsizing.

Working for a publicly traded company is the worst. You think you have a great job and your job is secure. Then one day the CEO decides to retire. A new CEO comes in and decides to improve the stock price by reducing the head count. From then on it is constant worry about whether or not you will survive the next wave of layoffs. My wife and my father have both worked under those conditions.

There is none of that stress when you work for yourself in network marketing. Really, there is no job security to worry about because there is no job. You are your business and it doesn’t exist without you.

That’s why I chose network marketing. It has none of the hassles of a job. No boss, easy advancement, unlimited income, and no job security to worry about. What could be better than that?

Wayne Woodworth

PS. Go to my network marketing opportunity website to learn more about working with me.

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Funded Proposals for Building Your MLM Business

Posted on April 1, 2012 by Wayne

Value of a Funded Proposal in ProspectingDo you know what a funded proposal is?

It is a low cost item,  a product or service, that sits at the top of your marketing funnel to get new prospects. It is called a funded proposal because it can generate enough income to cover the cost of your prospecting. It pays for itself.

Prospecting for most network marketers, especially in the offline world can get very expensive. You have to pay for your brochures, CDs, DVDs, and product samples and then you give them away for free in the hopes that you can follow up and get them to join your team, or at least buy your product. In most cases they will not join, and if they do, it may take months of follow-up before they do. In the mean time, you keep spending more money. It’s going to take a while before you are operating in the black.

With a funded proposal you are offering something of value for a small price, usually $35 or less. That something of value is usually an info product that has little to no cost to provide, like an ebook, video, or other downloadable content. The goal of the funded proposal is that the sale pays for your prospecting upfront.

The funded proposal approach has several benefits over giving away a CD.

Build a list. If your funded proposal is online then you can have your prospects opt in to your list before they buy it. Now, whether they buy your offer or not, they are on your list and you have their permission to market to them.

Better quality prospects. Your prospect must have some level of interest for them to pull out their credit card. When handing out free CDs, your prospect will accept it just to be polite whether they are at all interested or not.

Free marketing. The income from your funded proposal pays for your marketing so that you don’t have to. If you have a good offer, you will never pay for marketing out of your own pocket again.

Something to offer everyone. The funded proposal gives you a bigger reach and income opportunity because you have something to offer to people who may not be interested in your opportunity, or at least not interested yet. This establishes a connection and gives you a means to stay in touch and build a relationship. They may be interested in your network marketing opportunity later.

What are some possible funded proposals

You could always write your own report or ebook or create a valuable video yourself. Another possibility is to purchase the resell rights for someone else’s ebook or content.

Some affiliate marketing programs make for easier options because they are already done and can cost a lot less than buying resell rights.

One affiliate program that I use is Magnetic Sponsoring. It provides some of the best internet marketing training available for beginners.

Magnetic Sponsoring was created by Mike Dillard and has been around for a number of years. One of the benefits of Magnetic Sponsoring is that they have several programs at various price levels and they pay out a 40% commission. One of the downsides is that they control the list. Maybe that isn’t a complete downside because they will continue to market to it for you to build you a commission.

You do have to be a little more careful emailing the people on that list because you don’t have access to the opt out capabilities. You should have your own list management system, like Aweber, and opt them into that list so that they can opt out if they want to.

One more thing. I think you have to buy the Magnetic Sponsoring program for $35 one-time to be an affiliate with Magnetic Sponsoring. Like I said, it offers good training for people getting into internet marketing for their network marketing business. If you choose to promote any of the other products from Magnetic Sponsoring then I highly recommend that you buy the product first so that you can promote in integrity. It’s easier to sell something when you know what is in it.

Wayne Woodworth

Disclaimer: I use both Magnetic Sponsoring for funded proposals. I have purchased several of their products and I am an affiliate. If you decide to buy anything through a link on this website you can safely assume that I may earn a commission.

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