Is Telephone Prospecting Still an Effective Way to Build a Business?

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The old fashioned ways of doing business have become obsolete. Pounding the phones, buying leads, pitching your business to them, having meetings, bothering your friends and family members to try and convince them to join your business just doesn’t work so well any more.

This is old-school sales technology that is irrelevant in todays social and business environment. Today people are being FLOODED with information and marketing noise. Most of us have learned to block out the solicitations that we are constantly being bombarded with, especially on the internet.

People have become so frustrated and impatient with advertisements that entirely new industries products and legislation have been created to shield people from solicitations.  Examples are, pop-up blockers, spam filters and the Do Not Call List. Now that everyone has caller ID people are screening their calls to protect themselves from telemarketers.

Most of us detest solicitations and we just don’t want to be bothered which means you would have to be insane to try to build your business today with cold market and in your face tactics.

Now the internet has created a world of opportunity for everyone where you can turn a simple thought into a business with little or no money at all.

Unfortunately 95% of those who start a home based business will fail. The reason is they didn’t acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to succeed in todays competitive environment.

If you are going to sell something to someone you must find a way to become a welcome guest instead of a pest.

You have two options when it comes to building your business.

You can do things the old school way of prospecting and contact enough people until you make a sale.

Or you can position yourself so that interested prospects can find you and contact you.

Who finds who is actually very important. In the first option you were chasing the prospect. In the second one the prospect was chasing you. In this situation you are perceived as the expert and the one with the power in this interaction.

You are being invited into the prospects world and all the barriers that you would have to break down in the first option have already been broken down and you can instantly bypass them.

All of a sudden it isn’t about selling any more. Instead you are the one who is seen as the knowledgeable service provider who’s expertise has been sought out and pursued.

This is what it takes to break through all the marketing noise in todays marketplace.

“Nobody who bought a drill actually wanted a drill, they wanted a hole. Therefore, if you want to sell drills, you should advertise information about making holes, NOT information about drills.”

What does that mean? It means that our product is not what most networkers really think it is. People don’t care about your opportunity. Sorry to break it to you but they really don’t. People have not been waiting all their lives to be an MLM distributor. People don’t lay awake at night thinking “if only I could be an MLM distributor”. So should it really surprise you when they say “no thanks”?

What people really care about is finding a solution to their problem. It may be a lack of money, wanting to spend more time with their family, etc. Whatever it is that is what the person cares about. Your job is to position yourself as the solution to that problem.

You want your prospects to sell themselves on the idea of using your opportunity as a tool to reach their goals. You don’t do this by marketing your opportunity directly the way a salesman does. Instead you promote and market useful information. This is what a consultant does.

The solution to this problem is in the quote above.

“Nobody who bought a drill wanted a drill” – You didn’t buy your MLM business because you wanted an MLM business.

They wanted a hole – you wanted more time, money, freedom, etc.

If you are looking at an opportunity are you going to sign up with any random distributor? Probably not. You are probably going to sign up with a leader who will demonstrate real expertise and value. When someone sees you as an expert willing to help instead of a sales person just looking to get into their wallet, they will gladly pursue you, as soon as they are ready to make a purchase.

This is what you want, people pursuing you. People do like to buy but mostly when they feel like it was their idea. People don’t want to be sold. If you try to sell them your opportunity directly they will most likely see you as a sales person trying to get into their wallet.

So stop advertising your opportunity and start advertising your expertise and knowledge. Instead of promoting your company directly everything you do should be enhancing yourself as an expert and a leader who can show your prospect how to get what they want.

This is not hard to do, it just takes a little tweaking if your approach.
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There is an ironic but simple truth and that is, “Network Marketing is an industry of marketing and promotion, pursued by people who have no idea how to market or promote.”

95% of networkers are employees with no business experience at all. Many upline leaders will use the shotgun approach and tell you to make a list of 100 warm market prospects. Anyone can do this without any marketing skills.

This keeps you busy for the first week or two. After that your upline knows your emotional enthusiasm and “pumped-up” state will fade and the chances of you doing anything will drop to 30% or probably less.

There are smarter ways to run a business. The first thing we need to do is define our target market. Your target market are people who are already using or consuming what you are selling.

It’s a lot easier to sell something to someone who already wants what you are selling than it is to have to first convince someone that they want it.

In Network Marketing we have two target markets.

The first one is our potential business partners.

This group consists of other network marketers and people who buy and sell products and services that are related to network marketing businesses.

That’s it that’s your target market.

My advice is to stick with people who are in or have been in network marketing.

You could attempt to recruit your neighbor your doctor your Aunt Sally and your Uncle Ralph but if they are not involved in or have never been in network marketing I wouldn’t put much energy into pursuing them. If it happens to come up and they show an interest then great.

I suggest you stick to network marketers. They are the ones who are already actively buying what you have to sell. They are opportunity buyers. Opportunity seekers are just that, they are opportunity seekers.

A business opportunity seeker is usually nothing more than someone who filled out a form saying they would like some extra money. In many cases they only filled out the form because they were promised to get something free in return. When it comes to business opportunity leads you may do just as well cold calling out of the phone book.

Our second target market consists of customers for our products. As an example let’s say you are marketing a nutrition product. Most people would think their target market is people with health problems. But we need to get more specific than that. Your true target market is people with health problems who are already spending money on nutritional products every month.

There is a difference between people who inquire about a product and people who are already spending money on something similar.

So how so we find these people in these two categories?

It’s actually pretty easy thanks to the internet. Continue.

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