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Current Article Topics:
--Choosing the right direct sales opportunity
--Customer has no money? Sell it anyway!
--Killer Sales Techniques
--Proven Newspaper Ads That Get Prospects
 
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for direct sales business growth!
 
 

A Simple Tip to Build Your Direct Sales Team Quickly!

Are you interested in recruiting? If so, develop a program that works for you. Set your recruiting goals just as you do your sales goals. And, just as you do with sales goals, figure out how you're going to get the recruits on your goal sheet.

If you plan to recruit one person per month, identify 5 customers whom you feel are the best prospects. Start with current customers because they already know your products/services, but by all means keep your eyes open for new possible recruits.

Of those 5, develop a way to show them the value of becoming a member of your team and company. You may write them a letter and enclose recruiting materials, send them a tape with note attached telling them you think they would be great at what you do, or just pick up the phone and ask them.

Be sure to follow up if you choose to mail or email them. Ask them if they have received what you’ve sent and see if they have questions. Perhaps you could offer them a special incentive for joining by a certain time (gift cards are nice) if your company allows you to do this.

Whatever you choose to do, be sure to identify at least 3-5 people every month in which to concentrate your efforts. Some may tell you up front—no thank you—but some may be interested now or in the future. Remember, even if they are not interested in joining now, they may be eventually. And even they join, they may have an order for you!

POWER TIP: Abolish negative people from your life. If you have a friend who always whines, complains, has problems, don’t let them drain you too!

Need Leads? Get booked solid! Triple your direct sales, leads and recruits. Visit: Direct Sales Success

Choosing a Direct Sales or MLM Company to Join?
Make your checklist now or be sorry later...

When starting a new business, your goal is usually simple: Make money. However, how to accomplish this can be confusing, especially with the large number of direct sales opportunities available to you.

There are so many, that whatever your interest, it can be served by one of the established or budding companies out there. The choice of which company is right for you is akin to making a large purchase like a car or home.

First, do your research! Make a list of your personal goals and read as much as you can about your chosen company to make an informed decision. If you simply choose a product and/or company without first researching the company and products, you could end up disappointed and unable to move forward with your plans. Before you make your decision as to which direct sales opportunity is right for you, ask yourself a few key questions:

What is your TRUE opinion of the products it offers?

They should be products you can sell now and see yourself selling in the future. In other words, they must stand the test of time. Trendy, fad items may not make the cut.

The price range of the products is also important. You need to make sure the products you sell are affordable enough to use on a regular basis. Will people plunk down their money for what they are? Would you?

Consider how often the products will need to be reordered. A huge portion of many direct sales rep's commission come from repeat customers. Are your products consumable--meaning, do they get used and need to be re-ordered on a fairly regular basis? Also consider the commission or other money that you will earn for your efforts. How much is it, how does it compare with other companies you may be interested in and what is it that you will be required to do or achieve before get it? Also, is there a yearly fee if so, how much is it?

How will you advertise your direct sales company and how much will it cost?

Most companies are internet savvy these days. Many offer professionally-designed sites you can join with to promote your business. Also, companies can be sticky about you using their name, logo, etc. in your advertising efforts. Make sure you are free to use the company name and logo in your advertising campaigns and that your advertising plans are in line with the company guidelines. Talk with those who are already selling the products and collect all the information you can to help you make an informed decision.

How much money do you want to invest?

Even as a rep for another company you are a business owner. You will be solely responsible for your success or failure. You must set a budget for your business and its needs from the beginning. This will prevent overspending, desperation and ultimately quitting. Success will come easier for you if you are realistic about your earnings and expenditures, etc.. You should only invest the amount of money you are willing to lose. With every business there is a chance of failure, regardless of the reason.

Go to meetings, training, and other functions. As a business owner, you will benefit from networking with other business owners. Check into what your company and local team offers as far as seminars, training sessions, and product releases.

Don't kid yourself...direct sales will require hard work and determination. You will not be able to simply join one company or another and expect that the products will sell themselves. After all, if they sold themselves, what would they need you for?

You will have busy times and slow times and you must be prepared financially for the slow times. Know this upfront, make an informed decision, determine your budget and promotions for your business. Now, just get excited and get busy!

 

Customer Has No Money?
Sell It Anyway! Here's How...
 
"Wow, I wish I could because I love it, but I can't afford it right now" Sound familiar? Or maybe they want so many items they cannot decide and end up leaving the party with nothing. Yikes...there must be a solution!
 
One idea is to use a well-tested program used by many department stores: A gift registry. You've used them for weddings, baby showers and many other events. Why not for your business?

Be sure to let all your party guests know about it so during the party they can choose those they want to take home today and those they want to add to their personal registry.

Have them fill out a form with their personal information including special dates (Birthdays, Anniversary, etc) and the products they want. Then, they add the names and contact information of people (friends, relatives, etc.) that they know will be purchasing them a gift in the future. Obviously, you will make the contact with the person on the list, send them a brochure with the items requested flagged or circled, etc. 

A bonus of this idea? Besides making two sales (one the day of the party and one later from the gift-giver), you can add the contact names from each list to your potential customer list. Include them in your mailings, etc. They may even become a regular customer, hostess or new recruit for you down the line!

 

Using creative techniques such as this is one way to get the initial sale, a back-end sale later and build your mailing list. Be sure to use the list to contact prospects for the gift registry as well as for prospecting for your business.


 

EXPLODE YOUR SALES WITH THESE KILLER TECHNIQUES!

After the sale follow up with the customer. You'd be surprised how often this simple tips is overlooked! You could follow-up with a "thank you" email and include an advertisement for other products you sell. You could follow-up every few months.

2. You could upsell to your customers. When they're at your order page, tell them about a few extra related products you have for sale. They could just add it to their original order.

3. Tell your customers if they refer four customers to your web site, they will receive a full rebate of their purchase price. This will turn one sale into three sales. 4. When you sell a product, give your customers the option of joining an affiliate program so they can make commissions selling your product. This will multiply the sale you just made.

5. Sell the reprint/reproduction rights to your products. You could include an ad on or with the product for other products you sell. You could make sales for the reproduction rights and sales on the back end product.

6. You could cross promote your product with other businesses' products in a package deal. You can include an ad or flyer for other products you sell and have other businesses selling for you.

7. When you ship out or deliver your product, include a coupon for other related products you sell in the package. This will attract them to buy more products from you.

8. Send your customers a catalog of add-on products for the original product they purchased. This could be upgrades, special services, attachments, etc. If they enjoy your product they will buy the extra add-ons.

9. Sell gift certificates for your products. You'll make sales from the purchase of the gift certificate, when the recipient cashes it in. They could also buy other items from your web site. 10. Send your customers free products with their product package. The freebies should have your ad printed on them. It could be bumper stickers, ball caps, t-shirts etc. This will allow other people to see your ad and order.

Quote of the Day:
"Never talk defeat. Use words like hope, belief, faith, victory." -- Norman Vincent Peale

 

MLM Training: Generate Scads of Qualified Prospects with 10 Proven Newspaper Ads

Prospects are basically the foundation of any business since they are the "potential" customers to the business. So just how do YOU find good MLM prospects?

Let's start out with a definition of the word promote which is the most important word in finding prospects for your MLM business. The word promote means: to make known.

I was recently helping a person in my downline with her MLM business, which was not growing. As I asked various questions I finally found the "nasty bug" that was stopping her network marketing business from moving forward. She didn't want to come off as being or sounding sales-y. This stopped her from promoting.

How does everyone else promote?
A politician promotes how he/she can make a whole community's life better - so he's/she's making herself known to the public by promoting and making known to as many people as possible what he/she can do for them. If you've noticed, politicians promote on TV, radio, signs stuck in the grass or on telephone poles along a busy street or maybe speaking at various group meetings.

A college promotes what courses it offers. It might promote on radio, might promote to high schools or through sporting events. A stockbroker promotes that he can help his/her prospect make money. A local restaurant will promote via radio, or mailing brochures or discount coupons.

The worst thing you can ever do in your MLM business career is to think, ponder, worry or even get the idea that it's unprofessional to promote!

You really need to know and understand promotion. The only way you can have prospects, therefore customers or distributors - is to promote. The only way for you to make money in network marketing is to promote. You can write down your dreams and goals and study them every night. But you're as effective as a billboard in the middle of the desert. No one knows you exist until you make yourself known. So if you ever find yourself where your business isn't growing or you don't have enough prospects, enough customers, or enough distributors - what do you do? Promote!

Why do you promote?
The reason you promote is to create desire for your product. If you don't create a desire for your product, it's very difficult to achieve MLM success. How would you know that someone desires your product or business? Well certainly if you sent a post card and someone called the number - that's someone showing desire in your MLM business or product. Even if a person called and asks, "How much is this?" - it would still be someone showing desire, or at least slight interest. If you called a friend and asked them to look at something and they said, "Send it to me." That's showing a desire. People sometimes refer to desire as "responses," as in, someone responded to my promotion.

Different types of promotion
So now let's talk about different types of promotion that create desire. You could promote your MLM business in:

* The Help Wanted, the Sales & Marketing or the Business Opportunity sections of a newspaper

* Advertising section of magazines

* Direct mail, such as sending out post cards to everyone in your zip code

* Door hangers

* Email, banner ads on the internet

* Networking. I'm sure you could have guessed that I would name that one. But you would be surprised at how many people when mentioning all the ways to promote, miss that one. In fact, if you use traditional promotion with the mindset of just finding a network of people to work - you will fare far better than most who only measure their responses with how many people respond to their advertisement. You can turn one response from a promotion into thousands if you properly network.

One other place to find prospects for your MLM business is to promote to MLM leads you purchase from a lead company. The advantage of this is you're only paying for those who've responded and you're not paying for all the people who didn't respond. If I send out 10,000 post cards and get 20 responses then I paid for 9,980 post cards that didn't get a response.

The advantage of writing your own ads of course is being able to target your specific audience with your specific network marketing product or opportunity message. Which is VERY important and should not be underestimated.

In contrast, when you buy generic MLM leads, you're buying general ads - perhaps people who've responded to wanting a home based business. The other down side to buying leads is that very often, lead companies resell their leads to more than just you - so you’ve got extra competition to deal with.

Three broad ways to promote
Now, it probably sounded like I just contradicted myself; I didn't. I just saved you years of running in circles trying to figure the advantages and the disadvantages to generating your own leads or buying leads. This is the game. You must promote. There are three broad ways to promote.

1. Networking - which costs the least. You're going to have costs of meals with prospects, costs of joining clubs and associations. So I have rock climbing club fees, I have mountain climbing association fees, horseback riding fees, mountain biking fees...these are like $50 to $100 dollars a year.

2. Buying leads is more expensive than networking and less expensive than generating your own...but has some advantages and disadvantages. Sometimes you get some hot leads and sometimes you swear you're calling a graveyard.

3. Generating your own. Most expensive, but has the advantages of targeting your prospects. Here's a list of advertisements that I've run to promote my own MLM business opportunity.

* Some people earn Ten thousand dollars a year. And some people earn One million in the same year. Click here to see difference.

* Need more money; NOW!

* Does it ever break your heart to leave your kids at daycare?

* Looking for a FUN business?

* Go to the golf course when it's not crowded.

* The truth about making money. A lot of it.

* WEALTH FORMULA. Click here. (Use with banner ads)

* Wealth formula that takes a lot of effort - but retires you in 4 years.

* Extremely well paying position available to right person. Must have sales & marketing experience. Sales training a big plus.

* Immediate Need for Effective Sales Person. Unlimited earning and growth potential. Self-starter, sales writing skills and team player will be keys to success in this growing, high tech organization. Will be responsible for generating sales leads, preparing and giving presentations on company products and training sales team for development company. Great benefits. Great FUN TEAM! Fax resume to:

Be "in" business
The bottom line is you must be using at least one of these three methods to achieve MLM success. If you're not, you're not in business - you're out of business. What you should be doing, if you see the big picture and want the very big income is you need to be doing all three. All the time. Ideally you start out by networking, which will create enough money to buy MLM leads, and then you'll generate enough money from the leads you purchased to generate your own leads. My point is, as soon as you start making any money in your MLM business, reinvest it in promotion.

One other thought. Don't measure your success by just your immediate responses. Any marketer who is of any value knows that how you measure return on promotion investment is based on the "life of the customer." NOT immediate return. Get one leader from a MONTH or 6 MONTHS of promotion and it can pay you for the rest of your life.
People often ask me, "How much money did you make your first year in network marketing?" I tell them, "I don't know, I'm still earning it."

Party Plan / Wahm / Direct Sales Success