The Network Marketing Blog

At the Cold-Market Academy (only six places left for next weekend at Gloucester)  we learn that a good Network Marketer will always ring the husband/wife/partner rather than letting the prospect tell them about the appointment.

But do we always do it?

I was waiting in the queue at the blood donor session yesterday and because I now do more every day than I did before my company announced its new holiday promotion, I turned to the man in the seat diagonally behind me and said: “Tell you what, since we’re waiting, would you like to go in for a prize draw? You can win a car or £10,000…”

In no time at all I had an appointment for Thursday evening. It really was as quick as that. In fact I remember saying to him: “There that was easy, wasn’t it?”

Indeed, it seemed too easy. Had I forgotten something?

“Oh yes, I must ask you, are there any other adults in the house?Your wife? And will she be there? That’s great.”

No it wasn’t. That was not great at all…

Sure enough, just as I was about to sit down for dinner, he rang: “I’ve spoken to my wife and she doesn’t want you to come round.”

At the time I put it down to something else we learn on the Cold-Market Academy: Half your appointments will be cancelled or postponed.

It was only later, as I was walking the dog last thing at night that I realised what had happened: Poor woman! Of course she didn’t want me coming round. Can you imaging the presentation she’d had from her husband: “This bloke I met in the queue at the blood donor session’s coming round on Thursday…something about money…

Clearly I need a refresher!

See you in Gloucester…

Total for May: Prize Draw: 4hr 15 mins. Customers: 2. Distributors 3.

No sooner are we back from the company holiday in Las Vegas than they announce the next one! This time it’s going to be a six star cruise (another six star cruise!)

But this time it’s going to be harder. For this one we will have to do a bit more.

You could argue that in fact the business is easier than it was two years ago – the package on offer encourages customers to sign up for more. But maybe we should just look on that as a bonus and actually do more as well.

You have to be careful when you make decisions like that – there’s nothing more counter-productive than setting unattainable targets so yesterday I started to experiment: What if I decided to go one stage further than spending half an hour on the prize draw. What if I decided to aim for ten forms filled in?

It started well enough: I was signing up a new distributor when her friend appeared at the door enthusing about my car parked outside. This is fairly normal since it is a fairly noticeable car – and also it’s a free car: That is to say it’s not a company car but the company gave it to me (but not before they had smothered it in garish logos).

Would the friend like one too? Well, we just fill in this free prize draw….

And there was the first form done. Obviously I couldn’t take it any further – that is for my new distributor to follow up. But I like to think of it as a good omen.

However, as you will see below I didn’t manage to get ten. I didn’t manage anywhere near ten. But here’s the point: I did more. Instead of stopping after 30 minutes of activity, I kept going.

Now I didn’t have any more time to hang around in the street. But I did need to go to council offices and there I invited the receptionist to have a go in my prize draw – after all, I was there anyway…

Politely, she declined.

Then in the evening when I dropped off my son at Judo and paid for his session, I invited the lady who took my money. I see her every week. I could have asked her a hundred times if she wanted to enter a free prize draw but only now did I actually do it – because only now had I decided to “do more”.

And guess what? I  have an appointment for Monday at One O’Clock!

Total for May: Prize Draw: 3hr 53 mins. Customers: 2. Distributors 3.

Well, I’m certainly not perfect.

I think it was yesterday that I told you about the missing address for this Friday’s appointment. Well it’s still missing.

When I went to Bawdsey for today’s appointment, the plan was to spend some time asking around the village to see if anyone knew Friday’s prospect. But yesterday I did something different and I have a feeling it may just transform my business.

Let me give you a bit of history:

You may know my upline. He joined about 18 months before me and he was straight off a building site, very rough (you wouldn’t recognise the smooth network marketing leader of today)  and he didn’t feel confident about talking to people. So when he went to an appointment he just stuffed the company video into their cassette player (no DVD’s then) and when it came to an end, he would ask: “What did you like best about that?”

They all said: “We like the idea of all that money!” and promptly signed up as distributors.

After a few weeks of this he went to his sponsor and said: “It isn’t working. I can’t get any customers. They all become distributors and sign themselves up.”

The sponsor told him he didn’t have a problem and now my upline is one of the very top people in our business.

I’ve always known this story but I’ve never copied it because it’s not taught on the training. But yesterday I did – and that was how my prospective customer became a distributor. I then signed her up as my customer (as we teach on the Cold-Market Academy – see the tab above)  and I ended up in the house for nearly two hours making her first appointments and whatnot.

Result: No time to search the village for Friday’s prospect. Instead I jumped in the car ready to race off to my next appointment – only to find that I had left the address for this one at home! There was no time to go back for it and no-one at home to phone.

However by this time you can imagine that I was feeling pretty positive about the business and so drove straight to the next village, walked into the pub and asked: “Does anyone know this person?”

The thing about villages is that :

1. Everybody knows each other.

2. Everyone is willing to help.

Within five minutes we had the whole pub on their mobile phones. Within ten the woman who runs the shop had got the address from her deputy who in turn had got it from her next-door-neighbour.

I finished my lunch, distributed cards around the bar and went off to do a perfect presentation which led to a definite sign-up appointment for Thursday (it’s a business and we need the bills).

So where did I go wrong. In what way was I not perfect (apart from the little matter of not knowing where to go)?

It was only as I was driving away that I nearly fell off the road as I smacked my forehead in exasperation and said aloud: “For heaven’s sake why didn’t I offer the prize draw to everyone in the pub. I could have had another half dozen appointments!”

Instead of which – as you will see below, I made none.

Total for May: Prize Draw: 3hr 17 mins. Customers: 2. Distributors 2.

(Actually one of the people who went in for the draw did agree to an appointment but I didn’t like the look of him – my business – my choice.)

Does this ever happen to you?

I”ve just sat down to send a reminder to someone I’m due to see on Friday and discovered that I haven’t added them to my database and now I can’t find the prize draw form.

In short I have an appointment and apart from their name and the village half an hour a way where they live, I have no idea where to go.

The only thing to do, obviously, is to get to the village half an hour early and ask around. It is quite a big village, though –  almost a town really…

But here’s the interesting thing: No sooner had I decided to do that (rather than just shrugging my shoulders and accepting that there was nothing I could do) the Slight Edge Effect kicked in and I was rewarded with a bit of good luck: One of my appointments for today is in the same village. Maybe the person I’m going to see today will know the one I’m due to see on Friday.

And better still, today’s appointment is thinking of becoming a distributor. How convenient that I can demonstrate that at least one other person in the village is interested in our business!

So all’s well that ends well…. with luck…

Don’t you just hate some places? I hate the car park near Stanway School. I volunteer at the school as a Mentor.

This means I go in once a month and meet a very nice lad who is having a bit of trouble keeping up with his schoolwork – and I must not be late.

If you mustn’t be late, you have to be early and son once a month I end up with time on my hands.

What do you do if you’re a Network Marketer with time on your hands? Well, I reach for my prize draw forms of course.

The trouble is there just aren’t enough people in the car park and they all tend to be the wrong type. But I’ve worked out that each time somebody says “No” to me it’s worth £50 so what do I care if they’re the wrong type…

But that only took care of 15 minutes, so in between my Mentoring and my Clarinet lesson, I headed for my favourite spot in Ipswich. You can see the stats below. But what they don’t tell you is the full story of the appointment.

This was a lady who refused to give me her name and address. Now there was a time when I would have tried to persuade her. But actually you only need a name and address if you get an appointment. What you really want is the answers to the questions on the form – so why bother with the preliminaries?

I asked the questions, I told her what it was all about. We made an appointment and only then did I ask her name and address – which, of course, she was now happy to give me.

And then she said: “Can I ask my neighbour round too?”

- Of course.

“And my daughter?”

- The more the merrier!

“We’ll have a party!”

And lastly, when I got home the phone was ringing: A telesales call about Solar panels. She said her name was Charley.

“Hello Charley,” I said. “How are you today?”

- I’m fine thank you – and do you know you’re the first person who’s asked me that.

“Really? And how many calls have you made today?”

- Must be a hundred – more than a hundred.

“What’s it like making all those calls to people who don’t want to talk to you?”

- A bit miserable actually. You feel really drained by the end of the day.”

“Well I hope they pay you well.”

- Not really.

“Is that so? Listen Charley, I’m always on the lookout for bright people who are good on the telephone. Would you be in the market for some extra money?”

Don’t you just love this business!

Total for May: Prize Draw: 2 hr 41 mins. Customers: 1. Distributors 1.

Some days everything falls into place.

In between paying the Bed & Breakfast cheques into the bank and fitting a replacement bailer into my new sailing dinghy ready for the Wednesday evening race, I did exactly 30 minutes of prize draw in the car park. This is what happened:

1. The first person I asked agreed to go in for the draw. She agreed to an appointment but I would have to ring her husband to check his shifts. Her husband is a policeman. We like policemen in this business.

2. The sixth person I asked wanted me to call back to fix an appointment.

3.  The ninth person is desperately looking for an extra income because her mother is selling up and going back to Australia leaving her homeless.

4. The tenth person gave me an appointment next Tuesday.

5. The 11th can’t take a job because she cares for her bedridden mother and has been looking for flexible part-time work. She is watching the DVD and I will call her on Thursday.

6.  The 12th is going through a divorce and doesn’t have much confidence in her husband’s willingness to pay maintenance. She too has a DVD.

7. The 13th person wasn’t interested.

Then I went and fitted the new bailer (without any trouble, to my surprise).

But when I got home I discovered I had lost my planner. I was beginning to worry about this when the head teacher from the primary school near the sailing club phoned to say someone had handed it in. Clearly I had left it on the roof of the car and it had only fallen off when I turned the corner by the school. I went to pick it up. The head teacher met me at the door. I thanked her. I asked if she wanted to know what was inside the planner: “It’s a prize draw. You can win a car or £10,000,” I told her.

She agreed to enter the draw. She agreed that I should tell her what it was all about. She agreed to an appointment on the Friday of half term week.

Later I rang her husband (also a head teacher) and he was equally enthusiastic. Then I rang the policeman with the indeterminate shifts and we set up an appointment for May 18th.

I don’t think I have ever achieved so much interest from talking to so few people. Am I doing something different? Certainly! All I did was develop something that appeared to work on Friday (May 8th). If it works again during the rest of the week, I shall adopt it permanently – which is great news because the next Cold-Market Academy is coming up on Monday in Ipswich and it can be incorporated into that.

Ipswich is full, by the way. But Gloucester is on the 27th and I’ve just booked the Mere Court Hotel in Knutsford, Cheshire for July 5th. See www.coldmarketacademy.com.

Total for May: Prize Draw: 2 hr 09 mins. Customers: 1. Distributors 0.

Yesterday was a Bank Holiday. Yesterday I wasn’t working and so I don’t intent to publish my statistics.

But the odd thing was that I still ended up doing something for the business. This was what:

That Autoglass man came in the morning – I had tried to put a 2.5 metre drainpipe in the Mini. You might be interested to know that you can’t fit a 2.5 metre drainpipe in a Mini. When you slam the boot on it, the other end cracks the windscreen.

The Augotglass man was rushed off his feet – this being a holiday.  He didn’t even have time for a cup of coffee. When he was done he didn’t have time to enter my prize draw either. But the point was that I’d asked him.

Later on someone rang to ask if I had taken advantage of the government grant for loft and cavity wall insulation. Her accent was so strong that I asked her which country she was calling from. But she said she was in the UK and so I listened politely before saying: “We have a flat roof so there’s no loft and the house was built before they invented cavity walls. However thank you for calling. I think you must be very good at your job – after all, I’m still on the phone…. I tell you what, I’m always on the lookout for people who are good on the phone. Tell me, would you be interested in an extra income? Yes, for you… When you get home have a look at this website…”

And then there was a point just before lunch when Tamsin had taken our Number Two Son to a cycle race at Ixworth, our daughter was cycling to Snape with her friend’s family, Number One Son was walking the dog and Number Three Son was practising his stilt-walking on the terrace and I thought: “I’ve got time to do some callbacks.”

I did five from last week and made an appointment for next Tuesday.

And I wasn’t even working yesterday…

Not a bad day at all. I was very pushed for time but did manage to squeeze in an extra four minutes to cut the deficit.

You’d probably call that The Compound Effect: Just do an extra few minutes every day…

Anyway those extra minutes paid off: Four people agreeing to a callback – and three of them have already agreed to an appointment. The callback is to the partners.

I have found that it is no good at all making the appointment with one party and asking hopefully: “And will your husband/wife be there…”

All that happens is you get a call the night before: “My husband says we’ll all right, thank you.”

You can imagine the conversation: “Oh by the way, we’ve got this chap coming round tomorrow – something about saving money…”

“Nah, we don’t want any of that. Ring him up and put him off.”

On the other hand, if I ring him just as soon as I can – preferably before his wife gets home and spoils it – I can get him onside as well.

And you will notice that the first two people I spoke to agreed to go in for the draw. This was because I didn’t want to waste any time so I found some who were obviously standing and waiting for someone and started a conversation about the weather. Then once the ice was broken, I mentioned: “By the way, I’ve got a prize draw here somewhere. D’you wanna have a go? You can win…”

Total for May: Prize Draw: 1 hr 34 mins. Customers: 1. Distributors 0.

If you go on one of the Company’s Goal-Setting courses, they tell you to announce your intentions: Tell everyone what you’ve committed to doing. Write it out and put it in a frame on the wall. Set it in stone -that way they can hold you to account.

And if you look right back to the beginning of this blog (Good Heavens, it was May 20th 2009!) you will see that was part of the reason for starting it: If I knew I was going to have to sit down every evening and write about what I had done, then I had better have something to write about!

And now I have committed to a daily average of half an hour’s prize draw every day during the month of May, I suppose I am going to have to write about it every day.

Which was how I came to be standing at the corner of the car park again this morning – and since I am already behind schedule, obviously I had to do more than 30 minutes – which was just as well because, as you will see below, the appointment came right at the end: In the 31st minute no less…

And after that it started raining so I went home and used the remaining time to do some callbacks – and guess what? I have another appointment; on Monday week with the people who asked for a callback on March 8th. Eleven days is longer than I would choose to leave between making the appointment and doing it, but I suppose if the prospect was going to go cold, they would have done so after nearly two months.

Total for May: Prize Draw: 60 minutes. Customers: 1. Distributors 0.

Meanwhile you might be interested in an email I received from a new reader.

He writes: “Having told someone at a meeting that I was going nowhere fast with the business, she suggested I had a look at your blog. Inspired by its contents, I ordered some Prize Draw forms and set out to find a car park!!! It took me well out of my comfort zone. My stats :  30 mins, asked 23, 2 filled in a form, but both backed off when I mentioned appointments. Having learned from the first, I offered the second a card so they could look at the website in their own time.  I’m not sure if you give out advice like this (I understand if you don’t), but how do you convert ‘filled in forms’ into appointments?”

My response: “Turning the completed form into an appointment is all to do with what you say and – just as important – how you say it. I would suggest using a choreographed script: Turning over the form at the right moment… opening your diary at the right moment…

And here’s my view on giving out cards: If you hope someone will contact you as a result of being handed your card, you are likely to be disappointed. However, if they squint at it and say: “What’s this?” you have got what you wanted – their attention and an invitation to talk about your business. The only problem is that they also have the website address and it is entirely possible that you will get a call saying they’ve checked it out and decided it’s not for them. They shouldn’t be “checking it out on the website”. You should be doing your presentation.

All of this and more is covered on The Cold-Market Academy – see the tab above.

One O’clock in the morning on the night of the Gala Dinner – the highlight of the company holiday in Las Vegas – where was I to be found?

Sitting in a corridor on the 18th floor of the Bellagio Hotel on the phone to Head Office in London, trying to find out why a customer had cancelled.

I will never put myself in this position again.

But, you see, we are now into the next promotion – the company has a lot of promotions which you would not want to miss: Four customers a month for 18 months got us to Las Vegas – and just two customers a month will get us share options which, it is estimated, should be worth around £350,000 in ten years’ time.

And I had two for April…but only two for April…

Normally I would have at least four a month to allow for such glitches. But April was a short month for me: We were skiing in Italy for the first week. We were in the USA on the company holiday for the last week – and the middle two weeks included six days’ training and a bank holiday.

Basically my April was one week long – and the stress it caused was unbearable.

But if you look back over this blog for the last month, you can see why: The activity just isn’t there – not even during the week I was at home. You don’t succeed if you don’t put in the activity.

So I have set myself a challenge: I will average half an hour a day, five days a week during May.

Anyone like to join me?

P.S: The good news was that the customer hadn’t cancelled after all. The bad news is that, as you can see below, I  am already behind schedule…

Total for May: Prize Draw: 21 minutes. Customers: 1. Distributors: 0.

… perhaps I should explain where the customer came from: I was walking the dog when my phone rang. The man on the other end said he had been recommended to me by his father who was a customer. Would I mind going round and signing him up?

So I did – and you might consider that was not too hard.

I view it as a reward for sitting up in the middle of the night while everyone else was partying…