The Network Marketing Blog

Archive for the ‘save money’ Category

The dog has an appointment. I don’t know why I never thought of this before but the dog is a a better Network Marketer than I am. Here’s how it happened:

I needed to go to the bank. I needed to get my glasses tightened up so they would stop falling down my nose. I needed to get another appointment and the dog needed a walk.

It might just be possible, went the reasoning, to combine all of these disparate activities into one trip to town – after all, I could tie the dog to a drainpipe while I did my half an hour of prize draw to get my appointment. One appointment, you will remember, is the expectation from half an hour – two if you’re lucky.

So we went to the bank and the optician and we were just heading for the drainpipe when the dog spotted a kindred spirit – nearly dragging me off balance as I juggled my planner, my pen, my prize draw forms and my script in readiness for going to work.

The two dogs did what dogs do and the man on the end of the other lead looked at me with that exasperated smile common to dog-owners the world over.

It was while all this was going on that I realised I had a golden opportunity. “Tell you what,” I said brightly. “Since we’re stuck here, I’ve got something you might like. It’s a free prize draw. You could win a car or £10,000. We just put your name into a hat and if your name comes out, you win the car. And if you win one, I win one too.”

He said that sounded good and we filled in the form. I asked the four questions on the bottom of it. We read through the script together and, in four minutes start-to-finish, I had an appointment for tomorrow afternooon.

Now tell me: Would I have got that appointment without the dog? Why didn’t I think of this before? Obviously the dog did not get tied to the drainpipe after all. Instead she stood patiently beside me as I told a dozen people they could win a car or £10,000.
Then a cheerful-looking woman in late middle age turned up: “Oo, aren’t you lovely. Helloooo…”

This to the dog of course…

The dog backed away to the full extent of her lead. The cheerful woman held her ground, hand out,  fingers twitching. What she said, as far as I remember was: “Choo-choo. Who’s a lovely…come on say hello…”

The dog, who is a sucker for this sort of thing, advanced cautiously and allowed herself to be stroked.

“There you are,” I said to our new friend. “Clearly she likes you. You must be a dog person. What kind have you got?”

- Sadly no dog now. Just a cat. What’s she called?”

“Meg.”

So we talked dogs and cats for a minute or two until I said: “Tell you what, I’ve got something here you might like. It’s a free prize draw…”

And we went through the same procedure as the man who did have a dog – and we made an appointment – with a proviso: “But only if you bring Meg.”

So next Thursday Meg and I will go to visit the cheerful lady and her cat. Two appointments inside 15 minutes: I decided to roll with this.

For the next 15 minutes, instead of saying to people: “Here you are, you can win a car…” I said: “Here you are, you can win  a dog…”

I believe that the amount of interest I received more than doubled. Of course, I had to explain: “Not really… you don’t win the dog. But you could win a car or £10,000…”

And sure enough it wasn’t long before I got my third appointment. That was three appointments in half an hour (see below). No callbacks, nobody saying they didn’t want me to tell them what it was about – just three appointments over the next week.

I don’t know how pleased Meg is about it though – now that her morning walk is going to be down to the car park instead of along the river or through the woods.

But still, she is getting a cat to chase…

We have a protocol for hotels. Given the number of trainings and presentations we hold in them, we have to. You can imagine how unpopular a hundred network marketers would be turning up once a month and each deciding to give out fifty cards…

But there are ways – ways of helping people ask us what we’re up to.

One of my favourites is to do a sweep of the bar just as we’re signing in the last delegates: “Are you with us?” I ask here and there, pointing to my badge. Most people shake their heads and carry on with their conversations. A few really have forgotten the time and hurry to finish their drinks and join us. And then there are the others. They say: “I’m not sure. Who are you?”

- We’re having an open evening about making money. Are you interested in making money?

But the other evening I found a splendid variation – and it had nothing to do with me.

I had arrived in the hotel’s conference wing to find another meeting just about to start in the adjacent room. The young woman on the sign-in table asked – just as I do – “are you with us?

Her badge said she was with the Pharmacy Workshop. I didn’t know what a pharmacy workshop was but they certainly seemed to have more takers than we did.  Our room was gloomily empty while her’s had twenty people grouped in a semi-circle in front of a screen.

I told her I had my own conference and that she was welcome to join us – at this stage she didn’t know she would be the only one.

And that was when she asked me: “What’s it about,” she said.

So what was I supposed to say? “It’s about making money. Are you interested in making money? You could come and join us instead!”

She laughed. But at the same time, she was always interested in making money…

So now she’s looking – and as Jan Ruhe says, that’s all you need – enough people looking.

This was the question:

“I don’t suppose you know anyone who would be interested in some more money do you?”

And here are the answers…

The man who telephoned me while I waited for the garage to fit a new brake pad sensor. He wanted to know if I would complete a quick survey – I could win £150 which would be handy for Christmas wouldn’t it:

His answer: “Well I would.”

My Clarinet teacher after the lesson:

“I can’t think of anyone right now.”

The Cashier in the petrol station where I bought a (rather stale) chicken and sweetcorn pitta:

“What would I have to do?”

The assistant in the hardware store where I bought a pack of jointing blocks to mend a drawer:

“It depends on what’s involved.”

The owner of a business card left on the windowsill by one of the customers at the garage (I sent a text):

“What would be involved? And how did you get my number?”

So that’s three people who are looking at my Network Marketing (MLM) business who weren’t looking yesterday. It would have been four but the man in the hardware store didn’t want to give me his phone number and email address – so I didn’t tell him any more. (I must remember to go in and buy some glue next week just in case he couldn’t sleep for curiosity…)

The man shopping in his lunch hour laughed as he walked off – the sort of laugh that goes with a shake of the head and muttered amazement at someone who says: “OK, I’ll call you in a couple of years…”

A couple of years is a lifetime away. A couple of years is so far into the indistinct future that nobody in their right mind would make an appointment a couple of years ahead.

But my diary goes up to the next millennium – and it goes backwards too….

Today was a bit of a rush all round. Things to do, people to see… and a Cold-Market Academy in Gloucester to get ready for tomorrow. But along with half an hour of Prize Draw in the street, the day wouldn’t be complete without 15 minutes of phone calls…

Reaching into the microchips, I plucked a name at random. I said my piece and the woman on the other end agreed that what I had would benefit her. Now I have to phone her husband on Friday to confirm the appointment for next week.

It was only afterwards that I looked to see where we had met – at a Prize Draw in January 2009, it turned out.

That’s three-and-a-half years ago – and she talked to me as if we had been interrupted by the doorbell ringing or the potatoes boiling over.

And so when Shopping Man smirked at my idea of calling him in a couple of years, I knew something that he doesn’t know – something you only get to understand if you were born in the first half of the last century – that time is an illusion.

And time is magic. Time can transform something that is new and unknown into something that is familiar and trusted.

If you were to take half an hour a day to get six prize draw forms filled in – and you did that five days a week, for 50 weeks of the year … and you went on doing that for three years, at the end of that time you would have 4,500 people who knew you and were at least some way down to path towards trusting you.

Do you think you would have a big business?

Absolutely the best thing about writing this blog is the feedback. Today there was this from a Network Marketer who juggles her business around her children:

“I put my hour of ‘door to door’ in the diary but as it was p’ing down with rain I stood outside the local Spar undercover instead and in an hour I got 4 appointments for the rest of this week.

“Roll on holiday promotion for 2013 ”

But then it rained on me too. I had been to see a couple who agreed that what I had to show them was impressive. They understood that they would save about £700 a year but they just didn’t want to change…

This was fine, of course: Some will, some won’t. What was not so fine was the fact that I was now going to have to do my 30 minutes of prize draw in the rain and with hardly anyone about – you may have noticed it has now been raining for more than 24 hours  and people have come to accept it – promising themselves they will go out when it stops (I think we are in for a long hibernation).

However a commitment is a commitment and I set myself to accept that this was going to be a slow day.

However there is something about doing that which gives nature a nudge – as if the world accepts it can’t play games with this guy, so it had better just deliver and get it over with.

The very first person stopped and entered the draw – OK, so she was already one of my group customers and I had to spend five minutes being polite and encouraging her to take a couple more services. But it was a good start.

Then the second person stopped and agreed that I should call her for an appointment. In fact, as you can see below, it turned out to be a remarkably good session all round and after 28 minutes, I had the results you see below. But I like to think it was the final two minutes which may turn out to be the most significant: By this time I was under cover outside the shoe repair shop and had just made an appointment for tomorrow with a young man sheltering with his girlfriend. By the time we had finalised that,  there were only two minutes left.

Now, it occurred to me to forget about the last two minutes. But no, the world was watching and the Laws of Nature had to be appeased. I set to work. One after another people walked past me. Some gave and excuse, some did not appear to notice I was there at all. The young man and his girlfriend watched, fascinated.

“The thing about doing this,” I said, just in case they were wondering, “is that you have to remember how much I get paid each time somebody ignores me.”

“Why, how much do you get paid?” they asked as if this was the third week of rehearsal and their only line in the whole play.

“£50,” I told them brightly.

Now, when I go and see him tomorrow we’re going to talk about how that works…

Results

30 Minutes in Woodbridge

Approached  27

Two appointments

One Callback

Have you seen Marley and Me? It’s a romantic comedy wrapped up in the life story of a mischevious golden Labrador puppy – which basically means it’s a a sure-fire hit.

But for me it’s about the newspaper columnist who owns the dog – and who yearns to be a go-getting globe-trotting reporter. Because I was a go-getting globe-trotting reporter and I yearned to be a columnist. A columnist can write what he likes. Nobody goes through a columnist’s copy taking out all the jokes and adjectives. In fact I often suspect that nobody in the office  reads the columns at all. They just slam them into the paper like dumping beans onto a supermarket shelf.

Maybe that was how I managed to get one  in the end – inhabiting a small space on the Daily Telegraph’s travel pages for three years and later on achieving my life’s ambition and breaking through the £1-a-word barrier in the Daily Mail Weekend section.

And what has all this to do with Network Marketing?

Well, in May The Network Marketing Blog broke through the 1 Gigabyte barrier. That means 63,707 hits; 26,500 page views; 7,883 visits and 2,735 unique visitors – and I find that immensely gratifying.

Of course I’m not getting £1 a word for it. In fact I’m not getting anything at all for it – at least not directly. But I can tell you that if you know 7,883 people are watching you, it does make a difference.

Take today for instance: I had an appointment in the morning – or at least I did have until the prospect sent me a text from Ireland saying she had decided to stay on until the weekend so could we re-schedule.

Then I was due to meet a potential distributor in Caffe Nero in the afternoon. Normally I would check the evening before and ring when I set out to make sure there had been no last-minute hitches. But do you think I could find his number…

There was nothing for it but to turn up and hope for the best – but there was nobody in Caffe Nero looking expectant and answering to the name of  ”Anthony”. There was nothing for it but to sit and fiddle with the Blackberry which is what everyone does in coffee shops when they’re on their own … and that was when I discovered the very peculiar spelling of his surname. So that was why it hadn’t come up in a search.

I rang him – and then had to hold the phone away from my ear while he emptied a conscience-full of apologies for forgetting. So next week he’s coming to my house (providing he remembers).

All of which meant I had no success story to tell here – and that would never do.

But with the wind gusting 40 miles and hour round the car park, a Prize Draw was out. I thought of going home and making some calls – but nobody would use up precious bandwidth to read about that. And that was when I had the idea: I would do what we tell people to do on training. I would call on a customer – and I knew the very couple.

We had met through the Prize Draw in the car park on December 21st and they had signed up in early January – which meant I could call this their “six month check”. I phoned, said I was passing their door and wondered if I might pop in. Ten minutes later, I was sitting on the sofa, drinking tea with their dog’s head resting comfortably on my knee. I liked to provide a personal service, I explained.

They told me they were very happy with everything. In fact they were most enthusiastically happy.

“Well that’s good,” I told them. “Because now you’ve been with the company for six months, you’re qualified to recommend the services. I can take ten names today…”

I would love to be able to report that they opened their address book and gave me ten names – it has happened in the past. However, whatever liberties I may have taken with the newspapers over the years, only the truth is good enough for The Network Marketing Blog – and I have to tell you that I walked out of the house with just one referral.

But who knows where one referral might lead?

And here’s the thing: I would never have gone and asked for it if it hadn’t been for you looking over my shoulder at this screen.

For which I thank you.

The first day back from holiday and Number Three Son and I went to collect the dog from her rather posh kennels (more a canine B&B really).

The lady who runs it knows what I do – I have prospected her several times over the years and she has always politely declined (her idea of our business relationship being to relieve me of large cheques three or four times a year and leave it at that.)

But this time was different. This time I had just taken delivery of my new prize draw forms – and better still I had been up at six in the morning working out how to get my own words onto the back: The back used to be blank but is now clogged up with previous winners so the words had to be reduced to 9pt and the margins extended to within a hairsbreadth of the edge.

Anyway, having written the cheque, I said brightly to the dog lady: “Here you are, you can have a go in my new prize draw. You can win a car or £10,000! D’you wanna have a go?”

Of course holding my cheque for £140 (£20 a night for a dog!) she could not very well decline.

And now we have an appointment for Friday.

There you are, that wasn’t too much trouble was it?

And now I can say I am back in the old routine.

In last month’s edition of the company magazine I wrote a piece entitled “Yes, I think I’ve got the hang of it now…”

Every quarter they ask some of the Top Achievers to offer something inspiring and it was my turn – and I agonised a good deal about what to say. I thought it would be different to explain how easy it becomes when you have the right attitude… how liberating it is when you really didn’t care whether people join or not.

I even said: “People beat a path to my door.”

And I just knew that one day these words would come back and bite me.

On Wednesday they did.

I had been out after lunch to see the people I had met on the Friday and they sat politely and listened  and then said: “It all looks too good to be true.”

A lot of people say this. But this couple had said it several times until eventually I explained that not everybody joined; that there would always be people who thought it was too good to be true – and that was fine because we’re only looking for happy, smiley people who want to save money…

“You’ve got my number,” I said as I packed up my things. I even gave them a stack of cards in case they knew anyone who might like to try it out and report back to them in case it did turn out to be true…

And I went straight down to my corner of the car park with my prize draw  forms. In Network Marketing the answer to everything – to every “No” and every disappointment is always “more activity”.

You can see what happened below – but you can’t see the whole story.

It was a quiet afternoon but the very first person agreed to go in for the draw – and wanted to know what it was all about… and then decided to change her mind and asked for the form back!

The second wanted me to ring her at 7.30 in the evening – and three days later I’ve just looked at the form again and discovered that I didn’t.

Even the last entry doesn’t tell the full story. After 28 minutes and talking to 44 people I still didn’t have my appointment.

Of course I know that on average I will get one appointment every half hour – and after the “too good to be true” episode, then the Law of Averages  (or at the very least some sort of Natural Justice) should demand that I get one in the last two minutes. And do you know that’s exactly what happened – and not just any appointment – but one with a single Mum who is currently working at three part-time jobs and making less money than she did with two this time last year.

So for the past three days I have been going around with a smug smile, congratulating myself and looking forward to meeting her again on Tuesday.

But that was until I sat down this morning to write this up.

Now, what you don’t know is that I keep a second – secret – record of these encounters. There has to be a secret version because that one has the names on it – and I need the names so I can work out which ones join. And when I came to fill in this name, I couldn’t find the form anywhere. Oh, I had it in my planner all right but that was no good because the address was still on the form. That’s what leaving it three days can do: I should have come home and logged it instantly. I searched the planner. I searched the recycling bin…

Nothing! Finally – since the answer to all things in Network Marketing is more activity – I determined to go down to the car park again (even though it’s Saturday) and get another appointment. I even started to write this – and began with the headline “Aaaah!”

But at the very last minute, it turned out the total for the number of people was wrong and there’s always some “green” person to pick me up on these things, so I dived back into the recycling – and there, would you believe it, was the form: Name, address… everything.

Everything except the note which I had been looking for – the one word: “Appt”.

I can only think that because it was the end of my half an hour and I didn’t prepare another form, then I didn’t complete the last one either.

I’m still going to stick to the headline, though: The last hour has been nightmare. And as with all nightmares, we have to ask the question: “What’s the best thing to come out of all this?”

The best thing is that I’ve now realised I need a section in the Cold-Market Academy presentation about getting organised, doing your filing promptly – all that boring stuff.

… and by the way, with three weeks to go, the Academy’s first training course is sold out. If you would like to come but missed it, leave your name on the “wait list” and I’ll let you know about the next one. Just click the tab at the top.

This was fun. Network Marketers will appreciate this one … particularly if you’re familiar with my company.

The man on the phone asked: “Hello, may I speak to Mr Passmore, please?”

You can imagine the tone of voice. What was he selling? It was in the following two seconds that most people would have put down the phone. In fact since this was two days before Christmas, it would probably be sooner than that – for most people…

But not someone with network marketing running through their veins. Christmas or no Christmas, I listened.

It turned out he was from “The Government-sponsored watchdog” and did I know that energy prices were falling? Did I know that his organisation could get me out of my contract and find me a cheaper price. Did I know how much I was paying for energy?

“Oh yes,” I told him. “I pay nothing at all.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Nothing at all.”

And then, poor guy, he walked right in. He said: “How does that work?”

Well what was I supposed to do? I told him, of course. He had asked. It wouldn’t have been very polite if I’d refused.

And two seconds after that, I could hear him clicking onto the website – that is my company’s website, not his company’s.

So that’s another one looking – and all you need is enough people looking.

Jan Ruhe said this very well in her book “More Feet on the Street” – see below.

The Magic of 30 Minutes a Day

Every bit of teaching about Network Marketing emphasises the value of consistent daily activity. Try spending 30 minutes a day prospecting. You can do this  either by telephoning people you know from your list or by talking to people you don’t know using a Prize Draw.

The important thing is to keep a record of your results. Firstly this will make sure you do it (otherwise you have no results to record) and second; you can measure your gradual improvement.

Posting it here makes it even more imperative that I put in the daily activity. Feel free to add your own results as a comment. Just paste the table from your own Word document.

You can see some older records in the posts on November 7th & 9th

Here are two stories that give me faith in this fabulous business:
On Wednesday I was in Central London to host our monthly meeting at the Holiday Inn, Regents Park. Waiting until 5.30 p.m. precisely, I was able to buy one hour’s parking for £4 before the free parking started at 6.30 p.m. That meant the car was parked there from 5.30 until 10.00 p.m. (the reason it was there so long will become apparent later).
Now, my car is not like other cars. For one thing it has the company logo plastered all over it, along with my phone number. But also, it has three little plastic boxes holding business cards.
Until recently there was a sign above each box saying: “Business Cards – take one”.
Can you guess how many people took one?
Right. Not many – after all why should they want my business card.
But on Monday I changed the stickers to read “Win a Mini! Take One”.
It wasn’t all my idea. I was prompted by the company introducing “Win a Mini” business cards to go with the free prize draw for a car or £10,000.
One way and another, between us, we’ve come up with something special because – whereas in the past I had seen a business card disappear about once a week. Now I can lose three or four a day.
… and in the case of parking in Central London for a few hours: Seven.
And one of the people took one rang me up: “What’s it all about?” he wanted to know.
“How far are you from the Holiday Inn?” I was able to ask him. “Come along and meet us all.”
He did and by 9.15p.m. he was a distributor.
One of the things he asked me was: “How easy is it.”
Maybe I should tell him what happened this morning.
The bed and breakfast guest staying in our studio apartment asked: “What do you do?”
“I help people to save money and I help people to make money,” I told him. “Which would you prefer.”
“Making money,” he replied immediately – and with a rather startling amount of feeling. In fact he went on unprompted: “I need to make a lot of money.”
I was a bit taken aback. I looked him straight in the eye: “Are you serious about that?”
“Absolutely. I’m absolutely serious. I need to make a lot of money.”
Now, answer me this: How easy is this business?