The Network Marketing Blog

Archive for June, 2011

This is the way it works: I was walking the dog through the woods this morning with a list of people to ring – just names on the list. I rang the first one. I said: “This is just a quick call. I have your name in my address book and the reason I’m calling you today is because I’m looking for ten people over the next seven days who would like to make £1million over the next seven years. Now I’m perfectly serious and I’m not a fool. Do you want to be one of them?”
(The secret to this, by the way, is to sound perfectly serious and not a fool!)
Five minutes later I had explained how we do it and he had drawn out the money on a piece of paper. Next he had written down the website address and now we have an appointment to talk again on Friday.
But then we come to the interesting bit. He asked: “How did I get into your address book?”
“Ah, now that’s a bit of a mystery. I’m afraid I wasn’t as efficient in the past as I am now. All I can tell you is that I gave you a DVD on May 19th 2007. That’s all the note tells me.”
For a while there was a silence on the end of the line and then he remembered: “I know what this is about. It was years ago. I was restoring a barge on the river at Woodbridge and you came by and we got talking and you asked me if I was interested in making money. Then you came back the next day and gave me a DVD. It must have been about four years ago. So you’re still doing it then?”
And that was music to my ears. Because the fact that I’m still doing it after all these years works like magic. That alone gives it credibility.
If you’ve been doing something for six years and you’re clearly more passionate about it now than you’ve ever been, then you don’t just have credibility: You’re a shining beacon that lights up those dark places of the recession that nothing else can reach. People listen when you’ve been doing it for six years.
And, if you make a point during those six years of never throwing away a phone number, you end up with a goldmine!

If you’re with my company, you got this when you did your training. If you’re not, buy it now. If you are, listen again.

On the training we tell people to be prepared to change. After all, if you are the sort of person who should be earning £50,000 a year before you get out of bed, you would be, wouldn’t you?
And if you’re not, and you want to, then the only thing to do is change. As Jim Rohn puts it: “For things to change, you have to change.”
… which leads us comfortably to the suggestion that people should invest in books and CDs on personal development. It’s part of the territory.
And I’ve just realised I’m still changing. Take today, for instance. We were up early to drive to IKEA to buy new wardrobes and three metres of bright red table for the playroom. While we were there we threw in new covers for the sitting room sofas (you know how it is in IKEA).
Anyway, one of the sofa covers had to be picked up in the warehouse and the other was available at the collection point. Don’t ask me why – perhaps it was to prove that the Swedes are as well-organised and logical a race as the rest of the world imagines.
But the young man at the collection point was so helpful that all the inconvenience melted away. He wheeled my trolleys behind his desk so I wouldn’t have to take them them the half-mile back to aisle whatever-it-was. He raced around with receipts and order forms. He did his job and more – and it was a pleasure to be on the receiving end.
Now, here’s the thing: At each stage, I could have thanked him. It would have been basic politeness – and anyway I felt like it.
But instead, at each step I went just a little bit over the top – to which, of course, he responded by being even more effusively helpful. But the difference was that I knew where this was going: By the time he had checked and double-checked the order form, sorted out the trolleys, helped re-organise them to make room for the covers, we had ascended the scale of mutual admiration to the point where it seemed only natural that I should say: “You know, you’re really good at your job. I hope they appreciate you because I’ve never experienced customer service like this before… In fact, come to think of it, I’m always on the lookout for happy, smiley, helpful people like you. Tell me, are you in the market for more time, more money or possibly both?”
And you guessed it, he was…

With a harem of Barbies and a crate of Warhammer to sell, I had my work cut out.
We’re in Car Boot Sale season and the only way to empty the house of gruesome plastic is to persuade the children that they can make money by selling their surplus toys.
And who ends up selling them while the children roam the stalls buying more junk?
You guessed it…
So there I was presiding over the high quality merchandise piled on the pasting table when my good friend from round the corner wandered over.
Now, we really are good friends. We go out for a drink. Our children are never out of each others houses – and he was once a distributor in my team.
However he never did anything and eventually left. Then he became fascinated as I built my business – and so he signed up again.
But he didn’t join my team. He went on the internet and joined someone else’s. But this doesn’t matter because he has decided to do it differently. He proudly states that he has an “exclusion zone” around his family and friends. That is to say that none of them know he is a distributor. None of them get offered the opportunity to reduce their household bills by 20%. He refuses to tell them how they can make a very good part-time income. He says this is because he doesn’t want to lose his friends…
Anyway he wandered up from his stall to mine and noticed that in among the toys were a stack of DVDs and our company newspaper.
“Does it work?” he asked. “Having them on the stall.”
It seemed an odd question. It never occurred to me to wonder whether it worked. I just have them there – why wouldn’t I? Every time somebody bought something (or didn’t) I just offered them an Independence – why wouldn’t I?
Well now I can tell him that it does work. Last night, I received the following email from someone who had bought some plastic rabbits. She wrote: “I have watched the DVD and am actually very interested. I am going to talk to my husband and see what he thinks of it all as it does mean paying £100 which we might not have to spare! Perhaps we can talk some more.”
Now we’re all going to get together on Thursday evening so I can show them how the money works.