Coming from a background of both the corporate world and later moving into small business, one of the common discussions that I have participated in centered around defining the target market for a business owner. However, I find it strange that when asking the owner of a home based business to define their target market, I often find that the response is “anybody”.
The problem with that answer is that not just anybody will be interested in building a home based business. The quality of your prospects is one of the most important aspects of generating business for your network marketing business. The prospects you are dealing with should be targeted, so you are attracting the right people to your organization.
Most network marketers or home based business owners are in essence trying to sell steak to vegetarians. With the best business opportunity in the world to include a compensation plan that is out of this world, there are going to be a limited number of people that will have an interest in what you have to offer.
Ever wonder why so many of the people that you have sponsored drop out after such a short amount of time?
Most network marketers work at attracting everybody as a potential new prospect. Here is the problem, since their marketing efforts are not really focused on anybody in particular no one in pays any attention to their efforts. Believe me I used to do the same thing and the results of my efforts generated very few good prospects. The few did I attract where basically by accident.
At one point in time I even got creative and started using marketing materials that were misleading when you really boiled it down. While I did not want to go so far as telling outright lies it was easy enough to bend the truth enough to make for a much broader appeal. While that effort generated a ton of leads it ended up costing me way more in time and effort than it was ever worth.
All of my marketing efforts at this time all centered around messages like “make money fast,” “it’s easy,” “anyone can do it,” “earn a six figure income in months”, etc. While reading through those statements think about the type of people that those ads will attract.
I can promise you that they are the type of people that believe in get rich quick schemes, expect lots of money for little to no effort and in short expect to amass wealth without having to work for it. While a topic for a totally new discussion, there are natural laws of the universe in place to keep that from happening.
In my years of experience these people have always quit my organization because they simply did not have the right mindset to become successful entrepreneurs. Long story short, I wasted a lot of my time, money and effort on these people by trying to train, motivate and get them to do anything, when in the end they eventually quit.
That was the starting point for the discovery that I was attracting and working with the wrong people, when what I needed to be doing was attracting people like me that had the right mindset from the start.
So how do you find the right prospects?
In order to generate good qualified prospects you must be using targeted marketing material and strategies that will attract the right people to your network marketing business. To accomplish this you must ask yourself the right questions:
* What do they like?
* What motivates these people?
* How will they benefit from what your products, services or business opportunity?
* Where can you find these people? Where do they hang out?
If possible, also take time to look at your most successful business builders. Then focus your marketing efforts and materials on attracting those people to your business. With refocused attention in these areas you will begin to generate good solid prospects and more importantly your business will begin to grow.
The quality of the prospects that you are spending your time with will predict your future success, so if you have a network marketing business try networking with and when applicable marketing to other network marketers. You want to work with prospects who already believe in the business model, are looking for multiple streams of income and have the attitude that they are destined for success.
The only prospects that you want to spend time with are people who have been in network marketing, who are in network marketing today, or those who are actively searching out information to learn and improve their performance in the business.
For those of you that are truly ready to take your business to a level that you may have never thought possible you need to align yourself with people that can consistently provide you with qualified referrals. Imagine talking with prospects that already know about you, your products, your business and is interested in joining you before you have ever meet for the first time. Now, with that concept in mind, think about the impact that process would have on your business.
If you are the type of network marketer that could benefit from the concepts above please feel free to contact me at any time. While, these concepts are not right for everyone, I can assure you that those that find these ideas a good fit will reap rewards and benefits far beyond anything that may have dreamed.
To Your Success!
Chase Your Passion: Personally, I enjoy working w/ Small Biz Owners & Independent Business Professionals to attract new clients. 
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Hey, its absolutly right what you say in your article. I’ll follow you blog:)
Have a nice day
An aspect you’ve overlooked. Losing people in your organization is not always their lack of ability. I’ve joined up with a thing or two over the years as “added value” to an already thriving consulting practice. When the organization decided to call me a failure because I didn’t devote 100% of my time to them and them alone, Goodbye.
If you can’t deal with occassional sales, then you might be pushing away people who – in the long run – are making you look good.
You are very correct. The very challenge that you are referencing here is a result in the lack of communication between parties. As part of starting out with someone one of the first things that should be established are their goals.
If they want to be a casual business builder or to simply generate some sales from time to time, then great, that is where you work with them.
On the other hand if someone is wanting to replace a full time salary… great put a plan in place to help them do so in the time that they would like to target.
Without those upfront communications and planning you could very well have people drop out of your business all for the wrong reasons.
Great point and thanks for the input!
This is one area that a lot us forget about I think. We are so caught up in just getting someone into our opportunity that we don’t consider how well suited they are for the business. People who eventually quit certainly do not help our cause as we spend considerable time trying to goom them and train them for success – when it may be that they are just not MLM material in the first place.