MLM Dream Team Blog

Chances are good that if you've been running in network marketing circles, youve caught a glimpse of what can happen when someone falls victim to old-style MLM strategies. Trusting people are sent forth into the world with nothing but the dream of success, a list of names and a few key phrases to be thrown out at cocktail parties. The problem with that strategy is that it rarely garners real success, and certainly not the kind of success that is all too often promised to those who are sent forth to make it happen.

You've probably also learned the cautionary tale from those who purchased a list of leads and pounded the pavement practicing their best cold-calling approach. That approach doesn't work either. The only people who get rich with that approach are the companies selling the leads and the rare few who can make cold-calling work.

Fast-forward to the 21st century. Network marketing is a whole different animal now, thanks to the Internet and Web 2.0. You no longer need to rely on television, radio or the print media to craft an effective marketing campaign. You can drive people to you with social Web 2.0 marketing, all for relatively little effort and no specialized tech skills.

Web 2.0 marketing makes it possible for the average person to learn and implement marketing strategies that work. Web 2.0 allows you to have a real business with real prospects and real clients who knock on your door, not the other way around. Whats more, Web 2.0 allows you to generate cash flow from a multitude of sources while attracting the big spenders to the higher ticket items you are peddling.

Web 2.0, or social marketing, is where users can interact with the content on the Web, such as by creating blogs and Web pages, posting articles and videos think YouTube and provide an almost endless variety of content to an infinite number of Web users. In essence, its an easy way to get your business seen online.

There are six basic aspects of social marketing: content sharing sites, bookmarking sites, social sites, videos, blogs and articles. Taken together, these areas can create a social marketing network within the Internet aimed at attracting search engine giants like Google. This is known as attraction marketing.

Even if you arent proficient in all of these aspects of social marketing, you can be successful at attraction marketing. There is no need to use each area. With that being said, however, the more links you can create between your articles, websites and blogs and other sites and blogs, the greater your web presence will be. A great presence translates into a greater possibility for business success. Remember: The goal of attraction marketing is to draw attention to you. Think of it as the opposite of cold-calling.

Social networking online is the new way of doing business. Sure, you can still whip out a business card if you happen upon a potential lead in the grocery store, but chances are good that youll need a lot fewer business cards if you think, plan and execute a social networking plan carefully and aggressively. Web 2.0 has changed the way we network with one another and, as a result, the way in which we do business. Through attraction marketing, potential leads will now be knocking at your door, in search of information about what you are selling. The pavement will just have to go unpounded, you can put down the phone, and youll never have to spend another dime on a list of leads that will only prove fruitless. Through attraction marketing and social networking, the whole paradigm of marketing has shifted. Fortunately, it has shifted in favor of the marketer, not the consumer.

About the Author

kevin thomas is a 20 year entrepreneur who has run a successful business offline and is now teaching people how to do business online though a very effective lead generation program that helps people create a massive marketing machine learn how at his blog network marketing industries Here's to your success, Kevin

Article Source: Content for Reprint

Having a direct selling business (aka network marketing, mlm, affiliate marketing, etc.) can be very rewarding. But you can also lose a ton of money and even frustrate yourself if you fail to do a few simple things.
Unfortunately, most direct sellers drop the ball and end up leaving tons of potential for reorders on the table because they are not taking care of the customers they have worked hard to acquire.

The good news is you can end the frustration in your business and put yourself on a path of making more money and keep your customers coming back so they are ordering month after month after month. In this article, you will learn 7 simple steps you can take to add value to your local market customer's buying experience, so they become a customer that consistently buys products and services from you.

While these steps may seem simple, they are often overlooked by most marketers. Your key to greater growth and profits, especially long term residuals from reordering customers, is to master the consistent application of the following value adding steps. Do this and you will have a strong competitive advantage over your competition.

1. Understand Your Customer's Wants and Needs

Your prospect will buy for their reasons and not yours. They will also buy from people they know, like, and trust. These facts do not mean that you can't sell to strangers, but what it does mean is you have to get to know your prospects before they will make a commitment to become a customer.

A major mistake most marketers make when working with prospects is they fail to identify the true wants and needs of that person. The secret to reveal such information requires effective communication. This means asking the right questions and listening to what is said.

In today's economy, having a good product at a fair price is not enough. Your product also has to be best, the fastest, the nicest, and the easiest to use. There's a real market for premium products, even in a struggling economy.

Part of making your whole product a premium, which includes the physical product, you, and your service to the customer, is to make sure your product meets the wants and needs of your prospect. If it does not, do not sell it to them, not even at bargain price.

2. Do Not Compete on Price

Competing on price can kill your profits and your business. While prices should be fair, be careful not to fall into discounting your prices just to get the sale. The facts prove that if your price is too low, people wonder why you are charging that tiny amount. Low bargain bin prices often create an image of junk.

Remember that people buy from those they know, like, and trust. They will pay a fair price. The key is in your ability and skills to present value to your customer. Never price yourself so low that you cause your customer to think, "what's the catch?"

By offering a higher price, you are instantly creating less skepticism in the mind of your prospect. Now do not misunderstand what is being said here and price too high. Your price must be reasonably fair. Make sure your customer understands the uniqueness of what you offer and never compete on price. Set your price fairly and compete on a level of value. This does not mean not to provide discounts or rewards, but do not make pricing your primary competitive position in your strategy to acquiring customers.

3. Stand Behind What You Sell with a Strong Guarantee

Make sure you offer a guarantee to your customers. I see too many direct sellers sell with a clearance no return no refund policy. Having such a policy can prevent you from acquiring the customers you could have if you have a guarantee. Also make your guarantee a no-hassle policy.

Keep in mind, customers are picky and want value, meaning products and services that work as you describe they would work. Even if you were selling a plant stand, make sure the product meets your own standards on quality. And never sell junk.

When considering the guarantee you offer your customer, do not be afraid to offer a strong guarantee. As an example, in my business we publish our own how-to products for direct sellers. These products are written and produced with our company as the publisher and we stand behind our products with a strong guarantee.

We further believe that any product we sell to our customers must also carry a guarantee. When we sell books or CDs authored by others, we will offer a 180 day guarantee, even if the authors themselves offer no guarantee. We do this because we believe in what we offer and will only offer products that are high quality in content.

If you are offering a guarantee that your company does not offer, or if the guarantee is on top of what your company offers, make sure to point out that added value to your customer. This will help build trust and confidence in you. Reduce the risk in your customer's mind by offering a strong guarantee.

4. Present Your Prospect with Buying Choices

Whether you are offering a high ticket item or multiple small items, you must offer your prospects and customers options. You could offer to spread payments out into an easy payment plan, or a lower priced benefit if the product is pre-paid (i.e. a membership site that offers a lump sum that gives access for three months, six months or even a year).

Regardless of the options you offer, make sure you do not confuse or overwhelm your prospect with too many options. Keep it simple. A very simple payment option is to accept major credit cards as a form of payment.

Your sale process for acquiring new customers in your local market and for keeping those customers coming back for more is accomplished more effectively when you effectively answer their questions, squashing their fears or challenging thoughts they may come up with in their minds for not buying your product. You will not succeed by selling someone on something and then they find out they don't have the payment option they want.

5. Follow-Up and Follow-Through

Never ever, no matter what you do ignore the people that have purchased from you before. Understand that building a solid local customer base is based on relationships. To nurture these relationships, you must stay in constant contact with your customers.

You can use your follow-up time to better understand your customer's wants and needs. You can get a testimonial on their experience of using your products or even secure some referrals to expand your local market customer base. The bottom line is your customers must know you care.

6. Reward Your Customers

Customers are a great source of your residual earnings, meaning money that comes in month after month. In addition to understanding what your customers want and need, they also want to feel important. The importance of making your customers feel important will drive up your sales results. Whether through a customer priority service program or unexpected bonus rewards, it is not hard to come up with ways to reward your customers.

Never forget that it is more cost effective to get a customer to reorder or to purchase other products than it is to acquire a new customer. These people are the most important of all. They have already bought your products. This means they are more willing to spend money buying from you.

Of course, to get your local market customers coming back to buy more, they must know, like, and trust you. This is accomplished only through nurturing those customer relationships. Taking care of your customers and rewarding them will make them feel important, which nurtures the relationship, will cause them to want to continue to do business with you.

7. Invest in Your Customers and They Will Invest in You

Never be afraid of offering trials or samples. Whether free, paid, or even a reduce payment as a way to sample your products and services. This is an investment because you are often cutting into your profit.

Now do not misunderstand the use of trials and samples with what I said earlier about not competing on price. The fact is people are skeptical by nature and trials and samples allow for the prospect to become your customer in an easy low risk way.

You will want to avoid free trials unless you're aiming for lead generation. The problem with free trials is that you'll attract all sorts of freebie seekers, and I'm sure you don't want people wasting your time, taking up valuable resources and just picking something up because it's free. But in a lead generation tactic, you are exchanging value for value (your free sample for their contact information).

A critical lesson I learned many years ago was that you must give before you receive, meaning you must invest in your prospects and customers before they will invest in you. This does not always mean free samples or trail discounts; it can many times mean you investing your time to better understand your prospects and customers.

While you may have similar products and services to others in the marketplace, there is nowhere else they can get the uniqueness of you. As you develop your customer base in your local market, be sure to implement the above 7 steps for adding value. And never lose sight of the fact that you can create a massive competitive advantage in your local marketing effort by doing these things consistently.

About the Author

Jeff Zalewski is a Certified Training Consultant CEO of Direct Selling Academy, Inc., your training performance improvement resource. Jeff intertwines his knowledge in-the-field experience throughout his training and performance improvement resources. Subscribe FREE to his Direct Selling Pro eNewsletter at http://www.directsellingacademy.com

Article Source: Content for Reprint

Here are the killer tactics that you must use:

1. Exchange links with other website owners or entrepreneurs that share the same target market as you, but are not your competitors. For example if you are promoting vitamins, you can find link partners from websites that market health equipment or fitness programs.
2. Offer a free 7 day e-course. Educating your prospects is the best way of convincing them. If you can offer something that they are interested in or a solution that helps to solve their problem, they will gain more confidence in you.
3. Establish a good rapport with your leads by by sending them a weekly newsletter for as long as 6 months. You may think that the 7 day short course is enough, it’s NOT! It is important to keep them informed about your business progress and offers regularly so that they will buy from you whenever they are ready.
4. Use an autoresponder to automate the delivery of your newsletter / e-course. This is a no brainer. How else are you going to send your emails on time and keep track of who has read what?
5. Always use an email signature. You probably send out at least one email each day, your email signature is one of the best and free advertisement tool.
6. Request for testimonials from your clients and downlines. People need social proof before they commit to any group. Testimonials from your downlines who can vouch for your dedication and leadership in the business are the quickest way to get people to join you.
7. Start a blog or write articles. The fastest way to be recognized as an MLM leader is to share your experience. Not only will you get free exposure from your writing, if you can give valuable information, most people will regard you as an expert in your field. This is where attraction marketing is at work, so instead of you going after prospects, they will come looking for you
8. Submit your articles to article directories and social bookmarking sites. With the rise of web 2.0, linking multiple sites to your main opportunity website becomes much easier. When you submit your articles to various directories or social bookmarks, the search engine will index your main website much faster
9. Conduct a webinar or teleclass. This is by far the fastest way to attract prospects to join your business. Each attendee is a new lead and you can even leverage on them to bring in more people. If they have benefit from your online seminar, you can offer them a special discount or privilege pass for your next event on the condition that they bring a friend.
10. Participate in active communities. Join discussions in forums or social networking sites where your target market gathers. Don’t be too eager to promote your opportunity. People don’t buy from people they don’t know, so position yourself as a solution provider and offer free consultation to gain trust.

Tags: lead generation, mlm lead generation, Prospecting tips

Related posts

• 5 Tricks To MLM Prospecting With Free Offers (0)
• 3 Secrets To A Consistent Flow Of Eager Customers To Your MLM Business (1)

In the first MLM business that I signed up with, I struggled a lot in getting leads and finding customers. However in recent years I have discovered the secret of using the internet to promote my MLM business. The internet has not only changed the way I get downlines but also helped me save time and cost in my marketing efforts.

Although there are many companies selling MLM leads, I rarely use them. The reason is I am skeptical about the quality of those leads. I wonder if the MLM companies themselves are using the same leads that they are selling to me? Most likely they are not.

From my experience, I realized that it is much more effective to build my own database of email list. These leads that I have acquired are generally more responsive. Through my regular follow up with them, most have become my friends as well as loyal product users for my MLM business.

So how do you generate leads through the internet? This is actually a very simple process as there are an abundant of tools and services available in the web that you can use at almost no cost. It is also much quicker now as compared with years ago to get yourself started with the necessary tools for lead generation — even if you have no experience promoting online.

Secret #1 : Sign up for an autoresponder account
An autoresponder is a software program that captures emails from your website and lets you send sequential emails to your subscribers. By using an autoresponder, you can automatically follow-up with your potential customers using pre-written emails.

Secret #2 : Build an optin-list of qualified leads
An optin list is a database of targeted buyers whom you have persmission to communicate with on a regular basis. As the saying goes: The Money Is In The List. The success of any internet or MLM business owner is directly related to the responsiveness of his/her optin-list. The question now is how to develop an email list of eager customers?

Take a look at your email inbox, do you receive tonnes of emails daily that you have either no time or no interest to go through? If you ask yourself why you don’t bother to open those emails, then you can learn what NOT to do when you set up your email marketing campaign.

Therefore it is often not enough to just collect email addresses, you want your subscribers in your list to look forward to your emails and click on the links that you are offering! The only way to achieve that is to periodically send your subscribers valuable information relevant to your niche market. Don’t just focus on promoting your MLM opportunities in your emails. People get sick of hype-filled sales pitch and will eventually unsubscribe from your list if they feel that you are just trying to sell to them all the time.

The easiest way to provide useful information is through newsletters. Post interesting articles, tips and multi media materials such as videos or audios on your website in the form of newsletter. You can then include some promotional advertisement about your MLM opportunities in your newsletter. Announce to your subscribers whenever you publish new information on your newsletter, this will eventually build trust as your subscribers gain confidence in you as a leader.

Secret #3 : Encourage your subscribers to share your newsletter with others
When you offering interesting information, it is only natural that your subscribers would want to keep coming back for more and even share it with their friends. However, you can increase that viral effect by making it easier for them to tell others, some tips are:

• add a tell a friend form on your website
• write a short report for easy distribution and downloads
• start a referral contest

There are many other strategies available in the internet quickly generate a consistent flow of leads. In order to maximize the power of internet marketing, it is necessary to explore and experiment various methods that suit your MLM niche.

If you want to short cut your learning curve, get my free report on “7 Proven & Free Traffic Strategies To Drive 500 Visitors To Your MLM Website Every Day“

Tags: autoresponder, dream team formula, lead generation, mlm, mlm lead generation, mlm leads, mlm promotion, mlm traffic, Traffic Strategies, website traffic

Related posts

• How To Get 500 Prospects To Your MLM Website Everyday (0)
• Who Needs 10,000 Leads & Auto Traffic Generation Software? (1)

Prospecting literally means - looking for a treasure or that pot of gold. In Multi level marketing form of business it refers to finding those few people who will cause a turn about in your sales and bring in loads of revenue. It is about using those strategies to draw the attention of such people into your loop. And all it normally takes is talking to the right kind of people, but at times this could prove difficult owing to the demographic issue. People are all located in various parts of the country or the globe and at most times emails are the easiest way of communicating.

Prospecting should be an ongoing process in an MLM venture. One can never say “I have run out of people to talk to”. If that happens, it means he has reached the end of MLM string. In order to keep the flow going one must follow all or any of the following tactics –

1. While talking to people, make sure to do a effective pitch about the company and its products to get them interested. Also let them know of the free samples of products they will get for their personal use.

Read More


Tags: lead generation, mlm, mlm leads, mlm prospecting, Prospecting tips


Related posts

• MLM Successful Prospecting Tips (0)
• How To Get 500 Prospects To Your MLM Website Everyday (0)

Dream Team Formula is finally launched! After multiple tweaks and testing of the script, we should now have a robust script to automatic position anyone who joins your team. This blog will trace the development progress of the DreamTeamFormula.com system as well as all future supporting websites. Yes, we are going to add more resources to help you build a long lasting and profitable MLM business — with minimal work!

On top of that, we will also keep you update about current network marketing trends, hot issues and latest MLM lead generation strategies. Join the discussion by leaving your comments below! We would love to hear your stories and ideas.

Tags: dream team formula, lead generation, mlm, network marketing

Related posts

• How To Help Your Downline Do Something By Providing Network Marketing Leadership (0)
• Facebook For Business (1)