So why are you spending so much time away from home.. .



Prospecting at your job (if you still have one)

Prospecting at the mall

Prospecting at the grocery store

Prospecting at networking groups

Prospecting at church

Prospecting at family gatherings

Prospecting at your kids' sporting events

Prospecting at .. .. . STOP ALREADY, JUST STOP IT!!!

There is a better way. The most powerful tool you will ever learn to use in network marketing or direct sales is the telephone. The most powerful fuel for that tool is scripts. Before you can use a script, you need to have prospects, and that is what we will cover now.

First, stop chasing “prospects” that just happen to be in your life – your “warm market”. Not only is that a relief for them, since I know a few of them, they wanted me to tell you that they'd rather be your friend than your business partner. But, don't you think you will be a little more than humiliated groveling through your warm market only to turn off your closest friends, relatives, and professional business contacts? This can kill you and your business during the first 90 days in business. Forget warm market prospecting because it's wrong, wrong, wrong.

Our personal recommendation: DON'T go to your warm market at all. And if you send your new reps to their warm market (warm market defined as family and friends), who will in turn most likely reject them, causing your new rep to just disappear on you. The Art and Science of Marketing, when executed properly, puts the correct prospect in front of you and are interested in what you have to offer. It's not about you and your need. Using your relationship through warm market prospecting may damage your relationships permanently.

Second: Get cold, targeted leads for your business' products and/or services which is who we define as your true warm market, warm to what you actually have to solve a person's problem, that's our definition of a warm market and then learn how to use the most powerful tool in your arsenal, the phone. Time after time we've seen people bail out of network marketing because they are afraid of the phone. Why? They don't have a proven script used by hundreds of people before them who have acquired a customer or a rep as a result. When the new rep strikes out in the “make a list of family, friends, and business you do business with” warm market, they feel foolish, and that's the end of them.

Third: Analyze your product offering and identify the people who have a true need, want, and desire for your product or service the true warm market. This is how you will target your leads. If it was so simple and inexpensive to advertise to get customers, your company could do their own customer gathering without you. However, companies use the "network marketing" business model knowing most representatives will be out of business within 90 days and leave behind an average of 3 customers. Stop doing that.

Fourth, learn how to approach these re-defined warm market prospects through positioning; having people who have a true need want and desire come to you and requesting information. That's the ideal way to market, right? Large companies brand their product and do traditional advertising such as newspapers, direct mail, radio and TV. However, as an independent rep, small business owner, these options will break your bank account in short order. Until you learn the art of positioning, you cannot put in 20 to 30 reps a week or make 20 to $30k a week targeting this true warm market.

Network marketing and/or direct sales can truly be done from home without hotel meetings and accosting your “warm market” friends, families and strangers. Know what your tools are, know how to use them, and before you know it, your business will take off.

Learn how to escape the “warm market” prospecting trap.

Taking the higher road to success,

Bob Listerman & Nancy Dewitz