Anybody who participates in network marketing knows that obtaining leads and recruiting is the lifeblood of the business. On paper, it seems easy to get new recruits. You just need to tell your friends and family to come to a no pressure, no obligation meeting. After the flashy speech and slide presentation, your friends and family have their pen in hand ? ready to sign on the dotted line. Then you wake up.

Twenty years ago, it may have been possible to achieve the above scenario. However, modern society is conditioned to run the other way when they hear the words MLM, network marketing, free meeting, etc. The bottom line is that face to face selling is hard and getting harder.

Of course, you thought that network marketing was easy. Right? Actually, network marketing really is a business and should be approached as a serious endeavor. Running any business is not easy and does take hard work to build a customer base.

Today, there is still a way to grow your network marketing business using a two step method. This same method is still used effectively utilized by companies in the direct marketing industry. It is relatively painless in that you don't need to qualify recruits via face to face selling. The steps are easy to comprehend. However, the execution takes patience, diligence, and testing.

The first step in the two step method is to place small classified or display ads in newspapers, magazines, newsletters, and other media. The goal is to spend as little as possible but also to say enough in the ad to arouse enough curiosity from the reader to take action. This action is to pick up the phone and call a recorded message.

A sample classified ad may state: Unique business opportunity. Call our toll free number to hear a 24 hour recorded message.

It is important that the ad states to the reader that the caller will hear a recorded message because many people will not call if they think they will be talking to a live high pressure salesperson.

The second step is the recorded message. Here, the caller listens to your message revealing the benefits, products, and anything else of interest to a potential recruit.

If the caller is still interested after listening to the message, he or she will then leave their contact information in the voicemail box. Then the next step is to call or send literature, videos, etc. to take them to the next step and eventually joining your network.

The bottom line about this method is to get as many people as possible through a ?funnel? without actually spending time one on one. You want them to raise their hand and say they are interested in learning more about the business before you speak or send them marketing materials. You want to spend your time on communicating with the serious inquirers. Your goal is to set up a system as close to being automatic as possible.

In the end you can sleep better knowing that you don't need to pressure your friends and family into something they don't want to do. And you don't need to cold call or try to recruit someone who was never interested in the first place.