Effective Downline Recruitment

Next to selling, network marketing is all about referrals or recruitment. Some networkers refuse calling it recruitment, but that's what it is. To recruit is to enlist an individual to participate in a group effort aiming for a common goal. That's exactly what we need downlines for. Well, referrals is also a good term. But let's not hide anything. Referrals or recruits, doesn't matter. What we want is effective downline recruitment.

Be the Right Person

How do we find the right downline or the right person for this purpose? First step is, be the right guy yourself. You reproduce what you are in network marketing. It's called duplication. In a sense, good cells reproduce better cells. Bad cells reproduce worse cells. Law of nature. It's follow the leader. There will be exceptions, of course. If you find a bad downline under you, or if the good direct downline you trained turns out to be bad, it's not always your fault. Even Jesus found a Judas among his "downlines" though he never was at fault. See?

But at times, it's your fault. You didn't strive to be the right person, so that reproduced a bad egg. Most downlines become what you are. They imitate what they see in you. Again, law of nature. Very seldom do you see downlines turning out good despite their bad mentors. There are a few people in network marketing who are like that--conscientious, righteous, and hard working on their own. Rare breed. Be among that rare breed.

Less Hype

Another effective downline recruitment is the use of less hype. Too much hype tends to distort everything and cover up truth. That's not clean network marketing. That's not network marketing done righteously. Always present truth intellectually. That's it. If you need to put hype, make it 10 percent hype and 90 percent intellectual presentation. People need to know why they are joining you, so focus on the why. Don't lure them with sweet nothings and grotesque promises and pies in the skies because that would backfire on you and your business.

If I may say so, Jesus is the greatest networker. He knew how to set up a network of his duplicates. And he never hyped. Excess hypes are the style of mad cult leaders who want to deceive and move their unthinking followers to foolish deeds. Jesus always stimulated people's imagination and challenged them intellectually. It was Satan who hyped Adam and Eve into believing they can be like God by their own will and in man's ways.

Training and Mastery

When giving an orientation to your new recruits (which you should always do), emphasize on training and product and marketing plan mastery--especially product mastery. Half-hearted people will likely quit. A good downline sees the need to train and master his craft. This means he plans to build his career in network marketing in your team. With such emphasis, you do an effective downline recruitment. It may be slow but it often hits its mark, hitting the nail on the head. Quick recruitment may grow incredible numbers in no time, but they often produce incompetent, unscrupulous, and often rotten downlines. Making big money, yes, but corrupt networkers nonetheless. Do you like that in your team? 

If you want a lasting and fruitful networking business, make it clean network marketing. And that includes effective downline recruitment.

How to Look for Buying Prospects

You'd be tempted to sell to everybody when you want to earn big. In a way, it's a correct principle--don't be too selective about who to sell to. Don't judge a book by its cover. Everyone's a suspect, as it were. But don't waste time on non-buyers. Now, the question is, how to look for buying prospects?

Prospecting

You always begin with prospecting. You make a list of people you know, potential buyers or otherwise, and offer the product to each one of them. This is product dissemination. You don't expect to make a sale with any of them. Good if you make 2 or 3 sales, or more. Aside from product intro, you also want to test the waters, as it were. You want to know who's interested and who's not. It's how to look for buying prospects and confine your list (and efforts) to them. 

Your list needs to be categorized into three.

• Buyers
• Potential buyers
• Non-buyers

Sell to buyers at once. Don't give them time to change their minds. After you have given them enough information to help them decide--and they want to buy--sell! 

Some people need more time. But they show signs of possibly buying. Keep them in your follow-up list. Call them up or drop by from time to time and make friends. Then casually mention the product and the possibility of them trying it.

Don't waste time with non-buyers. Continue befriending them (because they may one day turn up to be a potential buyer), sending them text messages periodically, but concentrate on buyers and potential buyers.

Then, continue to look for new contacts to present to. Sales is that easy, though it isn't that easy. You have to build a base of buyers and a secondary base of potential buyers. Soon, when the base is solid enough, and your sales account machinery is operational, it will be smooth sailing from then on, with minimum troubleshooting and updating.

A Closer Look at Buying Prospects

A buying prospect--how does he or she look like? Potential buyers have no particular looks. A seemingly uninterested guy may surprise you with a huge order; a guy who seems to be very interested may prove to be a dud. Difficult people may be hard to deal with but it's been proven that a good number of them are difficult and meticulous because they're going to buy. They hate wasting money buying poor quality.

The lesson here is--don't rely on looks. Present your product well. You spot buying prospects by how well you present yourself and your product. Fail at this and you miss potential buyers who want and need the product but rejected you because they didn't get a thing you said.

And anyway, a good and clear presentation is part of clean network marketing--network marketing done righteously. No double or misleading talk.

Most people are a crowd of masked and disguised individuals opting to be unlabled or inconspicuous because it's part of their defense mechanism. You can only unmask them when you have attracted their interest and curiosity. They're going to give themselves away and that helps you pinpoint who'd buy and who just want to fuss with you. It's the most effective way how to look for buying prospects.

Product and Prospect Match

It will help a lot to know the potentials and benefits of your product to pinpoint buying prospects. If you carry a health and healing drink, then try people who need your product health benefits. If your networking business carries a luxury product then try people who dream of having that luxury, or the rich who want more of it.

It may prove a waste of time to offer a dairy product to people who are lactose intolerant. Or offer an exercise equipment for doing strenuous workouts to an asthmatic. Have the common sense to match products with the kind of prospect you have. Here's a tip: most parents will do anything to buy what their kids like or need. So, if you carry a health drink good for kids or accessories or food of the same nature, your buying prospects are likely to be parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, teachers, and older siblings.

Being Nice: Your Most Powerful Investment

You need to invest in network marketing--time, money, effort, and personality. Networking is not a get-rich-quick scheme or a thing for the lazy or idle. This involves great tasks, hard work, and professionalism. But really, it's the simplest business there is, and yet the most rewarding and challenging. You can always be proud to be a professional network marketer. And your most powerful investment is--being nice.

Do you believe that?

Some networkers are nice only when facing potential prospects and clients. That's garbage. Instead, make it a lifestyle to be nice. And by nice, I mean friendly, polite, and honest or trustworthy. Are you worthy of trust, or do you easily wane in character at the prospect of huge profits? I've seen many networkers like that. And they earn a lot. But they never last. And they build a bad image in the industry sooner or later.

Being nice is a big edge in anything, especially when going for the Kingdom of God. God wants godly and nice people. And this is what most clients also want in sales. People want to deal long term with honest and trustworthy people who are also polite and friendly. So your biggest asset and investment is being nice.

Why is Being Nice an Investment?

Why an investment? Being nice is an investment. You shell out something valuable to you and you take risks. It may or may not return profitably. It takes practice and sacrifice to be nice to people. It may not work out the first time, but you have to keep investing. You have to keep drawing out from your personal savings of patience, broad mindedness, openness, and tact. And that's costly, more so than money.

Worse is that, in sales you often cannot choose the people who you deal with. Most wealth owners are moody and bossy, often throwing their weights around. You have to learn how to be nice to them. And there are tactics on how to do this, which will be discussed in another article. Suffice it to say now that you have to learn how to influence people, even difficult people. Learn to see where their weakness is.Then focus your being nice to that weakness.

Now, being nice is not being stupid or timid (fearful). You also have to be wise and smart, confidently facing every challenge--and especially anyone. More importantly, it also doesn't mean compromising righteous network marketing in favor of pleasing your customers. Right is right, wrong is wrong--but you still have to be nice. Clean network marketing or network marketing done righteously, and yet appealingly. 

You see now why it's your most powerful investment?

Other Facets of 'Nice'

It's also important to appear presentable and talk clearly. Be accurate in appearance and speech. Remember, you are the product, really. The customer will buy if he or she sees you are worth buying. And accurate in appearance doesn't mean wearing expensive apparels. It means carrying yourself well--you look neat, you smell good, you smile well, you wear decent clothes, and politeness and professionalism stand out in your aura. 

Accurate in speech means you talk clearly and you make your selling points easily understandable. Don't eat your words when talking. Open your mouth enough to enunciate words properly. And always get to the point. Don't waste your client's time. Answer his questions directly; do not beat around the bush or digress. Stay on the topic.

Listen Well

Another part of being nice is being a good listener. Good sales presentation is you talking 20 percent of the time and your prospects talking 80 percent of the time. People love good listeners. People always have stories to tell about themselves. Listen. Enjoy. Make time. But also remember to always bring back the topic to your product. You may be partly counselor to your client, but you are not in the counseling business. You are in sales. Sell!

Finally..

Remember that in network marketing, you don't want to just sell--you want to build a strong team. That's the main idea. Selling is just a bridge to help your prospect cross over and be your team mate. Thus, show him what it means to be in your team. In a sense, you serve as a mirror for your prospects--they see what they will become if they join your team. 

So be nice. And that includes your honesty, politeness, professionalism and person. Show them you are a conscientious career person. And that's what they will want to be. 

Don't lure them into your team using your money and profits alone. Doing so is a sure way of building a team of greedy, corrupt network marketers. Give them an idea of how much you make, proving that network marketing is lucrative, but focus on character building. That makes for a strong and lasting networking team. And it all starts with being nice--your most powerful investment in this field.

Closing the Sale During the Opening

Closing the sale during the opening of the same. Sounds too good but it's quite possible (in fact, easily possible). You simply give your prospect certain assurances. Like an incredible discount, or money-back guarantee or freebie or trade-in, like bartering products. It must look like a win-win thing for the customer, 100 percent--like the advantages are all his. But it's really beneficial both ways.

Photo by Cytonn Photography on Unsplash.

Ever been to a crazy "sale" in a mall? Like a 3-day "50% discount on all items" kind of thing? In all transactions, the sale is closed right at the beginning, right there at the opening. In fact, no sales pitch is required. People just madly scramble for it. You don't need to do any convincing talk. People practically buy as soon as they enter your store. The same with what happens in Divisoria during Christmas.

You know why?

Your Product Should be Like a Vaccine

Because customers are beguiled by the idea of a win-win situation all in their favor. It's all about them. You have to create an atmosphere like that, one that makes buying a heaven for buyers. Then you won't need to sell, although you're selling. They'd even beg you to sell to them by hook or by crook. 

It's something like the Covid vaccines. People wake up early in the morning to get in line first and wait almost the whole day--even beg--just to get jabbed. Why? They see a win-win situation for them.

If you want a closing sale during the opening, you've got to make your product look like an anti-Covid vaccine for your customers--and have it easily accessed. Here are some tips how:

1. Make it easy for them to buy. In blogging language, make sure your site is very user-friendly. Some online networking companies put a lot of hassles for customers with their ATM or debit or credit card procedures. That's insane. The last thing you want customers to be is be pissed off with your buying system.
2. Tolerate whatever buying method your customers have easily in hand. Let them conveniently pay in cash, credit or debit cards, Gcash, or COD. The seller cannot dictate the paying option for the customer, especially if the option feels like getting crucified.
3. As much as possible, make sure you have all sizes and colors and brands available. The thing most customers hate hearing is, "Sorry, we don't have that."
4. I don't care what your product is. But make sure it's packaged nicely and can be conveniently carried by the customer. I've seen stores that do not provide free bags for the products sold. Duh? And most customers want shopping bags with firm handles. Your business should invest on this, and you'd see a lot of repeat sales, just because of your good packaging and shopping bags. Oh yes.

I've seen a lot of good products just rotting in the shelves because no one buys them due to poor packaging, and a lot of excellent sales pitches or presentations fall in deaf ears because they do not offer a win-win situation 100 percent in favor of the customer. Meaning, the buyer wins with the product he buys and the deals he gets out of it.

But You're Still in Sales Even If You Hardly Do Any Selling

By the way, before continuing, many networkers are not aware that they are in the sales business. They think networking is about recruitment or referrals and no one needs to sell anything. On the contrary, networking is really selling, no matter how they claim that it involves no selling. And even if your products are selling themselves like hotcakes with the least effort from you, you're still in the selling business. You still need to sell.

Networking needs a product to market to be legit. And it should be government licensed. Without any product, any networking is illegal. What do you do with the product? You use some, you sell some. Selling is inevitable in any network marketing, no matter how some networkers deny it. You have to share the product, and the practical way is to sell it. You propagate the product and benefit from it, too.

You can also give some away for free. This is done for promotion. Free samples. You give them away massive product awareness and recall and also test the waters of a certain market. All these are sales and marketing activities even if you're just doling out products for free. In a sense, it's still  part of your selling strategy.

So you see now how network marketing is basically sales work.

Closing is in the Opening

Finally, to close a sale, you need to do a good sales opening. Success in closing is hinged on your opening. The end depends on the start. This is why they say first impression lasts. How you start the presentation determines how your client buys. And this is not just about systematic presentation and skillful delivery. It's about YOU, first and foremost. I mean your person. Network marketing and sales is really how you sell yourself to the customer. That's how you open a sale. 

You see, YOU are the product! The physical, legal product you're selling is just a tool to make your business legitimate. But the product you hold in your hands is not the real product. YOU are the product. The moment you step into the room of your client or meet with them, you are selling yourself. The customer sets his or her eyes first of all on you, not the product.

Moreover, the moment you start the presentation, you're also "closing the sale," as it were. If the client is impressed by your person and your manners and character, not just your opening remarks, the client is ready to buy. You are closing the sale during the opening and even before you have said anything.

Always remember the significance of first impressions. They're proven to last. And not only that, they determine the closing or loss of a sale.

What You Don't Know about Internet Marketing

Some folks don't know the great blessings on the Net.

Thank God for internet marketing. Why? Here is a way small people like you and me can have a real business for a minimum amount of capital. We can even pool our resources together to be more competitive in a world where big-time moneyed people play business like a mere game. With an online marketing business, we can start deciding our own destinies, not anymore just playing pawns to the rich.

Photo above by Campaign Creators on Unsplash.

As it is, we're just pawns for big players, being used all our lives to make others rich, and not benefiting as we ought to from that. If we do get something from it, it's just a tiny, minuscule percentage of what we should get if our efforts are fully rewarded. I don't care what high position you have in your company. If you're not the business owner, you're just a pawn. And no matter how big your pay is, you're not getting what you're really worth, and what you're really worth is more than just money.

You're worth your freedom!

More on the ebook above. Click here!

Sadly, even some "business people" fall victim to this. I just heard somewhere on Facebook how a couple who is trying out a business "cannot enjoy vacation anymore or even have free time" because they're tied to their business 24/7. The beauty with an internet marketing business is you're able to take it with you on vacation or tours. 

And that leads later to freedom to pursue what's really in your heart--discovering and harnessing your God-given potentials. The pursuit of your happiness, not the happiness of your boss, or adjusting your happiness so that it coincides with your boss'. Tying your life to your boss' is no way to live, but most people, thinking they have no choice, have been conditioning themselves for years to live contently like that, merely making their lives coincide with (or be an extension of) their boss' wishes or company goals.

They even go to work on Saturdays and Sundays.

All that can stop if we can grow our money more than enough to make living our own lives possible. And what better way to do this than through internet marketing--or doing an online business? It's hard (even next to impossible) to be financially free with small traditional businesses which are likely being swallowed up by big businesses. Some manage to make it, but they are only a few. That's not what we need. Let's not be jubilant with that. We need more small people being freed from hand-to-mouth existence and making it big (or a bit more comfortably) with business.

And only the great potentials of internet marketing is possible for this. Among other things, an internet or digital business is cheaper to start. Your 10 to 15K pesos can go a long, long way. Some people I know started with 500 pesos and are making good money now. It's actually God's provision for us small people as a way out of slavery. God wants to set a lot of us free so he devised this type of marketing in our time--because he's hatching up a grand plan, especially for his work. In summary, one day soon, the church will stop begging for money through solicitations, and pastors will stop pleasing people and compromising just to get some favors from rich church members. 

Anyway...

Admittedly, even online marketing is being scammed by unscrupulous people. Fact is, scams are everywhere, not just on the internet. They're even in government and some "legit" businesses. But lately, internet businesses and marketing have been taking a wild beating. Many people corrupted it, just like how the bible is designed to set us free from human religion, but certain men used it (or corrupted it) to take people back to man's religions. But that does not make the bible bad, does it? We just have to go back to the original uncorrupted designs of the bible and start and progress from there. Soon, we reap the great potentials of what God has in store for us.

The same with internet marketing.

Many have scammed it, especially here in the Philippines, but that does not change its useful worth. If we shake off the corruption and use it as originally designed, it can transform lives and put many in a better financial situation--like the Christian church. As I just said, I believe God provided online marketing in these last days to benefit the church, use wealth to advance the Gospel of the Kingdom.

But the problem is, church would rather continue begging than tapping internet marketing for its finances.

Anyway, there is a need to re-educate marketers, business people and even network marketers about the great potentials of the internet for business. And this is the call of righteous online marketers: practice and promote clean internet marketing through righteous and godly ways.

Just Imagine this:

Imagine if we could turn the poor and marginalized--the millions of jobless out there--into successful small online business folks, helping each other out, together building an affordable, growing business they all can benefit from. It's a kind of cooperative raised several levels up. Better if a genuine, greedless Christian church can spearhead it. 

Then there would be less employees with miserable jobs and low pays, less poor, less hungry, and less miseries in this world. The Book of Acts church can be revived, where they all shared their possessions, worked for a living daily together, and where NO ONE was in need, says the bible. Imagine that? 

Not one of them was in need!!!!