There is nothing quite as sad as having an excited new distributor with a hot new business opportunity and superior product line, who has no idea where to go first and what to do. Downline abandonment is a plague where the recruit suddenly feels alone with no idea why they can’t get people to join their business.
The MLM sales pitch made it sound so easy. Right?!
Or they feel overwhelmed with too much information.
A new IBO needs access to two kinds of training -
- That of product sales training so they will know more about the benefits and features of their new product line and how to promote them.
- Then, secondly – and most importantly – tips and advice to prepare them to be in business for themselves and create a downline that’s just as motivated and educated as they are.
Ideally, you are training them to become independent of you, although you’ll still reap the financial rewards of having them sign up under your name in the first place.
Each new prospect will need guidance and input in the many facets of being in business for themselves. While they may be excited and raring to go, maybe they have poor business practices that turn people off. For that, they’ll need some personal skills development.
Or perhaps they need some guidance on how to reach new customers or approach prospects for their downline.
What’s needed is a peer-based setting where you can effectively teach the various aspects of sales and marketing as well as pointing out materials which will help your new recruit grow as a sales person.
A good sales person is someone who has been trained to be a people person but not everyone is a natural at it.
The buzzword in the sales and marketing industry is Attraction Marketing. The fact is no one likes to be sold. The days of the fast talking, hard pitching salesman is gone. But the flip side is that everyone loves to buy!
The obvious solution to this dilemma is to make it easy for your prospect or customer to make a buying decision – which, in this case, is a “sign-up” decision.
The object is to teach your downline how to inform and attract customers and their own potential downline. There are several excellent books on the subject of attraction marketing but for this report we’ll touch on how to use some attraction marketing methods with social media like Squidoo and Google Knols. Like I stated in a previous post… this stuff just works, that’s why I repeat it!
Squidoo lenses (and the same goes with Knols, WetPaint Wikis and Hub Pages) are an excellent way to provide training, advice, hints and tips in the form of training modules that teach the principles of attraction marketing.
Each lens or Knol can teach an important aspect of the bigger picture. Devise a step-by-step lesson plan, which leads your new prospect by the hand to learn how to be more effective in their sales and approaches.
Devote one lens for each bit of personal development. Teach them how to do what you do. You can feature books (available through Amazon.com, ClickBank or PayDotCom, for example) that will help cement that particular point. Then make sure to link these web 2.0 pages together in logical sequence.
Here are a few ideas to get you thinking on what to offer for training:
• How to prospect intelligently
• How to call your warm prospects
• How to develop their own lead generation system
• How to be a more personable person
• How to dress and act successfully
• How to demonstrate the flagship products (and so on…)
Most likely you joined an upline that has some form of training: books, tapes, brochures, and videos. Capitalize on that. Take the training that’s available and make it easily accessible.
Tie them into any upline training that’s appropriate or that wasn’t covered in your own training program. Think of what questions you still had when you were new and didn’t know what you were doing.
Nothing is stopping you from making your own training materials. Producing video is so simple now, and with a Flip video camera or Camtasia paired with YouTube, you can have a quick video up in no time.
Autoresponders
Learn to use an autoresponder to capture emails and then keep in touch regularly. An autoresponder would almost be essential to keep tied in. Since you can’t possibly talk to everyone in your downline once it grows, you should use regular email messages that feature a topic of interest or news, which in turn leads them to the main website or one of your lenses.
Be A Leader
Be a leader of your downline by maintaining a website that’s easily understandable. While most MLM programs have a “back room” for each IBO, that isn’t the same as one that you would maintain to stay in touch with everyone in your downline.
Create a Training Site / Blog
As the leader of your own group, take the initiative and create a central site where your members can get the latest news and you can offer the newest training downloads in the form of mp3s and videos. You might try using Ning.com if you prefer the layout.
Have the key questions highlighted on the sidebar so that they’re linked to other pages or other lenses. On these lenses, answer the questions and offer any helpful books, tapes or other training materials that will boost your new prospect’s confidence and knowledge.
It’s really simple to put together your own network of social networking pages and a training site, that help to build your downline’s knowledge base and make them feel confident in their decision to sign up with your opportunity.
27. June 2010 at 4:23 am
Hey Toki,
Each article I have read is well written and to the point. I would also like to say, not only are the posts well written, but the lay-out of your site is excellent. I was able to navigate from post to post and locate what I was looking for with ease. Keep up the great work you are doing, and I will return many times in the near future.
Damon