Very sorry for the lack of updates here. I’ve simply been too busy building my business to give this site much time lately… but I do have one heck of a gem for you today. After you get done laughing please leave your comments below!

Turn your speakers up, I’m hard to hear over the waves!

It’s often said that one’s best thoughts come while sitting in the bathroom.  I completely disagree and find that an ocean tends to bring the clearest thinking anywhere.

In this particular case I spent some time just thinking about why it is some people succeed and fail in network marketing.  Why given the same opportunity and chance can two people achieve vastly different result?

It really comes down to core belief and believability.  This might sound a bit too simplistic but I assure you that this 4 minute video is well worth the view and could force you to confront some serious decisions you’ve been avoiding and may just lead to an entirely new direction for your MLM business.

Most people break out the fire hose and drown their friends and family with a completely pointless barrage of facts and figures on why their opportunity has the best corporate team, compensation plan, products and up-line support.

Take a deep breath…

Your job is just to get people in front of your “power tool” which should be no longer than about 10 minutes and should serve the purpose of separating your list into the “I’m interested” or “I’m not interested” category. .

You are not selling your product, your opportunity or even yourself; what you are selling is TIME.

You need to make it worth somebody’s time to take 15 minutes, an hour or an evening out of their busy lives to check out what you are doing.  Use your credibility and relationship to let people know that it may or may not be for them but you would not waste their time and they very much need to see what is happening with your product/business.

If you feel like you are bugging, begging or selling than you are doing it wrong!  Make your invite direct and simple. What annoys friends and family is when you start to talking out of character.  You would be amazed at how refreshed people are when you cut to the chase.

Here is an example of how it could go…

Introduce yourself, QUICKLY get past the formalities of how you doing and how have you been.  Let people know by your tone of voice that you called for a reason and then get to it!

“Bob, I’d love to say I’m calling just to catch up but I’m not… the reason behind the call is that I’m extremely excited about a new business I just started and right now I’m just getting the word out.  I don’t have time to explain everything now, but I’m working with a product/company called “YourCompanyName”, have you heard of it?   OK, well… regardless, all I’m here to ask for is 10 minutes of your time.  I know that this may or may not make sense for you, but I’m very committed to making this business a success and your 10 minutes would mean a lot to me.

The Universal Objection Torch: “I’m asking you to take a look at what I’m working on, it’s not going to offend me if you decide it doesn’t make sense for you… but I’m not going to lie, it probably will hurt me a bit if you don’t trust me enough to take 10 minutes of time out of your day ”.

Don’t throw up!

More than likely a lot of people will want to know more right on the phone.  Remember that your sole purpose is to get the prospect to commit to listening to the sizzle call, view your website or watch the DVD. In order to assure the prospect’s participation, you need to keep the curiosity level very high. Saying too much kills curiosity so once again… DO NOT do the full presentation… KEEP IT BRIEF. Keep your level of excitement high and talk with confidence and a smile.

I am sick of reading articles and watching videos and getting tweets and emails from idiots who have never broken even in network marketing but proclaim if I just by this eBook I will learn how to attract endless MLM leads and prospects into my business. Problem is that my buying the eBook is what turns me into a prospect for their deal. To top it all off, they didn’t write the eBook to begin with, in fact they don’t know the first thing about network marketing.

Long before the internet, networkers were using classified ads, postcards, direct mail, car magnets, drop cards, fliers and radio advertising very effectively to generate MLM leads and build their networking businesses.

While all these old school methods are great, the internet blows every one of them out of the water. There is not even a close second to the internet in terms of your ability to reach an unlimited audience.

But if the internet is so great, why shouldn’t we just start there and ditch the prospect lists and meetings like all the online gurus say? The reason is that the internet has the toughest learning curve compared to every other method available to you.

How much training does it take to share a product, service or opportunity that you believe in with people you know? Not much right.

Now ask yourself this question. How much training does it takes to share a product, service or opportunity through the internet? Where do you start? No matter how fired up you are there is a LOT (a lot would be an understatement) to learn before you can effectively reach anybody with your message.

The real problem with online network marketing as I see it right now is that you have the internet gurus saying that old school network marketing is dead and yet their solution is 10x tougher to execute than the method they would have you avoid.

What you hear from these gurus is that you can generate MLM leads through “attraction” by becoming an authority in your field and providing value to others so they will want to follow you. The culmination of this whole “magnetic” or “attraction” prospecting process is that your leads are generated by selling an eBook to people on how to become successful in network marketing, yet the eBook does nothing but show you how to sell more eBooks so as to generate more prospects for your network marketing business. In the end the only business you are building is that of eBook author by creating a viral eBook selling machine.

Oh but I forgot somewhere along the process of generating leads, err… selling eBooks, you should run into a networker or two that is so entranced with your guru expertise that they decide to join your MLM company so that they can work personally with you in the eBook selling business in hopes of someday themselves becoming a guru and “attracting” network marketers into their own business.

Sounds pretty crazy right? It is!

I’m not here to completely trash on these internet MLM training programs. The fact is that I own every one of them. There is always something to learn, no matter how faulty the premise, but you should now understand that you cannot ignore old school network marketing.

Imagine a room full of people buzzing with excitement in anticipation of the coming presentation where they will finally get to learn what all the buzz is about. The best part is that this happens every week and each meeting is bigger than the last. You’ve had to get a bigger room twice in the past two months. This is the power of old school MLM.

Network marketing has gone through some dramatic change in the past 20 years and especially within the past 4 years as the internet and web 2.0 technologies have overhauled the very fundamentals of the MLM industry.

There are two primary schools of thought out there. First you have the old school networkers who pretty much have ignored the very fact that the internet was ever invented. They still teach people to make the list, attend weekly hotel meetings, schedule 2 on 1 coffee shop and lunch meetings, do three way calls and all rest of the old school network marketing strategies.

Contrary to the ramblings of all the internet aged networking “gurus”, these old school techniques still work very well. In fact, the Thursday before Christmas of ’07 I personally witnessed a hotel meeting at a Chicago hotel that had in excess of 600 people in attendance.

Since that time I’ve witnessed several other meetings for several other companies that are thriving just as strong today as their ancestors 10 years ago. I’ve witnessed and lead weekly meetings that grow exponentially week after week after week. There are companies that you’ve never heard of that are still cranking out billions of dollars in sales primarily driven through home and hotel meetings.

This is still a people business and people are slow to change. They still want a business they can touch and feel. They still want to work with people they know and trust. They still want to shake hands and have a comfort level with the people they are working with that is tough to create on the internet.

Old school network marketing is NOT dead and it will never die because it is the backbone of the industry. This business is still about taking a product or service of real tangible value to the people that you know love and trust.

If you are not willing to share your company/product with the people you love then you should reconsider your company before you jump on the bandwagon that old school network marketing died with the dawn of the internet.

So if old school MLM is NOT dead then what of all these college dropouts touting all over the internet that you can throw your list out the window and laugh at all the idiots attending weekly meetings and trainings. The reality is that they are not wrong either, at least not entirely.

Give it a year or don’t give it a day. Please… I’m begging you… DON’T WASTE MY TIME! We’re not selling 25 cent cool-aide on a Saturday morning anymore!

More than likely you are reading this as one of those naturally self motivated individuals who is already seeking out the knowledge and taking the action necessary to achieve success. Unfortunately most of your team will not fit that same description.

It’s time to get serious. If I’m your sponsor and you are in it to win it, I need to know about it. Give me some well defined written goals along with a commitment to make the sacrifices that will be expected to achieve them. This is the first test for my new network marketing distributors. If I don’t get this they are on their own and I saved myself countless hours of frustration.

There are 2 big reasons why goals are a piece of the puzzle that cannot be forgotten about…

Reason #1 – Requiring written goals and commitments is the first test to determine if your new distributors are worth your time and energy! Now you may be thinking… well they signed up, doesn’t that qualify them for your time? No it does not, people sign up on an emotional high without giving any regard to the action necessary for success. The people who balk or blow off this assignment never seem to make it past the dips of entrepreneurial life. On the other hand the seriously committed will be happy to send you their written commitments. Get goals from your team and watch your efficiency soar!

Reason #2 – This is really just and extension of reason #1 but from a different angle. By having goals in hand you have the ability to hold your team accountable versus “bugging” them to take action. Gone are the days of babysitting your team to show up for the weekly conference call, meeting or webinar. Having written goals in hand allows you to simply remind them of their own written.

I’ve found for whatever reason that many folks have a hard time asking their new distributor for their goals. Here is about how the conversation should go between you and your new distributor when first kicking off your business and getting serious…

“Joe, I want you to know that I’m seriously committed to this business. This is my vehicle to [insert your why/goals]. Before we get to deep into things I need to know what you are in this for. There are people making a yearly income on a monthly basis and on the other hand there are people happy to make an extra $500 a month. Obviously the game plan and commitment level required will depend on what you want to achieve. To give me a better idea of what you want out of this business, I need you to spend some quality time on this worksheet prior to us getting together to do your business planning.”

The bottom line is that most people don’t take network marketing seriously and therefore they don’t succeed. Implementing a team-wide expectation for written goals and commitments will help lower your attrition rate because your team will ready for and committed to working through the inevitable obstacles that will cross their path.