SUMMARY: Using the phone to prospect for your business is fine. Just don’t sound like someone who gets hung up on right away. Here are two simple steps to improve your marketing efforts.
*** ***
When prospecting for your home business – once you get the leads – there’s only one thing you need to do…
Talk to a whole bunch of people and make each of them feel like an individual you personally care about.
If you’ve been in MLM or affiliate marketing for any length of time you already know this. The successful people design campaigns around making what they’re doing seem very attractive, then inviting you to be a part of it. The good ones make you feel like you would be an important part of it.
The best ones really DO make you an important part of it. That, and what they have really is attractive and beneficial to a lot of people.
There is one thing that is an instant turn off. And even if you’ve never been involved in home business, you know what it is…
Your phone rings. You pick it up. It’s that guy or woman who’s been sending you autoresponder emails. A smiling voice, usually sounding like they’re trying too hard…
“Hello, (insert your name here)! This is (insert their name here) calling from (insert location they’re calling from). I got your name as someone who is looking for a way to make money from home. Do you have a few minutes to talk?”
There is nothing wrong with contacting people who are interested in building an income from home. Of course there are different levels of interest in those leads. It might be someone who just played around on the Internet and entered their name on a website. Could be someone who put their name down on something that has nothing to do with it (like when we called that poor girl who just entered her name on a college scholarship matching site).
And it could be someone who went through a long pre-screening process and jumped through plenty of hoops. That is a strong prospect!
The problem comes when that call comes from the initial phone contact. The lead generation process can be great. But at the end of it, people will make choices about signing up with you based on the company, and the product, and the marketing plan.
And more than anything else, they’ll make that choice based on that first contact…how they feel about YOU!
So if you contact people as if you’re reading a script – that you aren’t treating them like someone important or you are the thousandth call they made that day – how confident do you think they will be.
This is common sense. But good, smart people still make these calls and sound like minimum wage telemarketers. What’s up with that?
There is a solution to this. It’s called POSTURE.
It’s very simple. Two steps.
First, make sure you are giving your telephone time only to qualified leads. Yes, I know a lot of people choose to market by slamming the phones. If you’re one of them, you can use an autodialer to do the heavy lifting. Record a good, strong, friendly but confident message, and give them something to do. Don’t pick up the phone until they do it.
Second, make sure you are coming from a position of strength. Rather than thinking of what you’re doing as prospecting, think of it as interviewing. You are looking for the right person for something that can have a life changing effect on people. You know there’s a learning curve, and you know it will take a while for people to start making money. You also know there is an investment to get started. So you’re looking for someone who is the right fit. That’s not going to everyone. In fact, it will be fewer than half of the people you talk with.
People are hungry for a good thing. They are hungry for leadership. And whether you’re a beginner or seasoned professional, you can provide it. If you have confidence in what you’re doing, you can be friendly but strong. Real and assertive. You can be exactly the kind of person you would want to hear from when you pick up the phone.
Leave a Reply