Is Internet Network Marketing Dead?

Last week I got an email from Mike Dillard of the Magnetic Sponsoring Fame and I had to laugh when I saw it. The subject of the email was "Is our future (gasp!) Offline?"

The reason why I laughed was because of who was sending me the email. Here is what Mike Dillard has to say on his website advertising his book...

Look, here's the cold, hard truth you won't hear at the Thursday night MLM meetings or in your company's literature:

In the Internet age...

The "Old School" Prospecting Methods Will Kill
Your Chances Of Making Any Real Money In MLM.

In fact, using those "dinosaur" MLM tactics is like trying to fill a leaking bucket.

Then when I read my email, here is what he has to say regarding baby boomers interested in joining the MLM profession...

They don't know how to market online - at all. And they don't really want to... Ever.

And I can't say that I blame them.

They've done quite well for themselves using the people skills they've acquired over the last 40 years. The thought of spending the next 12+ months mastering PPC, HTML, and copywriting doesn't sound like the same kind of fun that it does for us in the "Nintendo Generation", nor will it allow them to reach their financial goals immediately.

Frankly, they're better off using "old-school" prospecting techniques, and so are most of their friends in the "baby-boomer" generation. That's what they know.

This is what I have been saying for the longest on this blog. Internet marketing strategies are great. However, they will NEVER replace traditional network marketing strategies and tactics. The bottom line is that the VAST majority of top income earners did it using traditional network marketing strategies.

It is also a fact that most of the leaders these days are advocating a DUAL approach where you combine BOTH traditional strategies as well as internet based strategies.

Here is a great article that puts things in the proper prospective Internet Network Marketing Recruiting – Is This The End Of The Road?

If you are interested in a great free report that combines both traditional network marketing strategies with internet based strategies to help you build your contact list, make sure you download the Endless Streams Of Prospects report today!

How To Expose People You Meet To Your MLM Opportunity

I'm actually at my house trying to finish up some last minute work before I get ready to watch game two of the world series. While at home, I was presented with a great opportunity to expose someone to my MLM opportunity.

Today, I am going to quickly share with you my experience and show you how you can apply this to your own business. With all the focus on building a network marketing business on the internet, calling leads and so on, a lot of us are missing out on some great prospects that we can share our opportunity with.

Anyway, my doorbell rings. I look out the window and there's a gentleman at the door that I didn't recognize. I open the door and he asks if Mr. Cooper is home. I told him I am Mr. Cooper. He explains to me that he wanted to drop by to talk to me about a particular candidate that is running for office in my neighborhood.

So we're talking about the candidate for a couple of minutes. He asked me whether I was prepared to vote for him. I told him that I'm leaning towards his candidate but that I'm not decided yet. He also asked me that if I do vote for him would I select a particular party. I told him I would. I understand that game. The smaller parties outside of the big two here in the United States need as many votes as possible because it influences their funding.

Anyway, he thanks me for my time and begins to walk away. Before he left, I called him back and said...

"By the way, I'm just curious since you're already here, I'd thought I'd ask you...do you keep your income options open?"

He said "yes."

I said "Great, hold on a second, I got something for you..."

I ran upstairs and got one of my DVDs that I use to promote my MLM opportunity. I came back down and handed it to him. I then said..."

"This may or may not be for you, but I'm doing well with this opportunity and I am just looking to promote this to as many people in the community as possible."

I handed him the DVD and then said "What's the best phone number I can reach you at?"

He gave me his phone number and thanked me for giving him the DVD. I then closed the door and went on about my business.

Now mind you, I didn't do this exposure as smoothly as I would have liked to do. In fact, I almost completely forgot to expose him at all. Normally, what I like to do is ask them "If I gave you this DVD would you look at it?" I also like to find out when they can look at it, confirm that they would have looked at it if I call them at a time after that and then get their phone number. Eric Worre does a great training on this technique that you can check out if you are interested.

Despite the fact that this wasn't one of my best exposures, the bottom line is a bad exposure is always better than no exposure at all. When I call this guy back, he might be completely excited, I recruit him and he becomes one of the next success stories in my MLM business. Or maybe he doesn't do much, but he leads me to someone who becomes the next success story.

Now notice, I didn't go out to the mall looking for people to expose. I met this guy during my regular routine and activity and was able to expose him to my business in the moment. Those are the types of exposures that I believe are the best, because they are authentic and you come across like you're doing them a favor as oppose to them doing you a favor.

So think about all the ways you can get these types of exposures during the course of your daily routine and activity. Such as...

a) You are having breakfast, lunch or dinner at a restaurant where you are being served by a waiter.
b) A telemarketer calls you to sell you something.
c) Someone stops to ask you for directions.
d) You are in the supermarket and you ask someone if they know where they keep the eggs.
e) You are at the gas station and you stop to talk to the guy on the other side of the pump.
f) And more...

Some of you could have so many prospects just from this one technique that you won't ever have to do anything else. For others, this could just be a strategy you can add on top of anything else you are doing because it only takes an extra 60 seconds to do this.

So don't forget to take advantage of "In The Moment" MLM prospecting. You never know who you might be missing out on if you are not doing this.

Also, this little strategy is only one of SEVEN strategies that I personally use to build an endless amount of prospects that I can expose to my MLM opportunity. In fact, I have so many prospects, I honestly do not have the time to call them all. Some of my prospecting efforts are even residual, which means I did something one time and I get prospects over and over and over again from that activity that I did ONCE!

If you would like to be able to do that as well, I highly recommend that you download my free report on the 7 Strategies To Build An Endless Stream of Prospects today!

Paul J Meyer Died Today - A True Icon & A Life Well Lived!

PAUL J MEYER
May 21, 1928 - October 26, 2009

I was sad to hear that Paul J Meyer passed away early this morning. He was a gentleman that I really wanted to have the opportunity to meet because of the tremendous life that he lived and the impact that he has had on millions of people all around the world. He was 81 years old when he passed.

Born to immigrant parents from Germany, Paul is a classic example of the American success story. He started off his career in service to his country by serving in the military. After serving his country he moved on to insurance sales. My understanding is that he applied to well over 50 companies, being rejected by each and every one before finally being accepted by a company and given one of the worst territories. By the time he was only 27 years old, Paul was already a millionaire insurance agent and insurance broker.

However, it is his contributions to the personal development industry that Paul is most well known for. Many refer to him as the father of the personal development industry because he was one of the first people to produce audio versions of personal development. It was through a passion for personal development that Paul started his two personal development companies which are:

Success Motivation International, Inc

Leadership Management, Inc

A couple of years ago he also launched a publishing company known as Leading Edge Publishing Company, which publishes many of the books he has authored, including one of my favorites which is 24 Keys That Bring Complete Success (Fortune Family & Faith)

Paul was also a deeply religious man, unashamedly speaking about his personal relationship with his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. However, what impresses me most about him is for all of his professional accomplishments they have not had a negative impact on his family life. Unfortunately when you read about most leaders who have earned the type of income this man has earned, they are usually divorced several times. Not Paul. He was married to his wife Jane for over 37 years and EVERY WEEK he sent flowers to his wife! Even more impressive is the fact that he has five children and 15 grandchildren. A lot of kids usually want to move far away from their parents. However, all five of Paul's children live within 2 hours or less driving distance away from him.

Paul J Meyer was also my upline in Pre-Paid Legal Services. Along with his daughter Leslie and his son in law, Kevin, they co-founded LK Marketing Group. This group is the #3 income earners in all of Pre-Paid Legal, earning well over 1.5 million dollars a year. A multi-millionaire many times over (last year Paul earned well over 100 million dollars for the year), Paul donates his half of Pre-Paid Legal commissions to religious ministries and charities all over the world.

Every year, Paul invites every distributor in the organization that has reached the Gold Executive Director position or above to his ranch in Waco, Texas for a leadership retreat. It was an event that I was looking forward to qualifying for in the future and having the opportunity to meet Paul in person.

I am so grateful that he has taken the opportunity to document so many of his philosophies and attitudes in books and tapes. Now that he is no longer here, I won't have the opportunity to meet him in person. However, I can still benefit from his years of knowledge and incredible success philosophy through his books and tapes.

Paul J Meyer - A great man, mentor, role model and a classic example of a life well lived. He will be missed!

I've included some links to some additional resources if you would like to learn more about this amazing man!

Read Paul J. Meyer’s Obituary

Paul J Meyer - What It Takes To Be A Winner - June/July Success Magazine 2009

MLM Training - Fear Of Failure? Fear Of Success? Part 1

Why Overcoming Fear Of Failure and/or Fear Of Success Is The Most Important MLM Training Topic That You Have Likely Never Been Trained On!

You know what I find most interesting about MLM training? The large majority of the training resources available deal with how to build a MLM business. Everyone has their different philosophies and techniques on how to actually go about building a downline.

However, for the overwhelming majority of those of you reading this who have not achieved the success you want, the problem isn't you lack the how tos.

The how tos are so readily available, it's amazing. Do a search for mlm training at Google or your favorite search engine and you will find a host of websites and other resources teaching you how to build a downline.

Yet I bet if you look at all of those resources most, if not all of them deal with what I believe to be the NUMBER ONE reason why most MLM distributors fail to achieve the success they want in this industry.

It is because of an inability to overcome fear of failure, fear of success or in many cases both!

Overcoming The Fear Of Failure In Your MLM Business

Let's start with the fear of failure because this is the one that I believe I personally struggle with the most. A fear of failure is when you are afraid to do something because you believe that you will not get the result you are looking for.

So in the case of building a MLM business, a distributor is afraid to build the business because they are afraid that their efforts will not produce a successful downline organization. I believe one of the biggest contributors to the fear of failure is our education system.

We all know that in life one of the best ways to learn many principles is by trial and error. You cannot read a book on swimming or riding a bike. You only learn how to swim or ride a bike by trial and error.

However our school system actually punishes our kids for failing and making mistakes. They are taught that they must get good grades in school, else they won't be able to go to college. If they don't go to college they won't get a good job. If they don't get a good job they won't live a good life.

Fear of failure is simply the result of negative programming and misconceptions about success and failure.

How can you tell if you suffer from a fear of failure? Are you a sore loser or were you a sore loser as a kid? Are you a perfectionist and you feel that you cannot do anything until you have it down packed absolutely perfect? Do you constantly look back at your life to previous mistakes that you made and say to yourself "if only I would have done this, or if only I would have done that?" If so, you likely suffer from a fear of failure.

One of the best ways to overcome a fear of failure is by engaging in MASSIVE ACTION! Some people would have never learned how to swim unless someone didn't push them into the water where they had no choice but to sink or swim. This is the type of action that you need to take in order to get over a fear of failure in your MLM business.

Are you afraid of talking to prospects because you think no one will want to join you in your business? Then talk to a lot of prospects all at one time. If you absolutely cannot get over the fear to get yourself to start talking to prospects for your own business, go get a part time sales position immediately!

Many of the best distributors in the industry today were absolutely terrified to talk to prospects. However, after getting a part time job where they had to talk to lots of people, they were able to overcome their fear of failure through massive action.

If you need prospects to talk to, download my free MLM prospecting report where I reveal the 7 strategies that I personally use to generate endless amount of prospects for me and my business.

In part 2 I will talk about fear of success and how to overcome that fear.

The 5 Rules Of Closing In Your Network Marketing Business

One of the biggest struggles that many network marketing business distributors deal with is trying to close out their prospects. It's amazing how many people are so terrified of asking for the sale or recruit.

One of my mentors in my upline talks about this all the time. He will do a three way call for one of the distributors on the team. The prospect is ready to go so he turns the call back over to the distributor. Out of curiosity he stays on the line to hear what happens next. Here is an example of how a typical conversation will go.

DISTRIBUTOR - Wow wasn't that great?

PROSPECT - Yeah, that was great!

DISTRIBUTOR - So...um...do you have any more questions?

Of course the person has more questions! They just made the decision to get started in a business that they absolutely know nothing about! In fact, they might not even know what questions they should be asking!

Now I want to clearly point out that closing is not about CONVINCING someone to join your business. I once heard it said that if you have to convince them to join, you are going to have to convince them to actually go out and work.

We need to stop making this business so complicated. The bottom line is as a network marketing distributor, our job is to give the prospect enough information about our products, services and business opportunity so that they can make an intelligent decision as far as whether this business opportunity is right for them or not. Our job is to then collect that decision.

If the opportunity is right for your prospect, they will decide to join with you. If the opportunity is not right for your prospect, they will decide not to join you. It as that simple.

Anyway, here is a great video training by MLM Trainer Doug Firebaugh on the 5 rules of closing in your network marketing business. This is a great video. Now I also recommend that you proceed closing out your prospect by doing a 3 way call with another experienced distributor in your network marketing organization.

And of course if you actually need some prospects to talk to, consider downloading my free mlm prospecting report that reveals the 7 strategies that I personally use to build my network marketing organization. Considering the fact that my organization continues to grow every single month whether I personally sponsor anyone or not, I think what I'm doing works pretty well.

Anyway, here is the Doug Firebaugh Video. If you are reading this on another website and you cannot see the video, visit my network marketing blog located at http://web204mlm.blogspot.com and look for the post entitled "The 5 Rules of Closing In Your Network Marketing Business'

You Already Know The Answers To Your MLM Success

Recently I got an email from a distributor in a MLM company. This person wanted me to give them some advice that would help them take their business to the next level. I asked this person what do they think they need to do to take their business to the next level. They replied that they need to be more consistent in following the game plan provided by their company. Being familiar with their company and their game plan, I knew that this person's answer was an accurate one and told this person such.

Many of us in the industry find ourselves in the same boat. It doesn't matter whether you are relatively new to the industry, have been around, built a team but haven't been able to break through to that full time income, or whether you are stuck at six figures (not a bad place to be stuck at!) For the large majority of us, we already know the answers as far as what we have to do to be successful in our MLM business. The problem is we don't do what we know.

This business is not a very complicated business. It's not like we are search engine optimizers where we have to figure out the keyword ratio density and figure out how many inbound links we need to get into a website with what keywords to get listed in the search engines for the word or phrase we want. Unless of course, you are into the whole internet marketing/network marketing business model, but that's another story!

Here is network marketing in a nutshell...

1. You find people to network with.

2. You find people to market to.

3. You plug the interested people into a system that teaches them how to find people to network with and find people to market to.

I can almost guarantee you that each and every one of you either know how to do what you need to do to build your business or if you don't know, you at least know who you can go ask anything that you need help with. So the issue isn't not knowing how to do the business. The issue is you just aren't doing what you know.

So stop wasting your time trying to figure this business out. You don't need to listen to your company training CDs again for the 164th time before you go out and start building the business. There are only 4 things you need to do...

1. Set a goal.
2. Put together a plan to achieve that goal.
3. Execute on the plan.
4. Review your plan and execution and make tweaks until you achieve the goal. Then you start all over again back at step #1.

For most of us, regardless of whether we are stuck at broke, stuck at break even, stuck at small monthly profits, stuck at a nice 4 figure monthly part time income, stuck at a nice 4 figure monthly full time income or stuck at six figures, the reason why we are stuck is because we are either not goal setting, not working from a plan, not executing the plan we already put together or we are not reviewing it and making the necessary tweaks. It has very little to do with not knowing what we need to do.

I made money my first month in network marketing. I didn't know anything about attending local business overview events. I didn't know anything about getting on team training calls. I didn't know anything about attraction marketing, squeeze pages, funded proposals or any of that fancy internet stuff everybody is trying to teach us these days. All I knew is show this DVD to people and if they like it, have them fill out the application and check to see if the money got wired into my bank account the next business day!

We don't like to hear that it's a simple business. We want the business to be complicated. One of my mentors always says people don't like simplicity because there is nothing to hide behind if it's simple and it is so true. So stop complicating the business, get out there and go build an empire so you can leave a legacy for your children and your children's children!

If you really don't know the answers and you are stuck, go download my free report. It's free! It doesn't cost you a dime. I tell you exactly what I did so that I now have a database of thousands of prospects that I can tap into at any time with more being added on a daily basis. Do you think you would have more success if you had thousands of people you could contact? If so, go download my free report right now.

"But I'm afraid you are going to sell me something" you say? Of course I'm going to try to sell you something. This isn't charity, this is a for profit business. If you're afraid that you are going to be hypnotized by my masterful sales process then give your credit card to your spouse or a friend you trust for all I care before you download the free report. Just stop making excuses and take the action that you need to take to build a successful business.

Otherwise, if you are going to continue to procrastinate, you are going to be just like the people that Jeff Olson talked about in this TPN training. You are going to say "man I wish I had" instead of "gee I'm glad I did."

The TRUTH About Home Business Leads

Are Home Business Leads A Good Way To Build A MLM Business?

There are a wide variety of opinions regarding the validity of home business leads when building your MLM downline. Some leaders swear by them as a fantastic way of building a business from home. Others feel that they are a waste of time and money. The question is who is correct?

The fact is, both of them are correct. I know a number of leaders who have generated and/or purchased leads of people interested in home businesses successfully. I know of other leaders who have dabbled with them, but simply didn't have the success they were looking for, so they moved on to other strategies for building a business.

First, you must understand that there are two different ways to generate these types of leads for your business. The first way is to purchase them from a leads vendor. The second way is to generate the leads on your own.

I do both and have done both throughout my entire almost five year career in the MLM industry. Here is what I have discovered as far as my experience with these two methods of lead generation.

The Truth About Purchasing Home Business Leads

Purchasing home business leads is the easiest way to get leads. All you have to do is come up with some money and you can have a steady stream of leads for your business. The problem that I found is that the quality of leads in my experience fall anywhere from ok and decent to flat out horrible and a waste of time.

The reason why is because of the way that lead generation companies use to get these leads for you. These companies participate in what is known as a CPA network or Cost Per Action network. These networks compensate website owners to place advertising on their web page. For each website visitor that completes a certain action (in this case, fills out a home business survey), the lead company pays the website a commission.

The problem with this approach is that it is very easy to manipulate the system. A website owner can play games with the system so that they can earn higher commissions. Some of them are just flat out unethical and will fill out fake names to generate commissions.

Others will offer incentives to get people to fill out the survey. For instance, they might say that anyone who fills out the survey will be entered into a drawing to receive a free laptop. With the incentive, the people filling out the survey may not actually be interested in an opportunity, they just want the free incentive.

Now there are some lead vendors that offer some pretty decent quality of leads. These are companies that rely mostly on their own advertising to generate their leads and use CPA networks to only supplement their marketing efforts.

A good example is Cutting Edge Media, who has a number of websites and magazines that they own that they can use as tools to generate leads for their clients. CEM produces a number of Home Business magazines and periodicals that they get out to hundreds of thousands of people a month. You'll pay $1 on the low end up to $5 on the high end. You are also going to need at least $100 to order a minimum number of leads.

Another company you can use is MLM Lead Specialist. Their leads aren't as good as Cutting Edge in my opinion. However, they are a lot cheaper and they do some specials all the time. I've gotten as many as 60 phone interviewed leads for $40. One of my business partners is one of the top 5 recruiters in her state in my company and this is the lead source that she uses.

The Truth About Generating Your Own Home Business Leads

Generating your own leads is definitely the way to go if you want to work a higher quality lead. It's even better if you are able to generate your own leads consisting of specifically people that are interested in the exact business opportunity that you are a part of.

This can be very expensive and/or time consuming. I remember, I was spending like $8 to $13 a lead off pay per click search engines. However for me it was worth it because I was converting them at a profit and I was able to talk to less people then I would have to if I was buying business opportunity leads and get retail customers and new business partners.

The challenge with generating your own leads is that it requires a new set of skills. These are skills that go above and beyond the set of skills you already need to actually acquire new retail customers and distributors for your business opportunity.

To generate your own leads, you will need to learn how to set up lead capture pages. You will need to learn what things like "conversion ratios" and "click through rates" are. Most importantly, you will need to learn how to generate traffic to your website so that you can get leads to begin with.

What I do like though about generating my own leads is that I don't have to worry about them being "surveyed" to death. This is when the person who is the lead fills out a bunch of surveys and gets a bunch of phone calls from a bunch of unprofessional MLM distributors that have no clue how to work leads effectively and vomit all over the prospects with their opportunity. Generally, a lead that I generated is usually filling out my lead capture form only at that point in time.

Another benefit that I like about generating my own leads is that you can replace financial equity with sweat equity. This means that even if you don't have any money, you can make up in work effort and know how what you lack in cash.

I also like the fact that many of the techniques that I use to capture leads have what I like to refer to as a residual effect. What this means is that I do that activity one time and it generates leads for me forever.

For instance, I wrote an article back in April. Since then I have had over 1000 people read that ONE article and I have had hundreds of people visit my website, some of which resulted in free leads for my business opportunity. These visitors continue to come into my website on a daily basis just from that article that I wrote one time!

Try going to your leads vendor and telling them you want to pay one time and get leads every single month for the life of your network marketing business. It simply doesn't exist.

Finally, most lead vendors that you purchase leads from will replace leads that you buy in cases where you have someone that puts in the wrong phone number or fake information. When you generate your own leads you are on your own in this area and you would be amazed at how many people actually put in fake information, especially phone numbers.

So in conclusion home business leads do work. However, you need to be aware of the advantages and disadvantages. That said, they certainly aren't the ONLY way to find prospects for your business opportunity. I know many leaders who have build wildly successful businesses without ever having to purchase a lead and without ever having to generate their own leads online.

In fact leads is only one aspect to my business. I have actually identified 7 strategies that I've personally used over the years to generate thousands of contacts for me to talk to about my business opportunity. If you are interested in learning more visit my website and download my free MLM prospecting report today!