MLM Sales Prospecting Methods Part 1 - The Warm Market

As a MLM professional, it is important that you familiarize yourself with as many MLM sales prospecting methods as possible, even if you personally are going to only focus on a few.

Why?

Remember, the big money in this industry isn't made based on what we do as far as our personal production goes. The big money is made by producing a team of leaders who are able to drive the production deep down through the organization without your personal involvement.

I have seen many a distributor quit building their MLM business, not necessarily because they didn't have what it takes, but simply because they were only familiar with one or two methods of building their MLM business that they were not comfortable with.

As a result, I think it's important that I take some time out to share with you some strategies for building your MLM sales organization from a recruiting prospective. By knowing of multiple ways to recruit and prospect, you will be able to save many distributors who would have otherwise quit the business or at least be not as productive as they could be.

Even though the focus of this blog is for prospecting online, I do believe it is important for you to familiarize yourself with some offline methods of prospecting as well. Some of your biggest producers will barely be able to type an email so it is important that you understand offline network marketing as well as online network marketing so you can cater to a wider audience.

The first and most common method for prospecting in MLM is the warm market. This is where you make a list of everyone you know and share information with them about your business. A lot of people complain that warm market doesn't work. It does work. The reason why it doesn't work for a lot of people is two fold...

1. You don't know how to prospect the warm market correctly.

2. You don't understand the "big picture" of prospecting in the warm market.

The best way, in my opinion to prospect people you know is to simply ask them for their opinion. If I'm calling up my friend Fred, I might say, "Hey Fred, listen, I got something I want you to check out, you may or may not be interested, but I would just like to get your opinion on it. When can I stop by? It will take about 15 minutes.

Most of the time, he won't even ask what it is, he will say sure, come by Tuesday or something like that. If he does ask what is it, I'll simply tell him, it is a business that I decided to get involved with, but I don't want to give you any more information than that because it is important to me that I get your unbiased opinion on it and if I go into any more detail, you may formulate an opinion based on what I said or what I didn't say.

What about people who have already been in 4 or 5 other MLM companies that didn't work out? Well I would still prospect my warm market in that scenario as well, but I would understand going in that I may not have a lot of success and make sure I have another way of prospecting lined up quickly. I would also lead with the PRODUCT instead of leading with the business and then only mentioning the business to those who have an interest in the product.

What about the big picture with the warm market?

The big picture with the warm market is that first of all, you may have a superstar in your warm market that you don't even know simply because they haven't been exposed to the opportunity. My number one producer in my organization was a former co-worker of mine and I didn't think he would be interested. The other big picture with the warm market is that more likely, your biggest producer won't necessarily come from YOUR warm market, but they will come from someone else's warm market.

Let me give you an example...

I am currently looking at a list right now of my top 10 producers. HALF of them came from SOMEONE else's warm market. 3 of them came from my warm market. Only 2 of them came from cold market.

So even if you personally don't have a great warm market, someone that gets recruited into your organization may have a fantastic warm market. However, you won't be able to teach them how to recruit into their warm market unless you have recruited in your warm market.

In part 2 I will talk about prospecting through referrals and give you a resource that you can use that will help you to be able to build an endless stream of referrals for your business so that you don't ever have to advertise if you don't want to.