Generate Free Network Marketing Leads With Articles Video

In my last post, I gave you some great strategies about how you can use articles to promote your business. I just came across a great video that shows you how you can generate free network marketing leads with articles.

The creator of the video is Joe LoBalsamo and his website is http://MLM.RealMLMTraining.com

What I really like about article marketing is the fact that your prospects have to go through a pretty lengthy process before they actually become a lead for you. As a result, this makes them a much higher qualified prospect than a business opportunity lead that you might purchase from a lead vendor company.

I will remind you though that this strategy is only a truly free network marketing lead generation strategy if you are able to write articles on your own. If not, or you don't have the desire to, you will have to hire someone to do this for you, which no longer makes it free.

Pay special attention to the two ways that he talks about for writing articles. I actually use BOTH of the methods that he talks about and they both work well.

Also notice that he is using ezinearticles.com as the article directory of choice. This article directory is, in my opinion the BEST article directory for you to use. It has the most website visitors, gets the most exposure and gets the best search engine rankings in all the major search engines including Google, Yahoo and MSN.

So if you really want to see how the process of submitting articles works, I recommend that you take a look at this video below as Joe does an excellent job at explaining and showing you how the process works,

By the way, creating good informative videos is also a great way to generate free network marketing leads. The reason why is because people like me will take your videos, post it to our websites or blogs and give you free exposures.

Article Marketing For Network Marketing Distributors

One of the best ways to generate leads for your network marketing business is to have prospects search for you in the search engines. The only challenge with this is many people have no idea how to get their websites listed high in the search engines. One way that I have found effective is article marketing.

So how does this work?

Let's say you are involved with a network marketing company that markets a weight loss product. Your goal is to attract prospects who are interested in losing weight. You can write an article about weight loss, place a link to your website at the bottom of the article and submit it to various websites all over the internet.

The first step is to write the article. You don't have to necessarily be a writing genius in order to write a good article. However, you do need to write well enough so that the article is readable and it will hold the interest of your prospect.

If you are able to write your own articles, this entire marketing strategy can be implemented for free if you want to. There are some tools that you can purchase that will make it significantly faster and easier as well.

If you don't write well or simply have no desire to write and would rather hire a professional to do it for you, I offer an excellent article writing service. I have written articles for distributors, attraction marketing training companies and even network marketing companies themselves. You can check out my company website for more information.

When writing your article, you want to make sure you include keywords and phrases that people who would be searching for what your company offers would type in. For example, if you offer a weight loss product, some of the keywords you may want to include are weight loss tips, fast weight loss, best weight loss program, etc.

You should select one main keyword for your article. That keyword should appear in the title of your article and several times throughout the body of the article. However, you don't want to overdo the use of the keyword. Otherwise the search engines will catch on to what you are doing and they won't include your article in their search results. Generally using the keyword once per every 100 words should be fine.

You then want to include other related keywords in the body of the article. These are other search terms that people might type similar to your main keyword. Sometimes people type in entire sentences and having other keywords besides your main keyword helps you to get listed for these long search terms.

Once you have the article written, the next step is to submit it to various article submission directories. The #1 directory that I recommend for submitting articles to is Ezinearticles. They have the highest pagerank, which is important for getting good listings in the search engines. They also have the highest amount of visibility as well.

Please note that it does take about a week for your article to be submitted and approved to this website. Once it is, it will be a part of their directory and people who are searching for the topics that you are writing about can find your article and if they want more information, click on your website.

There are a number of other directories that you can submit to after you get your article listed in Ezinearticles. Here is a list of some of the ones I like to use.

Goarticles
Articledashboard
ideamarketers
articlecity
Better Networker

Here's a list of the top 50 article directories by traffic, pagerank

To make this easier for you, I highly recommend that you use an automatic article submission tool. This tool will allow you to submit your articles automatically to hundreds of directories giving you massive exposure to your website. The article tool that I prefer is Article Submitter by Brad Callen.

His Platinum tool is the best tool because you can do everything in one shot. However, if you are on a budget, when you get to his page, click on Home and at the time of this writing, he has a free submitter tool that you can use.

If you have your own blog, I highly recommend that you post your article to your own blog as well. One thing that you can do as well to get more results is to do a search for other blogs that are about the topic that you are interested in. You can go to Google Blog Search to do this.

What you then want to do is leave a comment about the blog entry posted there. However, instead of putting your name in the name field, put the keyword that you are looking to get listed for. So if your article is about the best weight loss program, in the name put in "Best Weight Loss Program."

If you do this everyday, you will increase the placement of your article in the search engines. I have literally gotten to the top 10 of the search engines just by using this one strategy.

Also, don't forget to social bookmark your articles as well. Go to websites like digg.com and submit your article to their directory. This will also help you to increase the placement of your article in the search engines.

Here is a list of the Best Social Bookmarking Sites by Alexa Rating and PR Rating

This is article marketing in a nutshell for network marketing distributors! If you enjoyed this post, feel free to comment back and also use the "Bookmark and Share" button above so more people can learn these strategies!

Better Networker - Facebook For Network Marketing Distributors?

I have been a member of this particular web site for a while now and it is an excellent resource for network marketing distributors. I like to refer to it as the "Facebook For Network Marketing Distributors" The website is called Better Networker and its goal is to teach you how to become a better network marketing distributor.

There are a number of benefits to becoming a member of website like this. Like any social networking website, membership is free.

The website was created by Mike Dillard, the creator of Magnetic Sponsoring and a host of other network marketing training programs. If you are interested in more information, you can check out this free video where you get access to a 7 day boot camp on how to build your network marketing business using the internet.

One of my favorite features of the website is the discussion forum. Here you get to ask questions to the community on any topic that you want. You also get to see other questions and discussions that are taking place in the community. You can learn a lot just by seeing what is being posted in the discussion boards.

You also get your own profile page where you can share information about yourself, just like you could on a Facebook or a Myspace account. They even have friends where others on the community can connect with you also.

They also have a feature where you can submit content that you created to the community for additional exposure. For example, I just submitted one of the articles I wrote for an article directory over to the community minutes ago and already 4 people have read my article!

Articles aren't the only type of content you can submit. If you have videos and podcasts, you can submit those as well to the community and get added exposure that way.

Better Networker also has groups, which are like little subcommunities within the community. While joining a group is great for networking and getting specific content about the topic the group is about, you can also create your own group, which allows you to mass mail members within a group, which is a very powerful business building strategy.

The website also has a place where you can post your business opportunity, your affiliate program and any tools and resources that you offer to the network marketing industry. If you are looking for these things you can find them in the opporutnities section as well.

If you got money for advertising and you are looking to advertise to network marketing distributors, Better Networker also has ads that appear throughout the website. They only allow 10 ads at one time, so each ad gets a tremendous amount of exposure on the website.

If you are involved in the network marketing industry, I highly recommend that you create a free profile on Better Networker

Will MLM Work In A Great Depression?

Statistics have shown that MLM companies have thrived during economic recessions. However, it is very possible that we aren't in just a recession but a new great depression. Since the last time we had a great depression was the 1930's and MLM didn't get started until well after that, the question that we must look at is will MLM work in a great depression?

In studying companies that did well during the great depression, there is one trend that I have noticed with all of these companies. It really didn't matter what industry they were a part of or what products or services they offered.

The key difference between companies that failed during the great depression and companies that did well was the attitude of the companies.

During a great depression everybody doesn't just stop spending money. Granted some people do because they lost their job and don't have any money to spend. However even if unemployment reached 20%, you still have 80% of the population that still has a job.

What happens during a great depression is people are just a little more careful about the way they spend their money. They are going to take the time out to make sure they are getting a good deal. The companies that offer the best deals are going to be the ones that make the most money.

In addition to that, advertising and promotion is key during a great depression. Many companies simply stop advertising and cut their marketing budgets. The companies that continue to market and promote (and in particular those that INCREASE their marketing and promotions) are going to be the ones that do well.

So how does this apply to MLM and a great depression? I believe that there are going to be some companies that do extremely well during this economic environment if we are in fact in a great depression. I also believe that there are some companies that are going to fail during this enviornment.

So what are the key factors that are going to determine which companies do well and which companies falter?

1. Companies that save their customers money - If you have a product that saves people money that product is going to do well during a Great depression. Even Starbucks is coming out with a "value" menu. Now is not the time to be trying to market a product that someone can get a similiar one for 1/4th what your company is charging.

2. Companies that invest in its sales force - The smart network marketing companies are going to be the ones that make investments in its sales force. These are the companies that are adding to its compensation plan and not taking away from it. These are the companies that are investing in new infrastructure and providing its representatives with new state of the art tools so that its sales force can be more effective.

3. Companies with a recruiting first philosophy - The MLM companies that focus on recruiting and gets their sales force to focus on recruiting are going to do very well in this economic environment.

Besides more people interested in the opportunity because of a lack of job prospects, the more distributors that are out in the field selling, the more people that are going to know about that company's products and services. This will result in more sales being made, increased revenues and increased profitability for the company.

So will MLM work in a great depression? Absolustely it will! The key is you need to be with the right company and you need to have the right mindset. Now is not the time to be cutting back on your prospecting efforts. Now is the time to step up your prospecting efforts. Those who do this will be very happy at what happens to their business over the next 12-24 months.

Tips for Network Marketing - Avoid These Mistakes!

On this blog I love to share with you tips for network marketing as I believe they can help you to take your business to the next level. There are a number of common mistakes that are made by distributors in the industry. My goal is to help you avoid these mistakes so that you can shorten your learning curve.

If you have been on this blog for any length of time, you know that I am big on mindset and philosophy. We can give you all of the how to's that are necessary in order to build a big business. However, if you don't have the right mindset and the philosophy all of the tips for network marketing in the world won't help you.

Here is a great article about the most expensive mistake you can make in network marketing. Enjoy!

The Most Expensive Network Marketing Mistakes - Lesson of the Spider Monkey
By John T.S. Murphy

What is the Most Expensive Mistake you can make in network marketing? No, it doesn't have to do anything with what level you buy into your business with or running some marketing campaign without tracking the results. No know about this one area of your business will literally cost you everything you ever dreamed of making in network marketing. But before I disclose my secret, I want to share a story about how to catch a spider monkey!

The spider monkey lives in the trees of the tropical jungles of South America, have hook-like, narrow and thumb less hands and tiny brains.

The story I heard went something like this:

In order to catch spider monkeys, hunters in South America simply walk through the jungle and drop heavy containers on the ground. These containers have very a narrow top and a wider bottom. Inside the containers the hunters drop a special kind of nut, which is particularly attractive to the monkeys. Sometime later, the spider monkeys come down from the tops of the trees, smell the nut, but the tops of the containers are so narrow they have a tight squeeze to get their hands inside. Once they grab the nut at the bottom, their fist is too large to remove if through the opening. And the container is too heavy for them to carry.

So instead of letting go of the nut, the monkeys just sit there until the hunters come back, pick them up, and throw them in a bag.

The spider monkeys are not prepared to let go of a small nut in order to gain their freedom.

I take this analogy to no having the proper mindset when getting started in network marketing. People who join network marketing often fail or have no success what so ever because they hold their beliefs (which are the exact reason they are where they are) would rather sacrifice freedom, success, and an amazing legacy for their special nut.

There are three beliefs that I believe make or break someone achieving success in network marketing:

1. Abundance or Scarcity: Successful people believe in abundance in every area of their life. They know there are millions of prospects to be had. They know that no one prospect will make or break their business. They know that there is enough of everything to create win-win situation for everyone who does business with them. They true believe in abundance in the world.

2. Merchant Mindset vs. Consumer: Merchant buy widgets know they can make money. Consumers buy widgets to use them. Merchants seek profits. Consumers seek savings. Why does this matter? Because when new network marketers get involved in business, they forget they are in business. They apply their consumer mindset apply it their business. They try to save money in marketing. They do not invest in training materials to invest in themselves. What people with a merchant mindset understand is the leverage of marketing. With the proper mindset they know investing 2,000 bucks in a marketing course can bring a potential return of 2,000,000 bucks. View your business like a merchant not a consumer.

3. Commitment level: I know a family here in Indianapolis that started a Super Market chain that was sold to another bigger chain for 20 million dollars! This family had been in the super market business for 40 years. Here is the thing no buddy remembers. The guy who founded the supermarket failed in his first attempt. He had to wait 10 years before he open another and became successful! What is the lesson here? What is your commitment to your business? Many people are trying their business out like a new piece of clothing. A true genuine commitment is absolutely key to being successful in network marketing!

Let me ask you something? Are you the spider monkey? Are you more concerned with holding onto your "nut" or your beliefs than you are for giving up those beliefs for new and essential beliefs for success? It ultimate comes down to one thing: Making a choice!

John T.S. Murphy- Is a home based business owner who teaches people "How To" break free of the 9 to 5 Lifestyle. He shows EXACTLY how you can work from home, call your own shots, and live the lifestyle of your dreams!

To find out more information about John and how he helps people:

Go to http://www.ImNOTaGURU.net

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=John_T.S._Murphy http://EzineArticles.com/?The-Most-Expensive-Network-Marketing-Mistakes---Lesson-of-the-Spider-Monkey&id=2227762

I hope you enjoyed these tips for network marketing for today!

MonaVie Compensation Plan Review

Today we are going to take a look at the MonaVie compensation plan.

If you would like more information how how network marketing compensation plans work in general, take a look at this post entitled how to evaluate a network marketing compensation plan.

I have heard a lot of people say how MonaVie has one of the most lucrative compensation plans in the network marketing industry. After all, if one of the top leaders in Amway left to join MonaVie, it MUST be good right?

A compensation plan isn't good just because a heavy hitter leaves his or her company. What makes a compensation plan good is it makes it easy for the new people to get started and make $500 to $1000 a month. That's the "sweet spot" in network marketing because if you can get enough people on your team making that type of income, the large majority of them will stick it out.

So let's take a look at the Mona Vie Compensation Plan and see how it matches up.

MonaVie is a network marketing company that markets a suite of health and wellness drinks that are desgined to boost the overall health and performance of the body. As a Monavie distributor, you are compensated based on your ability to make sales personally and in your organization of the MonaVie products.

The first way you get paid is through retail sales. You buy the products wholesale and you can turn around and sell them retail to your customers. An original bottle costs $32 wholesale and you can retail it at a price of $39. Here is a link of all of Mona Vie's products and their wholesale and retail prices. You can get the price down to as low as $27.50 if you order 8 bottles at a wholesale price of $220. You can get the price down even lower if you place a bulk order. For example, the largest bulk order for a case of Monavie original is $955 for 48 bottles, which gets your price down to a little under $20 a bottle.

In order to take advantage of most of the compensation plan, you will need to sign up for an autoship of MonaVie products. You need to buy a minimum of 4 bottles every 28 days ($120) but if you want to maximize the compensation plan you need to buy a minimum of 8 bottles every 28 days ($220). So that's an annual commitment of $1560 to $2860 in product. That's on top of whatever you spend on the marketing tools, your web site, etc.

Just so you know, Monavie recommends that you drink 2 ounces a day and the average bottle is 25 ounces. Therefore, you will consume about 3 bottles a month yourself if you drink the minimum recommend by the company.

Mona Vie uses a binary compensation plan. Binary plans are great for top distributors from other companies who move their teams over to the new company. The reason why is because as a top leader you can structure your organization so that you max out the compensation plan and make a lot of money quickly.

However, for the average distributor who is just getting started building their business from scratch, a binary plan is not a good plan for you. The reason why is because of the way the compensation plan is structured.

With a binary compensation plan, your organization has two lines of sponsorship. You have a left line and a right line. You get paid whenever BOTH lines of sponsorship meets a minimum amount of sales volume. In Mona Vie, you earn commissions whenever BOTH lines of sponsorship accumulates at least 500 GV. GV stands for group volume and it is based on the total amount of PV (personal volume) accumulated by distributors in your group.

What's a PV? It's a point value that Monavie assigns to products that you order. For example 1 case (consisting of 4 bottles of juice) equals 100 PV.

So in order to get paid on your team, your team would have to buy a minimum of 10 cases of Monavie juice in a single week evenly distributed in both lines of sponsorship within your organization. When this happens you will earn a commission of $50. For every 100 PV above 500, you will earn an additional $10 and this maxes out at $10,000 for the week.

Keep in mind BOTH lines of sponsorhip need to have 500 GV in order to get paid. If one line of sponsorhip has 10,000 GV and the other has 200 GV, guess how much money you make? Absolutely nothing. They do allow you to carry over volume to the next week and continue to carry it over until you reach 500 GV.

Now one good thing is that because everybody has only 2 lines of sponsorship, that means that if you have someone in your up line that recruits a lot, there is a good chance that you are going to have distributors placed underneath you. Of course, that will only happen if you also happen to be in that leader's "weaker" organization.

There's also an Executive Check Match that allows you to earn commissions based on the people that you sponsor up to 7 levels deep. To become an Executive you will need to have a minimum of 2000 GV in BOTH lines of sponsorship.

Basically the way this works is Mona Vie has to pay out at least 50% of its commissions to the sales force. With a binary compensation plan because a lot of people miss out of getting paid in a given week because they don't have the necessary volume in their weaker leg, a lot of the money ends up not getting paid out.

To compensate for this, what MonaVie does is the remaining money that didn't get paid gets assigned to the Executive Check match and gets paid to the Executives in the company. The check match is a floating percentage and the percentage will be different every week because its based on what got paid out and what didn't get paid out for the week.

Therefore if you are an Executive and you don't have any executives on your team, you earn a check match on EVERY distributor in your organization that received a pay check from MonaVie that particular week! However, the downside is that the check match can never exceed the volume from your lesser leg.

So now that you know how the Mona Vie pay plan works, lets see how it matches up to the areas I evaluate in this blog for compensation plans.

1. How easy is it to make $500 to $1000 a month?

Since you make about $11.50 for each bottle of juice you sell (if you buy the 200PV autoship), to make $500 in a month, you will need to sell 43 bottles of juice in a month personally. Of course the average person isn't going to sell 43 bottles to 43 different people a month. You just don't have enough time in the day to do that if you are part time.

Therefore, in order to make $500, you will need to sell cases of Monavie, not just a single bottle. If you sell 1 case (consisting of 4 bottles) to each of your customers, your profit would be $29 a case. To earn $500, you will need to sign up 17 customers a month.

Let's look at the numbers and see what your sign-up ratios will need to be to move 17 cases a month to 17 different customers...

50% - 36 people a month (9 per week)
25% - 68 people a month (17 per week)
10% - 170 people a month (43 per week)
5% - 340 people a month (85 per week)
1% - 1700 people a month (425 per week)

These numbers are pretty high for a part timer. You won't stand a chance if you aren't signing up at least 10% of your customers.

Therefore, the only real way you are going to make $500 a month in MonaVie in most cases is by recruiting. When you recruit, you can get your distributors on that 200PV autoship because they know they have to do that in order to maximize the compensation plan. Any compensation plan where its difficult to earn $500 a month without recruiting is a red flag to me.

2. How much does the product cost and how much does it cost to get started as a distributor?

A bottle retails for $39, which I think is pretty expensive in my opinion. Since a bottle is only going to last you a little more than a week, that works out to $3-$4 a day. That's almost what you would pay for Starbucks coffee daily (which I also think is pretty expensive as well). By the way, there are Acai based juices that you can get for significantly less than that. Here's an Acai Juice product that you can buy for $13.99 and it will last you an entire month.

The fee to get started as a distributor is only $39, which is pretty reasonable. However, as I mentioned previously, in order to max out the compensation plan, you are going to have to buy over $2000 a year worth of juice.

3. Is there competition for your products and services?

There's a tremendous amount of competition for MonaVie's products. I just showed you a similar product that costs less and lasts longer. There are other network marketing companies that have juice based products as well that all claim the same or similar health benefits that MonaVie claims. The health and wellness juice market is a highly competitive market.

That being said, it is highly competitive for a reason. The reason is there is a tremendous amount of demand for health juices. There are literally millions of searches done on Google a month for keywords that are associated with health juices. So there's certainly a lot of interest. The key is to get those people to try the MonaVie product and hope that they have a good experience with it. If they do, they will tend to stay on it and you will make money as a result.

In short, I personally would only recommend MonaVie if you really have a passion for the product. Maybe you might have tried it and noticed a significant improvement in your health. Maybe you just really enjoy the taste. If you really love the product and you would buy it even if there wasn't an income opportunity attach to it, MonaVie can work for you.

However if you are just joining because you heard that you can make some money I would recommend that you pass on it. The compensation plan in my opinion isn't all that impressive. I think Tahitian Noni and Xango (two network marketing companies with juice products) have a MUCH better compensation plan than MonaVie if you are interested in a juice company.

I personally would never do a juice company because I just have no interest in paying that type of money every month to drink a juice that is suppose to give me health benefits. I'm of the opinion that if you eat a good balanced diet, you don't need any of that stuff. That goes for all of these health and wellness companies, which is why I have never joined any of those companies.

The real value, in my opinion is offering a service. People flake out on product orders all the time. However, if you offer a service that people need, they are going to keep it and pay for it every single month.

The compensation is much better as well. For instance, in my company I make $207 on a $36 a month product, plus residuals. In MonaVie, you sell a $39 bottle of juice, you only make $7. Your juice customer would have eventually buy almost 30 bottles of juice just for you to make what I make on ONE sale of my service.

Also note that I said plus residuals, which means if they keep the service, I continue to get paid a percentage of that $36 every month. This is on TOP of the $207 I make on the initial sale!

Unlike MonaVie, I don't have to balance the volume of my team in two seperate legs to get paid. In fact, if I recruit a brand new distributor, place them directly under me and they go out and sign up ONE customer (even if that customer doesn't join the business) I make up to $170 on that one customer!

I also get paid Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday as long as my team or I made sales that were processed the day before.

In Monavie, you would need to have over 3000PV from BOTH lines of sponsorship just to earn that kind of money.

If you haven't decided on a company yet, I encourage you to take a look at what I consider to be one of the best network marketing compensation plans that I have ever seen. Keep in mind, I have reviewed HUNDREDS of companies personally so I've seen almost all of them. I'm not saying its the best because it sounds good. I'm saying its the best because I've actually looked at a lot of other compensation plans and compared them.

If you are currently involved in Monavie and you aren't happy with it, feel free to look as well. However, please keep in mind, I have a personal policy in that I don't sponsor people in other network marketing companies who haven't been with their current company for at least a year unless you have a VERY GOOD reason for leaving (i.e. company going out of business, etc). I am a firm believer that you need to stick to and commit to building a network marketing business for at least a year before you can truly evaluate it and determine if it is right for you.

If you are involved in Monavie and you are happy with it, congratulations! I would love to assist you in building your business. I offer a free report that will show you the 7 ways that I personally use (and teach to my team) to have as many prospects as I want to talk to about my network marketing business. These strategies are generic, which means that they can be used in any network marketing company. In fact, I know that many leaders in MonaVie who are having success are using many of the same strategies that I use, so that's called a clue that they work.

If you enjoyed this review, please feel free to leave your comments at the bottom of this blog. Also feel free to use the "bookmark and share" button at the top as that will allow other people to find this as well if you enjoyed this.

Double Your Results From Business Opportunity Leads

Do you use business opportunity leads to build your business? Here's a little strategy that you can use to significantly increase the results that you get from these leads.

Most business opportunity leads come with an email address for the person in question. Many times you might try calling or emailing these leads and fail to get in contact with the person. As an alternative, what you can also do is import these leads into a social networking web site like Myspace or Facebook.

These days many people who are on the internet are also members of these social networking web sites. Some of them are very active on these web sites and spend a significant amount of time following up with their friends and family, as well as people that they meet on these web sites.

By importing your business opportunity leads into these web sites, you can invite all of these people to become friends with you on the web site. Once they accept your friend request, you can now talk to them online and build a relationship that way.

My team has recruited some of our best people from social networking web sites like Myspace and Facebook. If you have business opportunity leads, this is just another way that you can take advantage of these leads.

As an alternative you might not feel comfortable with importing your business opportunity leads because you may be concerned about getting a SPAM complaint. This is a valid concern. If you get too many SPAM complaints, your account can be deleted and you will lose all of the information and friend connections that you have made on these web sites.

That is not a problem. What you can also do is just do a search for some of the leads that you are calling right on these web sites. The large majority of these web sites have search features where you can search for a member by using their email address.

Once you pull up their profile, you simply make a friend request and if they accept your request, they become a friend. You aren't going to get shut down for making friend requests only to leads that you are actually contacting because you simply won't be calling enough leads at a time to trigger a huge number of SPAM complaints.

So don't forget to take advantage of social networking websites like Myspace and Facebook when you are contacting business opportunity leads that you have purchased. This one little tip could literally double the results that you are currently getting from your recruiting efforts.

Tracking Your MLM Business Part 2

In my last blog post, I talked about how I track my individual activity. Today I am going to talk about how I track my activity of working with my organization.

You can be the best in the world at activities that contribute directly to your own personal production. However, if you want to have an organization that duplicates what you do, even more important is being the best in the world at convincing your organization that they can do the activities that are necessary to build a network marketing business.

That takes time and you really need to invest time with your organization so that they will learn how to do your business. There are too many people that know how to recruit people, however, they don't know how to sponsor people.

What's the difference? Recruiting somebody is just getting them in the business. Sponsoring people is taking them by the hand and showing them how to do the business.

Here are the activities that I track related to how well I am working with my organization...

• In Home Presentations
• Business Briefings
• Incoming 3 way calls
• Conference Call dials
• Game Plan Interviews
• In Person Training Attendees
• Team Dials (open)
• Team Dials (non open)
• # of sales (open)
• # of recruits (open)
• # or sales (total)
• # of recruits (total)

So what do each of these categories refer to?

Whenever we sponsor a new distributor into my organization we instruct them to have an in home presentation so they can share the business with their friends and family. I attempt to track the number of these that are going on in my organization.

Now my team is too big for me to know the actual amount, but the ones that are close enough to me in my line of sponsorship for me to know about, I track those. This number gives me a good gauge as to how we are doing in recruiting as well as getting new recruits started the right way.

Business briefings are the number of guests that my organization has showing up at their local weekly opportunity presentation that takes place in their area. Like in home presentations, my team is too big for me to know the exact amount, but for the team that I have in my local market as well as anybody in an outside market that is close enough to me in sponsorship for me to know if they had a guest out, I track that.

Incoming 3 way calls are the amount of calls that I personally took from someone in my organization with a prospect on the line for me to answer their questions. Conference call dials are the amount of phone calls that I made to promote to my organization our team's training conference calls.

Game plan interviews are the amount of new recruits that I have personally done a game plan interview with. A game plan interview is basically a session that takes place in person if they are local or on the phone if they are long distance where I help them map out their goals and get their business up and running. I do these for everyone who I personally recruit as well as anyone who my team recruits that's not underneath another leader.

In person training attendees are the amount of people on my team that attended an in person training in their local market each week. Team dials are the amount of phone calls that I've made to my organization to attempt to inspire them to build their business, to check up on them, to see how I can help them or to answer questions they might have.

Number of sales are the amount of services that my team has sold. Number of recruits are the amount of new distributors that my team has sponsored.

Now you might also see two words, open and non open or total. Open refers to any distributor that is not underneath another person who is at least at my level in the compensation plan or above. Yes I have a person on my team who is higher than me in the compensation plan. A nice problem to have!

Non open refers to distributors who are underneath someone who is at least at my level in the compensation plan. Total refers to both combined.

These are the numbers that I track on a regular basis. If I'm not happy with my team results, all I have to do is go back to these numbers over the last 90 days and I can easily tell what the problem is just by looking at these numbers.

Like the personal numbers, I track these on an Excel spreadsheet as well.

If you're not tracking in your business, I highly recommend that you do so. Only by tracking your business can you plan, do and review. You plan what you want and what activity you are going to do to build your business. You do the activity. You then review what you did and see how you can improve.

That is the key to building a long term successful and thriving organization!

Tracking Your Network Marketing Business Part 1

Yesterday, I wrote a blog post about troubleshooting your network marketing business. In that post, I concluded by talking about the importance of tracking and shared with you one tracking system that you can use.

Today, I'm going to share with you the tracking system that I personally use to build my network marketing business.

I personally use Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. With these spreadsheets, I track certain key performance indicators that I have found that have historically contributed to income generation in my network marketing business.

I have two spreadsheets that I use. The first is for tracking my personal activity. These are the actions that I take that result in me personally signing up a new customer or recruiting a brand new distributor. The second is for tracking my organization activity. These are the actions that I take that result in me helping my team sign up a new customer or recruit a brand new distributor.

Here are the key performance indicators that I track for my personal activity:

• Leads
• Dials
• # Called
• # Spoken to
• # Looked at
• 3 ways out
• # customers
• # counters
• # recruits

Leads are the number of prospects that I have generated for my business. A lead is anyone who has requested more information about my business opportunity. It could be a business opportunity lead that I purchased. It could be someone I met on a social networking web site whose interest I may have piqued. It could be someone who visited my web site on their own and requested information. It could even be someone I know or someone I meet whose interest I may have piqued as well.

Dials are the amount of physical phone dials that I make to any prospect. # called are the amount of prospects that I have dials for the first time only. Follow up dials don't go in this column. # spoken to is anytime I actually get a prospect on the phone live (and not a voice mail or no response).

# looked at are the amount of individual prospects that have actually looked at or listen to some type of presentation about my company. They could have looked at a web site presentation, listened to a live or pre-recorded conference call, listen to a presentation that I actually do live in their home or a coffee shop or attend an actual event where a presentation is done.

3 ways out are the amount of my personal prospects that I do a 3 way phone call with. # of customers are the amount of physical people (or companies) that purchase one of the services my company offers from me. # of counters are the amount of services that I have sold. A person or company can buy more than one service, which is why I distinguish between the two. # of recruits are the amount of distributors that I personally recruit that join my organization.

So those are the numbers that I track. All I do is take a spreadsheet. Each row in the spreadsheet has a date. Each of these categories gets its own column. Every day I fill out the numbers that I got in these areas each day.

Over time in doing this, you will discover that a ratio will begin to appear. What this means is that you will learn that certain numbers produce certain results.

For example, based on my personal numbers, I know that on average if I can get 6 to 7 people to actually look at a presentation of my company in any form, one of those people will join my business as a new recruit in my organization. I also know that the biggest contributor to getting people to look at the information is to call each lead multiple times. I also know that currently on average, I call each lead 1-2 times.

Do you see how powerful this information is? With this information, I know EXACTLY what I need to do to get the results that I'm looking for.

I also know that if I'm not getting the results that I'm looking for, I know what I need to work on to get those results. This is the power that comes from tracking your network marketing business.

In part two next week, I will share with you how I track my activity related to my organization.

Troubleshooting Your Network Marketing Business

If you are having trouble with getting the results that you are looking for in your network marketing business, perhaps you may want to consider taking action similar to the way computer technicians handle trouble with computers.

I have a background in the technical support industry. I started off as a lab technician for a university and I worked my way up to management positions. In the technical support industry, you have to do a lot of troubleshooting.

For instance, suppose a client has a problem with their computer. You have to ask that client questions to see if you can determine what the root cause of that problem is. Once you determine the cause, you then need to take corrective action to fix the problem.

If you are having trouble in your network marketing business, you need to have a similar philosophy. You need to determine what the root cause of the problem is and take corrective action in your business to correct it. This needs to be done not only for yourself but for the distributors in your organization as well.

Case in point, let's say you are looking at your paycheck and you are not a happy camper. You are spending more money per month on your business than you are making every month. This is a big problem. Network marketing businesses are known for their low overhead so if you can't even make enough to cover your overhead, something is wrong in your business in a big way.

So how do you address this? How do you determine what the problem is so that you can fix it?

Jeff Olson, one of my mentors in this industry says that if you are having trouble in your business, meaning you don't like the results that you are getting, the first thing you need to do is look at your actions. Are you taking the right actions to get the results you are looking for?

If you aren't taking the right actions, you need to look at your attitude. Do you have the right attitude about building your business? If you don't have the right attitude, you need to back up one more step and look at your philosophies. Your personal philosophies about how you build your business drives everything else and is usually the root cause for whether you have success or not.

So to continue our example, you aren't happy with your paycheck. The first step is to take a look at your actions. How do we get paid in this industry? We get paid when we either personally sign up a new customer or someone on our team who we are qualified to earn an override from signs up a new customer. We also get paid when we retain a customer.

I can write an entire blog post about retaining customers and I may very well do that later. However, let's focus on signing up new customers right now. How do you sign up a new customer or help someone on your team sign up a new customer?

You do this by personally exposing a potential customer (known as a prospect) to your company or by someone on your team doing the same. You also do this by following up with that prospect until you collect a definitive decision. When that decision is a YES, you have that prospect fill out an application and that prospect becomes a customer.

How do you expose a prospect? You have to have a reliable source for finding prospects for your business. A prospect is someone who indicates an interest in learning more about what you have to offer.

So if you aren't signing up customers or people on your team aren't signing up customers, the problem lies in your actions within this entire process. How do you know where in this process are you lacking? You know this by tracking your actions in your network marketing business.

Tuesday, I posted an article of one tool that you can use to do this, known as the GoalTrends system. Tomorrow, I will share with you the system that I personally use to track my network marketing business.

However, without having a system in place to accurately identify whether you are taking the appropriate actions, you will never have the success in your network marketing business that you are looking for.