How to Quadruple Your Business Today!

This week, I finally got caught up on calling some old leads, and I noticed something very striking. First of all, these were all current network marketers who had submitted their contact information into my lead capture page that promoted a system and training to help people in the MLM industry learn how to build their business faster online. So basically, they were all coming to me for help in their business. When I called through my list of a couple hundred phone-numbers, obviously I got a lot of voice mail messages. Well, the surprising thing to me was that over 60% of the time I didn’t even know if I was calling the right person, or had the right number, due to what was on the voice message.

Some messages had a computer generated voice say something like, “You have reached 555-444-3322; no one is here to take your call; please leave a message after the beep.” Other times I would just hear music and no message at all, and then an abrupt beep followed by silence. More confusing then that though were the messages that said, “Hi, were not home right now so please leave a message,” with no mention of their name whatsoever. Sometimes it would even be the voice of the opposite sex of the person I was trying to reach. And less then 5% of the messages said anything about any type of a business.

Now, I know that communication has gotten much worse in our society since the advent of e-mail, since you no longer can hear vocal inflection, or see body language. I can’t tell you how many friends I got into misunderstandings with over a misinterpreted e-mail message. And it has gotten even worse with text messages. Now people don’t even use complete sentences; they communicate almost entirely in abbreviations. But these were professional home business owners I was contacting.

Here is what will happen to your business with that kind of lack of professionalism. Of course your family and close friends know your voice message very well, but we all know that we need to go way beyond that small circle of influence to build an effective business in network marketing. Anyone else who is referred to you, or who you give your number to, will not be sure if they have the right number, and half of them won’t leave a message. And it will be difficult to get a second chance with them. So you’ve just lost 50% of your potential business growth.

Next, for the people who do leave a message, and even for your close friends and family members, you will not be presenting yourself as a successful business owner. You have just lost credibility with 50% of the remaining group. That is a 75% decrease in potential customers, or representatives, all because you didn’t set up your voice mail like a professional.

So, if you want to quadruple your business today, or if you are on top of this, but your down-line is lacking in this area, which will dramatically affect your profits, here is what you will need to do.

If you, or people in your down-line, are to shy to leave a voice mail message, get over it fast, or stick with a job. Robert Kiyosaki, who is a guru for many of us in network marketing, was extremely shy. He forced himself to take a face-to-face, business-to-business, sales job for two years until he finally over-came this so that he could become an entrepreneur. Most of us don’t have to go to this extreme, but I’m sure you get the point. There is no place for being shy in network marketing.

If you are trying to be mysterious by not leaving your name, or by playing music on your voice mail, stay in high school. I was a professional musician for years, but I still understood the value of communication when dealing with club owners and music industry contacts. Mystery, and creating a unique persona, has its place, but it is not in the business world.

If you are overwhelmed and are trying to hide from the world, you need to reverse this tendency fast. In network marketing, the only way to make it to the top is to become a leader that your down-line will follow. This implies putting yourself in the spotlight, so to speak. You need to set an example, encourage, and inspire others so they will not lose interest and quit. Many of us thought we would just get two friends to join and we would become rich, but we learned the hard way that there is a lot more to the game than that. (This is one of the misleading things about many opportunity presentations that I hope will soon become a thing of the past. If we replace some of the hype with a realistic idea of what it really takes to make it in MLM, the retention rate will be much higher.)

To quadruple your business today, make sure that every member of your team has a voice message that, at the minimum, clearly states his or her full name, in an articulate manner. You can take this a step further by leaving a message that says, “Hi, you have reached (full name and position in the company) from (XYZ Co.); please leave a message and I will get back to you as soon as possible.” Sometimes you may not want people googling the company before they see the full presentation, so not leaving the company name and being a bit mysterious here could actually be to your benefit. If it is a very established company that everyone knows about, however, like Avon or Mary Kay, leaving the name will probably create status and credibility for you.

So if you want those phones to ring off the hook, start by telling people who you are.

Kevin Thomas

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