Pieces of the puzzle

On a recent rainy weekend, my five year old daughter went on a jigsaw puzzle binge. She has a closet full of 'em, and we must have pieced together 20 or more.

The best strategy for working a jigsaw puzzle is to first find the corner pieces, then the edge pieces, and then fill in all the center pieces. If you start out by trying to connect the center pieces, without first building the frame of the puzzle, it is much more difficult, frustrating and time-consuming.

While in the middle of putting together a picture on Hansel and Gretel, the thought came to me -- building a network marketing business is a lot like working a jigsaw puzzle.

The best way to start building a network marketing business is to first get the "corner pieces" established. The corner pieces are:

(1) Personal use of and commitment to the products and the company.

(2) Understanding the powerful dynamics of network marketing as a business.

(3) Putting personal goals in writing, so that you know on a daily basis why your are in the business and where you are headed.

(4) Willingness to be trainable and to plug into your company's duplicatible success system.

After your "corner pieces" are established, you start filling in the "edge pieces." These are people in your warm market who can give the business a solid framework. Warm market "edge pieces" are not as numerous as cold market "center pieces," and it is tempting to go out and plunge into the cold market because it is so much larger. But it is difficult to be very effective in the cold market unless you have first established a working structure. Hence, your warm market "edge pieces."

Once the edge pieces are put together, you have a powerful framework for building the business. Now it becomes easier to see places for all the "center pieces" you run across on a daily basis. In network marketing, everyone you talk to is a potential prospect -- either a prospective customer or a prospective distributor. In other words, every piece of the puzzle you pick up goes somewhere. With a well-developed framework, it's easier to see exactly where each piece of the puzzle should go.