Renting booth space

We're all looking for ways to expose our products and businesses to potential customers and reps. One of the ways network marketers do this is by renting booth space at a home show, a fair, a business opportunity show, a swap meet, etc.

My brother and I recently joined a long distance network marketing company - SynCom International - we're excited about the business and decided to give this approach a try. Actually, my brother booked the space then asked if I'd help out - I probably would have analyzed it for return on investment based upon long distance demographics in the area!

Was it worth it?

For my brother and I, ABSOLUTELY! It got me out of the paralysis of analysis state and into the JUST DO IT frame of mind. Make no mistake about it, it was HARD WORK and you'll wonder how some people can do it for a living. Our upline gave us tremendous support and helped us work the booth. They provided real life training, better than any training class or satellite broadcast (although SynCom has those too!)

What were the keys to success?

Have FUN! Be ENTHUSIASTIC! We had a professional looking booth, gave away candy, had a drawing for a free vacation at a beautiful Minnesota resort (a satisfied SynCom customer), but the key was enthusiasm! Experienced network marketers know this, but judging by the other booths -- it's not being taught very well. If you sit in your booth and expect people to line up with orders, you're sadly mistaken! We had other reps approach us about joining and we made a lot of contacts because people could see we were having fun! The best "catch phrases" were: "Do you own your own business?" - People love to talk about their own business and are always looking for ways to improve it. If they said "no", we hit them with: "Do you want to permanently lower your long distance phone bill?" - The bottom line with some people is money talks if they said "no" we just smiled and said (to ourselves) "NEXT".

Yea, but did you get your money out of it?

My brother and I were aggressive and we each got customers at the rate of about one an hour. My brother paid for the booth from one sale of prepaid calling cards! That customer is still placing orders and is ready to write a letter of recommendation which we will show to others in his industry! The key to success in network marketing is and always will be the warm market. We introduced a number of people to discount long distance (REAL savings) and they were genuinely appreciative for showing them how they can save money - a new warm market! Once they have the service, and see the savings maybe we'll have some new reps in addition to the ones we made at the fair.

What else did you learn?

Some people love AT&T and don't mind that they're paying for their billion dollar ad campaign (top advertised brand in the US last time I checked). They don't even care that AT&T is the most profitable service company in the US and that their profits in 1992 were up 639% over 1991! Remember, some will, some won't, so what, NEXT! By the way, we gave out more candy on Senior Citizens Day than on any other day :-).

Hope this helps - I'd love to hear about other people's experiences!