Onrushing events of daily life can often overcome your long term plans and obscure your goals. It can be very helpful to stop and take some time to appraise carefully where you are compared with where you want to be. Are you really making progress? Is your progress pleasing, adequate, or unsatisfactory. Even if it is pleasing, could it not be better? How can you make it better?
In this context, we are primarily concerned with multi-level or network marketing. While there are certainly some specialized problems and techniques unique to this type of marketing, we must not forget that the key word is "marketing." And marketing means selling. Ultimately, all expenses, cash flow, taxes, and profits of your downline, your upline, the parent company and yourself depend on selling the product or service. That is not quite true, especially in starting, for there is invested capital that can be lost.
The point is that there is no other source of income to take care of all those items. Product or service must be sold. It is a matter of survival.
Of course, there are other important considerations, such as recruiting and motivating your downline. Isn't that also selling? You sell the prospect the idea, the concept; you sell him or her the opportunity. No doubt about it, the ability to sell, to persuade, is of crucial importance.
Instinctively we all know this. It is one reason prospects are often reluctant to accept your attempts to help them have better lives. They feel inadequate at selling and know or at least suspect that salesmanship will be required if they are to succeed.
The bad news is that most people really can't sell. The reason is that they believe they can't, and such belief is self-fulfilling. To sell one needs to be confident and self-assured.
The good news is that confidence and self-assurance can be acquired. Not only that, the techniques and skills of good salesmanship can be taught and can be learned. For some it may not be easy, but for all, it's worth it. We can all pursue happiness more effectively when we are better able to sell. Not just products and services, but our opinions, our attitudes, our personalities.
To improve your skills, I suggest starting at a public library or a good book store. Ask the librarian or the clerk to direct you to books on salesmanship, motivation, and advertising. Books by Zig Ziglar, Ted Nicholas, or Jay Abraham are powerful. Especially appropriate would be "Multi-Level Money: The Complete Guide to Generating, Closing, and Working with All the Prospects You Need to Make Real Money Every Month in Network Marketing," by Dr. Jeffrey Lant. (Dr. Lant's address is PO Box 38-2767, Cambridge, MA 02238.)
Never forget that your prospect or your customer wants to know "What's in it for me?" He or she doesn't really care so much about the features you know are important as about the benefits those features will bestow. Always stress the benefits.
Good salespeople like people and are liked by people. It's easy for them to make friends. They have ability to ease tensions of human relationships, to help smooth the way for others. Indeed, they like to help others; they like to solve problems. They especially love it when the product or service they sell is important in solving those problems, and they are never motivated only by the need to close the sale for profit. They really want the sales event to be a true win-win situation.
Our entire economy depends on sales. Good salespeople make the country work!
The kind of salesmanship we are talking about is not hyperbolic nor pressured. It is persuasion based on the benefits the buyer will enjoy. The customer must be pleased and must remain satisfied that the decision to purchase was a good one. And if his conviction wavers, there should be no question about a prompt and cheerful refund.
One rule I have found valuable in business, whether multi-level or otherwise, is this: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
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