If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
I came into Network Marketing through the business opportunity and so in the beginning it was really tough to find an angle to market my business (business opportunities have very high competition).
I’ve noticed that when it comes to choosing a topic to blog or create a website around, people often struggle.
Ken Evoy from SBI has been saying all along to build a site around something you are knowledgeable and passionate about. Gary Vaynerchuck has been saying the same thing and he also is very clear about the fact if money comes first and passion comes second, you could be in for a long, hard road.
If you’re already in a network marketing business and you are limiting your marketing research to what you think is going to help you market your mlm product or opportunity, you could be missing your chance to talk about something that really gets you fired up…and will ultimately lead to your success.
Are You Building The Brand Of Someone Already Ahead Of You In Your Own Niche?
Funded proposal systems such as The Renegade System & Magnetic Sponsoring are fantastic programs but listen to what Gary Vaynerchuck says twice at the very end of this video and then ask yourself; “Am I doing this?”
I recently came across a really great example of attraction marketing and so I thought I would share it with you…
There are some interesting factors that made my decision to purchase Ellen’s ebook on PowerPoint Tips so easy;
I was introduced to her website via a 3rd and that was someone whose opinion I value and trust.
Ellen’s website was loaded with excellent content
The banner to her ebook was in a place that was impossible to ignore (right in amongst the titles for all her PowerPoint tips).
She has social proof in the way of testimonials about her work.
Her picture and the audio gave her website a personal feel and an instant trust factor.
Her e-book was reasonably priced.
Ellen’s website had a PR of 6 with Google which means that the search engines very much like her site. Part of getting such rankings with Google is to be linked to by a lot of other people. Imagine all the people that would link to a wonderful resource like this? Educators and presenters would share this site with anyone because of the shear amount of great information she provides.
Running an Internet business can sometimes make you feel like a waiter trying to carry 15 plates at once, as the various tasks mount up it can be quite an overwhelming experience.
It doesn’t have to be like that though…
I’ve always liked the concept of outsourcing tasks but going through the process of putting jobs on Rent-a-Coder or Elance always seemed like quite a confusing and difficult process. I also never quite felt confident as to which person I should choose for a job and also wasn’t sure if the price they quoted was what I should be paying…
… outsourcing can be an overwhleming experience and I can certainly see what people just don’t bother going there.
A couple of years ago I had a design job done on website done by a guy at Elance and for the most part I was pretty happy with the job. There were a few things that weren’t quite right and after going back and forth with the coder, I just gave up and settled for what I had.
Up until recently I hadn’t thought much about outsourcing but somehow I stumbled across a video of a lady talking about how outsourcing had changed her life, she had talked about the fact that she was spending untold hours doing all the various tasks related to her internet business and as a result her family life was suffering. Once she discovered outsourcing that all changed for her. Not only did her business grow but she had more time to enjoy her family (which is often why we get into this business in the first place).
At that time she was recommending an outsourcing course and although I was quite interested in it, the priced seemed a little too expensive and something about it just didn’t sit right for me.
The idea of outsourcing wouldn’t go away for me though, it just made too much sense…
It must have been about 6 months later and I received an email from Mark Lindsy and Daniel Turner (2 Aussie marketers based on the Gold Coast) about an outsourcing course they were releasing. I’ve always liked the way these guys teach, no nonsense and straight to the point.
These guys have literally spent millions of dollars on outsourcing and reckon they have blown at least a few hundred thousand dollars on mistakes along the way. Through these experiences they systematized the process so that they could find good outsourcers at a fair price without having to go through so much trial and error (in the early days they found that only about 1 in 10 outsourcers where worth working with).
This course was good timing for me because I had a few coding jobs for my blog that were beyond my ability. I pretty much took the templates and lessons I learned from their course and posted a job on Rent-a-Coder.
In contrast to how I felt a few years ago, I now felt really confident in submitting my job and choosing the right person to do the work. I was able to accurately describe my job and choose a coder based on their selection criteria. Thanks to their course and templates I choose a coder that did a really great job for me within the time-line I specified and for a very reasonable price.
I then took the next step and commissioned this guy to do work for me privately because I was confident with the quality of his work and his work ethic.
Basically, as a result of Mark and Daniel’s course I was able to get the exact result that I wanted and also managed to get a contact that I can call upon when I need a job done quickly.
It was a really rewarding process and it’s a great feeling to get something done for a reasonable price that would have taken me potentially many hours to do. I’d have to say I’m totally converted to getting jobs outsourced now. The time I save is well worth the fee I pay other people to do certain tasks in my business.
Mark and Daniel are offering a $1, 10 day trial of their Outsource Method Course and I would confidently say that if you have ever wondered about outsourcing jobs for your business, this course will be absolutely invaluable.
Recently I got a good attraction marketing slap and it really made me take stock of how I’m approaching my business.
Alica Bausley and Lisa Hanfileti recently sent me a copy of their latest e-book to review, Rich Network Marketer Poor Network Marketer and after reading it, I realized that I was making a few of the mistakes that they had identified as being the primary sources of frustration and failure for network marketers using the attraction marketing model.
I wonder if you have been caught in a few of these little traps yourself?
The Death of Attraction Marketing
Lately I’ve seen a few marketers claiming that attraction marketing no longer works… too competitive and too many people are already switched on to it they’ve been saying.
With 50 million people involved in network marketing (in the US alone), I don’t think the problem is too much competition but rather people may just be choosing the wrong niche to compete in.
For quite sometime I’ve been saying that promoting your mlm products and expanding your customer base is a much easier way to go rather than going after the opportunity seekers niche (which is one of the most competitive niches going).
A while ago I created a video outlining the different ways that The Renegade System could be used to build your business and where the different target markets fit in, you can watch that by clicking on the image below.
I also created a blog post called How To Target MLM Retail Customers And Get Paid Twice and in that post I talk about the process of converting happy customers into business builders for your mlm and how this effectively allows you to get paid twice.
The Art Of Squandering Hot Leads
In Alicia and Lisa book Rich Network Marketer Poor Network Marketer they cover 3 main topics in great detail; Lead Generation, Lead Conversion, and Customer Follow Up. One of the things that is so impressive about Alica and Lisa is the fact that they are building their business on 2-4 leads per week!
The reason they are able to do this is because their conversion rates on their sales calls are anywhere from 80% – 100% depending on the day. Is that even really possible you might ask?
One of the things that Lisa and Alicia spend a lot of time on is selecting the right target market, having a message to market match, offering a product and services that’s a perfect fit, and only talking to people once their marketing system has brought them to the point where they are qualified.
For example, if you are going to choose the frustrated network marketers niche you have to be aware that these people already have an mlm company (which is why they are frustrated). Many of these people have invested time and money into their company and very few people would be at the point of wanting to give up that company.
Mike Dillard goes for this frustrated network marketer niche and his conversion rates are around 5% but because he is skilled at selling his affiliate products to these people through his mailing list, he is still able to make a healthy profit on the front end (just to clarify, that 5% is of the leads that he generates through his marketing rather than the people he or his sales team speaks to on the phone, that I’m sure would be much higher).
If you have an mlm that is going to be beneficial to the prospects you attract… something that is complementary to their existing business, then with the right positioning, you will be able to achieve a much higher conversion rate, much like Alicia and Lisa talk about… if you follow up correctly.
Examples of complementary products and services would be; telecommunications companies, educational and motivational training, marketing tools (greeting cards and post cards), internet software and technology. Basically anything that will aid the person in their marketing. Add training and guidance that will help these people succeed and you’ll have a much higher chance of these prospects doing business with you.
One of the mistakes that I have made is focusing too heavily on marketing and not spending enough time on the sales part of my business. It really doesn’t matter how good your marketing is, if you don’t get on the phone and speak with the people that you are attracting, then you will be leaving a lot of money on the table.
The Other Side Of The Coin — The Message To Market Mismatch
On the other side of the coin, it doesn’t matter how good you are at telephone prospecting and sales, if you are talking to the wrong people… you’ll just waste your time and theirs.
This is why really having a clear understanding of your target market and having a product and service that is going to match their needs is so critical.
If you are attracting frustrated network marketers through your marketing and you are trying to build a nutritional business, you will likely attract a lot of prospects that already have a company that they are happy with (they just want to know how to market it). This means that you will probably spend your time and energy trying to help these people understand how to apply the principles of attraction marketing to their business not yours – end result, you become a frustrated attraction marketer…
If you want to learn how to avoid this frustration, I would highly recommend reading Alicia and Lisa’s latest e-book, Rich Network Marketer Poor Network Marketer, it’s packed with excellent information on this topic.
I’ve got to say that the more I work with WordPress the more I love it! Recently I started working on a project to turn my blog into a membership site on the backend and what I’ve been able to do with all the different plugins and applications has really blown me away.
I made a quick video of the mess I create when I’m busy creating all this stuff.
Over the last week or so I learned how to effectively create tables in WordPress, how to upload video files directly to Amazon S3 (extremely inexpensive video hosting), how to get videos to play in a lightbox (like the one above), how to create landing pages within a WordPress site (not crappy ones either), how to create templates within WordPress so I could create a premium content area for members, and lastly how to integrate membership software with WordPress.
At some point no doubt this will all filter into the training area of the Renegade Professional or you may just want to go on the pre-notification list for my free Easy Renegade Members area (this is where I’ll be sharing all this kind of good stuff).
The million dollar question on everyone’s lips at the moment is — can social media really be used in business?
Unless Gary Vaynerchuck, head of a New Jersey Liquor company with over 100 employees and a turnover of more than 50 million dollars is nuts, the answer is most certainly yes.
Gary V noticed a shift towards social media a few years ago and so he decided that he would give up his role of leading the company he built up with his father to focus on creating a wine TV show that is now the phenomenally popular Wine Library TV blog.
Most people actually thought he was nuts for doing that and some people just think he is nuts anyway but one thing is for sure, he knows a heck of a lot about social media and it’s worked like a charm in his business.
Here is a 4:25 minute snippet from an interview he did with Rich Schefren a while back:
As you may have gathered, Gary Vaynerchuck is huge on becoming part of the community. He apparently gets over 500 emails per day and he takes the time to answer every one of them personally. Since his increased popularity as a result of his Wine Library TV blog, he has also started a blog where he just talks about business, which is also a passion of his. If you really want to understand social media, watch Gary Vay.Ner.Chuck as he probably gets it better than anyone else on the ‘net.
The Renegade Professional has been open for nearly one month and already some great stories of success are starting to come in.
The training in the Renegade Professional is the most comprehensive training on setting up a internet/network marketing system I’ve seen (and I’ve been around a few membership sites over the past few years).
Although this training is really aimed at network marketers who are wanting to take their business online, there seems to be quite a number of people who are not in network marketing but are still finding the training very useful.
Every move you make, every click you take, I’ll be watchin’ you…
It’s kind of creepy but if you are on my website, I’m going to know what word you typed in to get here.
If you didn’t find this site through a search, I’ll know if you came from twitter, facebook or any other webpage on the net.
If you typed my domain in because you already new about this site, I’ll know that too.
I’ll also know exactly how long you stay here, whether it’s 1 minute or 10.
In fact, I’ll know exactly how you leave, whether you hit the back button or click on a link or banner (of course I’ll also know which link or banner you clicked on).
If you stick around and read a few different pages I’ll know that too, and I’ll also know which pages you went to and in what order.
You are probably starting to think this guy is bloody weird, what’s his problem…
I can’t tell you how thrilled I am about the free content that has been made available since the Renegade Professional launched.
As an affiliate promoting the Renegade system products in order to generate leads for an MLM business and also create a steady stream of income, this is really great news.
Having a good contact management system is an important factor in building any business, especially a home based network marketing business.
I’ve had people decide to join my network marketing business 1 and 2 years after our initial contact. Staying in constant touch with these people over a long period of time allowed us to develop a relationship that was built on consistency and trust.
In all cases these people joined me in business at a time that was just right for them. Everyone has their own time line when it comes to getting involved in a business and it has little to do with what YOU would like to see happen. If you are not in constant touch with your prospective business partners, you probably will not be top of mind when they are ready to get started with a new business venture.
With hundreds of people on my contact list, keeping in touch regularly with people would be hard without an excellent contact management system.
Are You a Hunter or a Farmer?
In Joe Nunziata’s book, Spiritual Selling he divides sales people into two groups;
Farmers – those who cultivate relationships over a long period of time
Hunters - those who go for the quick sale and then move on to the next target
Farmers are the people that build huge lists of contacts and continue to nurture those relationships over a long period of time. If this way of working appeals to you, then having a very good contact management system will be crucial for your success.
I personally prefer to build relationships over time and so have tried a number of different contact management systems.
The first one that I used was Microsoft’s Outlook and I must say that I was very happy with it. I did find that it was a little hard to integrate all of the tasks, notes, appointments and emails with contact information but for a long time I made do with it and was happy.
On a few occasions I lost all my data due to computer malfunction (as well as me not backing up properly) and that was an absolute nightmare. This is not something that can be blamed on Outlook but I must say using a web-based contact management system gives me a lot of peace of mind on that front.
The next contact management system that I used was ACT by Sage. I switched to this because it was recommended by a few of my mentors and most of my team was using it. There is no doubt that ACT has some powerful features that Outlook doesn’t but I never totally got used to using it. I found it a little too complicated and never got past using the simple features.
One drawback with ACT and Outlook
I use a desktop computer for all of my work and both ACT and Outlook were PC based systems. This meant that if I was anywhere other than my office I couldn’t access my contacts, appointments and scheduled tasks. I know that ACT has a palm device that can by synced with a PC but I just never felt inspired to go there.
Then came Oprius…
I wasn’t really looking for a new contact management system but was asked to trial the Oprius Sales and Contact Management system to see if it would be a good affiliate program for the Renegade Marketer System. There was a 30 day free trial with Oprius which required no payment details. I tried it for the 30 days and have been using it ever since.
I used to love playing with new software and tools. I’d happily spend hours fiddling with them until I was comfortable with all of their quirks…not these days. Because I have better things to do with my time than fiddle with software, I want things to be obvious and intuitive. If I try a new piece of software and it’s not fairly obvious how to use it, I move on very quickly.
That was one of the things I liked about the Oprius Sales and Contact management system, everything about it was obvious. Within minutes I could find my way around the basic features and the slightly more complicated features could quickly be grasped by watching their short and simple tutorial videos.
One of the other things I loved about Oprius was the fact that it was web-based. After losing my data more than once this was very appealing to me.
After about 1 week into trialling Oprius I was converted and over the following couple of months I started to really see how useful it was in building relationships for my business.
I was chatting with the CEO of Oprius a while ago and he mentioned the conversion rates for Oprius, I was amazed but not surprised — web traffic to free trial converted at 7%, free trial to paying customers converted at 48% and the retention rate was 98% !!
These are quite an incredible statistics and give you an idea of the level of satisfaction that people have with the Oprius Contact Management system.
Over the coming months I’ll be doing a series where I break down all the features of Oprius and how I use them in my business.
You can take a 30 day trial of Oprius and see what you think. I’d love to hear your comments…
By the way, what contact management system are you currently using if any?
Stephen Anderson demonstrates a true entrepreneurial mindset as well as one who knows how to get into action quickly.
He realized in short order that if he was to succeed he would have to take ownership of his own business and not rely on others to do it for him.
Within days of reading The Renegade Network Marketer, Stephen has learned how to create his own websites and has developed a mini-system within The Renegade System.
Stephen's creativity and resourcefulness is a demonstration of his rising status as a leader in the network marketing industry.
Stephen Anderson demonstrates a true entrepreneurial mindset as well as one who knows how to get into action quickly.
My name is Steve Anderson. I'm a 36 year old guy from Australia. I'm an Acupuncturist by profession but through chance became involved in Network Marketing. It wasn't long before I realized that there must be a better...