This is the first in a series of articles on the foundational skills needed to succeed in Network Marketing or Direct Sales. Each week I will cover in detail one of the basic skills you need to master over time in this profession.

I am going to start with one that is used more often than any other. Telling the story of your WHY.

What Is Your Why

Imagine that you are at a party and someone asks you what you do. Most of us fumble over that or we say a short answer that is what our job is. I’m an accountant or I’m a mechanic or I’m a salesperson or I work for Acme company.  Even if you own your own company, it’s a job description that most of us give. I’m a contractor. I’m in dog grooming. I own a UPS Store.

In the network marketing profession, we need to have an answer ready that tells the story of why we LEFT doing a J.O.B. and started down an entrepreneurial path.

How To Craft Your Why

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Rule #1 of Selling is to be crystal clear on your value proposition. Unless you can clearly articulate the outcomes a customer gets from using your product or service, it’s nearly impossible to get them to change from the status quo.
~Jill Konrath

This quote from one of my favorite authors on sales struck me and it got me thinking about how to apply the fundamental principles of sales to an industry filled with non-salespeople.

What one sales skill should every person in Network Marketing learn in order to be successful

People buy because of emotions and rationalize with logic
~author unknown

Network Marketing is also called the direct selling industry. Our profession may be filled with non-sales types, but if no sales are made, then no one makes any money.

To be successful you will have to learn some basic principles of sales. Now it’s not as scary as it sounds. Sales success is about telling stories and storytelling can be very fun. In this case, it’s true stories that are both fun and help people buy from you.

Why People Buy

People don’t buy because of features of products. They are not buying your product because of the studies or the ingredients or the purity or the science or any other fact. They are buying because something about the results your product produces struck an emotional cord with them.

People don’t join your business as associates because of the products or the pay plan or any other feature of the opportunity. They join you because you or someone else struck an emotional cord with a story about a result. A story about an outcome that caused an emotion in them.

The True Stories You Need to Learn to Tell

What are the outcomes your customers get from using your product or service? Not the features, the benefits or outcomes.

What are the outcomes your customers get from using your product or service? Not the features. What are the benefits, the results, the outcomes? What third party testimonials do you have?

What emotions have those outcomes produced in your customers? When you listen to your customers or other testimonials about your product or service, what emotions come up again and again?

How can you best express those outcomes and emotions to your customers?

Those are the keys to selling any product successfully and that is the one sales skill you absolutely must work on mastering to be successful in your company.

#sales #success #networkmarketing

How Would You Answer?

We were sent this list of questions in an email recently and it seems like a great thing to pass on to you. The answers are both enlightening and powerful motivators. So, how would you answer? Take a couple of minutes and honestly answer these 6 questions

How would you answer these questions?

• If someone offered to pay you $50,000USD in cash if you could find and sponsor just 6 new motivated Associates in the next 30 days, would you?

• Could you?

• How about 60 days?

• How about 90 days?

• Did you know that sponsoring just 6 new motivated Associates will likely be worth far more that a one-time payment of $50,000?

• What are you waiting for?

Now that you have answered those questions, I have one more. What action can you take right now that will move you closer to sponsoring those 6 new associates? Not tomorrow. Not later. Right now.

So why are you still on this page. Go do it.

Those profound words stuck me like a ton of bricks. Truth plainly spoken often does.

In this profession that I have chosen, personal development is paramount to success. It’s a precursor to getting what I want in life. The more I grow, the more love and good I share, the more comes back to me. I can’t fake until I make it, I have to fake it until I become it.

To be successful in network marketing, I am forced to be constantly nudging myself towards becoming the best version of myself if I want to be successful in the business. The more I grow, the more I am able to give, and the more I attract people that are looking to become more themselves. Those people are the ones that want share the products and the opportunity with others and we grow our businesses together.

In each moment that I am present in the moment, I am telling myself that I am a light. That by doing what I do in this profession, I am serving others in a way that they and I need. I am spreading joy and greater fulfillment in life. That I am learning to be more and serve more.

By serving more, I become more successful in my network marketing business.

Thank you Amy Cuddy! For that piece of truth you shared that clarified why and how  to be successful in life and in the network marketing profession.

I do hope you decide to join us on our adventure. Once that momentum kicks in, there is no limit to what peaks we can climb together.

Is Your Entire Industry Going Away for Good?

Of the 10’s of millions of jobs lost in the US over the past 2 decades, most are not coming back. Not because they have moved to China or Malaysia or India, but because they simply do not exist anymore. Its called structural unemployment.

Think about all those people that made vinyl records, that worked in printing houses or newspapers, that sold and delivered yellow pages, that made photographic film and that processed photos taken on film, that did manufacturing jobs now done more cheaply and efficiently by robots, that worked in a myriad of jobs that simply do not exist anymore or exist in such small numbers that it is not available as a career path.

So what is next?

Let me give you a glimpse of the immediate future. This is coming in the next decade. Tesla Motors has announced that they will have a fully autonomous (self driving) car by 2017. According to Elon Musk that is a “true autonomous driving where you could literally get in the car, go to sleep, and wake up at your destination”. Mercedes Benz followed Tesla’s announcement within a day with the same news. Cadillac also has said that by 2017 they will also have a feature available in all their vehicles “technology that takes control of steering, acceleration and braking at highway speeds of 70 miles per hour or in stop-and-go congested traffic.” By 2020 we will have fully autonomous cars on the road. Japan has announced that they want fully autonomous taxis before the 2020 Olympics. While it may take 2-3 years to get legislative approval in the US for a fully self driving car, it will come.

When they are approved, what industries will go away completely?

Taxi drivers? There are about 250,000 taxi and limo drivers in the US alone. Courier drivers? There are 1,000,000 courier jobs in the US alone. Delivery truck drivers (local, not over the road)? There are 1.25 million in the US alone. Delivery drivers in the restaurant industry. There are 2 million in the US. Postal delivery carriers? There are nearly a half million in the US. People that work for Fedex and UPS in delivery jobs? Over 200,000. Bus drivers? The list goes on.

If just HALF of those listed above that are in those industries lose their jobs to autonomous vehicles over the next decade, that is 2.5-3.0 million people losing their jobs. 1 in every 60 working age adults.

And I have certainly not mentioned even half of the jobs that will be directly affected. Parking attendants and the entire parking industry (parking lots, garages and the companies that service them). If you live in a major urban area like New York City, Chicago, Houston or Los Angeles and don’t have to drive because you can call a ride sharing service and have an autonomous car pick you up in a few minutes, would you even own a car? For many the answer is yes, but for 32% of Americans the answer is they would no longer drive if a fully autonomous vehicle were available. What would it do to the automotive industry to have 30% less cars sold? What would that do to the jobs of those that make vehicles, repair cars and make aftermarket parts? To ancillary industries such as auto insurance, auto financing?

Morgan Stanley estimated that with as little as 30% of people utilizing autonomous vehicles they own or from ride sharing services, that there would be 2 million less traffic accidents and 700,000 less traffic accident related injuries.

What will happen to the jobs in the auto body repair and painting industry? To those in the medical care industry that deal with those injuries?

I think I am being conservative in saying that more than 10 million jobs in the US may go away permanently over the next 2 decades as autonomous vehicles become prevalent in our lives.

Where will those people that have lost their entire industry turn?

The really forward looking people in those industries see the future coming and are already looking.

I suggest that network marketing, one of the fastest growing professions worldwide, and entrepreneurism of all types as an answer to where they will be forced to turn if they are not willing to rely on a government hand out.

What do you think? If you are in those industries where will you turn?

How to Laugh at Your Savings Account

What are your dreams? A new or larger home? A new or 2nd car? A vacation to an exotic locale like Hawaii or Tahiti? A Caribbean cruise? Would an extra $500 per month help you make some of them a reality?

This great post by Tom “Big Al” Schreiter really drives home what it takes to earn $500 per month by putting your money in the bank and shows the asset even a modest, part time network marketing business provides for you.

What It Would Take to Earn $500 per Month from Savings

With interest rates around 2%, how much money do you need in a savings account to earn $500 a month in interest?

1. $50,000
2. $150,000
3. $300,000

What did you guess?

The correct answer is $300,000.

Just think how long you would have to work to earn $300,000 after taxes. And then you could relax and collect that extra $500 a month.

Earning an extra $500 a month in network marketing sure sounds a lot better.

​Tom “Big Al” Schreiter – www.fortunenow.com

#networkmarketing #entrepreneur