From My Mailbag: It’s All About Relationships

HI,
How does a woman make it in network marketing by contacting Leads? Sometimes the Leads can be quite unpleasant to deal with, so how can a woman still be brave enough to contact them; not to mention ask them to join their home-based business with out feeling shy?!!! Thank you!

I am making a guess that by contacting “leads” you mean leads that you have little or no relationship with.  And I agree, contacting these kinds of leads can be very disheartening.  
 
In today’s very busy and crowded market place, people do not like being “interrupted” from their already overloaded lives to hear a sales pitch.  I think it was Seth Godin who dubbed the term “interruption marketing”.  While this used to be an effective means of selling, these days it usually leads to unpleasant conversations, and worse, no progress in your business.

So if contacting leads doesn’t work effectively, what are the alternative solutions to growing your network marketing business?  Ah, one of my very favorite topics!  Relationship Marketing!!!

Relationship Marketing is all about helping others get to know, like and trust you – before asking them to buy anything.  In a world full of crazy marketing messages, aggressive sales tactics and a “dog-eat-dog” mentality, we all crave doing business with those people who have taken the time to get to know us. 

Some of the essential elements of Relationship Marketing are:

-Commit to being of service – to your clients, your downline and your prospects.  How can you be of help to them – even if it doesn’t involve selling your product to them?  Remember – it is all about them!

-Be focused on learning about their specific problems and challenges.  If you can tease these out and then formulate solutions (neatly packaged around your products of course!), people will beat a path to your door.

-Listen, listen, listen.  As tempting as it is to tell everyone you meet how fantastic your product and/or service is, your words will fall on deaf ears if you haven’t first asked meaningful questions and truly listened to the responses.  You honestly have no idea if your offering will be useful to them and if you “assume” that they need it without asking questions first, you’ve made the conversation all about you.  See #1 about that.

-If you feel people backing away from you literally or figuratively, give them the space to do that.  If you chase them, you smack of desperation.  If, however, you back away too, you are giving them room to step toward you again – and that is what you want.  Giving people space is also respectful of other people’s wants and wishes.  People will think very highly of you if you demonstrate this kind of respect.

These are just the tip of the iceberg – and great places to start – for incorporating Relationship Marketing into your business strategy.  Though it may take a little longer to complete the sales cycle using these tactics, your clients and your team members will stay with you much longer.  And isn’t that what we all want!

Love & Success!

Sarah

Last 5 posts by Sarah Robinson

• Profit Purpose & Beyond 2008 - September 24th, 2008
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• A Week Unexpected - August 20th, 2008
• Is the Internet the Only Future for Direct Sales? - August 1st, 2008
• The Bullseye for Your Direct Sales Business - July 17th, 2008