I remember a summer afternoon when I was a kid. We were fishing on a pond near the beach, using some muscles for bait.
We caught big bluegill with the muscles. When the muscles ran out we were too lazy to walk back to the beach and collect more so we cut up some of the bluegill and kept fishing.
But we didn't catch more blue-gill...we started catching crawfish.
When the bits of bluegill ran out we tried a chunk of crawfish...and started catching snapping turtles.
I learned some thing about bait selection that day. It applies to my network marketing business too.
First, have a pretty good idea of what you want to catch.
That's sorta like choosing a fishing hole. If we had used those muscles as bait in the surf, we could have caught completely different fish than the ones we caught in the pond.
It's easy to get the phone to ring or build a list if you aren't too picky whom you want to talk to. It's also a great way to get distracted, spread too thin and set yourself up to not get anything done.
Next, once you know whom you want to attract and you know where you want to fish, then it comes time to choose the right bait.
I spent a couple of years, and more money that I like to think about, fishing for opportunity seekers for my business. These are folks who want to make money from home- and who usually, have never done an entrepreneurial day of work in their lives. There is nothing wrong with these people, they just require a lot more work to get them going.
I attracted lots of folks, recruited scores in one year alone, and after training, teaching and a lot of hand-holding...all but a couple quit. I learned that is not unusual in Network Marketing.
So I started doing some homework to figure out a better way than spending thousands of dollars every month for leads. It needed to be something that anyone could do.
It's funny that we become experts and one thing and then leave our expertise behind when we make the change to something else.
I was a top-producing paper salesman for many years. I specialized in commercial printing papers, big sheets and rolls of paper that ran on multi-million dollar printing presses.
I never would have dreamed of going into a construction office or a day care center to sell paper. Not enough volume. I sold paper by the truck-load.
But we end up doing this in MLM by advertising 'work from home' or 'income at home' for our network marketing business and we cast our pole in every pond and puddle we see.
You get some folks who want to become entrepreneurs, but mostly you get folks looking for a J.O.B. from home. You get lots of get-rich-quick types.
Instead, define whom you want to recruit for your business. If you want educated professionals, don't put signs up at the laundromat and bus stop. If you want stay at home moms don't put ads in the sports section of the local paper.
You get the idea.
That will take some research. If you aren't intimately familiar with group you want to attract, like professionals or at-home moms, you need to find out what makes them tick...what keeps them up at night.
You have to find their itch and scratch it.
These are some generalities, but the truth is that most network marketers never get past these two fundamental principles:
Fish in a pond that has the kind of fish you want
Use the right bait.
There's more to learn, but get your head around these two things first and you'll be way ahead of your competition!
