The importance of making a list of all the people you know cannot be overstated. My experience shows that job-dropping residual income begins with making a list of at least 200 people and then effectively contacting ALL of them. Our business is driven by relationships and word of mouth referrals, period. No advertising, no commercials, no banner ads, no spam, no flyers. Our business grows when one person talks to another person. That usually happens over the phone, in-person, or occasionally through e-mail or other technologies. But make no mistake about it, those people you come into contact with must come from some form of names list.

What’s unique about our industry is that if you want to reach a million people, you don’t have to go out and personally talk to 15,000 people, each year for 66 years. Rather, you can develop a team of people who share in the task, and are rewarded proportionately from the results of their efforts. A hundred people who each add 10 people, who present the business idea 15 times per month, would reach a million people in 5 ½ years. Get the idea?

So why do we have to write people’s names down on paper? As long as they’re accessible, why bother? You can contact and present your business to people you know more rapidly if you have their names written down, so that you can strategize on how and when to make the contact. It’s also a good way to keep track of who you’ve called, presented to, left materials with, and et cetera.

Remember, you’re not planning a social; you’re building a business. My experience in this industry tells me that 100% of the people who make a names list of 200 people and appropriately contact them ALL create job dropping income.

Your business will grow at an accelerated pace if you are connected to many individuals and organizations where people meet. The more people you know, the more people you will be able to effectively and naturally expose your products and company to. In every city, town, or community, whether big or small, has groups of people who meet together to discuss topics of the day, share experiences and in the process refer products and services to friends and family of those who belong to the group.

In many cases there are organized networking groups. Their purpose is to create awareness of products and services that might be of interest to members or their colleagues. These are great places to meet new people and create great connections at no, or very low cost for great exposure to dozens, hundreds or even thousands of potential customers and associates.

There are also volunteer groups, who meet to provide some form of community service. This is a great way to meet new people, get to know them, and build relationships that you can use to have conversations about your products and services. There are always special interest organizations. Clubs like Kiwanis and the Rotary are but a few of the many that exist. All these groups provide an opportunity to get to know others and build strong relationships with them as well as an opportunity to share your products and services.

Lastly I want to mention the idea of partnering with people who provide a complimentary product or service to yours. That is to say, if you offer a product that needs to be mixed with water, then a good partner is someone who offers fantastically clean, fresh, water, to mix with your product to make it the best it can be. Together you can introduce people to each other that individually neither of you would know or meet.

Your business will grow at an accelerated pace if you are connected to many individuals and organizations where people meet. The more people you know, the more people you will be able to effectively and naturally expose your products and company to. In every city, town, or community, whether big or small, has groups of people who meet together to discuss topics of the day, share experiences and in the process refer products and services to friends and family of those who belong to the group.

In many cases there are organized networking groups. Their purpose is to create awareness of products and services that might be of interest to members or their colleagues. These are great places to meet new people and create great connections at no, or very low cost for great exposure to dozens, hundreds or even thousands of potential customers and associates.

There are also volunteer groups, who meet to provide some form of community service. This is a great way to meet new people, get to know them, and build relationships that you can use to have conversations about your products and services. There are always special interest organizations. Clubs like Kiwanis and the Rotary are but a few of the many that exist. All these groups provide an opportunity to get to know others and build strong relationships with them as well as an opportunity to share your products and services. 

Lastly I want to mention the idea of partnering with people who provide a complimentary product or service to yours. That is to say, if you offer a product that needs to be mixed with water, then a good partner is someone who offers fantastically clean, fresh, water, to mix with your product to make it the best it can be. Together you can introduce people to each other that individually neither of you would know or meet.

Your ability to effectively promote the fact that unlike any other industry, Direct Selling takes advantage of current and future product and service distribution trends, along with it low start-up costs and residual long-term payouts from one-time referrals will accelerate your business growth my quantum leaps. In order to do this you must also learn about and effectively talk about advancements in technology, legal issues, tax ramifications, and many other issues related to the industry, above and beyond the specifics of your company.

Many of the people you talk to will have questions on topics other than your product or service. The truth is that everyone wants it to work, they just need correct information that make it believable for it to work for them. If you ask them to just trust you because you met the up-line guru, that is not going to cut it for many people.

No-one wants to spend money and time building something that could be taken away from them in an instant. No amount of hype or hopium will persuade them. Facts, data, and your testimony of your products, company and yes your understanding and ability to communicate the viability of the industry are required to help ease concerns about them getting started.

Most people’s concerns will be alleviated then they find out that there are 10’s of millions of people who own personal businesses in this industry, and that there is a very powerful association that represents all of the company’s with respect to legal and tax issues, along with a very strong code of ethics, and the fact that there are many direct selling company’s in the Fortune 500 list.

Armed with industry knowledge you can teach your prospects that this is a very reputable industry, and this will allow you to present your company and products with confidence and ease any concerns that your prospects may have with the assurance that once they know what you know, they will take an in-depth look at what you are doing.

Knowing the features and benefits of your products and services is key to helping your prospects understand how they can benefit from them. Things like cost, personal benefit, competitive advantages, and, of course, research to back up claims is very important for your customers. It may sound a bit backwards, but it’s also important to know who your competitors are, and the features and benefits of their products & services as well as your own. Spend a few minutes each day, reading, studying, & getting to know the full range of products you represent & why they are better than your competitors.

Knowing what your products do and what problems they solve will greatly enhance your ability to present, overcome objections, and answer questions. You don’t have to become a bio-chemical engineer, but you do need to understand at a basic level what your products do and don’t do. The in-depth knowledge about the specific detail of your products and services can easily be found – probably on your company’s web-site. 

Remember that everything you do must be duplicate-able.

So if you know the chemical compound structure of your product then your prospect will also think they need to know this as well. This might keep them from enrolling in your business. This in-depth knowledge is too much, & even if you do know all the facts and background of your products, you should refer the really detailed questions to a web-site or question & answer teleconference call.  This should alleviate some stress for you, & will certainly relieve any anxiety for your prospect who might be thinking they have to know everything about everything before they could ever make any money in this business.

With all that said, the most important part of product knowledge, is your personal testimony of how the product has affected you. Being sincere in explaining the benefits you have received is important to making sales. It also makes it appear to your customer how simple building the business could be if they choose to follow your lead and either make some money, or just get the products you love for free.

The things we typically think of when we talk to prospects about our opportunity are almost never the real reasons they join. People listen to stories of fast cars, huge houses, fantastic vacations and incredible lifestyles. However, initially – most people don’t define success in this way. Everyone has a different vision of what success is to them.

No matter what people want or dream of, its your job to help them get it. The challenge is to get them moving towards something. Whether big or small most people believe they are a long way from being able to achieve their dreams. So to cross the great divide, between where prospects are, and where they ultimately want to end up, I use a stair step approach starting with the concept of “take it to the level you can believe it”. For example, when I first got into personal business ownership, my goal was for my wife to be able to go to the grocery store and buy what she really wanted, instead of what we could afford. Of course this is not monetarily equivalent to 20,000 square foot houses on 10,000 acres of rolling hills divided by a perfect fishing stream, Ferrari’s, or trips to Hawaii to swim with the dolphins. But it was as far as I could see at that time.

When I accomplished this goal, I started working on a newer car, then to a new car, then to vacations to Hawaii, then towards my greater cause and higher purpose. In the beginning, I couldn’t even see myself making a thousand dollars in the business, let alone becoming a millionaire. No matter where people start, as they advance, they are able to see farther and farther down the road, if they just get moving in the right direction. Remember that success is the progressive realization of a worthwhile dream. Goals should be appropriate milestones for tracking progress towards greater causes and higher purposes.

You have probably heard the saying that a goal not written is a wish. And that appropriate work will win, where wishing won’t. People who have a written set of realistic goals have a way to know if they are moving towards or away from their dreams. Those who do not have written goals with dates are at the mercy of their emotions to determine whether they feel like they are succeeding. The most important business goals should be related to converting prospects to customers or associates. Because these two groups create income, and income translates into goal achievement.

Write down, your goals with specificity and detail. Include a date for the accomplishment of your goals, and then create a plan that will produce the results you want. Make sure to discuss your plan with your mentor, so that you will have his or her input, feedback, and assurance that if you follow the plan, your will likely achieve your goal.

One thing I’ve learned over the years, is that no-one can motivate anyone! You can excite them, you can influence them, you can persuade them, but in every case the effect You create wears off in a few minutes or hours. Effective, long lasting motivation comes from within each individual, Not You! The truth is that everyone is motivated. They are motivated to create the result they are focused on, and believe they can achieve. They are motivated to do what they are committed to. They are highly motivated to attain what they perceive as their needs.

When someone is hungry, really hungry, do you have to “motivate” them to eat? They are highly motivated to get something to eat with or without you “pumping them up”. When people are thirsty, they will find something to drink.

My experience is that a really great speaker can get the crowd worked up into a frenzy and emotionally ready to dominate world economy’s. However, hype and hopium by themselves don’t last. When people go to work on Monday, they get beat up at work, and the emotion goes away. Your people must find something they need so bad that they will take action to get it.

Your job is to get them to dream, consider the possibilities and believe. Only then will they learn, practice, and take appropriate action to make the dream a reality. They will be motivated everyday to take action to accomplish things that they believe are possible. Especially when the feel like they posses or could learn how to acquire the personal effectiveness necessary to achieve the goal.

So remember that your long term success in this business will be determined by your ability to discover what people need as badly as they need oxygen, or food, or water. When you master this skill, you won’t have to try to motivate anyone. They will do it all by themselves and in the process, you and your team will accomplish super human feats.

Character has been defined as the amount of disappointment you will endure before you become discouraged. People who are easily discouraged often quit easily. Discouragement is the opposite emotion of courage. There are really only 3 things that create discouragement in this business, and all other negative emotions, and thoughts start from them:

1) Lack of results. If you fail to reach your goals, in a reasonable amount of time, most people will begin to question themselves, their company, or the industry. Consciously, or subconsciously lack of results creates the dreaded thoughts, “Does this really work”? or “Can I really Do this?  If you allow discouragement to fester, you will begin to sabotage your actions, which in turn cripples your results. And lack of results is the number one reason people quit.

2) Unrealistic expectations. New people typically do not have the skill or knowledge to build a million dollar business, but many expect to! And when it does not happen quickly, they think they cannot do this business or that the business doesn’t work, and they become discouraged. 

3) Listening to the wrong people. If new people listen to those who are negative about the business, don’t understand it, or have never been successful in this industry, they will begin to adopt the thinking and actions of the negative, un-educated, or unsuccessful. This create negative results which of course we know spawns discouragement.

Although it may seem at times like circumstances are conspiring against you, remember this, circumstances are can be temporary if we take appropriate action to change them. If you are in this business for the long term results, take a quick accounting of all that is going right, and what specifically you feel could go better and discuss corrective action with your mentor. Who by the way has probably gone through their own times of discouragement.

In order to be successful in this business you must become the kind of person others will follow before they will follow. A personal improvement plan is like a road map to success. If you follow it, you will have a credible claim on success. If you don’t have one, or you ignore the one you have, you will flounder and lose your way. Most people who enroll in your organization aren’t accustomed to stretching and growing. Most of the people you meet will have spent years as an employee, in a position where they simply repeated the same things over and over again without ever being challenged to move outside of their comfort zone.

When you begin building this business, you will find that your old comfortable patterns, and habits don’t apply to this business. You will quickly realize that if you are to succeed you’ll need to learn, practice and apply skills and knowledge to do things you’ve never done before. This is an industry that requires personal and professional improvement in areas like building relationships contacting, presenting, following-up, overcoming objections, answering questions, asking for the business, leadership and 50 other critical skills and knowledge.

In life we get beat up by family and financial situations, and other things that drain our belief and energy. Even in the business there will be ups and downs. A personal improvement plan serves as a constant encouragement and positive influence to keep you going. It can help you to accelerate your business growth by helping you concentrate on improving specific areas that hold you back. Take the personal effectiveness profile, and sit down with your mentor to discuss the results.

Talk to him or her about your goals, and find out what you should focus on, and learn, practice and apply this skill and knowledge to become the kind of person who can achieve their goals.

Not everyone you enroll in your business will be sitting around waiting for you to present your opportunity to them. Most people don’t have an extra 20 to 50 hours per week set aside with nothing to do. I have learned over time that there are four categories of commitment people are willing to devote to building their business:

1. Sometime,  4 to 6 hours,
2. Spare time, 6 to12 hours,
3. Part time, 12 to 25 hours and,
4. Full time, 40 to 60 hours

In most cases people who really see the value of the business opportunity will be able to rearrange their schedule or turn off the T.V. long enough to at least start out as a “some timer”. Those who consistently build the business at any level of commitment can create job dropping residual income. However, it will take a lot longer for a part timer to achieve this level of success than a full timer. Consistency means that no matter what, when you have business building time scheduled, you build your business during that time.

People who consistently plan and work each week will eventually succeed. Those who spend 2 hours one week, and then 50 hours the next, and 1 hour the next, followed by 15 hours the next will never create or maintain any momentum in their business. It’s not really a matter of spending time for the sake of spending time. The bottom line in your business is determined by your personal effectiveness in recruiting, training, and retaining, coupled with an unrelenting passion for creating your desired results.

Some will quit, others will concede, but those who are willing to pay the price will have the grandest rewards this industry has to offer. Those who quit, generally do so because success is always dressed in overalls and looks like work.