Phone Tips for Network Marketing/Direct Sales Prospects

Phone calls to your prospects are essential to working your business. Sure you could take the chicken way out and just send your prospects an email about your network marketing business. Been there done that, tried that and trust me it doesn’t work. What you do is hope they open your email and just fall in love with your products and your network marketing opportunity and they will rush to the phone to call you. HA! They will not.

Phone calls are where you not only start to build your network marketing business it is also where you start to build a relationship with your prospect. It’s important to build a relationship with your prospect, get to know them and let them know you. You have to take “you” out of it and put your prospect front and center.

I know what you’re thinking, the fear of picking up that phone and making that call. This is a fear that most people have; it is the fear of rejections. You are not alone in this feeling so many others have felt the same exact fear you have right now about picking up the phone and calling.

What you have to remember is that it’s not about you. The prospect is NOT rejecting you, they are just saying no to the products or the opportunity because it’s not the right time for them. They are not ready now to make a commitment, but they just may be ready a few weeks, months or even a year from your first contact.

Building a network marketing business involves building a team, training that team and teaching your team to do the same thing as you are doing. That’s called duplication. Set a goal of making 25 calls per day, or possibly doing a power hour each evening where you make calls to prospects for an entire hour doing this for five days each week. Where will your business be in 90 days? It’s important to be consistent and you will see great results.

Create positive energy and sound confident when making your calls. Remember voice does matter when talking to your prospects. Body language plays an important role when calling and talking with your prospects. Your voice in this case is your body language.

There are some proven methods that can help you portray a positive energy and to sound confident as you are talking to your prospects.

*Stand up and walk around when talking ~this is the only way I talk on phones, I can’t sit still when talking.
*Be authentic, be real and listen to your prospect.
*Most importantly relax ~ if you are relaxed then your prospect will also be relaxed.
*Talk slow, don’t rush what you say
*Relax….relax….relax
*Don’t forget to breath

Did you know that you speak differently that you write? You do trust me; everyone speaks differently than they talk.

When you use scripts, read it through first, read it out loud in front of a mirror, make sure that you have a pen with you when doing this; as you are reading through the script tweak it so it sounds natural. You want the script to sound natural not like you are reading from a script. It should sound just like you speak, if the scripts have contractions in them (ie: don’t, can’t etc) and you don’t talk using contractions then by all means take them out and replace them.

Making your script sound natural is accomplished by practicing, practicing and then practicing some more. Tweaking your script until you feel comfortable, remember you talk differently than you write.

For the final step, but a very critical step for your network marketing business is the follow up. Remember "The Fortune is in the Follow Up," I’m sure you have heard that before and you will hear it over and over again from many different people and places because it’s true. The initial contact is just the start of the process – follow up with your prospect is important to see where they are in their process of making a decision.

I know that the fortune is in the follow up because I’ve lost a few prospects. Why because I did not follow up after my initial contact. I let other things get in my way of not making a follow up call. I have come across some of my prospects and signed up with someone else, someone who made the follow up call. They could have been my partner, on my team if I had only followed up with them when I said I would.

So when you set a follow up day and time with your prospect CALL THEM BACK!
How do you remember to follow up with a prospect? You need to put together a system that works for you. A few techniques that could aid in helping you to remember your “follow up appointment:”

*Use outlook or google calendar and set up a reminder so it will pop up 1 to 2 hours or whatever time you   
  just so you will be reminded before the appointment time you set.
*PDA – sync it with outlook or Google calendar and your PDA will remind you if you are out the your office
  or on the road.
*Write it on your calendar or daytime on the day and time you set up.
*Set up a notebook with number dividers 1-31, after you make your notes on the prospects sheet move the
  sheet to the correct numbered day. Then each day go to that number and call each prospect back.

These are just a few ideas to try in your business. Try all of them to see which works best for you.

Leading Success in Network Marketing

Barb Sibbing