Authors: Eric Worre
Some people go a little crazy when they hear this question. They say, “Pyramid scheme? Like every corporation in the world? Like the government? You mean like THAT?!”
Instead of going crazy on your prospects, it’s important to understand where this question comes from. My experience has shown me that they usually knew someone who joined with no success or else they’ve done it themselves (usually they just purchased a virtual lottery ticket like I described earlier and it didn’t pay off). This scenario represents well over 90% of the people who will ask this kind of question. The rest of them have heard of opportunities like this and are rightfully skeptical of the promise of getting rich quick.
If they ask this kind of question with any sort of emotion, I know they’ve been involved at some point, so I say, “Wait a minute. You have a story. What happened? Were you involved in Network Marketing at some point?” Then just let them tell you their story. It opens them up. It lowers their defenses. And it allows you to ask some questions about their experience.
Let me give you a typical example. I’m going through my invitation process when the prospect says, “Wait a minute. Is this MLM?” And they say it with emotion. I reply, “Oh, you have a story. Did you try it out at some point? What happened?”
They say, “Yeah, I joined a company a few years ago, bought some product and lost my money.” I reply, “What do you think was the reason you didn’t have success?”
They say, “Well, my friend talked me into it. I didn’t have a lot of time and I thought more people would join right away but they didn’t. I guess I just lost interest.” I reply, “Do you think you really gave it a fair shot?”
They say “No, not really.” I reply, “Do you think Network Marketing was the problem? Or do you think maybe your timing wasn’t right?” They say, “It was probably the timing.”
Do you see the dynamic? I’ve had thousands of these conversations and they’re all slightly different, but if you ask some questions and are friendly through the process, you have a strong opportunity to help them get rid of their blind spot and take a look at what you have to offer.
In addition, you can relate to them by saying you had the same objection initially and telling them how you overcame it. If someone uses the word “pyramid” with me, I always say, “Oh no. Pyramid schemes are illegal, and I would never be involved with something illegal.”
For people asking without the emotion attached, I usually respond with, “Yes, this is Network Marketing. Do you know anything about it?” Again, I’m asking questions and waiting for answers. From those answers, I ask more questions, and through the process I can achieve my goal of education and understanding.
“I don’t want to bother my friends,” is slightly different. Again, I relate to them by telling my story or someone else’s story. And then I ask questions like, “What makes you think you’d be bothering your friends?” or, “If you truly believed in the product, would you let your friends know about it?” and, “If I could show you how we share this product with others without it feeling or sounding like a sales pitch, would that help you?”
The last in this category is, “How much are YOU making?” If you are making money already, this is a great question. If you’re not, your answer depends on how long you’ve been involved. If you’re brand new, you can tell them you’re just getting started. If you’ve been around for a while and not making big money yet, you can tell them you are working this part-time and are really excited about your future. You could also say that you’re excited about your future with this company because you knew things weren’t going to change if you didn’t do something to change them.
The other way to answer it is to tell your story and then tell stories of people you know who ARE making good money. You can even suggest setting up a phone conversation with those people so they can feel more comfortable about the opportunity.
All of this takes practice, but if you get the concepts down, you’ll find it becomes easy. And the other thing that should encourage you is you’ll only have this handful of the same objections for the rest of your career. There’s nothing new here. What I’ve listed in this section is about all there is. Remember, our goal is education and understanding. This is a part of the process that makes that goal a reality.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Skill #5—Helping Your Prospects Become Customers or Distributors
This skill is a natural byproduct of following up professionally. As you walk through exposure after exposure, our goal of education and understanding will be accomplished. But that doesn’t mean the prospect will come out and ask you for an order form or an application. It’s your job to guide them to a decision.
The key to success in this area is a combination of having good posture and asking good questions. Good posture means the way you carry yourself. Your words and actions will help your prospect feel more confident about joining your opportunity or they will plant seeds of doubt.
In my early years, my posture was terrible. I was trying to “get” people instead of pursuing the nobler goal of education and understanding, and the prospects could feel my intentions. I was very emotionally attached to the outcome. You could even say I was needy. Every time I got to this part of the process, I really, really wanted it. Again, the prospect could feel my emotional attachment and that usually scared them away.
Through lack of results and without even realizing it, I started to assume people were not going to be interested. And that assumption started to seep into everything, which led to the predictable result of the prospect not joining.
Most of the time I wasn’t properly prepared. I didn’t have applications, start-up materials, or whatever else was necessary. Think about the subconscious impact this had on my prospects. It seemed like just about everything I did projected a lack of belief and a lack of professionalism.
Instead of asking questions and listening intently to the answers, I just talked and talked and talked. I was more focused on being interesting than being interested. Prospects don’t like that. No one does.
So, again I followed my pattern of modeling the professionals. I watched what the best closers did and began to copy them. I interviewed top performers to figure out what they did differently. And slowly, I started to see the flaws in my approach.
First, I learned that professionals are emotionally detached from the outcome. In other words, their goal is education and understanding while helping a prospect make a decision that would positively impact their lives. They are the opposite of needy. They aren’t trying to “get” anybody. They are honestly just trying to help.
Second, they are very assumptive in their approach. They expect the person to join because their belief that the opportunity would benefit the prospect is so strong. They are rock solid. Many of them are sincerely shocked when a person decides not to get involved.
Third, it was interesting to learn they promote themselves as much as they promote the product or opportunity. What I mean by that is they help the prospect make the decision by saying, “You get ME!” When they promote themselves, it isn’t like, “I’m going to do everything for you.” It was more like, “We have a great product and a great opportunity, but I’m going to take this thing to the top and we can do it together.” This gives people great comfort in knowing that they don’t have to learn everything on their own.
Fourth, they are always prepared. Always. They have everything they need to get a person started right on the spot.
And fifth, they ask question after question after question and are great listeners. They act like a consultant helping a person with a problem. The best consultants in the world have to ask a bunch of questions before they can offer a solution. Network Marketing Professionals use questions as their most powerful tool.
As you can imagine, it took me a while to figure all of this out and that was just half the battle. It’s one thing to have the information and it’s another thing to put it into action. I wasn’t as talented as the pros, but I could model what they did, so I just started to act like they acted.
I acted emotionally detached (I really wasn’t at the beginning); I started to act very assumptive that people would join (I really wasn’t at the beginning); I started to tell people, “and you get ME!” (even though I didn’t think that was such a huge benefit at the beginning); I was always prepared; I started asking lots of questions, focusing more on being interested than interesting.
And as time went on, I acted less and less, and believed more and more. The same can happen for you.
Let’s talk about questions. If you were a consultant and your job was to figure out if an opportunity was a good fit for your client, what would you do? You’d ask questions right?
In working to help a prospect make a positive decision about your opportunity, you’re going to do the same thing. But instead of asking, “What did you think?”—which leads nowhere—learn to ask questions that lead in a positive direction.
“Did it make sense to you?”
“What did you like best about what you just saw?”
“Pretty exciting, isn’t it?”
“Can you see how this could be an opportunity for you?”
Of these examples, the one I use the most is, “What did you like best?” The answer to that question is almost always positive and it gives you clues as to the area in which they are most interested.
Then I like to say, “Let me ask you a question. On a scale of 1 to 10, with one meaning you have zero interest and 10 being you’re ready to get started right now, where are you?” They will give you a number. And it’s usually obvious from their number that they either need more information before they will make a decision or they are leaning toward getting started now.
If you feel they need more information, just guide them to the next exposure that will help them the most. But if you feel they are ready to get started, then ask a series of four questions. This “Four Question Close” has produced strong and consistent results over the course of my career. If you learn it and use it, you’ll be amazed at how many people you can help.
Question #1:
“Based on what you’ve just seen, if you were to get started with this company on a part-time basis, approximately how much would you need to earn per month in order to make this worth your time?” Instead of asking this question, most distributors say things like, “How would you like to make $10,000 a month?” Don’t do that. Instead of prescribing what you think they want, just ask them what it would take to make it worth their time and wait for their answer.
Question #2:
“Approximately how many hours could you commit each week to develop that kind of income?” Now they have to go inside their head and check their mental calendar to see how much time they would invest to get that kind of money.
Question #3:
“How many months would you work those kind of hours in order to develop that kind of income?” This question makes them think about their level of commitment if they want the income from question #1.
Question #4:
“If I could show you how to develop an income of (their answer to question #1) per month, working (their answer to question #2) hours a week over the course of (their answer to question #3) months, would you be ready to get started?” Most of the time, you’ll get a positive answer to this question. And when people say, “Sure, show me how,” you can pull out your compensation plan and sketch out a reasonable game plan to achieve their goals.
There are rare occasions when people give you unrealistic numbers. They might say they want $10,000 a month working two hours a week for one month. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. If you face that situation, you act as a consultant and say, “I’m sorry, but your expectations are way too high. You can get to $10,000 a month but it will take more hours and more months than you’re willing to commit. If you’re willing to change those expectations, we can talk.”
If you don’t get a positive answer to the four questions, that’s okay. It just means the prospect will need to have more exposures before they’re ready. Schedule the next one and repeat this process when you’re done. This skill will take practice. But it’s a skill that will serve you for the rest of your career. If you’re tired of having too many people thinking about it and not enough taking action, this will help.
CHAPTER NINE
Skill #6—Helping Your New Distributor Get Started Right
In Network Marketing, people invest enormous effort, time and money into getting people signed up, and then squander that investment by leaving their new distributors to figure everything out for themselves. Professionals don’t do that. They set proper expectations, they help get some quick results, and then continue to guide the new distributor through the many phases of our profession.