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RE: Forum Informum - Feedback for Business and Pleasure 7/15/2011 3:49:56 AM
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Back to the old tried and true basics, Kathleen.
When I first came online 12 years ago I was a successful outside salesman tired of the road. One of my first experiences was the dreaded "MLM" with a new and unusual product that was ahead of its time. VoIP was in its infancy, and I was hooked on the concept. But, I had a terrible sponsor, that loaded the deck with the dead weight of family members that weren't even involved in the opportunity but were placeholders, looking for the free ride. This became old soon.
Then someone told me I had to build a list, so I built and bought leads to do so. I had a 50,000 person list one that size back then, put me in the black. But my AR provider got slammed for spam and lost it all. Now I export all my leads to a .csv file type lesson learned.
Coming from a sell it or go home offline mentality and work history I was quite aggressive.
Maybe I still am, but, Frank Kern just came back to the online world selling "Old School Direct Selling Strategies and Methodology, can you Believe It? I just left one of his recent conferences and this is what he selling now.
Would you believe that in the early days I was told by my sponsors and trainers that my old school methods won't work online?
Me neither but that is what I was told. So I spent the next few years trying the SEO, PPC, and Adwords strategy none of which supplied me a profit to support myself on, much less my family. Was this time wasted? Not really, it was disappointing for sure but not wasted. I learned enough to tweak my web pages and started building my lists.
Now Frank Kern, comes out and says the methods and strategy I spent years learning to be successful offline needs to be brought online! His latest training is $997 USD Damn!
You don't have to spend that kind of money to get that information, it is available practically FREE if you know how to research your market, know what they are buying and what their hot buttons are.
But people are lazy and will give Frank $997 USD to teach them 100 year old marketing strategy and techniques. Hmmm has the Internet become too competitive? It must have folks are going to their local markets offline! and bringing those folks back online. This is something I am learning now and putting into practice.
Interesting to say the least. But the fact is you have to know what the customer wants and needs before you can sell them something. FACT
I have sold, floors, doors, windows, air and water. All in the clients home. But I did my prep work, I knew what type of neighborhood it was. Blue collar, middle class was always the easiest to sell to. Why? Because I am a blue collar, middle class type of guy.
I did a very thorough inspection, answered their questions along the way. All the time I was probing them and asking questions myself. Loading up on ammunition for the close.
I commented on their furnishings, pictures on the wall, the boat in the garage anything to break the ice. Found what they were emotional about, became their knowledgeable friend and sat down at the kitchen table. Asked for a glass of water and that the husband and wife sit with me while I shared the results of my inspection, etc. I am going to stop here as this is the start of a valuable e-book already.
I guess my point is the business is important but people do business with people they Know, Like and Trust.
Learn how to be that person and you will do well. I promise. If you need help pay attention here, in the new forum Barry is setting up and in my own forums here on Adland. Listen to Diane, Glen, Kathleen and Mattias, oops and me too. You will learn something valuable I am sure of it.
Quote:
Hi Diane, Most people are looking for additional income, so talking about the income will get their attention. Also, most people don't want to pay for an autoshipment of products or have real products piling up in their house, so digital products are usually more popular in MLMs. Lots of people also may not have an interest in the products, they may be more interested in the income plan, it depends. The most-sold and most-promoted digital products are about marketing and how to earn online, especially those written by successful high-earning marketers, so those may be of more interest to newbies because lots of experienced marketers already do things their own way and gather advice along the way, and have watched the successful rich people BECOME successful and rich over the last few years and basically have some understanding of whatever they write and sell. It depends on the customer. I've watched and listened to some marketing videos and taken notes, and purchased real books and bookmarked pages, basically it's all about saturating the internet or all forms of media with advertising and being unique, and becoming expert at something, whether it's writing articles or gaining a large following. I haven't seen any digital products that say anything much different than that...reach the largest audience, and stay in contact with our referrals, and be consistent with promotions, and I learned this in mail order that a lot of internet marketers don't do...always put part of the income into higher amounts of advertising, and make backend offers. Great backend online offers include sharing our advertising sources with our downline so they'll get more business and if they upgrade in those also, it keeps our advertising self-funded. People forget that ad sources ARE ALSO sellable services, and there are tons of ad sources out there that also have MLM structures, so pulling our MLM groups into our ad sources that also pay in an MLM way is a fantastic multi-stream income decision, especially if the downliners also do that. As far as real-life products, the question is...would someone buy it in the real world if it wasn't attached to a money-making business? Is it something that people want and need and would buy on a regular basis?
Online marketers do a lot of ad-saturation, and newbies approach their relatives and real-life friends or co-workers. I told someone a couple years ago to get online and get name-recognition in networks, but she didn't do it, she kept trying to sell vitamins to everyone in the real world. It only takes a few months of consistent advertising and networking online to gain name-recognition, if people put their name at the end of their ads, and maybe with their photo, that makes a huge difference in response rates over anonymous advertising.
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