How to Get Your Warm Market to Join Your MLM

The number one biggest challenge I ALWAYS hear from people in the MLM industry is that they can’t get their warm market to buy into their MLM products or business.

Why is this such a big challenge for people?

One word – APPROACH.

If you approach the situation the wrong way, you’ll fail miserably at this.

And sadly, most people approach this completely the wrong way…

… just like I did in 1997.

How to Completely Ruin Your Reputation in Your Warm Market

Here’s the typical plan that most MLMs give their distributors for “growing their business”:

Step 1 – Make a list of EVERYONE you know.  Family, friends, relatives, acquaintances, even your mailman!  You now have a list of 300!

Step 2 – Phone them up, and  invite them to a meeting/party at your house or at an office.

Step 3 – They attend your “party”, get pitched on the products/opportunity by you or your sponsor.

Step 4 – A whole bunch of them will join because your product and/or opportunity is the coolest thing EVER.

Step 5 – Tell them to do the same thing.

Step 6 – You’ll get at least 5 people, and they’ll get 5 people, and they’ll get 5 people and due to exponential growth you’ll have one million people in your MLM!

Step 7 – You are now a millionaire, right?

Sound familiar?

How has that been working for you?

Probably not so well right?

But why?  You did what you were told to do, so what went wrong?

Well, frankly… EVERYTHING.

Let’s go through the steps, one by one and see what ACTUALLY happens at each step.

Step 1 – The List

You sit down to make a list of family, friends, relatives, acquaintances, etc. and you realize a few things.

First of all, you realize that you don’t really keep in touch with everyone you know.  You have a core group of people that you usually hang out with, which isn’t really that big, and the rest of the people that you know, you only see them MAYBE a few times a year at birthday or holidays.

Secondly, you realize that over the last few years especially, MOST of your communication with these more distant friends and relatives has moved onto social media, like Facebook, or email communication.

You don’t DO PHONE CALLS very often anymore!

I have dozens and dozens of friends on my facebook list who I communicate with on a semi-regular basis, but not very often on the phone.

If I do pick-up the phone and call certain people who I don’t talk to, they think it’s weird.

But let’s say that you DO have a list of 300 friends who you have phone numbers for, and who you somehow magically keep in touch with, and who would not feel weird if you called them to book a meeting.

Step 2 – The Invite

Phoning people you don’t usually talk to and trying to invite them to a meeting can be awkward.

If you try to use a SCRIPT that doesn’t sound like your normal voice that you talk to people with, then things get REALLY AWKWARD.

You’re nervous, which makes the people on the other side of the phone even more nervous and the whole time you’re trying to say your script without screwing it up, they’re not even listening, because they’ve already decided that they’re not interested and they’re just trying to think of an excuse to NOT come to the “meeting”.

But lets say that you DO in fact get around 20 people to agree to come to your meeting.

Step 3 – The Meeting / Party

First of all… out of the 20 people who said they would come, only about 5-10 will actually show up.

The others will phone the day of the meeting / party and cancel last minute because some “emergency” came up.

Some actually won’t even call.  They just won’t show up, and if you ask them about it later, they’ll just say they “forgot”.

If you don’t believe me, ask your sponsor what the average statistics are for people showing up. 🙂

But let’s say that you DO in fact get 10 people to actually show up and to watch the presentation / pitch about your products / company.

Step 4 – Who Joins?

Will you get any sign-ups?

If you get 10 people to your meeting / party and your presentation is good, you probably WILL sponsor a few people.

However, they’ll most likely sign up out of obligation and because they want to support you in your new “business” and they want to be nice.

They’re not usually buying because they love the product, or because they want to build the business… they’re buying out of OBLIGATION and RESPECT for your relationship with them.

In other words they don’t really want to buy anything, but they just don’t want to seem rude.

So what do they do?  They ask this question – “What’s the smallest package I can get?”

… and they buy the smallest package they can get, and they tell you that they’ll “try it out” and get back to you.

Is it possible that you’ll fluke out and sponsor someone like YOU who actually wants to build a big business in your MLM?

Absolutely!  Anything is possible.  But it’s pretty improbable.

Here’s why.  Let’s look at some very simple stats.

• Number of NEW Network Marketers who joined the MLM industry in 2013 in the US = 900,000
• Total population of the US = 316 million
• Percentage of population looking to join the MLM industry = 0.3%

These are stats pulled from the Direct Selling Organization which monitors trends in the Direct Selling / MLM industry.

Their stats show that only about 0.3% of the US population is looking to join an MLM in any given year.

I don’t have the exact data from other countries, but I’m sure it’s pretty similar.

So what does this mean?  This means that if you talk to 300 friends and pitch them on your business idea, you are most likely going to find ONE person who is interested – statistically speaking.

If you only talk to 10 or 20 or 30 people, your statistical probability of finding an MLM leader are almost ZERO.

It happens, but the statistics aren’t on your side.

And even if you do find someone, whatever happened to the idea of finding 5 who find 5 who find 5 etc.?

It’s not all bad news.  I’ll explain how you can make this work in a few moments, but first let’s get real on the final three steps.

Step 5 – Motivating Your “Downline”

If your “Downline” team is composed of 3 or 4 friends or family members who joined your team from the meeting they attended, and they have no real interest in the products and no real interest in building a business… how easy is it going to be for you to “motivate” them to do something?

Virtually impossible.

Remember, they mostly just joined or bought the products out of obligation.  They might not even use them.

So you can spend all the time you want, phoning them every day, and trying to encourage and “motivate” them to DO something, but it’s not going to work, because they came into the business for the wrong reasons.

Of course there is that possibility that you fluked out and sponsored that ONE person who is going to build things, but those people don’t need motivation anyways.

They’re mostly self-motivated. 🙂

Step 6 – Duplication x5

We’ve all heard the line.  You get 5 who get 5 who get 5 who get 5 and so on, and pretty soon you have millions of people in your downline!

I think I’ve already covered why this doesn’t work.  The statistical probabilities of this happening using this method of approaching relatives you’ve been taught are not very high.

It just doesn’t work this way.

Step 7 – Cashing In

I think we both know that without a REAL downline that REALLY duplicates, making millions in the MLM industry is pretty much impossible.

So if this doesn’t work, then what DOES work?

Here is what I have found to actually work for getting people in your warm market to join your MLM.

#1 – You MUST Think Longer Term

Building a successful MLM business is going to take at least 2-5 years – not 1 week!

So the first thing you have to realize is that you don’t have to sponsor people in your warm market right away!

There are other ways to build your business without even approaching your warm market, or at the very least by being VERY selective as to who you target in your warm market.

Your warm market does *NOT* trust you with the products you’re selling.

They see you as an amateur.  They *KNOW* that you just joined this “thing” a few days ago or a few weeks ago and you don’t really know anything about it yet!

Let’s say that you’re in an MLM that sells nutritional supplements.

Do you realize that your warm market is more likely to take advice on a product recommendation from a TEENAGER working at the mall at a GNC store or some nutritional store, than from you?

Why?  Because from their perspective, they think that the person at the nutritional store has worked there for a while and so that must mean they know their products well… PLUS, they have a whole store of products and they don’t care which one you buy, so they’ll recommend the best product for you…right?

Whereas with you, and YOUR nutritional products, they’ll immediately be a bit more skeptical because they think you don’t really know anything about the products yet!

And you know what? In most cases they are 100% right.

Why?  Because in most cases, when new distributors join an MLM, they know next to nothing about the products.

So how do we overcome this barrier?

#2 – You MUST Get to KNOW Your Products

I can’t even count the number of times that I’ve been seriously interested in purchasing some products from an MLM company, and I seek out a distributor that is selling those products…

…and then when I find them, I ask them some questions about the products…

… and in most cases they know NOTHING about the products that I couldn’t have learned in 10 seconds of looking at the website.

Most MLM distributors are just plain LAZY.

They don’t want to bother even learning about their products, because secretly they’re already thinking that they probably won’t be around in “this thing” in a few months, so what’s the point of educating yourself on a line of products if you think you’re going to quit in 3 months?!

When I join an MLM, one of the first things I do is I start RESEARCHING the products, and I learn as much as I can about them, and I compare them to other products in the industry.

And you know what happens then?

My warm market TRUSTS me 100x more than the average MLM distributor, because I know a LOT about the products that I promote.

You don’t have to know everything… you can also use your sponsor or other third parties to help you fill that gap of knowledge if you’re talking to a prospect.

However, it should be one of your priorities to learn about your products.

#3 – You MUST Become a Product of the Product

Another very common mistake people make in the MLM industry is that they try to promote products, but they don’t even use them themselves!

I’ve seen distributors who buy product packs, but then are too afraid to open the products and start using them themselves, because they want to “save” them for re-sale to someone else.

This makes no sense!

If you’re not a product of the product, then you’re not going to be able to sell to your warm market.

They’re watching you!

For example, as a member of Empower Network, being a product of the product means that I am a Blogger.

One of the products that we promote is the Kalatu Branding Station, which is what I am running my Blog on.

My warm market is watching me.

They SEE if I’m actually using the product and blogging or not.

When they see me using the product, that builds credibility with them automatically.

If I wasn’t blogging, then that credibility would go out the window.

So you have to be a product of the product!

What else?

#4 – You MUST Be In Their Awareness All The Time

Imagine this… imagine if you’re in a nutritional supplement company for example, and you are blogging about your journey on a regular basis.

Let’s say that you started off by using the products to try to lose some weight, and you start blogging about your experiences.

As you’re doing that, guess what? Your warm market is watching!  And they don’t feel like you’re SELLING to them or PITCHING them anything, because you’re just blogging about your journey!

And let’s say that you start learning about your products, in a lot more detail, and you start sharing some information and articles about your products on your Blog as well…

… and then maybe you even start sharing some research and some studies that support your products with their findings.

Guess what?  Your warm market will be watching that as well, and over a period of time, they will start to realize that you actually know a LOT about the products you’re selling!

You’ll actually start to build up your status of authority on that subject, because they’ll constantly be seeing how you’re learning about things and then sharing them on your Blog / Facebook etc.

But the thing is that it is NOT GOOD ENOUGH to just learn about your products in the privacy of your own home, or at the company meetings and events…

… because just because you know something new about your product, it doesn’t mean that your warm market knows that you know that.

Meaning, if you invest 5,000 hours into studying every detail of how amazing your products are, and how all these research studies support how amazing the products are… BUT, nobody knows that you’re investing all that time, then they still won’t join you or buy products from you!

Your warm market has to KNOW that you’re researching and learning about your product line.

The best way to do that is to start a blog.

Then, as you learn something new about your products, blog about it!

And as you use your products, and you start getting results, blog about it!

And if you discover cool articles, research studies, or whatever other things that support your product, you blog about it!

And as you use the products daily, and you invent new recipes for using the products, you blog about that too!

See, the way I see it is that if someone I know joins an MLM that sells a weight loss shake for example… and every day they are posting a new blog post talking about the benefits of the product, and maybe sharing recipes for making the shake taste good or whatever… I don’t mind seeing that kind of content.

So I’m okay with them sharing interesting information about their products and their business and THEIR journey with both, even if I’m not interested in the products or the business right now.

But if that person was to call me and try to CONVINCE me to buy their product and tried to HARD CLOSE me every single day, calling me non-stop, I would tell them to go away!

See the difference?

NOBODY cares if you share some cool info about a product you’re excited about on your Blog or Facebook wall.  If you blog about your company and products from an educational perspective, people will appreciate that.

But if you tried to SPAM someone on your warm market list with facebook messages or phone calls every single day, they’d tell you to go away pretty quickly.

So what you want to do is you want to start a BLOG as soon as possible, and start Blogging about your company, products, benefits of the products, research studies, etc. and then SHARE that information with your friends on Facebook or Twitter or other social media sites.

And as you BLOG about this stuff on a regular basis, you will CONSTANTLY be in your warm market’s mind for when they’re ready to COME TO YOU to purchase the product.

For example… if you Blog about your journey of losing 20lbs or 50lbs using whatever product you’re promoting…and then 3 weeks later someone on your warm market list decides to also lose some weight, who do you think they’re going to contact?

If you’ve been on their Facebook feed sharing all these amazing stories of success about your product, chances are hey might contact you!

In the last week alone I’ve had TWO people in my warm market who signed up on my team WITHOUT me ever picking up the phone and calling them to pitch them on my opportunity, or inviting them to a meeting, or SPAMMING them with Facebook messages.

I did NONE of those things.

All I’ve done is just BLOG daily for the last few months.

And those people who joined my team, they have been watching!

They keep seeing my blog posts popping up on Facebook, and in their email (they subscribed to my email list), and when *THEY* decided that they wanted to start a Blog, they naturally contacted me!

You can setup the same kind of system in YOUR MLM as well!

If you use the Kalatu Branding Station and apply the training you get access to inside Empower Network, you will sponsor more people in your warm market when they are ready to join, and it will be a lot more fun to allow them to buy something that they already want to buy, than it would be to try to hard sell them on it!

#5 – You MUST Have a Little Bit Of Patience

Applying this strategy to your warm market takes a little bit of patience.

It doesn’t happen overnight.

But it’s definitely worth it!

The trick is to get started right away and to setup your Blog as soon as possible so that you can start building your online brand presence.

By taking this “soft-sell” approach which essentially EDUCATES your warm market about your products and your company, over a period of time, you position yourself for a much higher level of success than if you just tried to call everyone on your warm market list and tried to do a hard-sell on them.

Hard selling doesn’t work…especially in the MLM industry.

People HATE to be sold!

The HATE IT!

But they LOVE to BUY things that THEY decided to buy. 🙂

If you get in their awareness, by blogging on a regular basis and sharing your posts on Facebook and Twitter and other sites, and the time comes where they actually want to buy your product – they WILL contact you.

I mean why would they contact anyone else, if they see you as a growing authority in that company?