Are you ready to get to work and really make your network marketing business take off?

After you have signed up and officially started your business, one of two things will happen.

You will either jump in and start building a business, or you won’t.

If you hesitate, sometime it’s a lack of clarity, or uncertainty about what marketing strategy to use.

Here is a simple seven step strategy you can use as a blueprint or outline for success with your MLM business.

Step 1 – Decide Why You Want Success

Let me emphasize this as the most important first step in your network marketing business. It isn’t enough to just say “I want to succeed with my business” – you need to know and understand the specific motivation that drives you.

Think carefully and write down your “why”. It should be something that means a lot to you. Something with emotional impact that will keep you going when things get tough. With any business, I can assure you, there will be times when you feel like quitting. Knowing your true driving motivation makes it easier to keep going when something discourages you.

Step 2 – Experience Your Products Yourself

Most network marketing products are consumable, and it’s important that you use the products yourself. I’ve been surprised over the years at how many people try to build a home business with network marketing but don’t want to use their own products regularly.

Using your own products is important, because they are the foundation of your business. If you aren’t sold on them enough to use them regularly, how can you be enthusiastic about presenting an opportunity that is based around them?

Even if your sponsoring focus is on the compensation and money, don’t forget that there will be no money without products being purchased and consumed. They are the core of your opportunity.

Step 3 – Believe in What You’re Doing

You must believe that network marketing is a legitimate and honorable way to earn an income. You must believe that your opportunity is really a great deal that would benefit anyone who chooses to put in the time and work. Seriously.

I say this because it’s surprising how many people fail because they have reservations in the back of their mind about the business model. Sometime this goes back to old stories about friends who got stuck with a bunch of inventory they couldn’t get rid of, things like that. Examine your deep beliefs on this.

Ask yourself – does mentioning the phrase “network marketing” or “multilevel marketing” to people make you feel uncomfortable? If so, why? If you have reservations like this, it’s critical to get them resolved so you can move forward.

Step 4 – Plan Your Strategy

You need a plan. A path. This is where you should take advantage of any training your company and upline team offers, and then have a meeting of the minds with your upline leaders. The ones who are successful and who are where you want to be.

You don’t want to fall in the trap of “overplanning”, because that can lead to procrastination and frustration. It can make you feel like you’re doing something for your business when you’re really not.

Step 5 – Communicate with People About Your Opportunity and Products

Another step that seems so obvious, yet so many networkers miss it here. Take a look a the time you will commit to your business, and set a target for how many contacts per day that you’ll develop.

An example would be to shoot for ten contacts per day initially. Starting out, eight could be new prospects you establish communication with, and 2 could be followups with people you’ve already spoken with about your opportunity (who are still open).

Step 6 – Expand Your Downline Group and Customer Base

Focus on connecting with new prospects each day and following up with your previous MLM leads. If you consistently present your products and opportunity to 10-20 people each day:

• 1-2 should eventually join you

• 1-2 should become retail customers

I said “should” because you never know how long it will take some people to study the situation, think it over, and make a decision. Just know that consistently making those connections will result in sponsoring people, and growing your network marketing business in other ways as well.

Step 7 – Enjoy Money and Free Time

The last step to prosperity with your network marketing business is the best. Enjoy the money and time freedom that your hard work has earned for you! Consistent effort, tempered with reasonable patience, will earn you the lifestyle that you truly deserve!

Have you ever purchased some sort of online marketing training course, went through it, but not got the value from it that you hoped?

I’m talking about any course that is designed to teach how to market something on the Internet. It can be your network marketing business, or maybe affiliate programs you promote, just about anything

The fundamental structure of these courses is similar – multiple modules or sections aimed at teaching a specific group of skills. These can be videos, Powerpoint presentations, or any combination of multimedia that outlines a course of action for marketing or selling something online.

Let’s use this as an example. Say you paid $297 for a course that teaches you how to create a blog and promote your brand and opportunity online. The course consists of eight modules, beginning with setting up your blog. As you advance, you get more online marketing training related to promoting your brand through social media, search engines, press releases, and other proven methods.

At this point, you have access to the full course and a ton of information at your fingertips. It’s exciting because you feel like this just might be what makes the difference in your business and your life. And, it might be!

Here is where you can do something different that makes your training more effective. Most people tend to go through the entire course, take notes, and sort of create a mental action plan along the way. At the end of the course, with all these notes and your head bursting with great ideas, what happens?

Wham! Overwhelm! You have SO many great techniques and ways to improve your online marketing that you don’t know where to begin. In the beginning you could see a path, now it’s like there is so much to do all at once.

Here is how I recommend getting the most from any online marketing training you purchase or participate in. I learned this because I used to be the “note taker” and found when I finished courses I just didn’t know for sure where to start in applying all of it.

As you begin the course, there will be definite concepts and action steps you learn in each module. Many people try to get through the entire training before taking action, so that they have some sort of “overview” that would seem logical and helpful before beginning. Don’t worry about that, just get started!

You will find it much easier to absorb and master what you are learning if you take it a bit at a time. Many of the online marketing training courses I’ve seen are first presented live as webinars about a week apart, then are packaged and sold as complete courses that you can go through at your own pace.

I strongly recommend that you take each module of any course you work through and apply the action steps and principles before you move to the next module. This is how most of these trainings were designed, to be absorbed one at a time with ongoing application. This makes everything easier to learn. As you move forward, you are building on concepts that you have actually practiced or implemented, and everything just makes more sense this way.

Next time you do some online training that is broken into parts like this, focus on completing and taking action as you go along. Don’t worry about the overview and wait until the end. You’ll get far more out of it this way.

Have you ever had the feeling that some of your MLM prospects just won’t tell you the truth?

How many times have you had someone express an interest in your business, say they will take a particular action, then nothing happens?

I really don’t believe that people necessarily intend to lie or be dishonest, but it sure appears that way sometime.

There are usually pretty predictable reasons that this happens.

Let’s assume you’ve had an initial conversation and went over some things about your opportunity.

As you are finishing up, your prospect says…

• “I’ll watch this DVD and get back with you“….and when you follow up they haven’t

• “send me the link and I will sign up tonight” and they don’t

• “sure, give me a call Wednesday evening and we’ll talk some more” and they won’t answer or return your calls

• “I like what I’ve learned, I’ll be signing up next week when I get paid“…and they don’t

What do you think might be the problem here? Are people just lazy or trying to get rid of you?

Here are three possible reasons.

Sales Resistance

You know how people will tell a salesperson anything to get rid of them, right? Consider whether your discussions with your prospects are more about all the benefits of signing up for your opportunity, or more about what THEY are looking for. The answer to that is huge.

The solution to sales resistance – don’t come across like you’re trying to convince or persuade. Think of your conversation as a two way discussion, with your job being to help your prospect determine if your opportunity is right for them.

What is the Why?

Have you talked to them about why they are looking for a home business right now? Sometime it’s just to make enough extra to support an additional car payment. Other times, it might be a really big goal like replacing their full time income and creating a lifetime residual income.

It’s important to discuss this and know what your prospect has in mind. Those wishing to replace their current income will likely need additional information and more insight into how they can make the business successful and profitable. This is where “the solution” comes in.

Where is the Solution?

Given their “why”, can your opportunity get them where they want to go? This is one big reason people disappear or neglect to take action. They just don’t see how they can take your opportunity and turn it into the income and prosperity needed to reach their “why”.

Remember that most people are rushed and stressed from busy lives. It takes more to get peoples’ attention now than it did 30 years ago. I’ve found that most MLM prospects I work with are also considering other opportunities, which makes it even more important to focus on them and build that initial relationship.

Most others they talk to about opportunities will likely be more self centered and concerned with what’s in it for them, so putting the focus where it should be (on your prospect) makes a lot of difference and sets you apart.

Are you a home business blogger? Are you creating and publishing content to help build your brand, and perhaps directly or indirectly promote your opportunity or products?

You can create great content, and write really cool articles, but if nobody notices you or finds your blog, it doesn’t really help you much. Obviously.  :)

Traditionally, one way to get found is to publish lots of keyword rich content, then build backlinks to that content, and wait for search engines to find your content and rank it high enough for searchers to find. This used to work really well, and still does actually, but the rules have changed.

With advancing search technology, the search leader (Google) is striving to provide the best possible results when consumers perform searches for whatever interests them. As home business bloggers, we must understand this and strive to do whatever it takes to increase our chances for showing up when people are searching for what we offer.

I’ve put together a few ways to improve your chances of having success with your blogging efforts.

1) Whatever your niche (network marketing, MLM, direct sales, or some other home business), think long term. There are many tools and tricks out there to help you get short term boosts in search engine ranking, but ultimately this becomes a cat and mouse game with the search engines and isn’t worth it for long term stability.

2) Focus your blog on providing value to your niche. You can certainly monetize and offer products/services/opportunities, but put a tremendous focus on creating content that addresses questions and solves problems for the people you want to attract. Be discreet with the ads – don’t make the mistake of plastering these all over your blog to the point that they distract from your message.

3) Social signals are becoming an important ranking factor. Set up plugins and tools that syndicate your content to Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social networks that you are involved in. Join a blog commenting group to help your content get more exposure and “social proof”. Help other bloggers promote their content, and many will help you in return.

4) Use keywords that you’re trying to rank for in your content, but be careful not to over optimize. Excessive bolding, italicizing, and repetition of keywords in your articles and posts is less likely to help now and more likely to hurt.

5) I see people coming out constantly with new tools and approaches for getting links to your content and thus increasing rank for your primary keywords. Beware of any recommendation that promises quick ranking with little effort. Remember – think long term. Winning the search engine wars is the result of slow steady progress. There will be new quick fixes developed constantly, but their effectiveness is likely to be short term at best.

6) Look for opportunities to write content for other blogs. Become a guest blogger. Having content published on other quality sites in your niche,with a link back to your blog, dramatically improves your chances of being found.

It is important, in 2012 and beyond, to focus more on long-term results from your blogging efforts. In the past, quick fixes and SEO tricks made it pretty easy to get ranked if you had time and money to invest in tools and learning how to use them. As search technology improves, and Google continues to tweak their algorithm to filter out web spam, the focus for serious bloggers must be on quality content and long-term vision for solving problems and creating solutions for their visitors and followers.

When you call your network marketing business prospects on the phone, do you feel challenged?

Are you sometime hesitant and not sure what to say?

For this discussion, I’m talking about prospects who have either opted in to receive information about your opportunity, or have contacted you directly asking for more information about what you’re doing.

The first thing to consider is what you are thinking when you make that call. Are you excited and focused on signing them up in your business? Are you thinking about what they can do for you?

You will be surprised at how your sponsoring results will improve if you shift your attitude to think a certain way when you get on the phone with them.

What Your MLM Prospects Want to Hear

If you put yourself in the shoes of your prospect and potential downline team member, you can begin to understand what’s important to them. Try to think back to what was important to you when you were looking around and talking to people about an opportunity.

By understanding what they want to hear, and what appeals to them in a very positive way, you can begin to improve your approach to discussing your business and ultimately increase your sponsoring success.

Those who are candidates and leads for your network marketing business will enjoy:

• Talking to a REAL person – don’t try to fake it till you make it, just be yourself and relax – focus on enjoying the conversation.

• Talking to a person who is genuinely interested in them and their “why” for starting a home business.

• Having a conversation that is focused on empowering them and presents the business opportunity as a vehicle for reaching THEIR goals and dreams, not yours.

You don’t want to come across with an attitude that shouts “I want you to join me so I can build my business and make more money“. Rather, you want to have the posture and attitude of someone who is offering them an opportunity to improve THEIR lives and fortunes.

Here are some keys to having a successful and meaningful phone conversation with your network marketing prospects. If you keep these in mind when you are talking, it will make a world of difference.

1) Don’t come across as needy (that you need them to join your team). Take the attitude that they need you and your opportunity – you are offering them something of tremendous value.

2) Don’t try to pressure people – no “I will do this and that for you but only if you sign up today” type of stuff.

3) Ask questions about their dreams and desires, and focus on understanding how they see your opportunity fitting into this.

4) Be relaxed and in good humor. If you have had a bad day and are not feeling up to par, relax and get your mental attitude in better shape before you make the calls.

5) Be encouraging and let them know that you believe in them, that they can achieve whatever they want.

Just changing your attitude toward your prospects, and putting them first, can make your business grow faster than ever!

Last night I was talking to one of my downline team members who joined us about a year ago.

He has a desire now to get his MLM business moving. He is struggling though because for a year he put off doing anything and kept thinking he would get started “soon” when the timing was better.

He is caught in the common trap I call “paralysis by analysis” – he has spent so much time thinking about what he wanted to do, that he never got around to taking steps to do anything. If you’ve ever been in this position, you know how frustrating and discouraging it is. You want to make something happen, but just freeze up and feel a sense of confusion and hesitation.

I’ve been in that position myself, so as we continued talking, I offered a solution that worked for me when I needed it.

First, I asked if he was really sure he was ready to go. I emphasized that the desire had to be there, and that it was up to him.

His response was something like “I know what I should be doing. I started this business with good intentions but just let it slip as time went along. Now I feel like I’m stuck in a rut and don’t know how to get out!”

So, the next thing we worked on was redefining his reasons for starting his business in the first place. This included talking about goals and dreams and what was driving him to get moving.

I then asked if these goals and dreams were still as powerful as they were a year ago. He said not only as powerful, but even more so. Some things had changed in his job situation. He had survived a company cutback but had to take reduced pay to stay on. This had squeezed him hard financially. He was still doing okay, but knew he had little security and virtually no future in his position.

Once we were done, I recommended some action steps to help him get unstuck and start getting some prospects and making some money. A similar routine worked well for me when I was in this dilemma.

1) Write out your dreams, goals, and “why” for your business. Make sure they are clear and have emotional impact on you.

2) Write out a list of 100 people you can connect with about your business this month (this is a dreaded step that many skip, but if you approach the people using warm market notification it can be quite pleasant and productive).

3) Schedule time each day to contact at least 5 people on that list. If they are not interested at this time, ask for referrals (both for products and for the network marketing business opportunity) and add them to your list.

4) At the end of the month, you should have a few customers and at least 3-5 new downline team members (and several more that are interested and considering it). Just remember that some will not be interested now, just stay in touch. Lives and circumstances change (as they did with your job) and some who are not interested now may be in a few months.

I recommended this particular routine for two reasons.

1) to give him some actions that are simple and doable

2) to stress and emphasize daily action, to create a positive habit

If you find yourself with the “want-to’s” but feel paralyzed by inaction, take steps like this to get out and break the pattern. Keep it simple, doable, and focused on the key action – introducing people to your MLM business.

Trying to get unstuck by attempting to do too much at once will not work well for most people. Stick to the basics and take it one step, one action, at a time.

If you are looking for ways to increase blog traffic to your home business blog, don’t overlook the power of establishing a strong presence in forums related to your niche.

In the same way that people use blog commenting to draw visitors, becoming a powerful contributor to forums related to your niche can get a lot of eyeballs on your blog and dramatically increase the number of prospects who stop by to see what you’re up to.

In many cases, establishing a powerful presence on quality forums can bring more targeted and qualified traffic than the same amount of time spent doing blog commenting. You can increase blog traffic doing both, but well chosen forums draw more traffic and have an advantage.

To bring this powerful traffic to your home business blog, follow these three steps.

1) Define your target audience. What is your blog about, and where would likely visitors be found? If you are in network marketing, for example, go to Google and search on keywords like “mlm forums” or “network marketing forums”.

Visit some of the forums related to your niche and see if they appear active and managed. Look for lots of recent discussions and activity, and a feel that the community is “alive”.

Look for spam and blatant ads. If you find a lot of them that are over a day or two old, the forum may not be well managed and the environment might not attract the quality users that you want to visit your blog. You cannot significantly increase blog traffic by participating in message boards that attract more spammers than legitimate users.

2) Create an interesting and compelling signature. The forums you want to participate in will allow you to create a signature with a link back to your blog.

Create a signature that draws visitors to your blog. Most forums allow you to highlight, bold, use colors, etc. so take advantage of that to create a signature that stands out. Ask yourself, when you have created your signature, would you click on your link if you were a visitor to that forum? Is it interesting?

3) Impress forum  visitors with your enthusiasm and leadership. Focus on answering questions that other forum members post. Start threads on popular topics that relate to what your blog is about. Be the person who stirs up interest in popular, relevant topics in your niche.

Keep any promotion and advertising to your signature, following the guidelines of the forum you are participating in. Don’t blatantly promote your product or service in your posts. The key here is showing leadership by being an active contributor whose first priority is helping others.

Lots of people visit these message board communities with the intention of getting leads, and use any opportunity to post something about how great their product, service, or opportunity is. Don’t make this mistake. You can get far more visitors (quality visitors) by being professional and focusing on being a positive and helpful contributor!

You can increase blog traffic to your MLM or home business blog by using forums. Just remember that the key is choosing active and well-managed communities, creating a signature that draws interest, and becoming a valuable and unselfish contributor.

Relationship marketing and understanding what that means is a big key to success in any network marketing or MLM business.

We talk a lot about building relationships and getting to know people, but still so many network marketers go out with the wrong attitude about this.

Your business isn’t all about what other people can do for you, it’s about developing friendships and business relationships. Working as a team. Valuing others and appreciating them for what they do. Helping others achieve their goals and dreams as you pursue yours. Truly appreciating others for who they are, and not putting on a false front trying to recruit them and then dropping them if they don’t sign up.

That’s the big thing that distinguishes your MLM business from most any other business out there. Think about it. In typical corporate and business environments, you get ahead and achieve greater success by beating other people out of promotions or advancements. You find yourself in direct competition with people who have the same ambition as you do – getting ahead, moving on up to a position or responsibility with more pay and a better future.

Contrast that with network marketing and MLM. This is a business where you build positive and productive relationships with others. It is a business where you make more money and get ahead by helping your new friends and business associates do the same. It’s win-win from top to bottom.

A common mistake in MLM prospecting and recruiting is being self centered and putting the focus on you and looking at others as “business prospects who can help me make money”. If that is your attitude when you are out there talking to people, it shows through.

People can sense the difference between a selfish recruiter who is thinking “what can you do for me“, vs a sponsor whose focus is “how can I help you be successful so we both benefit?” There is a big difference. Be real….be sincere.

Want some quick tips on how you can use relationship marketing in your MLM business? This video was shared by Success Magazine, and has some quick tips from Mari Smith that make it clear what relationship marketing is all about.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/k9LYfLLkIKs[/youtube]

What is the right way to prepare for success in network marketing?

I like to blog about this topic from time to time, because I was once in this trap and I don’t want you to fall into it.

This is a trap that is easy to fall into, because you are actually taking action related to your home business, just not enough of the right action for success.

How can you fall into this trap?

by preparing for success in network marketing by doing certain things that seem logical, but putting too much emphasis on these things…

Here’s the deal. Maybe you have just started your MLM business. Or, you’ve done a little bit of business building and are ready to get serious. In either case, you are pretty fired up and enthusiastic about getting started on the right foot.

So….you begin your journey to success in network marketing by preparing and organizing yourself. Let’s be clear on one thing, preparation and organization is essential to building a powerful and enduring residual income in this business. You do need a clear plan, and a path to follow.

The trap you can fall into is “over preparation”, which can lead to paralysis and lack of meaningful action. No meaningful action toward building your business means no real business and no income.

Over preparation and excessive planning for perfection can be symptoms of a lack of confidence, or a fear of stepping out and taking action. Sometime well meaning network marketers feel intimidated and afraid of talking to people about their business, so they spend lots of time studying and preparing to talk to people – later on.

It’s procrastination that destroys your opportunity to actually make money with your opportunity.

Do you do any of these things? They are symptoms of over preparation and over planning.

• spending a lot of time thinking about ways to promote your opportunity, debating and pondering what might be most effective

• organizing a little corner you’ve set up to be your “home office” – but never quite finishing the project and dwelling on it

• daydreaming about the big successes you will have….and what you are about to go out and do….when you get everything ready…

• reading network marketing success books, making lots of notes, and telling yourself that you are preparing for greatness

None of the above actions are bad, in fact all of these things have a place in your overall plan for success in network marketing. The key is, how much of your available business building time do you spend on this type of activity?

Here are some things to ask yourself, and compare the amount of time you spend on these “people focused” actions to whatever else you do for your business.

• How many new prospects did I find for my opportunity in the last week?

• How many people did I actually talk to about my business in the last week?

• How many follow-ups did I do with people I’ve talked to previously?

• How many new associates have I helped get started in the last month?

The numbers here are a pretty good predictor of your success and income in network marketing.

Success in network marketing, or any “people oriented” home based business, is directly related to how many live contacts you actually make. Getting leads on the Internet and using systems to pre-qualify and sort prospects is great, but how many of them are you actually having a conversation with?

Get organized, plan your strategy, spend time on self improvement, just don’t spend all your time on these things. Make talking to real, live prospects your top priority and you’ll see massive results in your network marketing business.

Colorado Rockies pitcher Jamie Moyer is amazing. At 49, and coming off “Tommy John” surgery on his arm that wiped out his 2011 season, Jamie just become the oldest pitcher in major league baseball history to post a win.

Now, what does this have to do with network marketing? Watch this short video. Listen to his philosophy – it tells you a lot about what it takes to be a winner in this business.

It’s about attitude and a way of thinking that helps you to be the very best you can be.

This is a guy who for years has been told he is too old, he can’t do this, or he can’t do that. He has simply chosen to persevere and seek opportunity to work and grow. Get your pen and paper ready, there are some incredible nuggets in this story.

For some reason YouTube doesn’t allow this particular video to be embedded, so when you click the image below, there is a link to view it directly on YouTube.

Enjoy!

[youtube]http://youtu.be/cN9D4B8ybaY[/youtube]