There is a huge misconception about building relationships online. Many people think that the Internet is too impersonal to build real relationships. You can actually build more lasting and trusting relationships online if, like anything else, you know how.
When you are promoting your business to strangers without gauging their level of interest, which is your only recourse after you use up your "warm list", you have to be very careful. Most people's mindset is guarded and to be successful you will have to move them from guarded to open to interested or willing.
Everyone starts in the guarded position. They do not know about you or what you have to offer. The way you proceed will decide whether they stay guarded or move to open. If they move to open, that means they see some appealing benefit. Then your next move will either move them to interested, and they buy, or back to guarded and they are turned away.
Before I took my business online, I had to try to carefully guide all of my prospects from guarded to open to interested. One mistake and I would lose that person, most of the time, forever. This approach has many flaws but the four major ones for me are:
1. Constant rejection - only a small percentage of people will ever move from guarded to interested because mot are set in their ways.
2. Trying to change attitudes - You spend a lot of time trying to find prospects and when you do, you have to move them along through attitude changes.
3. Constantly trying to prospect to uninterested prospects - Everyone you meet instantly becomes a challenge to see if you can swing the conversation to business or your product. Most people can sense when you have an ulterior motive and if you are always prospecting, you are not making friends.
4. Energy - A lot of energy gets wasted when someone rejects your offer and you have to start all over trying to find another prospect you can pitch your opportunity to,
Then I figured out how to really work my business online and leverage the most modern tools and technology. This changed everything dramatically. Here are the main changes for me:
1. By positioning myself online where interested prospects can find me, every one of my prospects found ME because of their INTEREST.
2. I do not have to carefully guide anyone through attitude changes or locate the next prospect because they find me and give me their name and email if they are INTERESTED.
3. INTERESTED prospects are more comfortable asking questions because they look up t me and are not suspicious of my motives.
4. My time and energy now is spent on money making actions like recruiting INTERESTED prospects and encouraging team members, not seeking out new prospects and probing their level of interest or the benefit they will be most interested in.
There is also the principle of attraction marketing which simply means that your actions you’re your positioning online is such that people gain value from what you do and how you position yourself. If you offer value and solutions to problems that others have they will come to trust and like you. People do business with the people that they trust and like.
Also, most people these days just go online when they want something and they do searches to find it. When they find something that works, they will know that that source is a good one and will be more apt to buy from there again. If you position yourself where others can find you online and offer more value than you get paid for, those people will always come back for any other products you have.
That is the secret to every industry income leader in network marketing. Just offer value so you will be trusted. There are only two reasons that people buy things. One reason is for pleasure and the other reason is to avoid pain. Think about that for a minute. Everything you spend money on is for one of those reasons. Even when you buy on impulse. You are either wanting the pleasure of what you are buying or you are trying to avoid the pain of having to search for it later. You buy or spend money on a place to stay. It is for the pleasure of having a place to keep your stuff or to avoid the pain of sleeping outside. A car is bought because you want the pleasure of driving a car you like or to avoid the pain of walking or using public transportation.
So, you can offer value in all of the products you sell whether they are your products or products that help you in your business and are affiliates. And you can offer value to the prospects that find you online by giving them answers and solutions to their products. The social media sites are best for this type of interaction. You can write articles and post them to the groups that you join offering some of your best strategies. You can also read others articles and leave comments that show how you dealt with some of the problems mentioned.
Any way you slice it, if you are using the principles of attraction marketing, you cannot go wrong because this will position you as a leader. The thing you must do is always work on personal growth because this only makes your value grow and the more you learn the more value you have to offer. This will make it easier for you to attract interested prospects online.
Using the computer to capture the info of interested prospects and eliminate the tire kickers really supercharges my business. Now I build business relationships online and personal relationships with friends that I don't try to recruit for my business. I only talk about my business with those that find me online and those that ask me about it.
Author - Dan Lambeth - http://www.MLMBizWizard.com
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