Getting lots of inquiries from potential customers is great. It means that you are well known in your chosen market. But all this popularity won’t do you much good if it doesn’t generate sales. 

The most common complaint I hear from MLM Distributors is that their MLM prospects just won’t part with their money. Potential customers are accused of being slow to make decisions, reluctant to change their thinking or just behind the times. 

While this can be frustrating, it is a big mistake to blame the prospective MLM customer for not taking action. Look closer to home for the real reason why your conversion rate is disappointingly low. The reality is that you actually have a lot of control over this issue. But you have to be proactive.

The general rule is : 

People buy from people who they know, like and trust.  O.K., ok…yes, I know you hear me say this all the time!

The more expensive your MLM product or service is, the more strongly this principle applies to the process. And your biggest marketing challenge is to ensure that prospective customers end up feeling this way about you. 

If you can get prospects to know like and trust you, they will gladly buy from you. Even more importantly, they will come back and buy from you again and again. Your conversion rate goes up. And so does your customer retention rate. The combined effect is that your marketing efforts pay enormous dividends.

So let’s consider each precondition for customers to enthusiastically do business with you:

1.      Prospects must know you:

You achieve this simply through advertising and/or PR. Well placed print/ezine ads, articles, forum discussions will attract inquiries. And the better the advertising, the greater the response rate will be.

Word of mouth is an even more powerful tool for getting known, because personal endorsements build credibility. So does networking, writing articles, and speaking engagements.

2.      They must like you:

Once they know about you, prospects need to be convinced that you can solve their problems. And promoting your MLM business opportunity in terms of appealing benefits does the trick.

The challenge, of course, is to frame up the benefits in a way that makes you stand out from the crowd. This highlights the need to focus on a niche market.  When you can speak to their specific wants, you become Very Attractive.  So it helps to know the particulars of the people in the market you are pursuing (that’s referred to as “niche” which I have written about extensively).

3.      And they trust you:

Before they will spend money with you, potential customers need to feel pretty sure that you will deliver on your promise. You have to remove the risk of doing business with you, in a persuasive and compelling way.  That means you have to explore their concerns and know the issues going on in their mind.  That’s hard to do if you haven’t gotten to know the prospect.

Referrals from existing customers do this very well. So learn other’s testimonials, so you have many sources to tell about.

To summarise, if you want to consistently bring in customers, you need to build relationships with prospects. And don’t expect to make the sale after the first encounter. On average, 7 touches are required before buying decisions are made.  So if you give up before those 7 encounters, you really don’t stand a chance!

The bottom line is, successful selling is a multi-stage process. Each stage involves building and strengthening your relationship with your prospective client or customer. And your mission is to ensure that your prospects end up knowing what you do, liking how you do it, and being confident that you will do a good job for them. 

Tags: MLM business opportunity, MLM customer, MLM Distributors, MLM product, MLM prospects

Technorati Tags: MLM business opportunity, MLM customer, MLM Distributors, MLM product, MLM prospects

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This entry was posted on Monday, May 5th, 2008 at 6:36 pm and is filed under MLM - multi level marketing, Network Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.