How to Get Great Results with the Best Local Leads for Direct Sales Network Marketing Recruiting

Being able to effectively recruit new people to your local team is often a roadblock for most marketers. Recruiting becomes even more difficult when you do not have a steady stream of interested prospects. But you know this and you understand that you need a steady stream of good local leads.

There is another problem. The problem is local leads are not as accessible as with standard opportunity seeker leads. With standard opportunity seeker leads, you can buy lists from multiple sources. Online you can find dozens of good sources for such leads.

However, in building a local team, you need the best local leads for your recruitment efforts. Now there are some companies that offer local leads in addition to their standard opportunity seeker leads, but the unfortunate challenge is such leads are normally focused on a specific area code and are not as plentiful from these companies as their national lists. Plus, local leads purchased from such sources may not be as local as you want or need them to be.

Due to such challenges, many marketers fail to get into the necessary action because they do not have enough quality prospects to contact, interview, and recruit, which results in failure to build a team.

There are many pieces to the puzzle of recruiting a successful direct selling organization (includes mlm, network marketing, affiliate networks, etc.). Your actions will determine your success and your own action in consistently interviewing and sponsoring new people to your team will be critical to your long-term success and residual income.

The fact is you can create a steady flow of the best local leads for your recruiting efforts and it is not as hard as you may think. But you must be consistent in your actions and be proactive in your approach to attract prospects to you. This can be done either online or offline, or a combination of both. I recommend using online technology to leverage your time, money, and effort, but keep a balance in your efforts with both online and offline methods to generate your local leads using both 5 point and 2+ a day strategies.

Online technologies have really opened the doors of leverage for those in direct sales to build large sales organizations. You can use the technologies of email, auto responders, websites, and even instant messaging to leverage your communication efforts. Since communicating through the Internet is a lot different than communicating face to face, and may even seem easier, don't be fooled to think that you can effectively build a sustainable growing organization without talking with people.

The core to effective recruitment is one-on-one communication. One-on-one communication gives you the opportunity to understand your prospect's specific wants and needs, so you can offer a solution (your opportunity) in a way that meets their needs. Although there are technological tools that can create an interactive environment with prospects, statistics prove that people prefer a more high-touch interaction, meaning a live interactive conversation with a real person. The technologies only supplement your telephone efforts and should not replace it.

The best local leads are the leads you generate. These are the best because the prospect will have responded to your ad or marketing message and will be contacted by you. This is far better than a generic list of opportunity seekers. Although a generic list of leads can help supplement your efforts as you develop your marketing and increase the flow of your self generated leads.

To generate a steady flow of local leads, you will need to set up a basic system consisting of a website tied to an autoresponder follow-up system.
This does not need to be fancy, but it does need to present your opportunity in a professional manner. Basically, through your 5 point marketing strategy, you will market your opportunity through a balance of offline and online methods that point your prospect to a preliminary application on your website.

The preliminary application will provide basic information that creates curiosity and a sense of urgency for the prospect to complete the application. The application provides you with basic information about your prospect and in exchange for that information; you provide further information (ie. an e-book download, CD, DVD, or any other collateral informational piece). This allows the exchange of information in a no-risk non-obligatory way.

When your prospect completes the application form, they are automatically entered into your autoresponder follow-up system where you send a series of letters. The letter series further informs your prospect of who you are and what you do. You will receive their initial application, where you can then mail their collateral information piece. If you have a downloadable e-book or report, you can automate that part of the process as well, so the prospect can immediately access the information.

In addition, you become proactive by picking up the phone and contacting your prospect. This is where you gain the greatest advantage in your marketing. Think about your own purchases or requests online. How many people have called you? The fact is very few people get proactive because they believe the prospect will know what to do next or they even believe the prospect will come to them when they are ready.

By showing an initiative to reach out to your prospect by picking up the telephone and calling them, you gain a powerful competitive advantage over your competition. But there are a few things you must do and a few things you must not do in order to get the greatest return on your investment of time and effort.

I recommend a 4-step simple process for recruitment, where you qualify and interview the prospect. The interview is not a focus on your company or opportunity, rather the interview is a focus on the prospect and to determine if you can work together or not.

Here are some tips for improving your local recruiting efforts, so you get better results:

1. Be honest and open with your potential recruits.

2. Don't try and make it sound like the direct sales company that you represent is the only company out there that is profitable. Let your prospect know the honest facts about the potential of your opportunity.

3. Be enthusiastic; yet don't focus on the hype. Be natural in your excitement and you will build credibility and trust.

4. Make sure to make yourself available to your online potential recruits whether it is through email, chat rooms, instant messages or phone. Nothing would be worse then to have wonderful conversations through email with a potential sponsor and then never hear from them again or find it difficult to connect.

5. Do NOT knock other companies. You want to present yourself in a professional manner and that is not going to happen if you make statements to your prospect like "You won't make any money at all with Company X" or "Company Y has such lousy products and the commissions are horrible."

6. Don't be pushy, but do be effectively aggressive. For instance, if someone is looking for a company that offers nutritional non-aging products, don't push them into uncomfortable discussions about joining your legal services company. The key to effective aggression (which is important in closing) is to ask questions that help you understand your prospect's wants and needs.

Regardless of what company you represent, you can become effective in recruiting. In fact, you can even easily learn how to sponsor 5+ people each and every month in your local market. The secret is to have a plan and to work that plan. Use an online system to help sort and sift through prospects, so you are spending your priority prospecting time talking only to and interviewing interested prospects.