The Greatest Lie Ever Told: Everyone is Your Prospect!

| Posted: 10-07-2007 | Comments: 0 | Views: 10 | Rating: (55)

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Outdated network marketing ideologies (some people call them lies), have made failure a common destination for most network marketers in our industry.

The "everyone is your prospect" (and other tired theories), end up making you feel frustrated and incompetent, not to mention it sets you up for failure.

Why? Because you go out and try to "sell" your product or your business opportunity to everybody you come in contact with and then feel like a loser when people repeatedly tell you they're not interested!

Here's the reality: not everyone is a prospect for your business opportunity or product despite what you've been taught. Shocker huh?

Although your upline and in some cases, your company has drilled it into your head that everyone is a prospect for what you're marketing, you must keep in mind you're in business and not everyone wants what you're selling.

You must also know that it's to your company's benefit for you to think that you have a huge market with wide-open arms just ready for your product. That's probably how they sold you on the opportunity - right?

Take for example the three foot rule. The three foot rule is an offshoot of the "everyone is your prospect" theory. This is where you find a catchy phrase to start a conversation with anyone and everyone who's unlucky enough to venture within three feet of you. The goal is to "work" your opportunity into the conversation. Don't you feel phony when you do this?

Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with making small talk with strangers when you're out and about, but if your only reason for doing so is to get an "opening" to pitch your business, then its contrived. Besides, most people can sense when you're insincere and fake. Who do you think you're fooling?

Now, think about it. What kind of role-modeling are you showing for your potential prospect anyway? After you pitch them your opportunity, the first thing that comes into their mind is, "will I have to go up to strange people in public places to recruit for my business too? I don't want to do that... this is not for me."

You are making your potential prospects even more resistant to your proposition with your actions and you don't even know it. But maybe you do, because the three-foot rule and the other "lies" you've been practicing and believing in have not been working.

It's a reality that you feel awkward prospecting this way, but your upline says it's one of the "techniques" we use. Your family hates taking you out in public places, like restaurants and stores, because they know you're going to launch into your network marketing spiel at any given moment. They're embarrassed and ashamed you work your business this way. You're like a lion on the prowl in the Serengeti!

The more you conduct yourself this way, the more you feel a lost of your dignity. You feel like a schmuck, like the creepy guy that sits alone in the back of a movie theatre watching a children's' flick and talking to himself.

Despite what you've been told, not everyone is your prospect. That can never be! Some people are happy working a job. Some people are so fearful and distrustful of business people that they could never muster up the courage to become one of them. Some people don't like risk. Some people just aren't qualified to be their own boss.

By now, if you've done the three foot rule for any length of time, you know that it is not a good use of your time. In fact you are getting frustrated, and angry that you have to resort to such tactics, but you feel you are obligated to use any wacky prospecting technique your upline comes up with.

If they told you to dress up as a clown complete with the big red nose and rainbow curly wig and go door to door prospecting, you'd do it because they told you it worked. You want to be teachable and trainable, so you do anything they tell you to do, much to your displeasure.

Around about now you are ready to quit. You've had enough of the "everyone is your prospect" lie and other lies. The reason you are not having much success is because...

You are not going after your target market! Your job is not to convince, bribe or convert anyone into having a business. Your job is to talk to people who are on the same page as you. In other words you want people who are actively seeking out a solution to their problem and you want them coming to you first.

When people seek you out, you are seen as an expert. When it's the other way around you are seen as a pest and a desperate one at that. Why would you want to waste valuable time trying to convince uninterested people of your opportunity or to try your product?

The reality is that if you keep believing the "lies" or the ineffective marketing techniques your upline is telling you to do, you will not have much success if any success at all.

If you want to have massive success you must go after your target market. I promise you that you will drastically reduce your chances of failure in this industry by doing so.

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Article Tags: MLM, Network Marketing, Upline, Sales, Leads, Business Opportunity, Target Market, Prospecting

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To find out what other lies are hurting your chances of success please visit: Free Network Marketing Advice Corrisa Malone is a successful home business entrepreneur and writer.

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The Greatest Lie Ever Told: Everyone is Your Prospect!

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