The one question that I get asked over and over is “Dawn how do you get so many leads and sales into your business in a day?”

I was fortunate enough to crack the code on how to get multiple leads and sales into my business on demand. Whilst my fellow network marketers were still trying to figure out how to get even two or three people to say those magical words “YES”.

But hold up… wait a minute!

Things were not always like this. Three years ago when I first started my network marketing business, I was struggling to get any one to look at the products or the opportunity. In fact for six months I was trying to figure out this whole network marketing game.

And that’s what I want to tell you about.

It took me a while to decide on the topic of this article because I was trying to figure out what content would make a good read and offer a great user experience for my network marketing friends.

I am part of a mastermind group of bloggers and one of the comments made by the members was that most of the blog posts were regurgitated content but had no personal experience attached to it.

So I decided to write a case study of my personal experience and particularly my first year in network marketing.

Essentially I am giving you a synopsis of all my fails (the things that went wrong) and all my triumphs (the things that went right) so maybe you can learn from my experience and perhaps implement some of the things that I used to finally succeed.

So here is my journey.

My First Year In Network Marketing And What I Would Do Differently

The first time I heard about network marketing was in the year 2014 when I joined the company It Works Global.

A little disclaimer before I continue. I no longer promote It Works Global so there is no affiliation between me and the company whatsoever.

When you join a business opportunity you join under a representative who is referred to as your sponsor. They take you under their wing so to speak and train you so that you understand how to get sales into your business.

I had never done network marketing before so knew nothing about how to speak to people, what to expect, how to get customers and most importantly how to sell.

My sponsor told me that the key way of getting leads and sales was to join as many Facebook groups as possible and to post about the product regularly.

Before and after pictures worked the best.

So I did my first post and I got about thirty responses. Happy dance! Woohoo!

But the minute I entered into conversation with the prospect to discuss the sale, I got crickets. Booooooooo!

Some were nice enough to tell me “never mind” or “not interested” but it made me wonder out of all thirty leads, not one person bought the product! Scratches head!

Dayyyyum!!

What did I do wrong?

So I went back to my sponsor and spoke to her about my sudden downward spiral. She was not surprised at all. All she said was “keep going”.

Hmmmmm. Here I am, poor little confused girl.

Does that mean that this is normal??

Apparently it was and as I spoke to other network marketers, from that day on, I began to understand that this was my struggle and what I was about to face.

So I put on my thinking cap and I got to work.

I began doing research to find out how other people were building their network marketing business. Some were using Instagram and others Facebook so I decided to focus on those two platforms to promote my business.

I was able to grow my Instagram account to over 25.5k followers in less than a year and had over 800 fans on my Facebook fan page.

Then I promoted the heck out of my business.

What I did was post as often as I could. From January 2015 until about August 2015 I focused on heavy promotion and incorporated some lifestyle posts, success stories and product posts.

I did that consistently and was able to build a team of 120 reps with about 20 of them personally sponsored.  This meant I was recruiting about 3 distributors into my business within a month.

Product sales were not bad during the time either. With my strategy, I was able to get about 10 customers every month and this was my number consistently.

But with all the work I was doing I crashed and burned.

Let me tell you something!

Although I counted my journey as a success because I was recruiting and adding customers to my payline, it was the hardest success to achieve.

Yet still I was not making near enough my income goal.

When I calculated everything I was actually only making about $2.14 an hour!!

And when I saw the numbers that prompted me to take some time away from network marketing, refocus and come from a different angle.

So that essentially was my journey in my network marketing business in my first year.

Why I Persevered?

To be honest, after all that effort and to realise that I was only making $2.14 an hour, I could have given up.

In fact I think that this is the number one reason why many people who start a business, do not succeed.

It is because of their mindset.

The only thing that kept me going were my dreams and the goals I had for my family. That was my why.

But many other people want results right now and they are not prepared to invest in themselves to find the solutions to their problems.

My first year was definitely a learning curve. I came from a legal background so had no experience with selling or marketing a product.

But I did enjoy connecting with other marketers and learning different strategies that were working.

If I had to do it all over again using the techniques that I know now, here is what I would do.

After two and a half years of being a network marketer and six months of taking my business online I have learnt so much.

I now know that to get massive results there is a right way to approach network marketing and VERY wrong ways to approach network marketing.

What I Would Do Differently

Make Smart Investments

By making smart investments in myself and my business, I was able to transform my struggling network marketing business, where I went from recruiting 2 to 3 reps per month to recruiting over 20 reps in a month. Jaw drop right?!

What did I invest in? I invested in my first marketing course which taught me how to “sell a product” without actually selling it.

This was the best investment that I could make for myself as it opened my eyes to the possibility of recruiting and generating sales into my business using the internet.

Use Email Marketing For Follow Ups

When I finished the internet marketing course I was introduced to the concept of email marketing.

This allowed me to work on building an email list and follow up with my prospects via email. So rather than messaging my prospects one by one via Instagram direct message or Facebook messenger, I was able to connect with my prospects all at once with an email autoresponder.

The email autoresponder sent emails to my prospects on my behalf and cut out a huge amount of time that I would usually spend following up with prospects to see if they were still interested in purchasing a product or joining as a distributor.

The biggest thing that I loved about email marketing is that I did not have to worry about facing rejection.

My one grudge when I messaged my prospects in my first year was they not responding to my messages.

HELLOOOOOOO!! It’s not hard to respond to a message merely saying you are no longer interested!

Why leave me hanging when you can simply type those five simple words and let me go my way??!!

Rant over!

This was my pet peeve but gladly with the help of email marketing I no longer had to experience that.

For email marketing I used the Aweber marketing software which gave me the ability to store 500 contacts’ email addresses for $19.00/month.

Aweber actually has a whopping 30 day free trial so if you want to try it out before you commit to those monthly payments then grab it here.

GetResponse is another good email marketing software. They however start at $15.00/month for 1000 contacts and they too offer an amazing 30 day trial offer which you can grab here.

Related Article: 

• How To Start Your First Email List From Scratch

Use Lead Capture Pages to Capture Prospects Information

If you told me in my first year that I could actually make sales in my business without chasing anyone, without cold messaging or begging anyone to buy my product I would have asked you where do I sign up?

Sadly it took me just about two years to figure that out.

But it’s all good.

Because the exposure that I got in my first year of network marketing, helped me to educate other network marketers and shield them from the gruelling months even years of frustration.

This was the biggest problem for me and I am sure it was for other network marketers.

No one really wants to be hustling for a sale.

Sure there are some good ways of hustling and there are bad ways of hustling.

However literally begging and chasing after someone just to get paid was not my cup of tea.

Thankfully I was introduced to these little things called lead capture pages. You may have also heard of them as landing pages, squeeze pages or opt in forms.

Whatever you know them as, they were a HUGE LIFESAVER for me in my business.

Actually it was a combination of the lead capture pages and the email marketing software that gave me massive amounts of freedom and I was able to pretty much run the sales process on autopilot.

No longer did I have to awkwardly start a conversation by asking someone to consider buying my product.

Nor did I have to follow up with my prospects only to be told that they had postponed the sale or they were no longer interested or simply blocked me (Ugh, how rude!!).

I had a lead capture page working for me and I was able to target the right people who wanted my products and the opportunity.

For my lead capture pages I used Clickfunnels. This an awesome piece of software and you can read all about it in my review here.

Clickfunnels does come with a hefty price tag of $97/month but this was so worth it with the number of leads and sales that I got into my business. They do have a 14 day free trial so you can try it out here and see if it is something worth investing in.

For me it certainly was as it allowed me to take control of my business, make it more streamlined and gave me a good bit of piece of mind.

I also found another piece of software, not as good as Clickfunnels but more budget friendly.

That is the Builderall marketing tool and it is an all in one piece of software with an email autoresponder attached to it. The Builderall System has a 7 day trial so you can try it out here for free.

Related Articles: 

• 4 Awesomest Lead Capture Page Builders You Must Use
• 5 Ways To Boost Your Network Marketing Business With A Sales Funnel

Recruited and Produced Sales With Advertisements

Game changer!

That is the only real way that I could describe what happened within the three months that I restructured my network marketing business.

Oh my goodness!

The reason that this worked for me was because I was the introvert.

Sure I built up tough skin after all those Nos and rejections but looking for people to join my business by advertising the opportunity and the products created a massive shift in my business.

Damn! For the first year on looking back I knew I left a lot and I mean A LOT of money on the table.  

That was money for the smarter network marketers who had figured out this deal a long time ago.

What advertising did for me and my business blew everything else out of the water.

I was now finding the ideal prospect who would convert to a customer without much hassle.

You see when you learn how to do advertising properly you can target the right people for your business.

Not chase after every Tom, Dick and Harry hoping that they would say yes. I wasted a huge amount of time doing that.

Thankfully I had a coach who taught me the skills on how to advertise with platforms such as Bing Ads, Google Ads or Facebook Ads.

Now I only get to offer my product or opportunity to people who actually want it rather than people who would “think about it”.

If ever you decide to change strategies and implement this super amazing thing called advertising in your network marketing business, I cannot give enough praise to the creators of the Social Traffic Blueprint course, Jon Penberthy and Jubril Agoro who were so patient with me and taught me how to use Facebook Ads step by step.

It has been a little over a year since I started using Facebook ads for my network marketing business and the response has been absolutely insane.

Check out the engagement on this one ad that I got which earned me thousands of dollars in product sales.

By using all these marketing tools in my business I went from crickets to this…

An abundance of people asking me for more information rather than me chasing them.

I was able to build my business with passion and enjoy it because I no longer felt stressed out by knocking my head against concrete blocks trying to sell a product and getting no where.

Network marketing is a great way to change your life but only if you go about it the right way. I have had a lot of stepping stones and grown a lot in the process.

Whilst I am no longer doing network marketing I am grateful for it because it would not have made me the person who I am today. A well educated, passionate business woman who is simply sharing her entrepreneurial journey with other ambitious like-minded beautiful spirits.

I quit network marketing in December 2016 and decided to focus on blogging and affiliate marketing. Only because there was less regulation of the way I worked and I was able to double my income considerably in the process.

Before You Go…

If you are just starting out with network marketing, make it a long term goal.

Never be afraid to make those investments in your business and yourself. From my experience it was so worthwhile to implement marketing tools and resources to help grow my business.

I would like to share with you, an ebook that I recently finished, that literally blew my mind. I thought I’d introduce it to you, because my mind is buzzing with new (easier) ways to build a network marketing team and this is what I teach network marketers. 

As a network marketer, this is what you should be implementing into your business today.

I got a copy of it for free (I just paid shipping).

This ebook is likely to shine a light on everything that perhaps you are doing wrong in your network marketing business.

If you ever thought to yourself:

• “I thought I’d be further along in my business by now”
• “Why can’t I get more people to join my team?”
• “How do I find the crowd that actually WANTS to hear about my opportunity?”

…then THIS is the book that you need to read. (and then read it again.)

Get your FREE copy of the Network Marketing Secrets Book by clicking here or click on the image below.

Are you in network marketing or direct sales? Tell me in the comments what your experience is like.

Related Articles: 

• How To Succeed In Network Marketing Fast  
• 5 Simple Ways To Grow Your Direct Sales Business Without Having Parties
• Network Marketing Blog – 5 Reasons Why You Need Them 
• 10 Network Marketing Tips For Guaranteed Success 

Helpful Resources:

Mastering Your Home Based Business my free e-book that will teach you all you need to know about internet marketing and how you can apply this to your network marketing business.

Cheers