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

The post My First Year In Network Marketing And What I Would Do Differently appeared first on I Am Dawn-Marie.

That time I almost, ALMOST quit my network marketing business…

Can I get absolutely real with you?

About two years into my network marketing business, I was not happy at all. I was tired and on the verge of crashing because it was so darn hard to get people to sign up as distributors and customers.

Then when I did get someone to join me as a distributor, there was little expectation that they would be around a good few months.

Most of the time, the distributors would join and then do absolutely nothing. They would not respond to my texts, no calls, never attend meetings or take part in support groups.

What was I doing wrong?

I thought to myself that if I had to win at network marketing, I had to go the distance myself.

So I buckled down and tried to get as many customers as I could to fill my matrix chart.

I was literally burning the midnight oil and messaging as many people as I can. You know, hoping that the next person would be a yes.

“It was a numbers game” they said.

So I thought, “Ok, Just one more!”

I mean I made some good money in my network marketing business, I made some awesome friends too but

I was also going nuts!

Instead of enjoying my network marketing business, I was constantly pushing every ounce of me to get that next sale.

It was an emotional roller coaster. Some days I was up; other days I was down when I did not get enough customers to hit the bonus.

And truthfully I was not at a level where I was making a massive income yet. I was at a place where after enduring a tiresome 9 to 5, I came home to pretty much hustle in my network marketing business.

That was not what I dreamed of!

Additionally the methods I was using, was not at all sustainable. Certainly, if I wanted to quit my job and work from home full time, what I was doing was NOT working!

Maybe you can relate?

If you feel like marketing your business is slowly draining all the energy out of you, then this post is for you.

I want to take you on a little journey. I want you to sit back and think about this for a minute:

• Imagine that you could automate your business, so that it works for you; rather than you having to work it. Kind of like a set-it-and-forget-it type of model.
• You can delegate some of your most important tasks to a system so that you can focus on doing other things that mean the most to you.
• Imagine your business making sales whilst you sleep!
• You could put down your phone or step away from your computer for an entire day and not worry about missing prospects coming to your business.
• Imagine not having to go out to the mall or on the streets to look for your next business partner or customer.
• Imagine putting in effort once and having your business run smoothly without you doing a lot of work. At most an hour a day.

Does any of that sound like heaven?

If it does then allow me to introduce you to what literally changed my business:

SALES FUNNELS

What in the world is a sales funnel you may ask?

I get you, because when I first heard of it; I did not understand it myself.

The only thing that came to mind were those funnels that you use to pour water into the neck of a bottle.

But if you have had very little results with your network marketing business or any business for that matter, then I have five words for you:

You’ve been doing it all wrong.

And I really mean this sincerely and is no way intended to sound like I am dragging you down as I was in exactly the same position as you about two years ago.

So I know and I was so glad that someone spoke some sense into my head and taught me a different way.

So stay with me here for a minute and you will see by the end of this post how there is some crazy amazing potential for your network marketing business. I will even show you exactly how to make that happen.

A Case Study For My Network Marketing Business

When I started my network marketing business I knew nothing and I mean nothing about these little things called sales funnels.

I knew nothing about email auto-responders.

I thought traffic was what you saw on the road.

I was a clueless little bunny.

All I knew was what my upline taught me.

That was, to speak to as many people as I can, regardless of who it was and tell them about my business.

I was never told to brand myself. Instead I was told to push the product.

If you want sales, then you have to do whatever you can to get the sales… so do not be afraid to talk about your business.

I took heed and I got to work.

I started posting about my business all over Facebook and Instagram.

I went to beauty events and talked to any and everyone who my eyes would meet.

I cold messaged over a hundred people in a day and got like only two responses.

I messaged all my friends and got ZERO responses.

I went to my nearby salons and asked if anyone was interested.

I handed out cards. Some would wryly laugh as I handed my card and the minute I walked out the door my card was in the bin!

I got doors slammed in my face. I got scornful looks and felt tons of rejection.

In the midst of all of that I got some results (yay!)

But I wanted to quit (boo!)

It was just too much and I literally crashed and burned.

The effort that I was putting into it and the results I was getting was just not worth the effort.

So I did just that. I quit.

Well not my network marketing business. Instead I quit what felt like hustling my business and invested in this marketing training which changed the nature of everything.

I had no idea that everything I was doing, could be done easier and without me putting in so much work.

If someone told you, you could build a business without speaking to anyone, would you believe them?

Well I did not but I was intrigued.

I learnt that with a few good sales funnels and the internet, I could actually reach far more people and never have to speak to a single soul, all on autopilot.

I was like WUH??? Sign me up please!

See all those emails above?

That was all the leads I got into my business, the moment I started implementing what I learnt in the training.

Pay attention to the time as well. Leads like clockwork, all asking me for more information about my business instead of me chasing them. 

Where was this 411 a year ago I thought? Why were they keeping this a secret?

It was a huge relief for me that I did not have to go through literally blood, sweat and tears to promote my business anymore.

So I started building out these sales funnels which were pretty simple to do and used the internet to build my downline and get customers for my products.

If you have ever seen a network marketer’s business explode, chances are they have cracked the code and figured out how to use sales funnels and the internet and are letting it do most of the work for them.

It is a genius idea!

And there’s a snowball effect too. All it takes is for me to keep getting as many people as I can to see my offer on the internet and opt into my sales funnel.

Then the entire sales closing is done for me on the back end by an email autoresponder.

And sales flow in, in what seems to be a magical way.

Those are the number of leads I got into my business within 3 months, whereas before I would probably get about 20 solid leads a month.

All I can say, is the sales on autopilot was enough to convince me that using sales funnels and the internet in my business was a new way of network marketing.

But there is a catch to all this fabulousity.

You cannot  expect to just throw together a sales funnel, put it on the internet and call that George.

You have to be like the strategic marketer.

You have to test your sales funnel, test the content, know what content speaks to your audience, what gets them to click on a button. How do they interact with your website?

Learning all these things are necessary but once you get the hang of it, it is so simple.

“Ok! So I’m sold. But how do I figure out this sales funnel business?”

Today I want to share with you my top five non-negotiable internet marketing tips that are absolutely essential for your growth in your network marketing business.

This is going to start shaking up your business and getting the sales (because well you deserve it).

There are tons of strategies out there but these five hit the nail on the head!

They are a MUST if you want to get going on the right foot.

1. Get a mentor

Get a mentor who knows what they are doing, then model after them.

Remember that this was actually what turned my business around. I took this training given to me by my current mentor then did everything that he said to do.

Show me a successful individual and I’ll show you someone who had real positive influences in his or her life. I don’t care what you do for a living—if you do it well I’m sure there was someone cheering you on or showing the way. A mentor. — Denzel Washington

2. Create your own internet hub

Create your own internet hub where you can tell the world about you and begin to brand you.

My best take away from all of this is never ever EVER brand the company that you are with. Because one day that company will disappear and no one will really know who you are. You always want to brand yourself first.

3. Build sales funnels

Create a sales funnel using sales funnel builders such as Clickfunnels or LeadPages so that you can capture your leads.

This is how you get leads automatically to your business. When you have a piece of equipment that does the “talking” for you, you barely need to lift a finger to convince anyone. The lead page does all the heavy lifting.

4. Connect your lead page to your offer

This is how you are building your sales funnel. Ideally your lead page should be connected to a bridge page then to the sales page for better conversions. Either way just make sure that when the lead opts in, they have a destination to go to which ultimately is your offer.

5. Focus on sending as many people as you can to your lead page

Here I would use advertisements such as Google, Bing or Facebook ads. You can also use something called solo ads.

This is where people outside of your close circle will see your ad. It is where you have access to the whole world instead of friends on your Facebook profile or neighbours on your street.

And trust me these strategies are not even scratching the surface.

There is so much more you can learn to optimise your results and get more sales in your network marketing business and see the type of growth that top earners have.

If you like what you have read and are hungry for more because you can just see how awesome this will be in your business, I have some super duper news for you.

There are actually people teaching this for free.

If you go to YouTube and type in “internet marketing” or even “using the internet to grow your network marketing business”, you can find hundreds of people already doing this stuff and teaching it for free.

I also have a few posts on the blog that will help you, if you are really hungry for that success.

But I have an itsy bitsy disclaimer and that is, it really will take you months to piece everything together.

Yes, free is great but not so great all the time.

How free works, is that you will get loads of information. That can cause overwhelm and usually there is no structure when you do not know exactly what you are looking for.

How To Grow Fast In Network Marketing

The smartest thing that you can do, is actually learn from the people who have done it before and who has a structured plan so you get all the roads that you need to take to lead to your final destination.

Do not make the mistake of becoming lost and trying to figure stuff out yourself.

I mean I can figure things out on my own but I prefer to figure things out quickly and more efficiently.

So if you are serious about your network marketing business and want to get everything in tip top shape, then 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.

In this ebook you will learn how to properly set up your network marketing business for success online.

The ebook reveals things that top earners just do not want you to know. What I have learnt has been shared with over one hundred thousand other students and helps even the most newbies of the internet to get everything set up and see your business explode into amazingness.

My business went from getting two to three sign ups a month to more than twenty sign ups. I was also able to make hundreds of product sales within in a month when before I only had about ten.

There is just so much gold in the training.

Now I am able to apply all these marketing strategies to any online business that I start and let me not get started on how I was able to go from having one income stream to more than seven income streams.

It is just ridiculous!

Do not leave money on the table with your network marketing business. Heck do not leave the money to your competition.

Because a lot of people have already started using sales funnels and the internet to grow their brand and you should too.

So here is a quick recap of why I absolutely love sales funnels and the internet to grow my network marketing business:

• You can automate your entire business so that you can do more of the things you love and keep your business running on track bringing in sales for you automatically.
• You can scale your business quickly and make sales exponentially all from as little as an hour a day.
• You will put in the effort once to get your business set up and then let it run like clockwork.
• You do not have to chase after people and constantly get rejected and frustrated by them “standing you up”
• You can start enjoying and loving your business all over again

So if you want to stop the hustle and bustle in your network marketing business, stop having to constantly post on social media hoping that at least one person comments on your post for more info you can grab the Network Marketing Secrets ebook here.

I absolutely recommend it and you will see how life changing it will be when you finally get it and you can take your business to a whole other level.

Cheers,

P.S How are you succeeding in your network marketing business? Comment below and let’s start talking. 

P.P.S Have you subscribed to my YouTube Channel where I give more free training on growing your network marketing business? Subscribe here!

The post How To Succeed In Network Marketing Fast appeared first on I Am Dawn-Marie.