Are you positioned for long term success?
I am of the opinion most people get into network marketing, affiliate marketing or just the home business arena because they have dreams of the quick score. I wonder how many people get into these businesses with the thought of positioning themselves for long term success. How can you tell if you are a quick fixer or if you are positioning for the long term? Here are some questions to ask.
1. Are you just building your opportunity or building your online presence?
2. Are you learning the skills it takes to be an internet success?
3. Are you only interested in shortcuts?
4. Are you marketing products or services that you don’t even use?
5. Are you trying to build 3-4 different mlm programs without having built one yet?
6. Are you willing to stick with it if you don’t see results in the first 60 days?
7. Are you networking with other marketers or are you only interested in pushing your “deal”?
How you answer these questions will tell a lot about where you are. The goal of the networker should be to be here 5, 10, 15 years from now. The only way that happens is to take a long term approach, build a strong foundation to your business, learn the right skills and be consistent in your efforts. There is a reason less than 10% of all internet marketers are successful. These people have learned the skills and are continually learning new ones, they are networking with other networkers and they don’t quit at the first sign of trouble. There are no shortcuts to success, but there are no barriers either. All there is are problems and solutions and the good part is that for every problem there is a solution.
Prospect vs. Customer, which is more important?
I just had this thought I wanted to share. Whenever I hear people talking about building a business online I always hear about prospecting. Prospecting is often only thought of in terms of new recruits into your business. I think prospecting should be a 3-headed monster. You should be developing 3 types of prospects for your business:
1. The customer(who uses your product or service)
2. The recruit(who joins your business)
3. The colleague(one who will never join your business but you maintain a professional relationship with)
In your prospecting make sure you are finding customers who will be users of your products. This provides a foundation for long term successful growth of your business and also these people can become your greatest recruits, if they decide to join the business. I have seen many companies where the only people using the products/services are the reps in the company. Imagine if the only people who ate at Mcdonald’s were the people who worked there? Mcdonalds would be Mcdone and out of business very quickly. Make sure your product is positioned well and there are people not in the comp plan who are end users, these are the most important people to long term success.
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Are you being distracted from your success??
Have you ever sat down to check emails at your computer or search for one thing online and find yourself still sitting at your computer 2 hours later and you can’t remember what you originally was supposed to do?
One of the great traps of having an online business is often you have to go online to work. The problem with being online is there are a lot of things that are designed to grab your attention as you are supposed to be working. These things are distractions. Plain and simple. These things are also not going away and they can rob you of your success because they attack the one thing in your life you can’t get back–your time.
How do you remedy this? Well here are a couple of suggestions:
1. Write down exactly what you want to accomplish before you start.
2. Check off each thing as you have accomplished them.
3. Give yourself a specific time to work for that day.
4. Check emails and do online searches when you finish your other activities.
Try some of these things and hopefully you will not be distracted from your success.
Get paid for what you are already doing?
Are you on FacebooK?
Are you on Myspace?
Are you on Twitter?
I have a question, have you gotten paid yet?
Learn how you can get paid for what you are already doing.
Machine Gun or Sharp Shooter – what to do next….
Do you know what the difference is between someone shooting a machine gun and a sharp shooter? Well simply put someone firing a machine gun is spraying fire everywhere not focused on any specific target but hoping to hit something everywhere. A sharp shooter focuses in on one target takes aim and fires.
Are you feeling like you have too many things you have to do to make your business work. I mean you hear about blogs, social marketing, articles, pay per click, solo ads, twitter and the list goes on and on.
Most people get overwhelmed by the number of ways they can market and they go out with a machine gun approach and start shooting stuff everywhere. Or they become so overwhelmed that they put the gun down and say that is too powerful for me.
I want to challenge you to take a sharp shooter approach and hone in on 2-3 things you want to do in your business and if that is too much just focus on 1 thing and learn to do those things well. Once you have mastered those things then add on another. Eventually you will get to the place where you will have the spraying power of a machine gun but it will be with the laser focus of a sharp shooter.
How my day went
Here I am sitting in a library thinking let me get some work done but low and behold my wireless card is not working. So what do I do? I have some choices I can
a) get frustrated and play spider solitare or some other game on my computer
b) call my friend and complain that I can’t get an internet connection and my time is shot
c) take it as a sign that God wants me to take the rest of the day off
d) do some other work that doesn’t require internet connectivity
I have found that people myself included sometimes approach their business with that a,b or c approach. We plan on taking certain actions and something happens that prevents us from doing that one particular thing and our whole time is shot. It doesn’t have to be.
This is why it is always good to have a plan of initial action and a contingent plan in case the initial plan can’t or won’t work. Productivity isn’t measured just by accomplishing the one thing you wanted but how effective you were in using the time and resources you had at your disposal when you were working. If something isn’t working do something else until you can make it work.
Are you a tortoise or a hare?
This is number two in my biggest mistakes. You may be familiar with the old story of the tortoise and the hare. The hare obviously much faster decided to race the tortoise and the hare knew he could beat him hands down. The hare got out to a big lead and decided he would take a nap and when he did the slow and steady tortoise cruised past him and beat him in the race.
Many people take the hare approach to network marketing online and I used to be one of those. Ask yourself these questions to see if you are a tortoise or a hare:
Do you find yourself spending all of your money buying leads for your business?
Are you joining a new company every 60 days because this is “really the one”?
Are you working on your business 1 hour a week and expecting great results?
Are you trying to build 3 network marketing programs at the same time?
Do you feel like the product doesn’t matter just the comp plan?
If you say yes to any of these than you are acting like the hare.
Here are more questions:
Are you taking the time to learn how to generate your own leads?
Are you excited about and a user of the product you are marketing?
Are you working on your business every day?
Are you committed to your company long term?
Answering yes to these questions put you in the position of the tortoise. You may be moving at what seems like a slower pace, but the good part is you are positioning yourself to slowly and steadily win the race.
Newtork Marketing Online- Multiple streams of Leads
One of the keys to success in any network marketing business is leads. One of the mistakes I made when I first started out was I chose the fast easy way to get leads. The two fastest ways to get leads for your business is to buy them or to use pay per click(ppc).
If you buy leads, they can be very high cost, you don’t know the source of how they got these leads and you don’t know how many other people were sold these leads so the quality of the lead may definitely be an issue.
The other source PPC, can be very successful and you can generate lots of high quality, unique leads that you own, however if you don’t know what you are doing it can cost you a fortune.
I believe you need to create multiple streams of lead generating sources. Here is what that will do for you:
1 – It will expand your marketing presence online
2 – It will stretch your marketing budget as many of the ways to generate leads are actually free or very low cost
3 – It will set you up for long term sustainable growth on the internet
4 – It sets you apart from 95% of the marketers out there who are only interested in fast, quick fixes
5 – It allows you to help anyone in your organization because they can build a business with a small marketing budget.
What are some other lead generating places online? Here are a few:
free traffic
craigslist
my space
squidoo
facebook
articles
forums
blogs
and the list goes on.
Visit me at http://www.theonlinebizman.com and learn how to put all of these lead startegies into practice.
Tip for those doing Network Marketing Online
If you are network marketing online, especially if you are doing pay-per click or are new to online marketing, then you need to make sure you are using google’s new keyword tool. You can find it in google adwords. The tool will help you with your pay-per-click advertising. Here are some great features of the tool:
You can research keywords for ideas…
You can find out how often those keywords are searched each month…
You can also know how much people are paying for those keywords…
You can also find lower cost variations on keywords that can get a lot of traffic but can save you money.
So whether you are new to the world of network marketing online or you have been around for a while, take advantage of this great tool for your business.
Are you a deer hunter or a fisherman?
My next biggest mistake was chasing people and trying to get them into my business. To be successful in this business you have to approach it like a fisherman and not a deer hunter.
The deer hunter gets dressed in camouflage, loads his gun and goes and waits for the deer to approach.
When the deer least expects it the hunter pounces. The poor unsuspecting deer was just minding his business and the next thing someone is shooting him. How many people have you killed and dragged into the business? Here are some ways deer hunters market.
They approach their warm market with the opportunity first instead of the product…
They put up opportunity ads and disguise them as job offers…
They buy opportunity seeker leads and spam them to death…
They pressure you to make a decision right now, without giving you time to see if the business is right for you…
The fisherman has a totally different approach. He rows out to where the fish are and puts out the bait. The fish smell it and they come and basically capture themselves. There are people out there that want what you have. The secret is learning how to put the bait out so that people will come looking for you and in essence capture themselves. The lightouse marketing system teaches you how to attract instead of hunt.
What do you think is easier and which would you rather do? Chasing and shooting a deer who is trying to run away from you or reeling in a fish who is already caught on your hook? I would much rather reel in the hooked fish than chase the fleeing deer.