Gyms Have A 95% Failure Rate: Do You Blame The Gym?
Posted by: Bob Firestone under Leadership
Every January gyms fill across America. Packing treadmills with fat, wheezing sweaty people.
By the end of February the gym is empty again and the fat wheezing people are back on the couch watching American Idol.
For every hundred people who join a gym in January ten will still be members 4 months later. Of this ten who go to the gym regularly only 2 will go 2 or more times a week and reach their fitness goals.
If only 2% succeed at reaching their fitness goals should we be blaming the gym?
No. I believe that a vast majority of the population agree that the problem is not the gym or the equipment. The equipment works if you work on it. What is lacking in the 98 people who don’t reach their goal is motivation to actually do what is necessary. Again is that the gyms fault if you stop showing up?
If the gym is not to blame then why do people blame the business model of network marketing for peoples failures if they don’t do anything?
“NO” Is Not A Word…
Posted by: Bob Firestone under Personal Development
Yes is Fantastic : No is Boring
Yes is Learning : No is Ignorance
Yes is Change : No is Same
Yes is Advancement : No is Stagnant
Yes is Better : No is Same
Yes is Light : No is Darkness
Yes is Expansion : No is Contraction
Life is meant to be experienced. Saying “no” is declaring that you want life to pass by.
Start saying yes to questions that your programming would immediately say no to and find out what you were missing.
Up-Selling: Give Yourself A Raise Today
Posted by: Bob Firestone under Business Development
Would you like to increase your sales and make 10-25% more money this month?
What if you could do this with out bringing in any new customers would that get you excited?
You can do exactly that. You can make more money from your existing customer base by using a technique called up-selling. Selling more to your existing customers is far more profitable than acquiring a new one. To up-sell you offer your existing customers additional products. For example if you are an insurance agent you would offer to give your auto policy customers quotes for their home or renters insurance.
When I was in high school I worked at a small burrito chain as a cashier. My average order was 25% higher than the average for the entire chain of restaurants. It wasn’t too difficult. On every burrito I offered the extras: guacamole, sour cream & cheese. If they said “no” I never got offended. The next thing out of my mouth was “would you like a drink with that?” Yes another up sell.
Not A Hard-Sell
If you believe that what you are offering is in their best interest you have the moral obligation to try and sell it to them. Even if it is something as small as a soda.
Question Of The Post: What do your current customers buy and what can you offer them as an up-sell?
Natural Laws Don’t Care
Posted by: Bob Firestone under Business Development
Does gravity care if you believe it is there? No it doesn’t care if you believe it exists or not the forces of gravity are working on your body like it or not. Gravity is a natural law and natural laws are applied to all persons equally. When we work with the natural laws amazing things happen. Humans have always had the ability to fly with the right equipment the dilemma was finding the right equipment. Today millions of people are jetting around the world as you read this because the Wright brothers figured out the natural laws of how to create enough aerodynamic lift to overcome the forces of gravity that were trying to pull the plane back to earth.
Natural laws are not limited to physics and reasons you can’t fly like superman. Natural laws govern all aspects of our lives and the results we achieve on a daily basis. The farmer they must plant their seeds at the beginning of the season or they will have no crop to harvest at the end. If you don’t plant the seeds for success today when your time comes it will pass you by because you are unprepared to receive the riches hoisted upon you. Find the over night success stories in any industry and look behind the hype, you will find a person who did an extreme amount of work to prepare before the spotlight was placed on them. Star athletes play their game every day for a decade or more before ever reaching the level where becoming a superstar is a realistic result.
When your ship comes in you better be at the docks
In my business I am always looking to plant new seeds. Over time some will sprout into new customers and/or business partners further increasing my level of influence and moving my agenda forward. If I don’t plant the seeds today down the road when the new business is needed there will be nothing to harvest.
Do Your Customers Have Customers?
Posted by: Bob Firestone under Business Development
Let me ask you a question, “Do Your Customers Have Customers?”
Lets cut to the bottom line, in your network marketing business the more product that moves through your team the more money you make. If you are focusing your efforts on bringing people into your team who have existing customer bases to market to you are going to find your self miles ahead of where you are today.
The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg
Posted by: Bob Firestone under Business Development
Do you remember the story about the goose that laid golden eggs?
A farmer finds that one of his geese had laid an egg of solid gold. From that day on every morning he would go out to the goose and find another gold egg waiting for him. This continues making the farmer more and more wealthy. But after a while the farmer becomes impatient wanting more eggs faster. To speed up the goose he starts trying all sorts of things but none of them work. Out of frustration he rationalizes that the gold eggs must be inside of the goose already so he cuts the bird open. Finding no eggs he then realizes what he has done. In his greed, he killed the goose that laid the golden egg.
Network marketing allows anyone who does the work have a goose that lays golden eggs.
Like the goose you need to tend to your business on a daily basis, nurturing it, feeding it, working to make sure it is healthy and having what it needs to produce on a daily basis. However there is one huge difference between a MLM business and the goose, you can increase the number of eggs you get by sharing the products and business with more people.
Have Be Do VS Do Be Have
Posted by: Bob Firestone under Personal Development
People are fascinating. The power of what one person thinks shapes their entire future. Taking this idea to the next level this means if we control what we think we control our future. So why do so few people do it?
People are like water they usually follow the path of least resistance. The path of least resistance usually takes you through places you don’t want to be.
On of these unfortunate easy paths is the structure of how people think about work and compensation. The current economic melancholy was a direct result of the Have > Be > Do pattern of expectation.
Have > Be > Do
- Have – Gimmie it now. I want the reward up front.
- Be – Now that I have the stuff I will become the type of person who has it.
- Do – Now I am ready to do the work.
It is pretty obvious why this way of thinking fails. There is no internal change so the person who didn’t have the stuff is still running the show. This is why so many lottery winners are broke shortly after winning millions of dollars.
Successful people have a different pattern of thinking. Do > Be > Have.
- Do – I am going to go out and take action.
- Be – Doing the work and succeeding at the task shifts thought patterns writing a new internal program installing the belief that they deserve the rewards.
- Have – I am now ready to be in possession of the reward.
Do > Be > Have thinking succeed because the pattern necessitates providing value first. Working in the proper order builds confidence with victories coming along the way and the understanding of where real wealth is created.
The Biggest Detractors Of Network Marketing
Posted by: Bob Firestone under Business Development
The profession of network marketing is so close to reaching the recognition that it deserves. There is one last group of people who need to be converted to see the industry in a positive light. This group is not the media, the government regulators, politicians, or the people who call it one of those pyramid things. No the group that needs to change their minds is existing network marketers.
Have you ever talked sh!t about another company company to a prospect? Have you ever suggested that other companies and their management is only out to steal from your prospect? Do these tactics ever help you actually sell anything? No.
When you badmouth another company you are badmouthing the industry and your company at the same time. Do you think your prospect trusts that if you say your competition companies X, Y & Z are bad companies that they are going to think great this is the one. No what is going through their mind is why do I want to be in an industry that is full of crooks.
Trying to destroy the reputation of your competitor might work in some businesses and politics but not in network marketing.
What you can do is compare products and companies with out being negative. Look at this recreation of a conversation I had with a prospect when he mentioned another company (this isn’t word for word but it is pretty close and some changes have been made to (poorly) hide the company I was talking about)…
Prospect: I have been hearing a lot about company M recently.
Me: There are a lot of people right now marketing their products and there are definitely people who like it. I looked at them before joining and there are some big differences that I believe make our products and opportunity superior. M is most know for having the acai berry. Our core nutrition product has acai, noni a fruit from the South Pacific, gogi, pomegranate and has ECE kelp extract the next generation of super anti-oxidant. ECE anti-oxidant stays in your system working for up to 24X longer than acai berry. In one bottle you are getting a lot more than just acai.
With the economy the way it is value is a big concern and being able to give people a large bang for their buck is important. Theirs comes in a very nice looking 25 oz bottle and costs about $40; ours is 32 oz for $22.50. So you get almost 30% more product for about half the price. It is a bigger bottle of a better product and less money. Would you agree that is a big difference in value?
P: Yes it is. Being half the price do you make a lot less?
M: The compensation plans are very similar in structure. Before joining I took a pencil and paper to the numbers and did a couple of side by side comparisons. We came out ahead. The difference is how much of each dollar gets paid out as commission. Of every dollar that is brought 60% is paid out to the field compared to their 50%. We are able to do this because we have less middlemen on the supply side.
I never resorted to playing them as bad guys or selling modern day snake oil. I highlighted the differences and framed the conversation in a way that made me, my product and my opportunity the better choice without having to compromise my integrity.
Shaving And Selling
Posted by: Bob Firestone under Quotes
“Selling is a lot like shaving. If you don’t do it every day pretty soon you start to look like a bum.” – Bruce Firestone (My Dad)
What Floats Your Boat?
Posted by: Bob Firestone under General Rants
I truly believe that my opportunity is the best thing going. I also know that for many of the people I speak to, my opportunity is not right for them. What is important is these people go out and find something that does get them excited and motivated to take action.
The profession of network marketing is extremely diverse with companies producing an amazingly wide variety of products and services. The right opportunity is out there waiting for you, it is now just a matter of finding it.
