It Happened Like This…

2 days a week I host an “Applicant Overview” webinar on behalf of myself and anyone else on my marketing team who has applicants looking at joining our business.

It’s a little early in the morning right now for me to delve into the details of funnels, filters, and follow up (the “3 F’s” of an Internet marketing business) so let’s just say that the Applicant Overview webinar is when people who have passed the first filter get to spend some time in a live environment with me and really see not just what we do but how we do it.

So on one of my recent Applicant Overview webinars I had a guy who was peppering me with comments throughout the presentation through the webinar control panel. Fortunately I close the control panel during the presentation so I didn’t see them as they came in (which would have been distracting) but when I went to end the webinar there they were, laying in wait like graffiti. A litany of comments the gist of which were that I must be dreaming if I thought that this guy was going to invest one red cent into getting involved in our business.

Now bear in mind, I am very proud of what our team does and I make some pretty bold statements on the webinar about things like “creating the best team experience in the entire home business profession” and challenging any other home business leader to produce statistics that rival ours in 2 essential metrics (Earnings Per Member [EPM] and Speed Of Earnings [SOE]).

So I don’t take criticism lightly

If there’s something to it I’m very interested (trust me I know I’m far from perfect), but if it’s just negativity being spewed I will take steps to shut it out of my personal space.

So after the webinar I shot a note to Jackee, our team Business Development Director, that even if this guy did decide to move forward that I was not interested in working with him and to prepare in advance to just refund him his investment and wish him well.

And I cc’d the guy to try to head it off at the pass just in case.

It wasn’t a rude email, just matter of factly stating that by his comments on the webinar he had removed himself from consideration for being a part of the team.

And that was to be it. I definitely had no intention of writing a post to “vent” about it or any such other thing. After 3 years of online marketing I have learned not to take things too personally.

Then This Happened

But this morning I woke up to an email from the guy that changed my plan (or lack of) – not in that it pissed me off or anything, but that rather the guy who wrote it had, without knowing it, communicated a valuable lesson that we can all benefit from. His email also provides some useful training in “Answering Objections” for those of us in the business.

So for these reasons I resolved to write this post first thing once I got in the office this morning.

In his email he made a couple key points:

• It isn’t what he is looking for. He doesn’t have $295 to “invest” (his quote marks) and definitely not $395.
  (The investment is normally $395 but I gave a promo code on the webinar knocking it down to $295)
• He was told that our business was “definitely not MLM” (his quote marks) but during the webinar I alluded to being the ‘Marketing Partner’ for a team of many levels, all of whom I work with equally through the ‘Marketing Partner Outsource Option’. Therefore our business IS multi-level and “that says it all right there”.
• Back in 2009 he “went through all this” with another marketer in our same business who was “unable to convert” him.

Disagreement Is Usually About Misunderstanding

The response to the 2nd point is pretty straightforward and clarifies some specifics about our business. I’ll touch on it briefly and then share the larger lesson (which hopefully you are already seeing).

We tell people all the time that our business is not “traditional MLM” or “old school MLM”. Sometimes we’ll refer to ourselves as “Top Tier Direct Sales” or “GPT (Get Paid Today)” in contrast to MLM as most people know it (Amway, Herbalife, Monavie, Xango, Prepaid Legal, Usana, World Ventures, Melaleuca, Mary Kay, etc etc etc.)

The fact that something has levels is not what is being referred to… Most sales organizations from autos to insurance to franchises have levels and different people at different levels will typically bonus off the production beneath them. What is being referred to is the myth that by selling low ticket products that pay small commissions you are ever likely to build up a large enough business to create a full time income because to do so usually requires an advertising budget which the small commissions don’t allow you to pay for anytime soon.

We are also referring to the uninteresting and unproductive marketing methods that most home business companies teach of “making a list” and calling your friends and family.

So perhaps he misunderstood what we meant by “not MLM”, but that’s easy to clear up.

But the larger lesson is sooo good.

Do You See It Yet?

Notice his first and third points… He doesn’t have $295 to invest and back in 2009 he “went through all this” but was “unable to [be] convert[ed]“.

I’m actually a bit shocked he didn’t catch himself and what he was saying.

Over 2 years after saying “no” to our business he still can’t afford a $395 product, even with $100 knocked off.

You know what I was doing back in 2009?

Getting started in my first few months in this business (my 1st full month was December 2008).

You know what the guy who “tried to convert him” was doing back in 2009? I do – he’s become a good friend of mine over the last 3 years.

He was just getting started too (he joined only a few months before me).

So there are 3 people in the story who all had the opportunity to get this business going in 2009… Me (who was facing bankruptcy a few month prior), the guy who tried to “convert him” back in 2009 (who was living in his Mom’s basement a few month’s prior), and the guy on the webinar.

Of the 3, 2 of us were “converted” in 2009.

And we have both earned over 7 figures since being “converted” without ever using any of the traditional MLM methods and are well regarded internationally as speakers, trainers, and marketers. One of us lives on 7 mile beach in the Cayman Islands, and the other lives on a mountainside golf course in Utah. We also have skills that make having a job unnecessary for the rest of our lives, even if somehow our present incomes were taken away and we had to start over.

And the third one of us, the unconvertable one, can’t swing $295.

So Next Time…

…somebody says (as I do at the end of every webinar) that the number one trait of successful entrepreneurs is the ability to take action, remember this story.

My good friend JJ puts it another way when discussing people who seem hellbent on proving their point on why doing x, y, or z thing is “not right for them”… “You go be right, I’ll go get busy.”

Both my coach and my therapist (yes I proudly seek counsel with both a business coach and a personal coach or what some call therapy) put it roughly this way…

People put off making decisions because they want to make the “right” decision. So nothing ever changes. Just make the decision and then go make it right.

And that’s what I pay them for… to give me understanding even when other people seem impossible to understand.