Cold Calling Generic Leads in MLM

Most people who join an MLM or network marketing company are told by their upline to make a list of their warm market, everyone they know and everyone they can think of from a ‘memory jogger’ list of occupations. They are then encouraged to get out and talk to people, go to meetings & invite their prospects along, maybe move on to doing home meetings and hotel meetings themselves. The next piece of advice is usually purchasing generic leads and cold calling them.

It is this cold calling that I want to address today.

It is important to understand that cold calling generic leads is not a selling process, it is a sorting process. The aim here is to sort the people on the list as quickly as possible into two distinct categories, suspects and prospects.

To do this you need to develop in your mind, the type of person you think is best suited to your particular MLM opportunity, come up with qualifying characteristics and ask questions that endeavour to qualify the lead. For example, the first thing you will probably want to establish is whether the lead is still looking for a home based business opportunity. If the answer is no, they are immediately discounted. A yes should be interrogated further by asking how long they have been looking.

If they have been seeking a home based business opportunity for more than six months, chances are they are looking for perfection or a get rich quick scheme, and are never likely to go from investigation to action.

You should ask why they are looking to become involved in MLM. If the reason is to make an extra $150 a month or come over a little wishy washy, you should consider whether this is somebody you want in your team. If they are seeking financial and time freedom, want to give their family all the trappings of a successful life etc, they are probably more motivated to achieve.

Qualify their commitment by asking how much time they can commit to the business. It should be greater than 8-10 hours a week. If they say 15 hours ask if that’s realistic as this sometimes gets the prospect to re-evaluate their availability and the new figure might disqualify them from your plans. They need to know that success in network marketing requires commitment.

Do they have the finance in place to be able to join and maintain their membership of your company?   

If at any time they don’t pass your requirements, you thank them for their time but explain that you don’t think you have a match and you let them go, so you can move on to the next lead.

If they do qualify, it’s important not to chase them, but to simply thank them for their time and let them know that they sound like someone you may be able to work with.

Find out if they have internet access and if so, ask how soon they can get online. This is also a qualifier because you want to see some hunger and excitement. Hopefully they say now or tonight as soon as I get in.

Invite them to grab a pen and paper and give them your contact details. After you have given them the link to your company website ask them to read back the contact info. Be sure to say it’s in case you gave it incorrectly rather than they took it down incorrectly.

This is another qualifier, if they didn’t bother to take your details down, let them go. They certainly won’t duplicate your business building if they can’t even be bothered to take down your name and number.

When following up with the prospect, ask them what they liked most about what they saw or heard. Get them to sell themselves by getting them to talk about the product, the compensation plan, the residual income that MLM can generate etc. If you can, try to link what they liked about the presentation back to the reasons why they wanted to join a home based business opportunity in the first place.

When they have told you about all the stuff they liked, invite them to join by saying “OK Name, it sounds like you really liked what you saw, let’s get you started”

They will either sign up or throw you an objection. The important thing is to reflect the objection back to them, linking in their reasons why they wanted to seek out an opportunity, and then continue to ask questions, e.g. well how much time can you devote to building a business that will allow you to (insert their goal)?

A point to remember is that if you go down the route of cold calling purchased generic leads, you are going to have to keep buying them, they are consumable, so have your budget in mind.

Be prepared for rejection and don’t take is personally.

The same lead will have been sold to five or ten other purchasers, so there will be competition for them to join other network marketing companies.

Finally, if you’re getting lousy results, don’t just keep flogging a dead horse. Get with your upline and go through your technique, they may be able to give you some real honest and useful feedback which will improve your returns.