Here I share 3 tips that WILL help you get more reps.
Network Marketing Closing Tips
I’m a big fan of sorting OVER closing.
The closing means every person I lock eyes with I’m trying to get into my business. I’m here to tell you there’s a lot of people that you don’t want on your team, and you don’t want in your business.
So, I want to look at people’s energy, attitude. Are they going to show up big? Are they coachable?
There are individuals that I recruited that I wish I didn’t.
There are people that you don’t want on your team. Believe me, it’s going to create strife amongst all your other teammates. It’s a team. Not just YOU.
The closing means, “Hey Ray, I’ve got this brother-in-law that’s cynical, skeptical, called me an a-hole, and he threw a brick through my window. How do I turn him around so he joins?”
You don’t. Not allowed.
Stop trying to close everybody that you encounter. Stop trying to close every mouth breather on the planet. You don’t want them on your team.
1. Look For Who’s Open
Stop being addicted to that sign up bonus.
So look for who’s open versus trying to close everybody.
Who’s open? If you just do that, you will alter the fabric of reality around network marketing. I’m telling you.
Why are most people turned off by network marketers? It’s because they’re addicted to the outcome. They use crazy strategies that make no sense because they want to get them.
Instead, look for:
1 . People who are open
2. Someone you’d want in your team
3. Be willing to disqualify people
2. Use Tools
Network marketing isn’t just about getting more sign-ups, it’s about duplication.
So use tools.
If you sign up someone, and it has to do with your charisma, your personality, your connection to them, then you’re not very duplicatable.
You need to point them to a tool.
The tool could be hotel event, restaurant event, presentation, sizzle call, magazine. It could be a sample pack or a seven-day deal. It could be whatever.
Use the tools because it’s about duplication. It’s about you growing your business and showing them a way they can do it regardless of charisma, personality, or their background. They can do it too because they can just follow the system.
3. Have Posture
Have posture.
I get asked a lot, “Ray, what do I do if I send a message and someone doesn’t respond?”
Well, you change your name, you grow a mustache, you move out of town, shut down your Facebook account, start a new one, maybe focus on Instagram this time because there’s less rejection over there….
No.
Who cares if someone doesn’t respond to you. Seriously? I probably have tens of thousands of people that didn’t respond to me but my income didn’t mind.
It was interesting when I went up to get my award for number one earner in the company, they didn’t say, “Now, just to verify, did you have everyone respond to you. Is that correct?”
Blue Ocean Strategy has been a corporate and business “buzzword” for over twelve years. But it is part of the business strategy lexicon for a reason. Blue Ocean Strategy is a powerful tool for entrepreneurs who want to create new markets instead of competing within established markets.
The goal of Blue Ocean Strategy is not to generate business concepts that compete for market share but to instead create entirely new markets, making competition irrelevant.
Note: If you plan to start a business that already has an established business model (i.e. casual family restaurant, dry cleaners, convenience store, bakery, auto mechanic shop…), you do not need to use Blue ocean strategy. But it may be worthwhile to examine this material further if you want to put a new twist on an old business idea.
Blue Ocean Strategy was developed by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne [1] In their seminal business strategy book, the authors divide the marketplace into “Blue Oceans” and “Red Oceans.” Red Oceans are all the industries in existence today that serve the known market space. In Red Oceans, industry boundaries are defined, accepted, and the competitive rules of the game are known.
In Red Oceans, companies try to outperform their rivals to grab a greater share of product or service demand. As the market space gets crowded, prospects for profits and growth are reduced. Products and services then become either commodities or niche and cutthroat competition turns the ocean bloody – the Red Ocean. Red Ocean strategy is the conventional approach to business – beating the competition in a contested marketplace.
Blue oceans, in contrast, denote all the industries not in existence today – the unknown market space, untainted by competition. In Blue oceans, demand is created rather than fought over. Competition is irrelevant because the rules of the game are waiting to be set. Blue ocean is an analogy to describe the wider, deeper potential of market space that is not yet explored.
The chart above nicely lays out the basic differences between a Red Ocean Strategy and a Blue Ocean Strategy.
Why Blue Oceans are the Way to Go
Kim and Mauborgne analyzed quantified the startup launches of 108 diverse companies and found three startling discoveries:
They found that 86% of the business launches were essentially line extensions – incremental, evolutionary improvements on already existing products or services. Kim and Mauborgne would categorize these businesses launch as Red Ocean startups. Blue ocean startup ventures – those companies who found or created their own uncontested markets – accounted for 14% of the business launches.
Within those 108 business launches, Kim and Mauborgne also measured the amount revenue generated by these companies. The Red Ocean business launches generated 62% of the total revenue impact of these companies while the Blue ocean business launches generated 38% of the revenue impact.
Finally, within those 108 business launches, Kim and Mauborgne discovered that the Red Ocean business launches accounted for 39% of the total profit impact while the Blue ocean business launches accounted for 61% of the total profit impact.
Bottom line: Blue ocean startups were 14% of the business launches but accounted for 61% of the profits. As Joe Biden would say, “that’s a BFD”.
Value Innovation – the Secret Sauce of Blue Ocean Strategy
The cornerstone of Blue Ocean Strategy is creating value innovation – creating a leap in value for both the business and its customers, thereby opening up new and uncontested market space. The main idea that powers Blue Ocean Strategy is to create new markets – which are thereby devoid of competition – instead of competing in existing markets populated with dangerous competitors.
Some definitions are needed to unpack the two sentences above.
Value innovation is the combination of two distinctly different concepts – value and innovation. Sounds simple right? Well, first impressions can be deceiving. We must first define markets, value propositions, value, and innovation, then define the components that comprise each.
A marketis defined as an aggregate group of people with the desire and ability to buy a specific bundle of goods and/or services (value proposition). For example, the total consumer demand for compact cars in the United States constitutes a market. A market for a value proposition can be further divided into market segments.
A market segment is a group of people who have similar geographic, demographic, psychographic or behavioristic characteristics that are willing and able to buy a value proposition. For example, the market segment for hybrid cars is an example of a market segment. Groups of hybrid car owners can be broken down into certain geographic, demographic, psychographic and behavioristic clusters.
Value: When a business delivers a value proposition to a customer, the exchange creates value for both the customer and the company. Therefore, the value of the exchange can be measured either from the perspective of the business or the customer.
Value, from the consumers’ perspective, is the worth customers place upon a business’s value propositions. If – from the customers’ perspective – a business increases the value of its offerings, then the company can extract more revenue from its value propositions through increased sales or prices.
Value, from the business’s perspective, is the economic gain the business derives from selling its value propositions. This is the net profit (revenue – costs) gained from sales of a value proposition.
A value proposition is a bundle of products and/or services that cater to the requirements of a specific customer market segment.[2]
Innovation is a technology advancement or process improvement that may lead to an increase in customers’ perceived value for a business’ value proposition.
The definitions above are dense concepts. They are not easy to wrap your head around and it may take several (or in my case, dozens) of passes to digest them properly. But, after defining these crucial concepts, we now have the building blocks to define value innovation.
Value innovation occurs when companies create value propositions that “align innovation with utility, price, and cost positions.” [3] This is accomplished by both increasing the value proposition’s value to a customer market segment(s) and increasing the absolute economic value of the business’s value propositions to the business.
Kim and Mauborgne coined this concept “value innovation” because “instead of focusing on beating the competition, you focus on making the competition irrelevant by creating a leap in value for buyers and your company, thereby opening up new and uncontested market space.”[4]
Diagram: Value Innovation
Trust me, Value Innovation is pretty hard for an established business to successfully pull off because true innovation is typically hard. Period. Plus, Value Innovation is probably a threat to a successful business’s already established a business model. Therefore, most established businesses opt for the following approaches to increasing their customers’ perceived value of their products and services:
Increase customers’ perceived value with minimal costs to the business.
A business can increase the value of its offerings without innovation. The business can do this by creating an incremental increase in the customers’ perceived value of its products and services (its value propositions), but not measurably improve, from the business’s perspective, the economic value of its value proposition(s).
Increasing value without innovation is usually done to maintain a company’s market share in a Red Ocean Market. In effect, it’s the business version of keeping up with the Jones’s. An example of this would be a car company making slight stylistic and/or functional changes in one of its car lines from the 2017 model to the 2018 model.
This is a business version of sleight of hand. Customers may fall for this or be satisfied by it in the short run, but in the long run, they will tire of it and seek out other market alternatives.
Increase customers’ perceived value with significant costs to the business.
A business can increase the customers’ perceived value of its value proposition(s), without innovation, only through making a conscious choice to lower prices or increase the quality of its offerings. Either decision usually leads to undesirable cost-value trade-offs. So, if a business increases the customer’s perceived value in a business’s value proposition(s) by lowering prices or adding features, it will not increase the economic value the company derives from its value proposition.
A lower price may sell more of a product, but this will reduce the economic value the business gains from each sale. Also, a business can increase sales of one of its products by adding features that increase customers’ perceived value of it. But adding features, without innovating, will reduce the costs to the business for each product produced, thus lowering the economic value the business derives from each product sold.
Innovation without Value Innovation without value is possible too.
In fact, it happens all the time and under the radar. Innovation without value “tends to be a technology-driven, market pioneering, or futuristic, often shooting beyond what buyers are ready to accept and pay for.”[5]
For example, an inventor can create a product that no market segment really understands or wants. If you want to see examples of this, just peruse the US Patent and Trademark Office website for a while. Its filled with interesting, novel innovations that markets ultimately didn’t want.
[1] W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant, Harvard Business School Press, Chapter 4, 2005.
[2] Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur, Business Model Generation, John Wiley & Sons Inc., pg. 22, 2010.
[3] W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant, Harvard Business School Press, pg. 13, 2005.
[4] W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant, Harvard Business School Press, pg. 12, 2005.
[5] W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant, Harvard Business School Press, pg. 13, 2005.
Yоu knоw thаt online reviews аrе impacting уоur bottom lіnе. Especially your local search rank
No dоubt уоu’vе hеаrd that wоrd оf mouth is thе best mаrkеtіng ѕtrаtеgу but these dауѕ, аlmоѕt 80% of соnѕumеrѕ truѕt оnlіnе rеvіеwѕ аѕ if thеу’rе a recommendation from a truѕtеd frіеnd.
Yеаr оvеr уеаr, more people turn tо them for thе lаѕt word on whеthеr or nоt they саn truѕt a business.
Fоr lосаl buѕіnеѕѕеѕ, these facts аrе еvеn mоrе іmроrtаnt – after аll, аbоut 50% оf mоbіlе ѕеаrсh іѕ local.
It makes ѕеnѕе; when уоu’rе оut аnd аbоut and you need tо find a рlасе nеаrbу, уоu’ll fіrе up your phone аnd thеn judgе where to gо bу the rеvіеwѕ.
Sо hоw can уоu mаkе that wоrk for уоu? One аnѕwеr іѕ to incorporate Yеlр into your SEO ѕtrаtеgу.
Nоt ѕurе whеrе tо start? Wе’vе got уоu соvеrеd.
Here’s how to think lіkе a local SEO соmраnу whеn it соmеѕ tо Yelp.
Optimize Your Sіtе For Yеlр
Rесеntlу, Yеlр rolled out a new penalty thаt tаrgеtѕ websites thаt аrеn’t mоbіlе-frіеndlу.
If уоu wаnt to gеt nоtісеd оn Yelp, уоu’ll have tо mаkе sure your wеbѕіtе іѕ орtіmіzеd for mobile аnd Yelp ѕеаrсhеѕ.
Hеrе аrе a few tірѕ:
No рор-uрѕ – Make sure thеrе are no pop ups thаt соvеr соntеnt оn уоur main раgе Above thе fold аdѕ – Dоn’t mаkе уоur сlіеntѕ scroll for соntеnt Interstitials – If уоur ѕіtе ѕhоwѕ an interstitial thаt уоur uѕеrѕ have tо dismiss to gеt tо thе mаіn раgе, Yelp wіll реnаlіzе уоu. Dоіng these thіngѕ will make your ѕіtе mоrе uѕеr-frіеndlу аnd kеер уоu in Yеlр’ѕ good grасеѕ.
Don’t Ask Fоr Rеvіеwѕ
Lоtѕ of reviews, аnd gооd оnеѕ, hеlр your ѕіtе rаnk; аnу lосаl SEO company can tеll you thаt.
What’s іmроrtаnt tо rеmеmbеr whеn gеttіng rеvіеwѕ on Yеlр іѕ to grоw уоur rеvіеwѕ organically.
Bеlіеvе іt or nоt, Yеlр wіll рunіѕh уоu іf they ѕuѕресt you’re trуіng tо boost уоur reviews.
Fоr example, thе rеvіеwеr dеtеrmіnеѕ thе rаnk оf thе rеvіеw.
If the rеvіеwеr’ѕ account іѕ brand new аnd they’ve bаrеlу reviewed anything еlѕе, Yеlр wіll ѕuѕресt іt’ѕ a dummу ассоunt and drор your rаnk.
Same thіng іf a bunсh оf reviews come іn аt thе ѕаmе time.
If уоu send a mаѕѕ email out tо your сuѕtоmеrѕ tо post rеvіеwѕ аnd ѕuddеnlу, Yеlр gets a tоn of thеm at оnсе, уоur views wіll be penalized.
Grow Rеvіеwѕ Organically
So hоw саn you іmрrоvе your SEO rаnkіngѕ with Yеlр оrgаnісаllу?
A good lосаl SEO соmраnу trісk is tо make ѕurе уоur сuѕtоmеrѕ knоw уоu’rе on Yelp.
Social marketing earns, not buys attention so have an opinion, be true to what you say, be of value, be open – above all be human. Here is how to be an open human.
“Ask not what your customers can do for you; ask what you can do for your customers” Stan Rapp
As ‘markets become conversations’ customer relationships and advertising models are changing for good. Passive consumption becomes active interaction. Monologue becomes dialogue. Control becomes collaboration. Customers are empowered, well informed, connected. Companies are becoming more transparent whether they like it or not.
It’s an environment in which the balance of effective communication shifts from being less about interruption to more about participation, less about delivering a message to more about being part of a conversation, less about what you say to people and more about what people are saying about you.
It’s an environment, which operates to social principles – creating not subtracting value, serving a larger purpose than your own, being useful, facilitating.
It’s an environment in which the more human elements matter – having a point of view, being true to yourself and what you say, being open, honest, transparent. Ford use social media to (in the words of Scott Monty) “humanize the Ford brand and put consumers in touch with Ford employees”, and regularly reach out to bloggers for feedback and to encourage the spread of positive word of mouth.
Zappos believe that their “culture is their brand” and use social media to create touch points throughout every area of their business and ensure customer service isn’t just a department, it’s the entire company. Authenticity is the currency that encourages trust, involvement, and engagement. Authenticity is what turns an audience into a following.
