MLM Leads — How To Find Qualified Business Partners
Why Use MLM Leads?
A good network marketing leads source can provide you and your business partners with an effective and duplicatable way of building momentum in your business. Whether you are recruiting locally or globally, most network marketing leaders that I know and respect use MLM leads as part of their business building strategy.
The need for MLM leads arose from the dilemma that many MLM business owners face. To grow any network marketing business, you need to create a professional team to work with, a distribution network. In addition to selling your products, you need to find qualified business partners.
However very few people that you meet are cut out to own and operate their own home based business! So how do you find the right kind of people to work with?
Luckily, some smart end entrepreneurially minded MLM professionals figured out that if you could find a way to simplify the process of advertising to find qualified partners, that everyone's business would grow faster. That's why so many people nowadays use MLM leads.
Even though you hear some stories in the MLM industry of people finding dozens of business partners in their first month, rarely does this happen for the average person. These hyper-successful folks usually already had a large number of professional or personal contacts that trusted them!
MLM leads generation services arose from the need to help the average person to succeed in the industry.
Network Marketing For The Rest Of Us
So what does the average person do to build their business? Many network marketing companies recommend that you start with your friends and family. However this approach never worked for me! My family and friends are not interested in business and are usually resistant to any new product I might recommend. (OK, I got a few of them. But, again, they're not business personalities. They are loyal customers.)
Then I started using classified advertising. Although my sponsor was one of the best mentors I could get on this matter this approach was incredibly costly and extremely time consuming. (Yes, I loved traveling through Germany — here's part of my story — but the Return On Investment was awfully low!)
I remember spending hundreds of Euros on advertising, sponsoring a bunch of smart people whenever I conducted job interviews, but the final activity did not arise as it should. (I think it was because these folks expected an employment, although I told them 'everything' in the interviews.)
It was in 2004 when I discovered a fool proof, specialized system using the Internet to generate targeted MLM leads for their Network Marketing business, which works wonders.
What Are MLM Leads Anyway? — Real People!
MLM leads are the names, addresses, phone numbers, and sometimes e-mail addresses of people who have responded to a professionally written advertisement for a network marketing home business opportunity. MLM Leads can come in the form of a simple name and e-mail address only, or can provide everything from name, address, phone number, e-mail, level of MLM experience, hobbies and other information.
Typically, MLM leads cost less than doing advertising yourself. Most MLM leads are generated on the Internet, though nowadays you can also get MLM leads generated via radio and television.
Why MLM Leads Work
Using professionally generated MLM leads is much less expensive than doing the advertising yourself, and saves you the problem of writing and tracking your own advertising.
Especially Mashubi Rochell (founder and previous owner of HomeBizHearts.com) learned this. She was very excited and set out to learn all about MLM leads companies and how they work, and what important factors produce effective and responsive leads.
Your own network marketing company or team may provide corporate generated MLM leads or a company advertising coop. These MLM leads are generally exclusive, sold to you alone, and the people have expressed interest in your company specifically.
Before investing though, look at the ad your MLM leads company places, and whether the ad qualifies the people that respond through an online interview process or a double-opt in. (I'll explain this in a moment.)
What To Look For!
Here is what I've learned about what to look for in a MLM leads company or leads service.
- Find out how the MLM leads are generated! Make sure people have responded to an advertisement, not just requesting information from a long checklist of subjects after subscribing to another newsletter. I do not recommend MLM leads generated through lists of defunct network marketing companies.
- Take a look at the ads the MLM Leads company places. Are they the kind of ads you would want to respond to? Or are they full of hype? If the company doesn't show you what ads they place, be careful because you don't know what people are responding to.
- Are the MLM leads recent, having responded to the ad within the last week or two... or within a month at least?
- Are the leads qualified with an online interview asking specific questions about the person, their goals and their business experience? The more you know about the person, the better!
- Are the MLM leads single opt-in (having responded once to an ad) or double opt-in (having responded twice to ensure their interest). Obviously double opt-in leads are more interested (and, naturally, more expensive).
- How often are the leads sold? Some leads are exclusive, sold only to you. These are more expensive. Other MLM leads are sold to several people or more. Obviously the fewer people the leads are sold to, the less inundated the person will be with different business opportunities. At the same time, most people looking for a home business will request information from several different sources so there is no really exclusive MLM lead.
- Does the MLM leads company provide you with tools and training to be able to effectively use the leads, and sort through people to find out who is most interested and qualified? Without training you will not know how to build relationships with the people you are contacting.
I personally recommend Tim Sales' Professional Inviter. It's a 6-step, solid, professional inviting formula which puts your income stream on automatic. I personally used it and can testify it works wonders! - Do the MLM leads come with telephone AND e-mail address? E-mail only MLM leads are NOT an effective advertising investment, due to the increasing problems with spam filtering. Response rates will go up dramatically when you telephone people, even if only to introduce yourself and let them know you're responding to their request by sending an e-mail to them.
- Does the MLM leads company advertise for a network marketing business opportunity? You are looking for people who are open to MLM business rather than a generic home based business opportunity.
- IMPORTANT! If you buy MLM leads with e-mail addresses, does the leads company provide an autoresponder for you to contact them with, and protection for spam accusations? This is crucial, as sometimes people forget they responded to an ad and cry "spam" which can lead to you losing your ISP and even your network marketing business!
- Does the company provide some way for you to recoup the costs of your advertising? Some MLM leads companies provide referral bonuses like "refer three and get your leads free" which can make a huge difference in your ability to keep your business going at the beginning.
More To Think About
It's important to remember that using MLM leads will not guarantee your MLM success. Working the "cold market" requires training and skill. In order to effectively use your MLM leads to bring in more customers and distributors into your network, you'll need to get training and coaching from your upline on how to communicate with people, how to sort, not sell, and how to enroll people into your team. Or use Tim Sales' Professional Inviter to accomplish exactly this.
Another important consideration in using MLM leads has to do with trust. How well do you trust the company that is selling you the leads?
I have encountered a number of extremely unethical MLM leads vendors who simply take a list and re-sell it 50 or 100 times, claiming that these are exclusive leads. That's no fun as you encounter a lot of angry prospects who already said "no" to 50 or 100 other network marketers! It's easy for an MLM leads company to scrimp on quality, so be sure you investigate any MLM leads company thoroughly before giving them your hard earned money.
• Learn about the benefits of recruiting in your own backyard with MLM Local leads.
• Learn more about how to generate your own prequalified MLM leads using the Internet the smart way!
To your success,
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