Introduction

The two most fundamental factors in economics and commerce are demand and supply. Man, all through history, has been progressing and each step of progress introduced demand for a new need that had to be met, and those who met that need profited from it.

The discovery of fire ushered in the Iron Age. This made those who were skillful in iron works rich from the growing demand of tools and weapons. When civilization grew to where man lived in cities and communities, merchants who supplied those cities with necessities profited from the demand for their merchandise.

The examples that can be cited are numerous, but they all point towards one truth; the progress of man creates a need that has to be supplied and that is how economies grow. However, very often, we find that suppliers are limited in their ability to supply the need on a large scale because of limitations in distribution.

Where this has been the situation, man has worked around the issue to find an answer. For example, the train was invented to carry goods faster over a longer distance, bridging the gap in the supply chain between source and market.

In the 1920s, the multi-level marketing mode of distribution was invented, where one could work as a distributor for a company and make a commission off their sales. The module has been developed over time and today, many of us have heard of a system in which you sell products as a distributor, but you stand to profit extra if you can manage to build your own team of distributors and earn a commission from their sales as well.

Many have profited from this module of business, but sadly, many have also lost money doing the same kind of business. This is due to a number of factors that range from product quality and reliability to how the remuneration system of each company is designed.

In this book, I aim to develop the marketer’s person so that they are able to deal with their customers, clients and prospects and build for themselves a team that will enable them to grow their ability to profit from whichever network marketing company they are in.

It is true that a good product does not sell itself and people buy from people. Therefore, the most important thing about a marketing business is the marketer.

This book is loaded with lessons, successes and failures picked from my own experience in network marketing. I know that if you put the practices mentioned in this book to work in your own business, you will be transformed into a better, more successful marketer, which will in turn reflect in your pocket book.

I thank you.

Elias

Chapter One

NAME-LISTS

The First Step Towards Sure Network Marketing Success

During my first experience at a network marketing presentation, I could not believe my eyes. It was like God was answering my prayers right there and then through the presentation. Some of the people that shared that day had stories that were so similar to mine in many ways. I thought to myself, ‘Surely if they could make it, then I can make it too.’ I was fired up. Listening to them that day, I envisioned all the financial challenges that had been choking me disappear before my very eyes. Where had this opportunity been hiding all along?

After buying my starter package, I quickly made a mental list of about six people whom I was 101% sure would join; my brothers, Magezi and Emma and my friends, Arthur, Duncan and Frank. I knew that if Frank was in, then his best friend, Isaac, would be in as well.

Unfortunately, they all turned me down one after another. When that happened, all the excitement I had had disappeared and I felt stuck. For at least one and a half months, I did not get anyone to sign up under me.

What made the situation all the more hopeless for me was the fact that I had exhausted my entire mental list. I wondered where I was going to get anyone to join me. If I couldn’t get anyone to join me, then there was no chance of success for me in this business. All the people in whom I had hoped were not interested. I almost quit. ‘Maybe this business is not for me,’ I thought.

Those odds changed for me when I learnt about name-list building. I realized that my initial disappointment was due to the fact that I had missed the most important step in the business; the name-list.

The name-list is crucial in our type of business. We are in a people centric business in which it stands as one of the foundations. It provides the first database with which the business will operate and the bigger your database, the better your chances of success. All the other activities in our kind of business; prospecting, inviting, presenting, follow-up and many others are only possible if you have a good name-list.

Many up-lines overlook the importance of teaching their new recruits this. Majority of those that do teach about it only brush the topic’s surface and usually neglect their new down-lines when it comes to them practically developing their name-lists.

Think about it. Why do we sponsor people in business? Is it so that we can just earn a one-off commission from them? If that one-off commission is your sole target for recruiting people into your business, then you are missing out on the most important advantage of network marketing - the power of leverage.

The power of leverage is the difference between network and conventional marketing. Conventional marketing only gets you paid once per activity while in network marketing, one activity has the potential to get you paid forever. Therefore, in network marketing, it is not just those you directly sponsor that make you successful. Rather, it’s who they sponsor and the team they build that determine your success.

One of my early mentors in network marketing, a gentleman from South Africa called Charlie Bolton used to say, “A sponsor is not a sponsor until they help their new recruit sponsor someone.”

How to build your winning name-list.

When I sponsor someone, I usually make it a point to buy them a new notebook as a gift during their orientation. I take the time to explain how big of a deal this gift is as I hand it over to the recipient. I explain to them that within the first few days of my joining the business, I almost failed “…but when I discovered this gift, which I’m giving to you, everything changed for me. I owe all the success I have to this special gift. I am so sure that if you put it to use, it will make you successful too.”

We then sit together in a quiet place and start brainstorming in order to identify and begin to build a team for them as a distributor, making use of the notebook gift that I gave to them. In order for my new recruit to remember more people, we employ what we call memory joggers. These memory joggers help bring to remembrance people whom one would otherwise not have thought about.

Together, we identify different categories of people and I make sure my new recruit writes down the people in these categories in the booklet. This is how we formulate the name-list.

These are some of the categories that I use as memory joggers for all my new recruits;

• Family;

Close family, Distant family, In-laws, etc

• Family friends;

Siblings’ friends, Spouse’s friends, etc.

• School;

Primary school, Secondary school, University, etc.

• Workmates;

Current workmates, Former workmates, Business partners, etc

• Wedding-List;

Guest list, Financial Contributors, Committee, Service Providers, etc.

• Neighborhood

• House of Worship

• Professional Associations and clubs;

Doctors’ association, Lawyers’ association, Teachers’ association, etc.

• Location;

places; Dar-esSalaam, Nairobi, Kampala, Kigali, Lusaka, Kinshasa, Cotonou, Lilongwe, Maseru, Pretoria, etc.

• Phonebook Contacts

By the end of this exercise, we should have at least two hundred names. In my opinion, a name-list is incomplete if it has less. Those two hundred names are the basis of the new recruit’s business. In these two hundred names, there could be people who will open your business in other countries. There could be people who will be the top recruiters or salespeople in your team. Therefore, treat the name-list with value.

When you look at our memory joggers categories listed above, it is no accident that the phone contacts came last. You must show your down-line how important the entire mental process of brainstorming and writing down each name and phone number is. Don’t just pick up the phone and contact everyone in the phone book.

The process of writing names and numbers down is important because it psychologically shows the recruit that they have an unlimited list of contacts that they can bring into the business. They only have to sit and think. It also helps the new recruit to populate their name-list without bias.

Too often, new recruits will hesitate to reach out to certain people that they know because they think they know them a certain way. The name-list, therefore, is an important tool in helping us bypass this vice, known as prejudging.

Prejudging, in the context of this book, is when you look at someone and assume that they aren’t qualified to build a network marketing business or won’t be interested in doing so. Basically, it is discriminating against someone based on what they look like, what they do for a living, where they are from, how they talk, how they live, and how you perceive them at face value.

Many networkers fail to build good teams that will further their business because of the vice of prejudging. They say things like, “The other person doesn’t have time.” “They don’t have money.” “They don’t need money.” “She cannot do this business.” “What will he think about me?” “He has done network marketing before and didn’t succeed.” “She will make fun of me.” “He doesn’t know many people.” “I know her and this is not her cup of tea.” Etc.

You need to get rid of that kind of thinking when you are building a name-list. I have seen people who prejudge a prospect and refuse to approach them, only for the same prospect to later be sponsored by another person in the same business.

Don’t play God by saying no for anyone. Write everyone who comes to your mind without prejudging. People join our business for different reasons. Yours may be financial freedom, another person may be interested in products, for others, it could be lifestyle, and others could just want a social group to belong to. You can’t know what will appeal to people, so don’t prejudge.

Your job is to simply share the opportunity in its entirety with everyone that you can. Let those interested in the products decide to become customers; let those interested in the business opportunity decide to become distributors; let those interested in making friends join and make friends; let those who are uninterested at least have the knowledge of what you have to offer.

Putting the name-list to use

After making a name-list, I then ask my recruit to begin by putting a star on each of the names that they consider to be a part of their top 20 list. We call these the A-players; the ones we shall approach first. I want to help my new down-line get results as quickly as possible, so we start with those people who are more likely to give the business a big boost.

We profile each individual and agree on the different scripts we shall use to approach each of them. After approaching the A-players, we now start approaching everyone else on the list in order, beginning with the first. There is normally a temptation by my new down-line to develop cold feet when we reach certain people on the list. They say, ‘Let’s leave so and so out,’ or ‘Let’s approach so and so later.’

When this happens, I insist on calling those people right then. This is the point at which I train my newbie on the virtue of boldness in the business. I help them to overcome their fear. I teach them that as they build their business, there will be times when they will be faced with that same fear or reluctance. I teach them that when you take action, fear disappears. I will cover more about that at a later stage when I talk about call reluctance.

It is interesting that after taking the plunge, many times the people that the new recruits were most scared about turn out to be even more receptive. When you take your new downline through this exercise, you give them the most important attribute that all great networkers have, BOLDNESS TO APPROACH ANYONE WITHOUT FEAR.

I approach this with them in one of two ways.

I give them simple scripts that they can use to call their prospects right there as I listen and correct them accordingly. This works well especially with the people whom they have influence over. In the chapter on inviting, I will cover this more extensively.

The other way is having me approach their people on their behalf. However, I make sure they introduce me to the other person first and tell them to expect my call. Then I follow-up with a call with my recruit present as they listen to how I do it.

Never call your down-line’s prospects in their absence. The reason why you go through all this trouble is to teach your down-line hands-on so that in the future, they too can do the same for their down-lines.

In the training, 8 building blocks by Pathman Senathirajah, he says his up-line used to tell him that, ‘Network marketing is not about Pathman; network marketing is about creating thousands of Pathmans so that the Pathman can retire.’

By the time we come to the end of the name-list we developed, (truthfully we rarely approach all two hundred names together. By the time we are at number 50, my new down-line is usually ready to stand on their own) they have learnt how to prospect, how to call and how to present. Why? Because we do all these activities together as I teach and they learn.

Remember that network marketing success is not about how many directs sales you have but how many independent lines you have under you.

Adding names to your name-list

Your downline will remember some more names or meet new people as time goes by. They should keep adding these names to their name-list. There isn’t any maximum number of names that a name-list must have; the more the better.

When you add new contacts to your name-list, write a few notes about them. Have you ever been scrolling through your phone contacts and come across a contact that you seem to have no idea about? This is most likely going to happen if you don’t add notes to all the new contacts on your name-list. As you add names, leave a line or two for a few notes that will jog your memory about these people.

I challenge you to make a name-list for yourself based on the specifics and guidelines given in this chapter before you proceed to the next one.