Nett Knowledge Blog

This question come up today in a forum from ArticleBase.com that I submit articles to, and I thought I would give this person an answer that he could really use.

There was one very brief answer in there before my post and it literally said, use “Social Marketing” to connect with others and promote your opportunity.

While that is right, there are so many areas that need explaining, because there’s so many people doing it plain wrong i.e. SPAMMING the crap out of others in these social hubs like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, YouTube etc… that it just plain pisses people off!

I must receive at least 5 emails a day from one of my Facebook accounts with people asking me to look at, join, weigh up their “Ground Floor” opportunity… If I hear the word “Ground Floor” once more I will literally scream LOL!

So… My advice to this person was this…

1. Don’t SPAM – Don’t send emails cold to people who might be interested in what you sell, your opportunity, your products or services, this is very bad form and absolutely no online etiquette involved. The same goes with offline selling and local marketing, if you go to a “COLD” marketplace with absolutely NO relationship with people, then expect them to fob you off, this is the stupidest way of selling I know of (and I’ve sold for many, many years and it’s NOT just a numbers game)!

2. Don’t Cold Call – If you cold call the way you’ve always cold called, or come off as telemarketer, learnt from a book, been to one of those “Sell The Sizzle and Not The Steak” type seminars you’re setting yourself up for FAILURE big time. Instead, make calls to people in a completely neutral tone of voice, be normal and non-salesy towards them, and see if there’s a fit between you and them which you might be able to help them with… Now there’s a very, very, specific process to doing this, but that’s for another post (and you can look under my Cold Calling tabs at www.adampriceblog.com for more info on this).

3. Do Build Trust by Helping – If you can participate in online forums and free members areas in Facebook, LinkedIn and other hubs (and there’s literally hundreds of them) and answer questions and really help others, then you’ll become valuable to that community. Same goes with the offline world, become valuable for FREE first, then demonstrate how much value you’d be worth if you were actually engaged to work with your followers.

What this does is build TRUST and rapport with complete strangers, you’re not talking about your company, product or services, but rather about the solutions YOU as an individual can bring to them, people don’t care about your company or it’s offerings if first you can’t show them HOW you’re going to “Solve-Their-Problem”!

4. Build a Following – By building trust and rapport in online hubs and forums, you will then build a following of people looking to learn more from you and gain even more value. This is where you offer them to visit your blog, or information marketing site (a great free blog to setup is www.WordPress.com and a great information marketing site to setup is www.Website-Buildit.com) one is free the other is a paid resource, both are excellent in what they do, so take your pick and work at offering WHAT people are looking for in solving their problems.

Once you have your followers at your blog, or information marketing site, then you can offer some more value for free, except this time, you’ll offer a little more value and ask a little more for it, their name, email and possibly their phone number and to answer their most burning question in a free consult / coaching session for 15 minutes.

What this does is allow them to “Come To You” and not you chasing them for business!

So the best way to market and sell anything, not just your MLM Business, if you’re a local business salesperson or marketer, either working for yourself or for someone else, you MUST create a sales funnel that builds trust, rapport, following and connection.

This way, you will become well known, and people will know you as the guy who wants to HELP others authentically and with no strings, and they can feel comfortable coming to you for as long as they need to until they feel comfortable in buying from you, you just need to have the resources setup for them to go through this process of trust building.

I look forward to hearing your comments on this and any questions you might have in regards to your own unique situations (see, I practice what I preach LOL)!