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I don’t know about you, but I really struggled for YEARS to create a decent elevator speech. I wish I’d come across Terri’s work years ago!

Terri Murphy has this amazingly effective approach to crafting an elevator speech. Learn more about her at the iLearningGlobal blog.

An elevator speech is a brief description of what you do and who you do it for – like a personal commercial. It’s a key part of any marketing strategy – you should have one!

According to Terri, most people state what they do but don’t describe how they help their customers improve the quality of their businesses or their lives.

They don’t even mention how they add value or include any benefits.

And most importantly, they don’t make the other person want to continue the conversation.

If you can keep the conversation going then you are on your way to building and strengthening a relationship that can lead to doing more business in the future.

How do you craft a great elevator speech?

Terri suggests that it be brief – ideally 7-9 seconds, though it can be as long as 15-30 seconds. The idea is you can share it with somebody in an elevator during a short ride.

The shorter the message, the easier it is to remember, and to say it smoothly, clearly and with conviction and passion. Being short, every word counts, so crafting it well really is critical! The easiest way to get started is to know there are a few simple steps involved, and to start at step 1!

• Step #1 is to write down all the services you provide your customers. Think about how you help them save time, money & improve productivity, for example.
• Step #2 brainstorm why people choose to do business with you – why customers want to continue to do business with you and what you do to make them raving fans. Sure, there’s plenty of people who can provide what you do – so why YOU and not them?
• Step #3 write out what you do in such a way that it encourages more conversation. Instead of saying “I sell real estate” say “I specialise in helping people get the most for their money when they buy or sell real estate.”
• Step #4 Break the statement down. First say what you do and then describe how the customer derives benefits from working with you.
• Step #5 Write out your actual elevator speech. It needs to become you, easily and spontaneously delivered, easily understood.
• Step #6 Practice – lots!!

Once you are happy with it – use it! These tips from Terri can help:

Having delivered your elevator speech your very next step is to advance the relationship by asking Qs about what they do, about what’s going on for them. And then follow up with this powerful script:

Mr X, it’s been delightful meeting you. I’d like to see if I know anybody in my database that could be a good prospect for your business. How can I best refer you?

This last sentence alone will make you standout, and allow you to discover what their wants & needs really are so you can see if they’re a good fit for you. And follow up – if you ay You’ll do something, do it. After a meeting etc follow up with a personal note so you can help them remember you and the event – making it easier for you when you call.

How is you elevator speech? Are you really happy with it?

Call to action: use Terri’s 6 step process and advice to recraft your elevator speech. Why not share it here? I’d love to read them!

Terri has made a short (<15 minute) video of all of this, with some great examples. Find it on http://www.ilearningglobal.tv/

(Surf over there, click on the Video Theatre Launch button coloured blue, on the right hand side. You may have to download & install a video player – it only takes a few seconds, then select Category Channels on the right and then Sample Category Videos – the player will open, then select the PLAYLIST icon on its bottom right, and choose Terri’s video – simple!)

There’s apparently been a debate raging between various factions as to where the money is…

Is it in the list? Some say “asbolutely!”

Others say “are you kidding? It’s not in the list!”

So who’s right, and who’s wrong?

Well, I reckon both sides may have a point….

What I actually believe is simple – the money IS in the list…. IF IT IS THE RIGHT LIST!!!

What does it mean to have the right list?

Well, the right list will have a high conversion rate – for every visitor, a higher proportion of them will convert to a sale.

The right list will also have higher efficiency – some say that before the average sale, the customer must be exposed to your sales message as much as 7 times. The right list could do this in 1 or at most 2 ‘exposures’ (sounds a little rude lol).

The right list can be much smaller than many other lists and still give you superior sales performance.

How is this all possible?

It’s possible because the people on this list are very clear about what they need, what you offer, and basically they also LIKE YOU!!! It’s a relationship thing.

There are 2 ways to build a list..

1. Entice any old punter in, use all manner of freebie giveaways – if there is little risk to the freebie, people will grab it “in case it comes in handy later…” – I know I do this sometimes – it’s part of my market research…
2. Be so clear about what you offer that those people who are in the market for what you have or something very like it, will come to you readily, and everybody else will stay away.

Some of you might be thinking there’s a third way, where you are being very natural, honest & sincere, and that attracts people to you as well. I agree, AND I would want people attracted to me BECAUSE they like me AND want/need/are very interested in what I am offering, so for me that puts this personal liking & connection element firmly back in to the second way to build a list. But that’s just me…!

Let’s start with a useful question. I like this one, and I think you will too..

Why do you even need a list? Why does anybody?

Well, if you want to upsell, cross sell or do any other selling in the future, it’s far better to pitch to people who’ve already put their hands up (thanks to Bernadette Doyle of www.clientmagnets.com for this turn of phrase!). To do this you need to know who these people are – and in my book that will be a list… capiche?!

But as I alluded to before, it’s not size that matters so much as quality – the quality of your list.

So why not turn your energies to building quality connections, to really understand the needs of your market and individual customers? Look at concepts such as Critical To Customer or CTC trees and the Kano map, both from the field of quality & performance improvement, in particular, Six Sigma (find more on both at www.isixsigma.com free, with no signup needed…)

I had a much better experience & growth on twitter when I stopped trying to get as many people to follow me and started focusing on conversations with individuals.

The ‘downside’ is it all takes time – 30 mins a day is unlikely to be anywhere near enough…. The ‘upside’ – some wonderful relationships with great people, fun, and actually, some cracking good referrals and recommendations…

Try it – it doesn’t cost anything!

Cheers

Martin

I came across this excellent blog post by Randy Gage via a follower on twitter. It’s at http://www.networkmarketingtimes.com/blog/evaluating-compensation-plans/

I think this is an area we can all benefit from giving more thought to. In a nut shell it’s about evaluating the compensation plan from an MLM company – ‘cos what works for somebody else may not necessarily work for you!

Cheers

Martin

The 3rd of Colin Powell’s 18 lessons of leadership is “don’t be buffaloed by experts and elites” and could at first glance challenge many people’s perceptions, given the focus on gurus and elites in this industry!

“Don’t be buffaloed by experts and elites.  Experts often possess more data than judgment.  Elites can become so inbred that they produce hemophiliacs who bleed to death as soon as they are nicked by the real world.”

In our industry so many people will lionise gurus and experts and elite groups. There is no doubt that a small number of people – gurus – have done a fantastic job with the programmes and business models they’ve brought to the market. Also, there is a widely held belief that anywhere from 90-97% of people coming to the industry will fail to be successful. I’m not totally sure what this means and I haven’t seen the actual data & evidence…

Does this mean the gurus are talking rubbish or are the cause of so much failure?

No!

It’s a bit like the morality issue with a gun – you can use it to hunt for food and so stay alive, or use it to shoot another human being – the gun is not the issue, once it’s been invented. The issue is the intent of the person with the gun. And so it is with the products and mindsets on offer from the gurus. If people don’t put in to practice in a way that works for that person the lessons and tools on offer, then failure will be more likely. Equally, blindly following a guru, or lots of gurus, is equally asking for failure too…

So my call to action with this is simple – go in with your eyes wide open, be prepared to go ‘off piste’ as it were, to adapt things to your own situation and strengths, and be discriminating – choose your gurus with care!

Cheers

Martin

The second lesson of General Colin Powell’s 18 lessons of leadership is summed up as follows:

“The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is theday you have stopped leading them.  They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care.  Either case is a failure of leadership.”

So what does this have to do with network marketing?

Well, if you have a download, they’re like the soldiers that Colin Powell refers to. So, if they stop coming to you with their problems, you’re leadership has, for them, failed.

How can you ensure they feel they can trust you, that you can help them in some way, either by pointing them to a solution, helping them find their own way to a solution, or just being there to hear and share the pain?

Years ago I served in my country’s air force on a helicopter squadron. One day we were told that we’d have to give up the weekend, that we’d have to work to support a short notice operation. It doesn’t matter here what the operation was. The squadron commander could easily have stayed away – the squadron personnel knew what to do and how to do it, and didn’t need a senior officer getting in the way… but the commander stayed, making coffee for lower ranks, making sure they were OK, getting fed and so on.

He was sharing the pain and being ‘one of us’ – so why wouldn’t we come to him with problems?

This is just one example – and I know you can find your own.

A great starting point if you are new to leadership is to take a look at the Leadership Challenge by Kouzes & Posner – see www.leadershipchallenge.com or click here.

There you will find out more about their 5 element framework – the 5 exemplary practices of leadership, listed below. Nearly 30 years of research make this a very proven & robust model.

1. Model the Way
2. Inspire a Shared Vision
3. Challenge the Process
4. Enable Others to Act
5. Encourage the Heart

Good luck!

Cheers

Martin

I friend of mine forwarded to me an email excerpt of a blog entry on Penelope Trunk’s blog at Brazen Careerist.

It eloquently and succinctly describes the new paradigm that Web 2.0 and social media represent to the PR and advertising/marketing industries.

So many organisations simply don’t get it – they will though – they’ll have to. If you work for a big corporate, you may find your next VP of Marketing is a ’spotty youth under 20 who lives & breathes social media…’ (!).

To put it crudely – the old PR way, where you seek to control the conversation & message is out – you cannot control anything. All you can do is influence it. I recently was telling a good friend of mine who’s spent her entire working life in PR/marketing and is fast approaching 60 yrs old (and moved in quite high places) about Web 2.0 and social media marketing. Her response was interesting: “We’ll just not go to social media marketing then, if we can’t control the message”.

I told her simply – “You have no choice – whether you join in or not, people will talk about the company, its products, services, and what it seems to truly stand for. If you aren’t there to influence the message, your competitors might be, and do you want them influencing the message about you, in your absence?”

She knows this is the future, but as she said, it’s hard to turn the clock back on nearly 4 decades of fighting to be in control…

We live in interesting times!

Judge for yourself, read the blog entry I mentioned, here.

Cheers

Martin

“Easily Answered” is a web-based service that enables you to get answers to your critical IM/MLM questions…

… questions that are answered by some of the Industry’s most successful marketers and business people.

You can find out more by taking a look at this video here.

I recommend you remove any distractions and give it your full attention for the next 15-20 minutes.

For those of you wondering about Tahir’s wonderful accent, he hails from the north of England – magic!

Get on over to www.easilyanswered.com to learn more.

This obstacle is really 2-in-1 – they’re so closely linked. You see, it’s been my experience in helping people achieve success that so many of them have neither a sense of the end game, of what success for them looks like, or  appropriate expectations.

How many times have I come across people who have said their dream is to not be working for a living, to have stacks of exotic holidays, the fast car and maybe the yacht…? Lots, so much so that I don’t believe in most cases they really want all this – it sounds like they’re replaying the blurb from the MLM company marketing material. What they want is represented by the holidays and yachts, fast cars & big houses… not necessarily the actual house/yacht/car.

An how many times have they said they’d like to achieve all this ‘within 6-12 months’? Yup, too often. The bit I didin’t mention is that they’ve got 1 hour a week to invest, and almost no starting capital to speak of. Amazing!

So, their brains know, deep down, that this is all so much BS, the end result often being some kind og disengagement at a deep level. This shows itself as procrastination, buying in to lots of systems, methods and courses, switching from 1 opportunity to another every few weeks and a sense of desperation about recruiting or selling…. sound familiar…?

It’s OK to just want a few $K per month, enough that a standard job is less of an issue – especially in the current climate when 650K people are losing their jobs every month in the USA. And it’s OK to be looking for things other than a fast car, yacht and big house.

I often have to spend a fair bit of time helping the individual client to get find their true outcomes and expectations, and then get comfortable with them, as they tend to be much less grand than your typical ‘guru’…

If you know any good coaches, seek one out and get some help getting really, honestly clear and focused about what outcomes you are looking for, no matter what your day job is or second income approach is.

Once you’ve got this sorted out, look at what money and time you can truly devote to this cause and only then, look to see how long it will take to achieve first, just 10% of your target (as well as your ‘day job’ income), and then 25% and so on – ask somebody with a good business background to challenge your thinking & figures. What ever answer you come up with, this is likely to be the shortest time it takes you to get to 100% of your desired outcome.

You may not initially like the answers you get – trust me, they’ll be a heck of a lot closer to reality that your previous ones.

Good luck!

Cheers

Martin

I think the world of Ann Sieg and Mike Dillard both.  I’m still waiting on either one of them to make me rich.

This is something I saw in a recent post on a thread on BetterNetworkers.com. The poster was making a bit of a character reference for them both, but this is not why I mention it.

No, what caught my attention was the attitude I imagine is behind this statement…

Like many people, over the years I have invested in various courses and systems from a number of the well-known gurus.

Buying their stuff does not mean I transfer to them, along with my hard-earned cash, the responsibility for them to make me rich.

When you buy something from anybody, all you have done is contibute to them being rich – for you to get rich you have to do something with what you’ve bought, in such a way that, for you, in your situation and with your strengths, that others will feel compelled to swap what you offer for their hard-earned cash.

It’s that simple.

So what is your self-talk? What conversation do you have with yourself? Is it the conversation of the victim, or is it the conversation of the owner, taking ownership of and responsbility for, the outcomes you want?

If you’ve caught yourself thinking “Why doesn’t [insert guru name]’s system/course not work?” for example, then chances are you’re in victim mode – being in owner mode will almost certainly be more useful. So replace these kinds of questions with a more useful kind, such as…

“What can I do to take me from where I am to where I want to be, with what I’ve got available to me?”

In my own experience the “what’s available to me” element is way bigger and deeper than it first looks.

I found that by adopting the elements of the Solutions Focus approach, I usually find a more constructive way forward – and it’s usually easier than might normally be the case.

Check it out – some explanatory articles can be found at www.sfwork.com

Cheers

Martin

The first big obstacle for many to overcome is one of mindset – the need to treat your second income as a business instead of treating it as a hobby. That said, there are aspects of hobbies that make them attractive, and that can be carried forward in to making running a second income more attractive.

When you treat your second income as a hobby instead of a business it means you pick it up and drop it, just like a hobby. It is almost impossible to develop a big enough base of loyal customers on which to have any reasonable sustained income.

I did ‘this’ myself in the very beginning: I said to myself “Martin, this is a second income, you’re going to spend much less time on it than your main job, you’re doing it from home in your spare time. Enjoy it, and don’t think of it as work (that’s your day job!), but more like a hobby…” And I’ve seen stacks of others take the same view as well.

WRONG!! A hobby is a hobby. This means you can pick it up and drop it whenever you like, and the consequences are measured somewhere around the ‘zero’ mark.

You CAN NOT do this with a second income that has any meaning and significance for you. Successful businesses are run like business but this doesn’t mean there is no room for fun and enjoyment. Very successful owner-managed business are usually full of fun and enjoyment – the two seem to go together!

Cheers

Martin

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