How To Get Customers
Of course one of the most important things I can teach you as part of your MLM training is how to get customers. Customers are the lifeblood of your business, and that’s why I highly recommend you get good at finding, getting, and keeping customers.
There have been a few questions submitted on the subject of getting customers. I’ve grouped these questions together to form a single question,
“How do I use the Inviting Formula to get customers?”
The Inviting Formula is a sequence to invite your prospect to look at something (business or product).
1. Greet
2. Qualify
3. Invite
4. Close to action
5. Handle questions/objections
6. Follow up/follow through
Because consistent product sales are crucial to your success, I want to share some specific MLM training tips for how to invite customers to try your product or service. I’ll do this by using the Inviting Formula above and demonstrate how to use the formula from a “getting customers” perspective. Also keep in mind that the examples below relate to nutritional supplement products but this strategy can be used, no matter what your product is.
You first “Greet” your prospect and continue to greet them until they are talking freely to you. You then “Qualify” them to find out what they need/want (need more energy, want to sleep better, need to sleep more, want healthy hair) or don’t want (don’t want to wake up during the night, don’t want to be tired all day, don’t want ugly pimples on their face, don’t want their hair falling out, etc) something your product or business provides. If they don’t qualify you end here with the Inviting Formula. If they do qualify you try to find out as much as you can about what they desire by asking for specifics.
- “Have you tried anything to help you get more energy?”
- “What’s your typical day like?”
- “How do you sleep?”
- “What kind of foods do you typically eat?”
After you’ve qualified them (and they qualify) you then “Invite” them to look at something that will help them get what they need/want or don’t want. This “something” could be your explanation. It could be a brochure, a video, an audio, or to come to a presentation.
After you invite them you “Close to Action,” which is to create an action step that actually GETS them this thing you’ve invited them to look at. So if you invited them to look at a brochure – your close to action would be to say something like, “I’m putting a brochure in the mail that explains how you can have more energy as soon as we hang up the phone. You should get it in three days. When would be a good time for us to talk after you’ve looked at the brochure?” Set an appointment for when you will follow up with them – date and time.
The next step of the Inviting Formula is for you to “Follow Up or Follow Through.” Which is simply, call them when you said you would (in the Close to Action step).
When you call the prospect to follow up, you just repeat the Inviting Formula but adapt it to the current conversation. Greet them and get them to talk to you (much quicker this time), you qualify them to ensure they received the brochure, read it and that they understood it. You then invite them to buy the product or to get additional information. Close to Action by getting them the product. Follow up and ensure they received the product and follow through by ensuring that they get what they needed/wanted or didn’t want any more. So in the case of the example we’ve been using, you would ensure that they do get more energy.
This is how you use the Inviting Formula to get customers.
I’ve included a message we received in our office that I found fitting to this question on using the Inviting Formula to get customers. The person who sent the message doesn’t use the Inviting Formula AT ALL for bringing people into a business. He uses it to train 10,000 insurance sales people to get customers! Certainly, if it works for 10,000 insurance sales reps, it definitely works as solid, MLM training to build your customer base.
Hi Tim
I want to thank you and let you know that your teachings in the Brilliant Compensation series have given me a lot of help and insights in training sales and sales leaders. I have been in the life insurance industry since 1978, with flying color results in Hong Kong. I had been in the role of Training Director for a large international company AIG /AIA looking after the learning needs of 10,000 people every year in the last 5 years. And we are known by many in the industry as the company that provides the “best” training. However few will know where and whom do we learn from.
Your teachings are really hitting the problems on the head, especially when you address the greetings, promotion and communication part of direct selling. I have been following your teachings for now over 7 or 8 years now. It WORKS !!
Best regards
Stephen Tsai
NOTE: The “Brilliant Compensation Series” mentioned above includes Professional Inviter, Brilliant Communicator and Pocket Tracker).
I sincerely hope this brief but thorough MLM training example helps each of you get MORE CUSTOMERS!
Tim Sales
Tim Sales helps network marketers gain the skills necessary to be successful in MLM. His MLM training is based on his personal success of building a downline of 56,000 people. Instantly access Tim’s free MLM Training and learn the steps to achieve success at http://www.firstclassmlmtools.com/MLM-Training-W13.aspx
January 26th, 2010 at 10:07 am
I’ve just listened my first time through Professional Inviter.
It makes a lot of sense to find out what they want before you tell them what you have. If you don’t find out who they are, it’s impossible to help them move forward.
Inviting someone to look at what you have, before finding out what they want is like shooting at a target in the dark. Because you haven’t created a connection with them, they’ll more likely to say no right up front.