Consider Social Networks for MLM Lead Generation

Any marketer who’s been in the business awhile will tell you that MLM lead generation is the bread and butter your company has to have in order to thrive. Without leads, your company stagnates and then withers.

Thankfully, with all of the social media sites available today, getting those leads is easier than ever before. But like any tool, you have to know how to use it to make it work for you.

If you don’t know what Twitter is or how to use it, now is the best time to start. First, if you don’t have a Twitter account, get one. It’s easy to set up and easy to get started. Once you’ve set up your profile and your account is activated, you start writing – known as Tweeting.

What to write will vary depending on the information you want to impart. You’re not there to chase after people. You’re there to be personable, to share some small details about yourself and to talk about your business. The beauty of Twitter is that you get 140 characters (including punctuation) to say what you need to. So it won’t take much time at all.

Talk about what you did today (took the dog for a walk so I could brainstorm ideas for a meeting, product presentation, etc.) or mention what someone said they enjoyed about your product or service. Build a following. Twitter is huge on the Internet and many sites will offer visitors the chance to follow them on Twitter. Just hit the follow button and you’re linked!

You can use Twitter to talk about what’s going on in your business, how the product is moving, conferences you attend, and more. The conversation is what’s the tool - Twitter is just a platform to use that tool to engage with people. You can send traffic back to your business site by talking about your business. Make sure you put your social media links wherever you comment - blogs, forums, etc.

Facebook can be a little trickier. You don’t want to mix a business Facebook account with a personal one. Make sure you have a great profile. Once you set up your account, create a fan page.

Don’t just talk about your business, but share insights about MLM. Share the do’s and don’ts of the business. Offer some helpful hints for what worked for you and what didn’t work.

When others become a fan of your page, that’s social media advertising and the word is spread. Plus, because of Facebook’s high search engine ranking, your name or business will rank higher just by being part of it.

With any of these, you don’t want to come across as being on there just to sell. Be informative - share with others how to solve a problem, how to manage their time, as long as it’s something of value.

Stop Losing Sales - Build Your Own Website

If you are in Direct Sales, you may not realize how many sales you are missing by not having a website of your own. Rep websites aren't usually indexed in the search engines, and most can't be personalized completely.

Let me give you an example of why it's so important to have your own website. I searched for "Watkins Vanilla" on Yahoo, Google, and MSN.

- On Yahoo, Watkin's company page was #7 in the listings. Ranked before them were reps with their own website.




- On Google, the company page was #5. Again, reps with their own websites ranked above them.

- MSN was the only place the company website was #1. However, following the company site were several personal websites.

Here's another term I searched: "Tupperware catalog" (which according to Word Tracker is searched over 300 times a day). On Google and MSN, Tupperware's company site wasn't even on the first page of results! On Yahoo it was the first, but of course personal websites followed.

So what does this mean to you? It's simple - there are millions of people searching for YOUR business or items from your business ever day. By having a personal website, you aren't lost in a sea of other rep websites in the search engines. Even the simplest of terms can work their way to the top of search engine results, in many cases giving you more free traffic than you can handle!

Of course, once you get those visitors there it's up to you to turn them into customers. The best way to do this is getting them on your list. More about newsletters next week.

So if you don't have a website already, start making plans now to build your personal website today!

Selling Digital Products

When you think of selling products online, most people envision getting a big box delivered by the postman to their door. Physical products are not the only ones sold by online businesses. Digital products are a hot commodity in the eCommerce market.

Selling physical products requires a lot of preparation on your website. You want to make the products visible via photos, create landing pages, market them elsewhere and create a reliable shopping cart process meets the customer’s needs. This process is different when it comes to digital products.

Digital products can be received in either of two ways: in the mail or downloaded directly to the customer’s computer. Most online businesses opt to offer downloads since they are easy to receive and require no inventory other than the initial files containing the products.

But, how do you get the products to the customers securely without being scammed yourself? Here are some thoughts on that.

Payment Methods

The issue of e-payments is still an issue with digital products. Customers pay at the time of purchase just like for any other product. If you want to accept credit card payments, you will need:

• Internet Merchant Account
• Merchant Bank Account
• Payment Gateway Account

A payment receipt still needs to be generated for your records and also for the customer if something should go wrong with the download. Credit card purchases of digital products are still subject to charge backs from the credit card company.

Using a third party P2P (Person to Person) payment method is popular for digital products. PayPal functions in this way. To create an account, a customer or business owner just needs an email address to associate with the account and a bank account for verification. On your site, payments are transacted by entering an email address. The customer is directed to their PayPal account where they securely sign in. Once there, they verify that they want to make the transaction. When this is complete they are sent back to the product website for confirmation.

Getting Digital Products to Customers

Your digital products can be stored in a password-protected directory on your site. This is to keep just anyone from accessing it. When the customer pays, they will receive the login and password and the link to that particular digital product. Ask your customers not to share the link with anyone else.

If you don’t want to organize it this way, you can use digital download systems that offer you everything you need to conduct your digital product business for a monthly fee. Examples of this include PayLoadz (www.payloadz.com) and ClickBank (www.clickbank.com).

Digital products are hot right now. Setting up a digital product eCommerce business means low overhead and more profit. Use a system that allows you to easily get your products to customers and their payments to you.

What Many Businesses Miss: A Multi-Billion Dollar Market

The goal of any business is to make money. And, we’re not just talking about the short term but long term goals of increased revenue. To that end, many businesses are missing out on a multi-billion dollar market: moms. Marketing to moms is the wave of the now and the future.

Why are moms so important?

Moms are enterprising. According to BSM Media Inc., mom spending is already over the trillion dollar mark. That’s more than the budget of some third world countries.

Also according to BSM Media Inc., almost 90 percent of moms consider themselves the financial head of the home. Her husband may bring home most of the bacon but it is the moms who decide how to spend it. They shop for everything related to the household: kids clothing, appliances, electronics, outdoor furniture, accessories and home improvement items.

Any husband that shops for these things is going to consult their wives before buying them. Why? Wives do the research into these products to find the best on the market. Moms influence as much as 85 percent of the purchases for the home. That’s over 70 million women we are talking about here. It doesn’t get any bigger than that.

Think about all of the tasks that moms handle in a day. They take care of the housework, shuffle kids from school to sporting events to other activities, cook dinner and manage the finances. In order to keep everything straight, they employ a wide variety of technology. It’s not uncommon to see a mom sitting in the park watching her kids play while listening to an iPod or browsing the Internet on her iPhone.

Moms are also savvy on the Internet. The trend for many years has been moms coming out of the workplace and starting their own businesses at home to spend more time with their kids. To that end, moms have developed a network of blogs, websites and forums designed to teach moms everything from designing websites, starting Internet businesses, marketing to other moms and managing their homes all the while. Their buying power increased exponentially with their knowledge.

Manly mistake?

Traditionally the only products marketed towards women were household products and cooking items. This goes back to the archaic thought that a woman’s place was in the home. That has been a huge detriment to many companies as they are beginning to see.

Women and moms have made an imprint in the man’s world in many areas. Women are not limited to office jobs; they are CEOs and CFOs. They don’t just surf the Web, they are becoming entrepreneurs with widening influence over Internet marketing. Having moms shun your product because you are not marketing to them means they are also spreading the word to other moms across the world (via the Internet) and in their own communities.

The future

Moms are influenced by other moms. Several generations of moms are coming together to influence the spending habits of major corporations. In the future the trend will continue. As moms become more “connected” in the world, their spending will increase. No product is off limits to mom advertising.

Moms do rule the world. Gain the support of savvy moms with your products and your business will reap the benefits.

Voice Inflection, Does it increase Sales?

Have you ever heard the saying, “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it”? There’s a huge benefit for you if you can understand how true this is. With voice inflection you can get your point across. When you drop the volume of your voice it will get people to listen close to what you have to say. It makes what your saying sound secretive and very important. When you are loud it lets them know you’re excited. When you pause in the right situation it gives them time to think and lets them know you’re confident. How you say the words you speak is why you sell. What you have to figure out is how to say what you’re saying more effectively.

A great way to find out is by testing it. If I say it this way, what happens? What I do is I ask my clients: “When I say it like that how does it make you feel?” This way I can figure out what I have to change. Where do I pick up the pace? When I start to talk a little bit faster what does that say to my client? Does it express my intensity to them? What if I really slow things down? Does that tell them this is something they should ponder? How does it make my clients feel?

Listen to what other great salespeople do with their voice. How they do it and when they do it. What words are they accentuating and why? Implement those strategies in your presentations. Ask your client, “How do you feel when I say it like this? What do you feel when I say it like that?” They will enjoy being apart of what you are doing. Contrary to belief, your clients love to help you, that is why they buy from you, they like you. Help them assist you into becoming the most powerful salesperson you can possibly be. They will see you are going the extra mile to be better for them.

Selling - Guaranteed Sales Strategy to BIG Money

Good salespeople are aggressive, dynamic types. Everybody knows that.

There are plenty of good salespeople out there. They have good product knowledge. They have good selling skills. And they are likable. The more competition you have, the more products that can do the same or similar things as yours, the more you need to help and advise your customers, not just sell to them.

Great salespeople are an extremely valuable commodity
because they are in such short supply. So, what are the bottom line differences between good salespeople and great?

Great salespeople are continually trying to better themselves. They are always layering on new skills while honing the skills they already have.

Don't just be GOOD. Many of your competitors are good and they're doing everything that they can to be better. Become dissatisfied with good. If you are good - want to be excellent. Then become dissatisfied with excellent. When you are excellent, want to be outstanding. Continue along this path as far as you can.

Great salespeople also have a higher level of ambition than ordinary salespeople. Sure, they want all of the things that money can buy, such as bigger houses bigger cars and more interesting vacations. They also want the non - tangible things that money can buy such as respect, admiration and more freedom.

Another big difference between good and great is that great salespeople have a love for selling.

Now, you and I both know that it's possible to make a great deal of money selling without having any love for it. So, what's the big deal? The big deal is that at the end of a long career in sales, you have been competing against people who do love it. This means that for your entire career you have been competing against people who are willing to invest more time, and more energy in what they do for a living because they love what they're doing.

Putting more time and energy into any endeavor will almost always lead to greater success. This is as true for selling as it is for playing chess, playing piano or playing baseball.

Imagine working for thirty years competing against people like that. For most of your career, you will feel like the salmon swimming upstream. You will have had a very long, very tiring journey, and, at the end of this long journey you will be completely worn out.

But, most importantly, great salespeople are great because they want to get the most out of themselves. The big money is a byproduct of being great. It's just another way of keeping score.

Selling is a 'winner take all' competition. The customer rewards the winner at the expense of everybody else. If you are even just slightly better than your competition, you will earn much, much more money.

Let's say you and I are competing salesmen, going after the same big account. If you are only 2 percent better than I am - follow-up, service, closing ability, etc. - and you make the sale, do you get only 2 percent more commission than I do? Of course not. You get it all. You get 100 percent and I get nothing.

That's why a very small increase in your ability or effectiveness can lead to a very large increase in your income.

Here is the one thing that you can do to give yourself that extra advantage over your competition. This is the one strategy that can catapult you from good to great. By adding this one weapon to your arsenal you can guarantee that you will dramatically increase your income.

The solution is to study and understand how your customer is going to use your goods or services - in depth. The best salespeople see things through their customers' eyes. You must not only profile your customer, you must profile their customer too.

That's it. The fastest way to dramatically increase your sales is to understand and help your customers' customers.

CONCLUSION Each and every single day, we are being tested as salespeople because clients and prospects vote with the dollars they spend. Show the buyer how they will make or save money by using your goods or services. It is even better if you can translate that into dollars and cents.

Do these things and I can assure you that you will have all of the great successes that your heart desires.

Work at Home? 5 Ways to entertain your kids

Depending on the type of home-based work that you do, having your children around to be a part of things can be a wonderful part of the experience. However, there are going to be times that you must simply have peace and quiet - whether it be to make an important phone call, to finish work for deadline or a myriad of other reasons.

There are many ways to entertain your children while you work. Finding productive ways to entertain them with can be more difficult. Outlined below are five constructive things that your kids can do to give you a quiet moment.

1. Naptime

Working while your child is taking a nap is an easy way to have the quiet that you’ll need for phone calls and other important tasks. If you have more than one child, try setting a specific time for them to take a nap each day, so that they will come to expect it. Even a half hour a day can make a difference in your workload.

If you have older children that are home during the day, they too need quiet time even if they don’t necessarily sleep. It is good for children to have some time to themselves. They can play quietly in their room, read or do another quiet activity.

2. Playtime

If your children are 4 years old or more, you can many times help them start an activity that they can complete. Put a small table near your desk and allow them to play with play dough, do a puzzle or a simple craft project. Take a break every so often to check their progress and help them if needed.

With older kids, you can have them sit at the kitchen table or somewhere else out of hearing range to do an activity or craft suitable for their age and interests.

3. Outdoor Time

When the weather cooperates, send the kids outside for some fresh air. Be sure that your children are old enough and mature enough to handle time outside by themselves. If possible, have a next door neighbor keep an eye on them. If you have a fenced in back yard, that is often the safest possibility. Another option is to buy outdoor activities that can keep your children occupied.

4. Computer Time

Allowing your children time on the computer can be a fun way for them to pass time quietly if you are on the phone or doing other tasks. There are many educational websites and games that they play online, such as SesameStreet.com, Noggin.com and BigIdea.com.

Many smaller children will also enjoy “typing.” Open a blank document in your Word Processor and make the font large. As they get older, they will become familiar with the letters and even learn to type their name and other words.

5. TV time

On the days when your child is sick or it is too cold to play outside, consider allowing them to watch a movie or an allotted amount of TV time. Most children’s movies are kept short to keep their attention and are also educational. Find movies and TV programs that meet your approval and adhere to your morals and beliefs.

Working from home and being there for your children is one of the best gifts that you can give them. However, there are always times when you will need the little ones quite while complete necessary tasks. Use these five ideas to take the stress out of finding quiet time.