Whatever business you are in, a time will come when you will have to promote something over the phone (even if it’s yourself!).

A lot of people find using the phone, for sales and marketing purposes, a daunting thing to do. Yet the phone is a very powerful tool for your business and, if used correctly, can be a highly cost-effective and productive way of getting business, and increasing your income.

* Key 1: Learn to get relax with using the phone by simply making calls:

Many ‘teachings’ about using the phone pamper to people’s anxieties over picking up the phone, but in my experience the best way to overcome any nerves or apprehension is simply this - get on the phone and simply start speaking to people!

The sooner you start chatting to people, the sooner you will realize that the phone is not the monster you thought it would be.

Just start making calls. What’s the worst that can happen? Someone says ‘no’ to what you are offering them. Yep, hearing ‘no thanks’ is the worse that can happen!

With each call you make, you will find your nerves ebb away, and you will get stronger and more confident on the phone. Try it and you’ll see what I mean. The more you use the phone, the more confident you will get.

I agree not the most profound solution but certainly one of the quickest to get you positive results, both by overcoming your nerves and for getting results that increase your business.

* Key 2: Always open your calls with a Time Qualifier:

There is nothing worse than when you are in the middle of something, your phone rings, you answer, and someone starts hosing you down with what they’re trying to market to you. Your attention is weak, your patience thin, and often your sense of humour for being interrupted has long left the room!

You certainly don’t want the same result when you call someone. So, the easiest way to avoid this is to qualify the time you’re calling by using a simple opening phrase along the lines of:

‘Hi John, ______ here. Have you got 10 minutes now?’ or ‘Hi John, ______ here. Is this a good time to run something past you for 10 minutes?’

By doing this, you extend respect that they might be in the middle of something and in doing, allow them to tell you its not really a good time. You also have prepped them with the fact that you only need 10 minutes of their time. And, if they say ‘it’s a bit difficult right now’, you haven’t wasted your time talking to someone whose attention is elsewhere.

* Key 3: Build in a Disclaimer:

When someone says ‘I’ve got something that is JUST RIGHT for you’, how do you personally feel? I bet you immediately think to yourself how do they know its right for me; I’ll be the judge of that; it probably isn’t right for me, and so on. Well that’s how the people you speak to on the phone will react when you try to market to them in a presumed way. So disarm them straight away with a simple change of phrase:

‘John, I’m not sure if what I want to share with you is for you or not, only you can decide but I did think that if it wasn’t for you, then you then may know someone who would be interested?’. By suggesting it may or may not be for them offers them what is known as a ‘disclaimer’. In doing this several positive things has happened: A) Firstly, by saying I’m not sure it’s for you has put the person you are talking to at ease because they then don’t think they’re on the spot to ‘buy’ whatever you are marketing or selling.

B) Secondly, it gets the person you’re talking to thinking quietly to them self ‘why isn’t it for me? It might be; I’ll be the judge to decide if its for me’. In other words it turns their mental posture from ‘I don’t want it’ to ‘I might want it’.

C) By saying ‘you might know someone who would be interested’ you are in effect using the ‘3rd party approach’ (we’ll talk more about this in future issues of Marketing Pro Info). If the person you’re talking to then really isn’t interested, he can see a way out for himself by simply saying ‘it’s not for me but Bob might be interested’.

D) You potentially could pick up two customers - the person you called and a referral.

Hope you found these ideas useful. There are many other ‘keys’ to using the powerful tool of the telephone for effective marketing, which I will share with you in future articles.

For a business to truly be successful today it needs to have good quality MLM leads. Certainly for those who do own and run a home based business knowing how to generate their own MLM leads is very crucial to their businesses success.

Whether you already have a website which you need redesigning or whether you are having one built there are a number of things that you can do which will help improve MLM lead generation to it. Below we take a look at some of the things that can help you to get on the road to generating good quality MLM leads for your business.

When it comes to your landing page it is a good idea that you include a link which potential new clients click on and then asks them to complete a form to register. Another simpler way is just to include a box at the bottom asking them to complete the information inside if they are interested in receiving more information or subscribing a newsletter that you offer.

When you are including a registration form on to your site to further tempt them people to complete it offer them an incentive. Usually things like a free e-book, video or a discount or voucher is a great way of getting people to provide information that you need for helping to generate your own MLM leads lists.

You will be amazed at just how many people will often take time out to complete a form where they know that they are getting something for nothing. But when you do give things away make sure that you do not provide them with too much otherwise they are actually unlikely to want to buy from you.

When sending out e-mails rather than sending them out to everyone you have only select a few who have shown particular interest in the product or service. Just think how you feel when you get e-mails that you have no interest in whatsoever and imagine how those people will feel when you send them yours.

Mass e-mailings as many businesses have already found rather than being useful are very detrimental to its success. Through the use of targeted MLM leads one has more chance of reaching those who are interested and who care and who will be willing to find out more and possibly purchase from you.

The reason why blogs are so effective at helping with network marketing your business is that each time new content is added to it you can arrange for this to immediately go to the top blog directories. The more your site details appear showing good quality content then the much better your rankings will be with the search engines.

Yes there are companies online where you can buy MLM lead lists from but these can soon eat into your profits. The problem with many of these MLM leads is that they are not very good quality ones and will have often been used already by other MLM opportunity seekers for their own business.

MLM Leads are simply a list of names that could be potential customers for your business, which you have acquired. Certainly when it comes to selling a product or a service these lead lists are a very valuable marketing tool that you could possibly own.

You have a couple of choices when it comes to getting MLM Leads. You can either purchase a list or you can actually attempt to generate your own MLM Leads instead. If you do choose to buy rather than generate your own MLM Leads you should go with only ones that have come from a reputable source. Look for an MLM lead company that offers what they classify as real time leads.

Unfortunately if you choose to go down the route of not checking out the company first you may not only end up wasting valuable time but lose money in the process as well. Today, there are a few companies around who are offering such lists but they are not in fact real time MLM leads and are just out to get your money.

Looking for good quality MLM leads is one way of ensuring that you have a good solid foundation for setting up a network marketing plan. Also through these leads you can build up a more comprehensive relationship with potential new customers which can only help increase your profit margin.

Through the use of MLM leads that you buy or generate yourself you are able to target those potential customers who are actually interested in what you are offering. Certainly, this increases the chances of you as a business owner being able to build worthwhile relationships with these people which could bode well for the future of your business.

However, in order that you select the right kinds of MLM leads for your business you really need to know your target audience. This will require you spending time actually learning more about the kind of people who are interested in what you are selling. So do not ever rush in to buying the first lists that you come across but spend time learning about your target audience first.

As we have said buying good quality MLM leads is essential in order for a home based business or any business for that matter to succeed. But what you may find is that not all the MLM lead company programs available are actually going to work for you. Also remember that buying these lists is not cheap so you need to think about whether your budget at the present time can allow for such.

Be aware there are also lots of MLM opportunity seekers around who want what you are after. Therefore you need to consider carefully whether it is worth paying the price quoted if you know a number of other people are going to be utilizing the same MLM leads lists as you. If you do then you may find it more difficult to actually capture those potential new customers because of the competition.

Network Marketing is a people business and you have to talk to a lot of people in order to be successful. Buying MLM leads is the easiest most duplicable method of building your home based MLM business.

The average person doesn’t know thousands of people. Some people do have personal contact lists of 500 or more, but even then this is just not enough. Plus, everyone in your organization would need to have a large list of contacts if this is how you are building your business. MLM Leads level the playing field and provide everyone in your organization with plenty of people to call.

You also could be a superstar internet marketer and know various ways to create your own leads. But does everyone in your organization have the same abilities as you do? And can you provide the leads for hundreds of downline members? Why not leave the job of generating MLM leads in the hands of people who specialize in providing leads for large numbers of people every day.

A question many people ask is whether they should purchase exclusive leads or shared leads. Exclusive leads cost more and I’ve found that almost everyone is filling in multiple forms on the internet anyway, so buying shared MLM leads will get you just as good a lead for less cost.

Purchasing leads is also much less expensive than creating your own leads so you will save a lot of money. It really doesn’t matter if one or two or even 3 other people are calling the same leads. It all comes down to who the prospect likes on the phone. Your prospect will either like you and your opportunity or they won’t. It makes sense to buy a shared lead since the prospect is almost always considering other opportunities anyway.

Time is your most important resource. You can never replace it. Does it make sense to call 200 prospects to sponsor one new recruit or would calling only 50 prospects to sponsor the same recruit make more sense? By buying the highest quality MLM Leads you’ll have to call less people for the same results.

Success in network marketing depends on how well you duplicate your success throughout your downline. Your downline needs to understand how you build your business and they must think that they can do the same thing. By making MLM Leads the heart of your system, your downline will find it much easier to duplicate your success.

Some MLM lead companies have live lead calls where you and your downline can listen in as experienced MLM leaders call leads and make appointments with actual prospects. This is an excellent way to show your downline how easy it is to call leads.

Your success depends on the success of your downline. The better you train and motivate people in your organization, the more successful you’ll become. By having everyone focus on getting good at using MLM leads, you and your organization will be able to achieve much greater levels of success with less effort.

Network Marketing is a people business and you have to talk to a lot of people in order to be successful. Buying MLM leads is the easiest most duplicable method of building your home based MLM business.

The average person doesn’t know thousands of people. Some people do have personal contact lists of 500 or more, but even then this is just not enough. Plus, everyone in your organization would need to have a large list of contacts if this is how you are building your business. MLM Leads level the playing field and provide everyone in your organization with plenty of people to call.

If everyone in your organization was an accomplished internet marketer then you could all put together your own lead generation campaigns. But this is almost certainly not the case. MLM Lead Companies have spent years perfecting their lead generation techniques so your entire organization can benefit from their experience.

Some people argue that if you create your own leads then you have an exclusive MLM lead that no one else has. This is just not the case since people who fill in forms requesting more information on a business opportunity are almost always filling in multiple forms. They are shopping around for the right business for them.

It doesn’t really matter how many other people are calling your prospects. What does matter is whether they like you and your opportunity or not.

Time is your most important resource. You can never replace it. Does it make sense to call 200 prospects to sponsor one new recruit or would calling only 50 prospects to sponsor the same recruit make more sense? By buying the highest quality MLM Leads you’ll have to call less people for the same results.

Network marketing is all about duplication. Your downline has to understand how you build your business and more importantly they have to think they can do the same thing. MLM leads make it easy to show everyone how to do the business in the same way.

Some MLM lead companies have live lead calls where you and your downline can listen in as experienced MLM leaders call leads and make appointments with actual prospects. This is an excellent way to show your downline how easy it is to call leads.

Your success in network marketing depends on how well you can train and motivate a large downline to all take the same steps towards creating large successful MLM businesses. MLM leads can be the heart of this process. If you incorporate the use of MLM leads into your business model then you have a much better chance of achieving a high level of success in the network marketing industry.