Get More Customers

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Give your customers the 5 things they need to "get to yes!" If you are involved in a network marketing or direct selling company, you spend a significant amount of time recruiting new consultants. Your job, in order to do that successfully, is to give them all the tools they need to say "yes." It is their job, naturally, to resist until they are convinced that becoming a consultant is in their best interest. In order for that to happen, they must have overcome any resistance they have toward the idea. You can help them get to "yes" much quicker by understanding the five factors that will influence their resistance. These factors are Trialability, Relative Advantage, Observability, Complexity, and Compatibility. Let's break each o­ne down and look at how you can use them to create a greater rate of acceptance in your prospective consultants. 1. Trialability. This essentially means, "Can I try it a little bit at a time?" Given the opportunity to try something before making a commitment means less uncertainty. It means you can learn by doing and, in doing so, see the good in doing it full time. There is less risk for the prospective consultant. Question: How can you help your prospective consultant ease into the business while, at the same time, ensuring that she has early success so that she'll want to do it full time? 2. Relative Advantage. Relative Advantage is the WIIFM question - "What's In It For Me?" This is the area consultants spend most of their time when recruiting a new consultant. You already know the advantages to being a consultant and know that if you can just translate that correctly, your prospective consultant will see them too. What's key here, and I mean absolutely key, is that relative advantage is completely different for each and every prospective consultant. This means that you must first be open to completely understanding what drives your prospective consultant, not what drives you. In other words, the reasons you joined your company are not necessarily the reasons they will join. Question: How does your prospective consultant want to feel? What part of being a success in this business will cause her to feel that way? Play to that. 3. Observability. Observability is the opportunity to "see it working." The easier it is to actually see the results, the more likely your prospective consultant will decide to become a consultant. Also, if she is able to observe success in action, she will make that decision a lot faster. Question: What are three ways you can give a prospective consultant an opportunity to see you in action in your business - selling product, making money, recruiting others, depositing checks? 4. Complexity. "How hard is this going to be?" Your prospective consultant is trying to figure out how the business will fit into her already busy life. She doesn't want to be overwhelmed. She doesn't want to be confused. You don't want it to seem so difficult that she quits. Question: What systems can you develop that would make getting started more streamlined? What would have made it less confusing and complex for you? 5. Compatibility. Compatability is often the area consultants avoid the most, yet it is o­ne of the biggest deal-killers. You've seen plenty of prospective consultants decide against becoming a consultant, and plenty of consultants quit their business, because there was too much negative pressure from her inner circle. While Relative Advantage is what's important to the prospective consultant, Compatability is what's important to those around her. "Will becoming a consultant fit with my personal, cultural, and societal values?" A prospective consultant will weigh many things when making her decision. o­ne of those is how being a consultant will be viewed by the people who mean the most to her. That will include her husband, her children, her parents, her friends, her neighbors, her church, and her current employer. She will wrestle with whether she will be encouraged or ridiculed, envied or mocked. She doesn't want to do anything that doesn't fit with the values of her environment. Part of her reluctance may be that she doesn't know how to sell the idea to those who mean the most to her. Question: What concrete evidence, facts, and tools can you give her to help her convince her inner circle? - Ann Vertel, MA, CPBA President, National Association of Direct Selling Coaches The Monday Cafe