The Importance of Friends & Family to Your Network Marketing Business
By Derrick Carpenter
February 8, 2010
I had been going thru some old pictures recently, you know organizing them so I could scan them on to a hard drive. It's hard not to be nostalgic when you're involved in a project like this.
I came across a picture of me wearing an old-time printer's cap & apron, it was from the grand opening ceremony of my parents printing company. Now back in those days the only way I could get a job was to work for my parents & it's the only job I could've kept: I was still enrolled in the school of hard knocks and doing a remarkable job of staying at the head of my class.
Anyway, this got me thinking about grand opening day, we had been "open" for about 3 weeks prior to the ceremony/celebration,. The plan was to have an official ceremony on my brother's birthday and because we were located in a busy strip mall we had picked up a few jobs here and there that kept us going.
So the big day arrives, my parents had an artist friend doing pencil sketches of the guests. It was festive with balloons & streamers and the mayor of the town & his wife came out for pictures, the press showed up for the ribbon cutting ceremony with the mayor & my folks. It was a Very nice day.
Among the honored guests were many of my parents' friends and lots of our family members. Now to my knowledge none of them did much printing-everyone either worked for someone else, who supplied them with their stationary, business cards, etc. or they were retired or stay at home parents. Looking at these pictures the memories came flooding back & I remember that, almost 24 years later, as if it was yesterday.
I also remember that even though the majority of people who were invited never did business with us, a couple did & a few more sent people to us, when they needed wedding invitations, business announcements, birth announcements, "we're moving" notifications & the like. Even though they never did business with us, we would not have grown-especially in the early years, without them. They, in turn, would not have been able to know what we did, had we not held that grand opening ceremony. One of those guests was still doing business with our company years after my parents retired and my wife & I purchased the business.
At this point you might be asking yourself, "What does this have to do with my network marketing business?" If you're sponsor is anything like ours, you were asked to make a list of family & friends, now I want to stop here for just a second. I've been involved in MLM since 1992 & I've seen a lot & heard even more, but by far the most destructive thing I've heard is that MLM is different from traditional business.
That couldn't be further from the truth: At the core business is business. A person has a need or want & our business can help them obtain that need or want. As a business owner we have to position ourselves to be the company that people who need what we have can find us when they're ready to buy.
How are people gonna know that if they don't know you're in business? Fact: people buy from people they:
- Know
- Like
- Trust
We received referrals from people who knew us liked us & trusted us and our business grew. Who were those early adaptors? My parents' friends, our collective family, and later my wife's friends & family became the catalyst for new clients.
Of course you're going to need more people then your friends & family and many of them aren't even going to join you, much less support you, but some of them might. A couple may even turn you on to some sharp people they know, but it'll never happen if you don't put them on a list & invite them to see what you have, what you're doing & who you're doing it with. Maybe your credibility is shot like mine was 20 years ago, but if you give your people the opportunity to see who you're associating with today, they might start to think (like they did about me), "there may be some hope for them yet."
In any event, my experience is not to fall for the "you don't have to bother your friends or family with this" line. My parents are in our organization, so is my aunt & my niece. My Mother in-law, before she passed, was a long time client and great referral agent. The same way it worked for our printing company, is the same way it's working for our network marketing company. Now we do make connections & build relationships with people we've never known before, but much of that confidence came from working our friends & family list first.
If your sponsor suggests you make a list, make that list; if they suggest a Private Business Reception for your close friends & family, have that PBR; in short, you never know where your next leader is going to come from, so why cut off any avenues that lead to you? I'm jus' sayin'…
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