Are you using these forbidden words while prospecting?

You shouldn’t be in convincing mode before the business presentation even happens

Another issue, along with using the forbidden words while prospecting, is trying to hype up or convince someone how amazing your business is before they even see a presentation. Certainly you’ll want to be excited while sharing your home business, but you don’t need to fully try and explain your business before you show it to someone.

Have you ever had someone try and explain a movie before you saw it and it either didn’t make sense or they ruined the best parts or revealed huge spoilers? Well this is what happens when you try and explain your business in a few sentences or try and hype up what it really is.

There’s definitely a right way and a wrong way to explain your business, but in most cases less is more. When you are starting with your warm market, or close contacts, it’s easier to say less and still get them to see the presentation.

Again the idea isn’t to try and mislead people in any way, but rather to find out if they are open and then sharing the information so they don’t pre-judge the opportunity before they actually see it.

This means you might just say something along the lines of, “I’m working on a new project and I thought of you, when would you have about 20 minutes that you could hop on the phone and computer so I can get your opinion on it?” or “I’ve got something you gotta see! I’m coming over you gotta check this out!” or “If I could show you a way to spend more time with your kids, would you be open to checking it out?”

Key words to avoid while prospecting for your home business

You’ll want to avoid things like presentation, meeting, business opportunity, network marketing, mlm, few key people, couple of sharp people, like minded individuals to name a few. Again it’s not that you are trying to hide anything or trick people into your business, but often people have preconceived notions about the home business industry or have been approached poorly in the past about a business opportunity.

This can cause your potential customer or potential business partner to blow you off, not show up, or say they aren’t interested, when they might actually love your business and get started if they saw it in the proper fashion.

Again don’t tell someone you are having a football party and spring a presentation on them in half time, or invite them over for dinner then force them to see a presentation instead.

You can still do something similar, without having to trick them into anything. For example you could say, “Hey Tom, I’m having a football party tonight and you should totally come! Also I’m working on a new project that I think could potentially be a way that you could get that boat you’ve been wanting to get, so why don’t you come like 20 minutes before they game so I can run that by you as well. Bring some ice too if you would as we didn’t have time to pick it up before the game starts.”

It’s totally acceptable to combine your business with fun activities but just simply have the integrity to let your friend know you have an idea to run by them so they aren’t baited and switched with your business presentation.

What if the person refuses to look at what you are doing because you won’t explain your business in advance?

Another key concept to remember when you are building your network marketing business is that you are sorting, not selling when you are building an organization. If you have to convince, and force people to join your business you are going to have to convince them to work it as well.

I’m sure you want to be a business owner and not a baby sitter, so focus on finding those who are willing and open and excited about doing your business and not trying to convince everyone even if they aren’t a good fit.

From time to time you might run into someone who will refuse to meet with you to see what you have unless you explain it to them in advance. There are a few options in this scenario.

Again you are sorting not selling, so if someone refuses to see what you have and wants you to half explain it, that prospect probably isn’t a good fit anyway. So you can take away the opportunity from them at that point. You might say something like, “I can totally appreciate that you want to know exactly what I’m talking about and if I could have explained everything in a sentence or two I already would have. However it would be easiest to set up a time to walk you through it or grab coffee and go through the details rather than trying to half explain it through texting. If there was a more efficient way to do it I would have suggested that instead. So that would be the next step and we can figure out a time to do that or not, I just figured I’d take a chance on you and at least throw it out there.”

Another option which can have you lose some prospects, but at the same time highly qualify those who do decide to move forward is to talk about the problems your business solves. For example let’s say you market nutrition or weight loss, you might say something like, “Well you know how most people struggle to keep the weight off after 40? Well what we do is help people make simple lifestyle changes to help them get the nutrition they need and keep the weight off without having to spend hours in the gym.”

Speak to some kind of potential pain your prospect might have and share how your business could be a solution for that and then suggest setting up a time to run through everything. Another example could be something like, “I’m sure you know how the economy has been pretty sluggish lately and most people are looking for a better way to prepare for retirement? Well what we do is help people build another stream of income that’s flexible around their schedules to help them have more freedom and options when they do decide to retire. If that sounds like something you would be open to, the next step would be that call/meet up I suggested to run through everything and see if it looks like a fit on both sides for us.”

If you lose someone with that few sentence speaking to a potential issue in their life and how you could solve it, well your business probably wasn’t a fit for them either way. You don’t want to pre-judge people and not share your business with them, but it’s certainly OK to pre-sort them in advance so you don’t waste either of your times.

Most people struggle in their business because they spend too much time with the wrong people, but when you invite correctly you will have many more people checking out your presentation with an open mind, rather than trying to convince people who aren’t interested.