Are you telling your prospects and team what they want to hear or need to hear?
It may seem counter intuitive, but if you shouldn’t tell your team and prospects what they want to hear, you need to tell them what they need to hear.
Don’t be a “yes man” and only tell people what they want to hear
I struggled for a long time at building my business because I was so focused on trying to sell everyone I talked to and convince people who weren’t really interested in what I had.
Sometimes I’ll ask people who their target market is and they tell me everyone.
It may be true that everyone could use your products and benefit from them, and for getting customers you can certainly share your product with everyone, but “everyone” shouldn’t be your target market.
If you are trying to market and cater to everyone you are really marketing to no one.
This is especially true when you are prospecting and recruiting for new team members in your business. If you try and prospect and recruit anyone and everyone you will waste a lot of time talking to unqualified and uninterested people.
When you only tell people what they want to hear you get the wrong people
For example when I first got started I would have people ask me do they have to talk to their friends or family about the business if they joined.
There’s a couple things to think about with this. You can build a successful business without talking to your friends and family, but in most cases people come into a home business lacking the skills to build their business on cold market alone.
Many people who ask that question are asking that because maybe they tried something in the past and didn’t get proper training so they approached their friends and family incorrectly. It makes a big difference in results if you invite correctly vs incorrectly.
On top of that you can still learn to work with cold market, but they are much less forgiving. You will need a higher level skill set, and you will lack trust and rapport, so you will have to go through more numbers and get a lot more nos before you get a yes.
Most people come in with a get rich quick attitude, or at least think they will have to do a lot less work than is actually required. In most cases they cannot handle that level of rejection, and will quit on themselves before they are successful and get through their learning curve.
That’s why I now would suggest starting with warm market as in most cases you can build that quicker and get better results while you are learning the skills to approach cold market prospects.
When I used to just tell people what they wanted to hear, and not come full circle explaining the philosophy behind the answer to their question, I wasted a lot of time trying to convince someone who wasn’t really a good fit for the business to begin with. If they did get started, after one or two nos or struggling with cold market initially, they often quit.
Nothing is more frustrating than spending hours working with and training someone who flakes out and quits after a few nos. It’s certainly part of building the business, but if you are qualifying who you are even presenting to and signing up in the first place you can avoid this issue more often.
An example of why telling people what they need to hear will cause the right people to move:
A lot of the time you’ll have new team members who might be whiny, or frustrated with their results. In most cases this happens because they aren’t being teachable and aren’t following the system.
Now you could try and sugar coat things and just tell them to keep going it’s all going to work out, or those weren’t the right people, or forget talking to the rest of your warm market, they won’t join, or that there is some magic bullet they can use that will be easier, but in most cases that’s not what the person needs to hear or do to be successful.
Usually I’ll ask people if they want me to tell them what they want to hear and have me sugar coat things or if I should be direct and tell them what it actually takes to be successful. In most cases the right people you want to work with will say tell them the direct version.
For example I often run into people who are struggling and not getting results and my first suggestion is always to get to the next training event. Why? Several reasons.
One is that people who are successful do different things and say different things and have a different mindset than what unsuccessful people do.
If they aren’t succeeding or are struggling they need more training to either build more belief in themselves or the business, learn a skill set they don’t have yet, or improve their mindset, so they are thinking and taking actions like the successful people are.
Now in most cases that’s not what they want to hear, but it’s what they need to hear. It’s probably not in their comfort zone or they need to invest in themselves or get off work, or whatever other obstacles they have in their mind, but if they figure it out it’s worth it.
The “wrong people” or people you don’t want to spend your energy on, will always become full of excuses when you call them out or tell them what they need to hear rather then what they want to hear. This is a good indication to you to simply move on.
Point them in the right direction, and what they can do to be successful, but don’t try and force them to be successful as it will only waste your time and cause frustration for yourself. As the old saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink.
You need to work where you are deserved and not where you are needed. The main reason people don’t succeed is that they spend way to much time talking to the wrong people. That can include people who have started in your team as well.
When you focus on telling people what they need to hear and not what they want to hear you can sort out the people who will just suck your time and energy, and be able to focus on working with the right people.
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P.S. Do You Struggle With Objections? Are you Sick of Getting No’s while presenting your business? Check out my training on How to Overcome Objections in 7 Easy Steps
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