Are You Prepared to Do Business?

Here's a quick story about being prepared.Yesterday morning when I checked my email, I saw that my local supermarket was having a special this week on steak. Since it was a beautiful, warm, sunny day I knew my husband would be up for grilling. I went to the store to buy some steaks. Normally, whatever type of meat is on sale that week has been packaged and put into the self-serve case. Occasionally, it is in the display case. Neither was true yesterday! There was no steak at all in the self-serve area and the display case was completely empty and being cleaned, something I think they should do while they are closed!I suppose they thought since it was Easter, people already had plans and they wouldn't get many shoppers. But I saw plenty of people in the store and not everyone has big plans for that day. I asked about the steak and they said it would be 15 minutes before they could even cut any. I left and came back 2 hours later thinking the case would now be full. It was still empty, and I had to wait for them to cut my steaks!I wonder how much business they lost from people who didn't even ask?To me, being prepared in network marketing means having the following on hand:Ice-breaker statements
Business cards
Product flyers
Product samples if applicable
Product or service testimonials
3-way calling on your phone
1-2 memorized story about your businessI am astonished when I attend a business mixer and someone doesn't have enough cards with them. It happens frequently!Ice breaker statements should always be benefit statements. Tom "Big Al" Schreiter has a course on CD to help you come up with these and Bob Burg provides examples in his books as well. These are what you use to answer the question, "what do you do?" or "what is your business?"After you have a relationship built with someone and they find out what you do, they might be open to trying your products. You can do a raffle give-away at a meeting or mixer too. Many companies do not make it easy to sample their products unless you attend a "home party" and most people avoid those because they fear the "hard sell" approach. At a minimum you should be able to provide information about your product, on paper or via the website, to anyone who is interested.Testimonials can be your own or someone else's. You can set an appointment for a 3-way call for either product or business testimonials. The point is, you need to know who to contact to get that set up quickly, and they need to be reliable. Having a third party validate your story is always valuable no matter how experienced you are.Your short business story is to be used ONLY when someone wants to hear more! It should explain just the basics of what network marketing entails and the niche your company is in.If you are new to MLM you might not have this all ready, but I encourage you to become prepared.If you are not new, and you are not prepared, ask yourself why. Do you:Balk at the price of business cards or keep forgetting to order them?
Always forget to bring the cards or have the product flyers with you
Hesitate to follow-up with people
Keep putting off getting 3-way calling set up
Feel guilty asking your upline to do a 3-wayIf any of this sounds like you, perhaps you are actually afraid of success! If that's true, get started on self development. You need to fix the procrastination or you won't get the success you desire!