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own communication. You are well on your way to success when you begin to prune, clip, and reshape your daily communication. If you are a victim of other people’s attitudes, distractions, excuses, and body language, then you are destined to sacrifice your better future. So many people blame others for their circumstances. We have all done it. You can enter every circumstance and say, “I made that happen!” Good or bad, it will support your growth. You won’t have to wallow in the mess. Just acknowledge it, clean it up, and try again.
In any partnership, the two people have a dynamic impact on each other’s destiny. They modify behaviors, which modify actions, which cause different results. Any small change in behavior on one person’s part affects the other. It is the yin and the yang of personal interaction, and you can impact your own destiny in a very simple manner.
If you wake up in the morning and you have a bad attitude or something happens during your day that changes your productive state of mind, you can change it very simply. If you are unhappy, distracted, or a little frustrated with your partner, child, or another employee or distributor, start singing or humming your favorite song. Only one of two things will happen— you will begin feeling great quickly or you will stop singing.
Posturing is your ability to take control of the direction. You are not always in control of the outcome, but you can modify the direction of a conversation over a day or in a business cycle or quarter. How you respond to each action is posturing. Do people know you are upset, interested, successful, talented, or broke? How do they know? Poker is a great example of a game where your posture is often dictated by your true vision. How powerful, emotional, important is your true vision? Does it drive you, guide you, and inspire you? If it doesn’t, it’s not your true vision for your life.
HOW LONG IS YOUR PERSPECTIVE?
The great Chinese warrior, leader, and philosopher, Sun Tzu believed that whoever has the longest-term perspective wins the battle. The battle is for your mind, your vision, your happiness, and your daily life. What is your true vision? How far away does it look to you? If your true vision is near, people tend to have momentum, excitement, productivity, and the ability to attract success. If it feels far away, people tend to be depressed, frustrated, angry, and resentful, and they repel any opportunity to make progress.
Most people’s fundamental communication styles are forged by the age of 6. It takes a conscious and courageous effort to unlearn some often misunderstood comments or nonverbal mannerisms that communicate about what we think and believe. This powerful communication transcends the phone lines as well. People can hear your tone, your attitude, and your belief. This
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happens whether or not you are aware of it, like gravity. You must control and protect your vision, for it powers your posture. It is your battery, and only you can recharge you.
People say things, we interpret them, and this interpretation changes our own posture, which will affect our very next communication. Posture is controlling your next communication in spite of what you might interpret. We have all heard the commercial that says never let them see you sweat. Network marketing has many of those moments, especially in the first few weeks of getting started. If you have been involved for three to six months, people expect results. If you have been involved for two to three years, people expect great results or there is a diminished likelihood that they will join you. In those cases, they are looking at your attitude, what you have learned, and what other benefits you have gained. Friends, vacations, free time, education, and a great product experience all add to your posture.
NETWORK MARKETING SALES—
THE ULTIMATE POSTURING
It is totally within your power to control the circumstances and the selling environment in which you operate. It all comes down to value. What is the value equation? What is a potential buyer’s reason to take action? Why would someone want what you are selling? This may differ from why you think they want it. How effective are you at offering your products, services, or income opportunity without being attached to the outcome? You need to be completely isolated from the selling process while at the same time being in the middle of it.
Let’s say you are offering cakes, pies, and brownies at a bake sale. Someone is thinking about buying something. They look over the goods and walk away. Are your feelings hurt? Probably not. But what if you baked everything and the money was going to pay for something important in your life? You might then put out quite an effort to sell them something. People would sense your desire to sell your goods. This pressure might work with baked goods but not with more costly items and certainly not with your network marketing opportunity.
People can feel your need to sell them if your posture is off. If they can feel your need to sell more than they can feel their desire for your product or service, you will have a difficult time. Conversely, if they feel the need for and value of your product and service and notice that you really don’t need their sale because lots of people are buying, they’ll want to be a part of the story. If everyone thinks an opportunity is fun, simple, and profitable, they will want to join. If they think that you will work your business and would succeed
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without them, they will be more likely to join the crusade. People usually don’t want to be involved with something if they perceive that others have little interest in it.
This is where posture comes in. Knowing it is just a matter of time before people will buy, join, and sell your opportunity gives you better posture. Don’t give people such an easy opportunity to reject you. One of the biggest reasons people do not join network marketing opportunities is because they fear rejection. If we can teach them to have a different perspective on rejection, attracting them to us will be that much easier.
PROCESS IS THE DIRTY WORK
Process is necessary in order to fully accomplish a desired goal. If you have a solid posture and perspective while you are waiting out the time line of process, you are well on your way. Process is a function of action and time. People hate process because they want instant gratification. If you learn to love it or at least embrace its power in your life, than success is just a series of actions away. This is often the toughest lesson for new network marketers to learn. Most quit before they reap the benefits of implementing the process.
Give yourself time to learn the process. No matter what the subject, it takes time to accomplish a result. Although you may get lucky from time to time in some pursuits, in building a network you will not fall far from your level of competency and enthusiasm when all is measured and rewarded. Consider the processes in your life. What does it take to make them successful? How many years must you learn, struggle, and relearn to master any of them? Success takes time.
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Education is a process. Friendship is a process. Rejection is a process.
Communication is a process.
Saving, spending, and investing are a process. Sales and recruiting are affected by process. Cash flow and momentum are effects of process. Happiness and sadness are effects of process. Success and failure are the effects of process.
Network marketing is also a process. You must understand that success results when those you introduce believe in the process long enough to do what it takes to introduce others who do likewise. The challenge with
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network marketing is that it usually involves working with a very undertrained sales force. The majority of successful people in network marketing did not have any sales background when they began. They treated it like a profession from the beginning and created a professional income. To be successful, you must learn the process, understand the posture, and have a solid perspective over time to develop a sizable and profitable organization.
SALES AS A PROFESSION
Sales is the process of providing value for a price. The more value that is created for the particular offering, the easier it will be to generate the sale. One of the keys to being a successful sales professional is to offer greater value than the cost. The more value you offer, the higher the likelihood people will want to buy. That is why the world is obsessed with the word free. The Internet is loaded with free promotions—free samples, free quotes, free food, and the like. People have been conditioned to bargain hunt, and there is no greater bargain than free!
Consider how you can use the value equation the next time you sell something in your network marketing organization. What extraordinary value can you offer—more training, more products, tickets to your company’s next event, a free dinner? Look at how you can increase the value. A great idea that has worked for many of my successful network marketing friends is they agree to send 10 to 20 introduction packages out on their prospects’ behalf if they agree to join at a certain level. Come in at the $500 level and I will do this. Come in for $200 and I will do that. Figure out the value equation and make your prospects a compelling offer.
ACTIVITY BEATS ATTITUDE
A bad attitude with good activity wins over a good attitude with no activity. I know a great number of nice, talented, and motivated people in network marketing who make absolutely no money! Why? No activity! This is simple stuff. I also have a few friends who are very grumpy, short with people on the phone, busy, and rarely return phone calls, and they make from $250,000 to $900,000 a year in this industry. Why? High levels of activity. They only focus on working with the willing. They don’t talk long on the phone, but they talk with lots of people. Activity is the process, the dirty work in the network marketing business. It all comes down to repeating the right steps every day. If one commits to consistent daily action, success will follow. Imagine what combining a great attitude with massive action will accomplish!