Wednesday, 25 November 2009

Building your list

I think we’d all agree that great people are the foundation on which all successful companies are built. But, how do you find them? People are busy, people are sceptical, people are stressed out. How do you find a way for people to look close enough at the business opportunity to get involved?
One of the most valuable tools in building your business is your list of contacts. What I call your personal database. The first thing we’re going to do and what we’ll ask everyone in your organization to do is to make a list of at least 100 contacts.Why are 100 contacts important?
1. It will give you something to work on personally
2. Your organization will tend to do what you did
3. We all have the capacity to remember. If we empty our minds on paper, it helps to remember more. Your subconscious is full of people.
You’ll find that the list will continue to grow once you begin to write it down.Anyone who has not joined the business yet counts. No pre-judging. Just empty your brains on paper. Start with your existing lists. When you finish with that, a great approach is to grab any yellow pages and to just go through the categories in the front. It’s very hard to go through that without coming up with a bunch more names.
Once you get your list, here’s what you need to do. First, qualify the people. When you’re writing the people down, you’re not to pre-judge them. After you write them down it is helpful to grade them. I’m not saying we won’t contact people with a lower score. I’m saying you can use this to contact the highest scoring people first.
Here’s a basic qualification system, it consists of 5 simple questions:
1. Do they have the financial ability to join your company? If they don’t have two farthings to rub together, contact them a bit later. If they have the financial ability to join, put a star next to their name.
2. Are they ambitious? If they are, put another star by their name. After these two questions, you should have 3 categories of people on your list. The “no star” people, the “1 star” people and the “2 star” people.
3. Do they act like they want more out of life? If so, give them a star.
4. Are they dissatisfied with some aspect of their life, to the point that they would be willing to do something to change it? If so, give them a star.
5. And do they have a good self-image? If they do, give them a star.
Once you go through these 5 questions, all you have to do is start by contacting the 5 star people first, then the 4 star, then the 3 star, 2 star, 1 star and finally the no stars.
Here’s how it works? You’re going to have some number of 5 and 4 star people on your list. Those are who I would consider to be class A prospects.You’re going to present the business opportunity to them until you get one person to say yes and join you. Once that happens, what is one of the first things you’re going to do with them? Right, you’re going to have them make their own list of 100 and grade that list.
Now, how many people do you have to talk to? Your 100 and their 100 for a total of 200. Some portion of those 200 are going to be 5 and 4 star people. Working together with your new recruit, you go through their 4 stars and above until you recruit just one more. What’s one of the first things you’re going to do with that person? Get their list of 100, grade the list and then the 3 of you can work on recruiting one of their 4 stars or above.
You now have 300 people to talk to from just 2 recruits. Your 100 and their 200.This process doesn’t ever have to stop. If you recruit 10 people, there is no reason not to have 1,000 people to talk to with a solid chunk of them sitting at the 4 star and above status.
Through this process, one of the things you’ll find is you’ll work better with other people’s contacts than you will with your own, 3rd party is just more powerful than 1st party.All of this works great unless you fall down. It’s up to you to start this process on your own. It’s up to you to make it part of your recruiting process and to help your new recruits understand why it’s so important for them to do also.
It’s up to you to overcome people’s reservations about contacting people they know. Some of those reservations include a lack of belief of the company’s products or opportunity, a lack of self-esteem, a fear of losing credibility, an embarrassment from prior failures, any number of things.One of the things you must show them is why it is in their best interest to make their list of 100, grade that list and begin to contact them with a systematic approach. Not just for the results that they’re going to get from doing that, but for what will happen when everyone in their organization does the same.
What’s the formula for financial independence again?
It’s in your ability to get a large group of people to do a few simple things over a consistent period of time. By doing that, you get leverage.
So, here’s your assignment. If you haven’t built your list, start one today, grade it. And begin to expose those people to your opportunity. If you’ve been around for a while and have already done that, I’d suggest you do it again. In addition, you need to use all of your existing leadership skill to convince everyone in your organization to do the same. If you do, you’re on your way to never running out of quality prospects to talk to and that’s a great feeling.

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