Direct Selling vs The Chewy Business
“Phffftttt!…. What the $@# is this?” my victim whines, spitting the contents from their mouth…
“Coffee.” I dryly state.
“Well that is the worst coffee I EVER had!!!… Do you have something ELSE I can drink to get rid of this taste!” laments the victim. “What was in THAT!?”
“hmmmm… let’s see water… and coffee grains… yep that’s all.” tilting my head curiously at the unsuspecting pupil, “Why?”
“… it was nasty… and… chewy…?” my victim hesitantly discloses.
“Oh! That!… I am out of coffee filters so I just threw some toilet paper in there instead.” I respond matter-of-factly.
“TOLIET PAPER!? What are you thinking!?!”
“I thought proper filtering didn’t matter to you… I have seen some of the people you have been ‘working’ with”…
*******
Direct Selling is about proper filtering. Just like you wouldn’t use toilet paper to filter your coffee (I hope!) you don’t want just ANYONE in your business.
Yet, I see rookie direct sellers completely disregard established filtering processes. Your businiess opportunity, more than likely, has a system in place to assist in properly identifying customers and potential downline…
Understand you are IN BUSINESS… your goal is to build relationships with people you can help… whether through your products, services or through your opportunity itself.
Understand there ARE people willing to PAY for your products and services or willing to PAY to take advantage of a business opportunity!
Rookie Direct Sellers are really good at convincing themselves that they “got one”… when in reality… they are about to waste their time, waste their resources and become discouraged and possibly one of the “I was in that…it doesn’t work” statistics… All because they like their business… chewy.
Direct Selling is work, but you can leverage long-term profits by properly leveraging relationships and make it an enjoyable, enriching experience. Simply by filtering your list of people, recognizing those looking to buy, and those looking for a business opportunitiy from those that aren’t willing to spend money or do anywork. Be honest with them and honest with yourself and avoid having a chewy business.
Eileen O'Neill says:
Mark, great advice for any business endeavor – unless, that is, your business IS working with “chewy” people!
Eileen
ESL: A Business?
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8th May 2010 at 12:19 am
Rob Northrup says:
Mark,
One of the hardest things for many sales people is disqualification:
in order to be really productive and effective you need to be able to perform what I call sales triage. this means analyzing incoming leads and opportunities and prioritizing them,
Some of them will left to die.
Seize the Day,
Rob
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8th May 2010 at 8:42 am
Steve Chambers says:
Everyone in sales and business needs to realize that they are not in the making friends business, they are in business to sell things to people for money. Sometimes we forget this. Choose and qualify your customers. This is a good thing.
Steve Chambers
Body Language Expert
8th May 2010 at 9:20 am
Michael D Walker says:
I like your example and — speaking from my own experiences — i think a lot of this problem stems from poor training. I’ve had people recruit me like crazy to join their downline but as soon as they got my money & added me, I never heard from them again & received no training whatsoever—so you wind up desperate to get someone in your downline & it never leads to anything good.
Had there been someone around to train how to filter prospects, that would eliminate a lot of these problems, I think.
Michael
The Success Secrets
8th May 2010 at 3:33 pm
Tim Van Milligan says:
There are a lot of filters that I use to weed out the customers I know will be time wasters. The first one is “price objections.” If they as for a special discount because of “who they are”, I know with 90% confidence that they are always going to be like this in the future. I tell them that they can find a better price with one of my competitors. Got to let them go.
Tim Van Milligan, helping you Make Money Online, God’s Way!
8th May 2010 at 4:20 pm
Mike Norris says:
I agree you have to use filters to filter out potential bad customers. You also need to figure out how to leverage your relationships.
Mike
http://www.ColumbiaSafetyProducts.com
8th May 2010 at 7:42 pm
bryan says:
Solid advice..often when we begin in sales we want anyone to say yes…often the ones we try the hardest to convince end up being the worst people to work with.
8th May 2010 at 10:51 pm
Lisa McLellan says:
I love the example you used to make your point! LOL can’t imagine using toilet paper as a coffee filter.
When you want so badly to make a sale, I can see it being hard to be thinking about building a relationship instead of thinking just about making the sale.
Lisa McLellan
Babysitting Services, Nanny Services, and Nanny agencies
8th May 2010 at 8:06 pm