This year marks 5 years since we entered the network marketing arena and our lives took a crazy detour into the world of entrepreneurship, deep personal development, and an insane amount of negative experiences that no human should have to endure...unfriended, ignored, rejected, laughed at, and hung-up on just to name a few.

The good news is that our story in this industry has a happy ending.

Our journey, however, was not without many fumbles, embarrassing moments and more prospecting mistakes than I care to share.   We hope our friends, family & the strangers we attempted to prospect have long forgotten the things we did. LOL

But here’s a few, so you have an idea…

Have you private messaged friends from high school with the agenda to share your product or opportunity with them. Oops, we have...and since there are 2 of us...it is twice as embarrassing.

Have you ever spammed your Facebook page with pictures of your products?” Doh! We have. 

And that’s about as much as I’ll reveal, because I’m starting to get really depressed remembering all of this right now. Ha ha ha…

The point is, I’m about to cast some heavy stones at some network marketers, but I just wanted to let ya’ll know that we've made mistakes too… but that doesn’t mean we should be going easy on those that are committing some MAJOR prospecting mistakes when recruiting with social media.

The Internet Never Forgets and It’s Ruining It for Everyone Else

​I once heard that success in business is all about ‘time’ and ‘place’. As a professional network marketer, I would add ‘message’ to the equation as well.

Unfortunately, network marketers today are being taught online prospecting methods, which include the wrong message, at the wrong time and most definitely in all the wrong places!

Here's the truth! 

There's a VERY fine line between recruiting with social media and spamming people. I’m sorry to say that most network marketers have been turned into human spam bots by their upline and company leaders...that was us.

‘Disposable distributors’ tasked with the job of spreading the word about their company’s products or opportunity, at the expense of the individual’s reputation and risking the suspension of their social media accounts.

Here's a couple examples of the WRONG WAY to prospect online...

Successful entrepreneurs and networkers alike eventually learn the true secret to success and it becomes the foundation upon which their entire prospecting, recruiting and business building strategy is founded.

The secret being...

"People don't care how much you know. Until they know how much you care. "Theodore Roosevelt"

The screenshots above are weak attempts from myself and other people recruiting with social media…people who haven’t yet figured out that building a business is not about tricking people or finding the right copy/paste FB messages to send to strangers.

It’s about actually caring about people, becoming a person of value and being someone uniquely positioned to help someone with their problems.

Anyone can copy and paste a message into the Private Message function on Facebook.

What sets you apart from the rest of the desperate reps hitting people’s inboxes with their new “ground floor” opportunities or cash programs?

Now this doesn’t mean, prospecting online doesn’t work. I know some very skilled recruiters who are excellent at online prospecting, but just like offline prospecting, they’ve devoted the time and effort to learn this very difficult skill and have mastered it. And if that’s the strategy you want to deploy, you need to do it right or else!

But if you’re still a little fuzzy on whether you are a spammer or not, here’s a guide of sorts…

Top 5 Warning Signs That Your Prospecting Efforts are Actually SPAM

1) Your first private message to a stranger on social media includes a link to join your opportunity.

2) You get angry replies via private messaging and/or you have been reported as a spammer.

3) You post links to your opportunity or website in the comments section of other people’s social media posts

4) You compulsively want to talk about your company or products, without anyone asking you to share.

Finally… this one is the most important one…

5) You engage in interactions online, with a hidden agenda, hoping to transition the topic to something that would get people interested in your opportunity, without caring about knowing the other person.

This last one for me is a big one but could also be controversial.

After all, #5 is the very definition of prospecting (online or offline), which even when done right… can still feel awkward, result in people getting angry at you and very un-leveraged, which is why we eventually decided to stop prospecting all together.

But here's the interesting thing…

“When We Stopped Prospecting People, Our Business Started Growing!”

I can’t tell you how relieved and at peace I felt, when we once again, were able to go out with our friends, visit a family member’s home, or be in a public place without having to think about prospecting anyone.

Just enjoying being normal again, was incredible.!  After 4 years of being taught  that “everyone was a prospect” and approaching every conversation with a hidden agenda, we were finally free!

That’s because it wasn’t until WE STOPPED prospecting, that our business actually started growing!

Weird, right?

At this point, you may be asking, “then how on earth did your business grow?”

Well before I answer that, I have to say that there are people who are very skilled prospectors and recruiters who completely disregard the issues I mentioned above.

They knowingly and without shame, approach every interaction with a stranger as a prospecting opportunity.

Getting yelled at or straight up ignored by prospects is no big deal, as long as some people say ‘yes.’

Click Here for my FREE Online Video Recruiting Series to learn how you can get people to come to you, ready to join you or buy what you have to offer, rejection free, instead of wasting your time having to chase them down.

The problem with prospecting in general, as it’s normally taught, is that the mindset going in, is still about what YOU want people to do and about manipulating people into doing what you want them to do.

In other words, it’s about YOU, not them.  And this is the part we hated.  We didn’t like that, but night after night, we still did it for a little while… until we did find a better way.

The More Leveraged Strategy, Which Won’t Make You Feel Like a Cheap Sales Man (or Woman)

Now, I am not trying to be high and mighty about all this prospecting stuff, because I’m not.

If it came down to feeding my family with ‘stone cold’ prospecting tactics or my kids starving, I choose stone cold prospecting every time, without remorse.

But the reason we were able to quit prospecting was because, with the help of some extraordinary mentors, we eventually discovered an online recruiting strategy, which…

Worked around our kids, jobs, and chaotic lives.  We were able to passively generate leads, customers and new reps – even when we were out having fun with friends and family.

(Hence why I didn’t have to worry about prospecting them!)

Rather than spending hours spamming or private messaging people on social media, we learned how to legitimately get Facebook and other networks to actually help me attract the people who are most interested in what I have to offer, using their ads platform! (i.e. going legit!)

In fact, every day lately, we’ve woke up to an email inbox full of notifications for new leads and commissions we earned while sleeping!

This strategy is called ‘attraction marketing’, which is an internet marketing strategy designed for network marketers and people in direct sales!

You see, if your business depends on you being on social media, sending private messages or commenting on people’s posts all day, you are NOT doing internet marketing… despite what you may have been led to believe.

Online prospecting and internet marketing are NOT the same thing!

Internet marketing is a passive strategy, which works, even when you are not.

If you want to learn how it works, the entire strategy I use is revealed in a FREE Online Recruiting Boot Camp available here.

You’ll also get more details about a book that our friend and mentor wrote, which goes into the nuts n’ bolts of my recruiting & selling formula.

Now if traditional prospecting online or offline is your thing and you want to stick to that, by all means, go for it.

There are many top trainers and earners in the industry that focus on cold market recruiting skills…

(And they do ‘attraction marketing’ too!)

For us, there was simply a certain way we wanted to live our lives and that was more important.

We would much rather make a ton of money in our business first, and then have our friends and family begging us to tell them more about it.

It’s much better than begging our friends and family to join a business which isn’t making any money.

Which would you prefer?

Exactly!

To your success!

Amy