Warm Vs Cold Market
So by now you have been in business for a while and you have started building your list of people you know - you probably think you have finished it. Pro tip - you haven't, not by a long shot but thats another post. There are many ways to build your list so we will cover that in a separate post.
Your list will be divided into two sections, or at least it should be. These are warm market and cold market, now people will argue that there is some grey area between the two and they would be right but it is best to keep things simple where you can.
Put simply your warm market is people you already know and your cold market is people you don't. So all your friends and family and even your Facebook friends to some extent are your warm market, all the people you haven't met yet are cold. This could be people you meet at a stall or people who respond to a Facebook post that you didn't have a previous connection with before then.
So how do you approach each?
Well when it comes to your warm market, these are the people who I assume you want to remain in your life so the last thing you want to do is hound them with messages about your amazing product and/or opportunity. That's not to say you shouldn't mention it to them, just that you need to be a bit more careful about how you do it. These are the type of people you may want to ask to try a product for you for feedback, rather than try to sell to them. That seems counter-productive when your goal is to sell products but trust me it's a valid sales tactic and one that goes a long way with warm market prospects.
There is no harm in telling your friends about this new thing you are doing or this new product you are trying, but thats where you need to stop unless they ask you for more information. Your warm market will often come to you in the end. You can of course prospect your warm market but you need to do it in a way that is individual to them and its maybe something you don't want to rush into. I never even told anyone who would be considered warm market for me that I had started in Network Marketing for about a year, because I was too scared of what they would think of me! Now the way I did it is completely wrong too - you should be proud of who you are and what you are doing, I am simply mentioning it to show that you don't need to rely on your warm market - no matter what your upline tells you!
Now cold market is what many people struggle with, heck most of us are terrified of the idea of reaching out to a total stranger with our product or opportunity. I used to be so terrified, I never sent a single message - sure I would get in touch with people who had interacted with me on Facebook or wherever but I never made the first move. I was lucky because I had a product that I could sell at stalls and it turned out I was pretty good at them so I sold a reasonable amount of product that way. I had managed to get my warm market into a facebook group by posting about it on my wall (again, another post on this at some point) and I got some orders through that, but I never directly approached my warm market either.
So what happened is basically nothing! I went to stalls and I did ok in fact I made my first promotion in VBM within my first month, but it was a sales target only to get that, I didn't need a team. Now I did manage to get 2 team members, one by pure accident actually. She was starting up her own business basically selling a lot of the items I was, to me it made more sense for her to join my team and sell the same thing without the trouble of making items herself, she agreed joined my team and never sold a single thing! The other girl responded to an ad I posted, she was the only one who responded and she did make some sales in that first month but then went on to do absolutely nothing for a while before leaving the company. It doesn't seem so cool that I made my first promotion in less than a month now does it?
So how do you reach out to cold market prospects? Now I do not claim to be an expert here by any stretch of the imagination, in fact it is something I still struggle with although I am getting so much better. I highly recommend you check out Ray and Jessica Higdon for advice here, they have plenty of free trainings available and you can follow them on Facebook too! What they teach is about not being attached to the outcome, instead be attached to the activity. Basically you have no control over how people will react to you or your message, but you can control how many messages you send. The more messages you send the more chance you have of someone being interested in hearing more.
If you follow Ray and Jessica you will also learn how to reach out to people so I am not going to go over it here as I would basically just be stealing their idea and as a former writer (I used to do a lot of content writing and editing in the early days of the internet when the money was still there) I don't think there is anything I hate more then plagiarism.
I hope you are enjoying your Network Marketing journey as much as I am. I will be back tomorrow with another post and I will also give you that update on where I am currently that I promised.
Your list will be divided into two sections, or at least it should be. These are warm market and cold market, now people will argue that there is some grey area between the two and they would be right but it is best to keep things simple where you can.
Put simply your warm market is people you already know and your cold market is people you don't. So all your friends and family and even your Facebook friends to some extent are your warm market, all the people you haven't met yet are cold. This could be people you meet at a stall or people who respond to a Facebook post that you didn't have a previous connection with before then.
So how do you approach each?
Well when it comes to your warm market, these are the people who I assume you want to remain in your life so the last thing you want to do is hound them with messages about your amazing product and/or opportunity. That's not to say you shouldn't mention it to them, just that you need to be a bit more careful about how you do it. These are the type of people you may want to ask to try a product for you for feedback, rather than try to sell to them. That seems counter-productive when your goal is to sell products but trust me it's a valid sales tactic and one that goes a long way with warm market prospects.
There is no harm in telling your friends about this new thing you are doing or this new product you are trying, but thats where you need to stop unless they ask you for more information. Your warm market will often come to you in the end. You can of course prospect your warm market but you need to do it in a way that is individual to them and its maybe something you don't want to rush into. I never even told anyone who would be considered warm market for me that I had started in Network Marketing for about a year, because I was too scared of what they would think of me! Now the way I did it is completely wrong too - you should be proud of who you are and what you are doing, I am simply mentioning it to show that you don't need to rely on your warm market - no matter what your upline tells you!
Now cold market is what many people struggle with, heck most of us are terrified of the idea of reaching out to a total stranger with our product or opportunity. I used to be so terrified, I never sent a single message - sure I would get in touch with people who had interacted with me on Facebook or wherever but I never made the first move. I was lucky because I had a product that I could sell at stalls and it turned out I was pretty good at them so I sold a reasonable amount of product that way. I had managed to get my warm market into a facebook group by posting about it on my wall (again, another post on this at some point) and I got some orders through that, but I never directly approached my warm market either.
So what happened is basically nothing! I went to stalls and I did ok in fact I made my first promotion in VBM within my first month, but it was a sales target only to get that, I didn't need a team. Now I did manage to get 2 team members, one by pure accident actually. She was starting up her own business basically selling a lot of the items I was, to me it made more sense for her to join my team and sell the same thing without the trouble of making items herself, she agreed joined my team and never sold a single thing! The other girl responded to an ad I posted, she was the only one who responded and she did make some sales in that first month but then went on to do absolutely nothing for a while before leaving the company. It doesn't seem so cool that I made my first promotion in less than a month now does it?
So how do you reach out to cold market prospects? Now I do not claim to be an expert here by any stretch of the imagination, in fact it is something I still struggle with although I am getting so much better. I highly recommend you check out Ray and Jessica Higdon for advice here, they have plenty of free trainings available and you can follow them on Facebook too! What they teach is about not being attached to the outcome, instead be attached to the activity. Basically you have no control over how people will react to you or your message, but you can control how many messages you send. The more messages you send the more chance you have of someone being interested in hearing more.
If you follow Ray and Jessica you will also learn how to reach out to people so I am not going to go over it here as I would basically just be stealing their idea and as a former writer (I used to do a lot of content writing and editing in the early days of the internet when the money was still there) I don't think there is anything I hate more then plagiarism.
I hope you are enjoying your Network Marketing journey as much as I am. I will be back tomorrow with another post and I will also give you that update on where I am currently that I promised.
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