The Network Marketer as
Story Teller
At heart, you as a network marketer are first
and foremost a story-teller. Story-telling is one of the
oldest and most enduring selling techniques. When you tell a
story, you are teaching by example rather than through
direct precept, and you’ll find that this method impacts
people in a more powerful and subtle way than any direct
selling technique.
How does story-telling
work for you? Through the time-tested, proven technique of
testimonials. Every day advertisers bombard you with claims
about the wonders that certain products perform. And the
greatest selling tool they use—the proof that their “stuff
actually works”—is the testimonial. This is the direct
testimony of a third party (who, hopefully, has not been
compensated for their testimony).
You might begin by
discussing a particular product you’re selling. For example,
let’s say that it’s Acme Carpet Cleaner. You might begin a
conversation by discussing your spring cleaning that you
began last week. Every year you go through the same routine,
dusting, brushing and clearing out the attic. Then you
vacuum your carpet—but there’s a difficult stain that
refuses to budge. So you mentioned that you finally used the
perfect product to remove the stain.
Then you pause, for
dramatic effect.
Your curious listener,
impatient, finally queries, “What did you use to remove the
stain?”
That’s your entrance. You
mention Acme Carpet Cleaner and how effective a product it
is. Discuss how long you’ve been using it, and the wide
variety of purposes to which you’ve put it to use (it also
works on tough stains on automobile carpet mats, for
example). Pretty soon your listener is curious, and so you
ask if she’d like a sample bottle for free.
Most likely she won’t
refuse. Everyone loves that four-letter word “free”—but
what’s this about a sample bottle, she asks?
You casually mention that
you happen to be a distributor for Acme House Care Products.
That leads into a discussion of the work you do, how long
you’ve been selling, and what a fine line of House Care
Products that Acme sells. Soon you are explaining your
business to your prospect, and they might just want to work
with you.
Remember, you don’t have
to be a high-pressured sales-person to be a network
marketer. As a matter of fact, that type of selling—the kind
you hear about from traditional sales training, where you’re
taught things like “presumptive close,” and how to deal with
all types of objections—is practically useless from a
network marketing standpoint.
The reason is that you’re
not supposed to be engaged in an argument to distribute your
products. Either the products you’re selling perform as you
claim they do, or they don’t. There are no ifs, ands or buts
about it.
So you hand your friend a
free sample bottle of Acme Carpet Cleaner, and it works just
as you claimed. The next thing that happens is automatic.
She raves to her friends about the Acme product, and pretty
soon, she is “selling.”
That’s Network Marketing:
story-telling, from one friend to another.
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