There is one way to guarantee you succeed in network marketing no matter how you choose to run your business and it’s way simpler than you think. I just checked my email inbox and I received an email from a fellow network marketer looking for advice and the email read:
“I’ve been involved with my business for two weeks and I haven’t signed anyone up I don’t think this is going to work for me what should I do?”
This question gets to the heart of today’s discussion. Your expectations can kill your business without you even knowing it. When I see an email like this my typical first thought is:
- Should you have signed sponsored someone in your first two weeks?
- Who set that expectation?
Not saying that you can’t sign up 10 people into your business the first day you join, but in general if you are brand new to the industry and you’re just learning the ropes how can you set any expectation on how many people you should be signing up in a two week period?
At that point you really don’t have any basis for setting expectations. It’s hard as a new person to get a gauge for what you need to do to be successful and exactly what success means.
Here’s why?
When you first join a business you immediately look to the people that are leading the field in your chosen company and you see their results and you expect those results for yourself despite your newbie status. It’s just natural – we’re optimistic and simplistic in our thoughts. We tend to think that things happen easier and faster than they do in reality and we base our expectations on these not so realistic thoughts. When our results don’t meet these unrealistic expectation we think something is wrong.
- We get frustrated.
- We get confused.
- We get depressed.
- We get desperate.
I know this because it happened to me.
Now being more tenured in network marketing I see a completely different picture of what success is in this business is and it begins with setting proper expectations. When you’re new your expectations should be based on what you can track.
For example…How many of your mlm leads you can contact or how much traffic you can drive to your site. For instance, I know based on our companies compensation plan that if you can generate 100 leads in a month you will be successful over the long haul. I know this because I’ve tracked conversions in our business.
This information is HUGELY important to newbies on the team. Why? Because I can give them a realistic figure to shoot at from the start.
I say to everyone new in our business that if you can generate 3 leads a day you will be successful and that should be the focus in the beginning. Once you get a feel for the effort it takes to generate this response you’ll then have the data and experience needed to take the next step in expectation setting. Only after this can you move to expectations based on new enrollments to your team per month or per time period. Then after you’ve successfully met that expectation can you move to next step which is income.
You can say . . .
Based off of current enrollment into my team per time period I can expect to make X amount of money in X amount of time.
You see the process? That’s how it works. If you are new you can’t set expectations based off of what you THINK should happen. You can only realistically set expectations on what you KNOW will result from your actions. And you can only KNOW what will happen if you begin at the
beginning and not at the end.
Of course the goal is to generate a certain income level in your business . . . But if you miss setting the proper expectations that MUST come before creating that income you’re setting yourself up for a HUGE amount of frustration and disappointment.
Be wary in the expectations you set. Done properly you can guarantee your success, but done wrong and you will guarantee your failure.
