Network Marketing Online – Two Common Recruiting Tactics That Don’t Work

I’ve found over time that there are many techniques taught for building a network marketing business online that simply do not work. While you might manage to sponsor someone here and there using these methods, they will not serve you well if your goal is to build a strong and lasting residual income.

Network marketing online and offline have one thing in common for sure – the need to have a personal approach to working with your prospects. These old fashioned recruiting methods just don’t cut it. Avoid these like the plague.

Buying MLM Leads and Using Automated Recruiting Systems

This technique works like this. You join a business, and are instructed to set up an autoresponder with a series of messages aimed at recruiting people into your network marketing opportunity. The messages are usually pre-written for you, all you have to do is log in and set up the system.

Next, you buy leads and plug them into the system. The leads will be sold as “pre-qualified” or “fresh”, and supposedly they will have opted in to receive information about starting a home business. There are many reasons this does not work, but the main ones are:

• they usually don’t even know how they got on your list
• their addresses have been sold to dozens, or hundreds, of other network marketers
• this approach is expensive, and simply does not result in good quality prospects for a successful business

Guaranteed Downline Building Systems

You’ll see these from time to time. You sign up on the promise that the system will build your downline for you. A common practice is to use fear of loss to motivate you to pay whatever the sign up fee is. Here is how that works.

• you sign up for free and get in the system to “try it out”
• you start receiving emails telling you other people are signing up and being placed under you
• you are encouraged to pay your money and get in NOW, because if those who were placed under you buy in before you do, they will go under someone else

What happens in these deals is that lots of people sign up expecting something for nothing. The majority of the people who sign up free never pay the required fee to officially get involved and qualify for bonuses. The whole thing is automated and impersonal. More of a money game than anything else.

Network marketing is a people business. You can do much better by promoting yourself and your team first, your opportunity second. I will soon be posting a series about leadership and how to promote yourself and your network marketing business online.