Stephan Schiffman
“Stop spinning your wheels with prospects that won’t commit.”
Ron Taylor
Just before President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, he challenged the people of America to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. During that speech he stated: “We choose to go to the moon, not because it is easy, but because it is difficult.” And that folks, is what it means to be an American, and Kennedy knew it.
Americans love a challenge. It’s in our blood. Challenge yourself today. Sit down at the kitchen table and write a set of definitive goals. Plan a strategy for achieving those goals, and then do something productive towards achieving that goal before going to bed tonight.
Embrace a challenge, and challenge
will brighten your life.
Unless you challenge yourself, you will wither on the vine, like a tree separated from its roots. The human mind needs a challenge to pressure it into doing those tasks it finds disruptive to a naturally pleasant state of mental laziness. That is, if you’re not careful you will spend your entire life watching sitcoms and wondering what’s for dinner.
Challenge yourself. Demand more from yourself. Challenge yourself to give the network marketing business at least one year of concerted effort. Dedicate ten to fifteen hours per week to build the business, talk to at least two people per day about the opportunity, and attend every weekly opportunity meeting with at least one guest.
If you will challenge yourself, success will be yours. There are people in this world who have experienced bad things, made grievous business errors, and lost fortunes due to deals gone badly. In the course of discussing the opportunity with your prospects, you’re going to come across these people. They’ll be gun shy, and very negative about getting involved in a business of any sort again. Most of these people may be hopelessly lost in thrashing themselves for past mistakes, but a few may come around with a little coaching.
One of the first points you can make to a prospect in this category is the low start up cost. In network marketing you will not be asking them to buy thousands of dollars worth of product, or to invest in a fancy piece of equipment. Secondly, you can use the story below to illustrate how costly experience should be considered education, not defeat.
One day a young executive for IBM made a mistake, costing the company over one million dollars in expenses. Thinking the worst, he approached Tom Watson, the founder of IBM, and said, “I guess I’m fired.” Tom Watson is reported to have answered, “Are you kidding, I just spent a million dollars on your education.”
A bad experience does not
have to spell the end of your dreams.
The moral of the story is this: just because you’ve had a bad experience, or tried and failed in another business, does not mean it is the end of the world. Learn from the mistakes of your past and build on them. You’ve paid dearly for those errors. Don’t waste them.
Successful people have often failed more often than failures. Confused?Failures are not people who have failed, but people who have ceased to try. They have given up on self-improvement, and disregard the power of goal setting and the pursuit of a worthwhile objective.
Successful people are not immune to failure, but rather than see failure as a setback, they see it as an opportunity to try something again, hopefully in a different manner. The old saying “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again,” is apt advice for the network marketing entrepreneur.
Where there is effort, no failureThe network marketing industry rewards perseverance with organizational growth and increased incomes, but swallows quitters whole. You cannot expect to get ahead in this business by quitting. Your personal challenge is to stay motivated. Keep a firm grasp on the fire you felt after your first opportunity meeting. Without it, the rejection and setbacks of this business will discourage you to the point of quitting.
The knowledge that the rewards of success are worth the effort will compel you to pursue whatever ethical means, to overcome the most burdensome obstacles, and to outlast the most stubborn resisters to realize your dreams. When perseverance in the face of adversity becomes your mantra, success cannot be denied.
Take a look at the Great Pyramids of Giza in Egypt. Can you imagine a project of this magnitude being completed overnight? Not hardly. It took years of torturous (and slave) labor to stack thousands of individually cut stones into the neat pyramidal shapes we see today. Likewise, success can be yours if you’ll tough it out and pile small successes atop one another, like an Egyptian building a pyramid.
It’s human nature to avoid work and challenge. As I’ve stated before, you must jolt your system, and force it out of its comfort zone.
Are you reluctant to host an opportunity meeting? Volunteer to host a meeting. Even if you don’t have any prospects to invite, do it. Ask your sponsor to have other people in his downline to invite people to your opportunity meeting. Do the meeting. Write the itinerary for your meeting below:
Set a date for your meeting:In the corporate world, businesses pay big bucks for key employees to hold brainstorming sessions to dream up new marketing plans, develop new product ideas, and share methods of meeting customer prospects. Have a private brainstorming session with your sponsor. List ten ways you could possibly meet new prospects outside your current sphere of influence (family and friends):