Danni's Blog

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That was the subject line of an email I recently got from a colleague. She & I are in the same network marketing company and she’s been struggling to build her business.

If you’re in one, you know the drill. Start a names list & harass everyone you’ve ever met since birth, purchase opportunity leads and spend HOURS on the phone trying to call people who are magically never home to take your call, go to the mall and put fliers on cars, and/or strike up conversations with strangers in the hopes that you’ll find someone who’s looking for what you’re offering.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard there’s a better way. Mike Dillard and Anne Sieg turned the network marketing industry on its ears a few years ago with the Magnetic Sponsoring and Renegade systems. Well, my colleague had also heard of them, and had studied all the “free” materials she could by and on both of them and their systems. (I know, I know… I know what you’re thinking! But I’ll address the unrealistic expectations from what you can get “for free” on a later post.)

What was so confusing?

She wrote, “It seems to me that if you join their program—you are selling their material–not your business. I would really like to chat with someone who has actually used this stuff and see what they say–is it all hype?”

First let’s address the hype.

While the MLM industry is rife with it, what good does it do? It only hurts in the long run. It either backfires immediately because everyone can see through it, or it backfires later when people ask for refunds because they realize that what you’ve said isn’t true.

Secondly, there are way too many people who are having success building their own businesses with these products and systems for this to be just about making money for Mike & Ann.

The Magnetic Sponsoring & Renegade systems are:

1. training systems for you & your new enrollees
2. to learn internet marketing,
3. to learn how to market YOUR business online,
4. to generate your own high quality prospects,
5. and to provide a means to monetize (meaning to make money from) your prospects whether or not they ever join you in your network marketing business (by being an affiliate for Dillard & Sieg).

According to the law of averages when working with purchased opportunity leads (some people do better and some people do worse, this is the “Average”), you will need to dial 200 numbers just to get one enrollment!

YUCK!!!

Why not find a way to have your lead generation system pay for itself on the front end while generating leads for your business on the back end? Sure beats that “200 to 1″ ratio!

Success in network marketing really depends on each person finding out which method works best for them, and working THAT method primarily. That’s why I started looking into other methodologies.

Sure some people are very successful with warm market strategies, opportunity leads, or the “walk & talk” method. But most aren’t. Besides, why ignore the entire online world and the great resource that it is?

What I got out of the Mike Dillard & Anne Sieg materials:

• How to apply the geeky side of internet marketing to my network marketing business. It works great! It just takes a while to start getting the financial results when you start it from scratch. What it really is, though, is generating your own opportunity leads. So you’re still working leads, it’s just a more powerful method because when you call the prospects, you’re saying, “Hi, you visitied my xyz.com website and requested more information…”
• Another big thing I’ve gotten out of the Dillard & Sieg methods is the self-growth. It’s embarrassing how backwards and poverty-minded my thinking has been over the past few years.

Ok, all that said, it is my opinion, and I’m hearing this more from the gurus now, that the whole “marketing your MLM via internet marketing” niche is becoming more & more saturated and more and more competitive. It requires SOOO much content creation, and what hasn’t already been said by everyone else yet? How do you market yourself as a leader that others want to work with in the face of all that competition for attention?

You create your own system, that’s how!

But who has the time and resources to do that? More importantly, who has the WILL to do that? Why reinvent the tools that already exist?

That’s one of the reasons there’s such a huge movement away from the “geeky online marketing” methodology toward social networking.

Not only is social networking SOOOOO much simpler to do, it’s much simpler to teach!!! For a vast majority of the population, we’re already on the social networks. We’re having fun, but wasting a lot of time. What if we could network socially, but with purpose? (I guess you could say that it’s “old school walk & talk” applied to the internet.) Most of us have no problem striking up conversation and socializing online. Speaking for myself, since 1996 I’ve made more friends online than I have off line!!! lol

The best part is that we don’t have to teach the methodology ourselves!!! You don’t have to be an expert at this. Just direct yourself and your serious biz builders to the training source. Max Steingart has been teaching what is now called “attraction marketing” via social networks for about 12 years already. His classes are extremely affordable. And once you learn the method, it’s applicable to ALL social networks.

Oh, another word about all this training that’s available. Pick a skill or system, learn it and MASTER it before moving on to another!!!!! Take if from an ex-teacher: you learn by doing. So…

Train then DO!

Let me add a few more exclamation points to that…

!!!!!!!!!!!

I cannot stress this enough. Jumping around from method to method accomplishes nothing. You get confused with all the trainings, then you start confusing “training” with “working,” and never build your business.

You MUST pick the method that’s most appealing to YOU. If you’re more of a geek, then go the online marketing route. But if you’re more social than geeky, then go the social networking route. Which ever you choose, though: Learn it. Master it. Start earning from it. Then you can add other skills to diversify and increase your earnings. But at that point, you still focus on the method that already works for you – don’t stop working it. You’re just adding another skill on top of it.

So, I’ve been studying and using the Max Steingart method and LOVE it! I’m just socializing on the internet, getting to know people, making new friends, reconnecting with old friends. By asking the right questions at the right time and paying attention to what people say and how they say it, I can determine if someone is a prospect (qualify them) before I EVER bring up business! So, there’s no rejection, and once I’ve qualified them and know what it is that they want to accomplish, helping them accomplish that is a breeze!!!

Training use to be a hassle. Now it’s just fun – because we’re just playing around on the internet!!!

Dear Reader,

This is a quick word out to you just to keep you from making a BIG mistake in the next two days.

I’m sure you’ve heard of Mike Dillard. He’s the fellow who revolutionized the network marketing industry in 2006 when he created four products revealing the process he used to go from a broke waiter to top earner in his MLM. Well he just updated his most coveted product and has just released it to the public at a MASSIVE discount for a limited time.

The current price is only $297. In just one day and ten hours, as of this writing, this special price ends.

It will then go up to the regular price of $997.

When I became an affiliate in August of 2008, this is the one product that I didn’t purchase of his, even though it was offered at a deep discount when I purchased all those other products. From that moment on, I’ve been struggling to learn those missing parts, spending MUCH more than $1,000 for training from other sources. I finally got tired of wasting my time and money elsewhere & decided to purchase this product – learn it from the master, so to speak. When I inquired of it, I was informed to wait just a couple of weeks for Traffic Formula 2 – and told to keep my mouth shut about it in the mean time.

So, do yourself a favor. Invest the $297 now. Do not waste MUCH MORE than $297, all the time, frustration, and gray hair trying to figure this out on your own.

MLM Traffic Formula 2 has been updated from the original. It’s interactive. It includes social networking. It was great before. It’s fantastic now!! It’s well worth $997, but why spend more when you can get such a deal now? Or spin your wheels, spening more time and money, and more frustration waiting on the next update in another 3 years?

Why are you still reading? Go NOW!

Danni

A couple of weeks ago, I got a little ahead of myself. In it, I reviewed the products & system created by Mike Dillard of Magnetic Sponsoring. Maybe I should have given a “what led me to that discovery” post first.

It’s been since October of 2005 that I got started my current Network Marketing (NWM) business. And for the longest it was a struggle to be successful with it.

Now, don’t get me wrong. The company I’m with is fantastic. It’s a Five Pillar Company! (Contact me if you want to know what that means – no strings attached.) It’s so simple and such a “no-brainer” that others who’ve struggled in NWM have finally found the success they were only able to dream about before.

So why was it such a struggle for me to find that same success?

Relatively speaking, my entire experience with this company has been successful. After YEARS of absolute failure in other home businesses, I was finally, actually, making money! But still not enough to start addressing the debt we’d built up just paying the living expenses over prior hard economic times. And every time something unexpected happened (and it will – that’s life), it made that debt grow. Bit by bit.

I knew there had to be a better way!

If you’re in NWM now, or ever have been, then you know the drill. Make a list, bug the devil out of every one you know, buy leads (of questionable value), and tear up the phone lines! (Check here for why you don’t want to waste your money on leads.)

Now, I’m not shy, and am definitely not afraid of the phone or whoever is on the other end of the line. So, I’m good at dialing leads, setting appointments, doing presentations, all that stuff. But my results still weren’t what they should have been.

So I started wondering… I KNOW this works, and I see it work VERY well for others. Why not for me?

My support team could only help me with what they knew. Although the “old school” methods (warm market lists & leads) that they taught actually do work in my business, they weren’t working for me. As a matter of fact, those who were able to reach the bigger incomes faster, did so by working with their warm market – even if they’d never, ever been in a NWM business before!

I’d been utilizing training available from independent sources for a year already, and I knew all about posture and personal growth. I knew that if my prospects became my customers and/or business partners, they did so because of their belief in me and my ability to help them succeed, too. So I knew the thing I was marketing wasn’t so much my company or my products as it was Me, Myself & I. I like to think I was good at that, but looking back now, I know I wasn’t.

So…

Why wasn’t it working for me?

Thing is, I’d also had a short gig as a web designer and website promoter in the past. That experience taught me some skills that got results. I needed those kinds of results in my new business. So I had an idea that there had to be a better way: a “marriage” of those marketing methods and NWM.

So I’d had this concept dancing around in my head for a LONG time that there had to be a better way for people like me. There had to be a way to “marry” the strategies that I’d long ago learned and implemented for designing and promoting websites, with Network Marketing. It required a better system than was being provided by my support team. AND it required online marketing skills that were most likely more modern and advanced than I had learned back then. That meant learning those new skills, AND training others on my team to utilize them, too. I may have had the smarts to figure it all out and create it, but I certainly didn’t have the time. I was working so hard at building my business that I didn’t dare risk my slowly building pay check to take time off to figure that out.

Besides, I couldn’t possibly be the only one who was thinking the same thing! Surely someone was working on such a system, if not implementing it already. So I started searching, and ended up stumbling on 3 very good systems at the same time. If these don’t sound familiar to you already, you’re going to start seeing them all over the place from now on:

• Mentoring For Free
• Magnetic Sponsoring
• Renegade Networker (and Renegade University)

As I suspected, the Internet had changed over the past 10 years and the skills I had were almost obsolete. I had a lot of learning to do as far as online marketing went. I learned. I implemented.

I am successful. Finally!

Here’s an analogy for you – my husband gets credit for giving it to me. I use to drive a 1989 Chevette that I’d paid $1600 cash for back in … never mind, I can’t remember and you don’t need to know. I drove that thing until it was on its last days. Then in 1997, I bought a 1994 Ford Ranger – you know… those cute little green trucks with the bed liner, chrome wheels, and sliding rear window that you saw all over the place? I HATED having to take on a car payment, but I just couldn’t depend on the “Vette” any more. And I LOVED my truck! That was an investment that needed to be made, and I never looked back.

Well, as much as I hated investing yet more money into my business, that was an investment that needed to be made and I’ll never look back.

So, if you’re like me and you’re just is not gonna make it using the old school NWM methods, I know how you feel. If you’ve got a failure is not an option attitude, you MUST invest in yourself and your business. Learn these new strategies. In all these systems you’ll learn that the reason you’re struggling isn’t your fault. It’s the methods that you’re using.

I’ll be discussing each of the above systems in upcoming posts.

If you’re involved with a network marketing business, you’ve most likely utilized some old school methods to build your business. Purchasing opportunity leads and/or marketing to your “warm market.”

We talked about leads in an earlier post. Today I want to address the problem with “Warm Market” strategies.

In order to be successful with them, one has to have a

Circle of Influence

Boy, are those loaded words!! Although we learned in geometry that any three points determine a circle, a circle of influence really requires MANY more persons to be considered a circle. And what does “influence” mean? According to Webster’s Dictionary, it’s the “power to affect others.”

So to have a circle of influence, you would have many friends and family with whom you have the power to affect. That takes a certain personality type: not just a social butterfly, but an influential person who is “more than just an acquaintance” with many people.

Loners like me, a “sweet Southern girl” who does weird things like acting, enjoys playing computer games, or chatting to online friends, or reading a book (not romance, either, but horror, or fantasy, or science fiction! Oooo! Real girls just don’t do that!), just will not have a “Circle of Influence” here among the Old South. Which is what my warm market consisted of.

I grew up in a small town in a somewhat “sheltered” household. Because of that sheltered upbringing, I’ve always found it difficult to make friends of more than a hand full of people at a time. Oh, yes, I’m out-going, and am not afraid to be on stage in any situation. But making real friends is unusual for me. So, if you are one, count yourself lucky!

That means I have no Circle of Influence.

Now, I know it’s not just in the South, but you get my point that only certain personality types will do well with the warm market strategies. So we’re left with buying leads. I don’t care what anybody says, that’s a very slow way to build. You’re calling people who don’t know you, so there’s no way you have “influence” with any of them.

The problem is obvious.

Does this describe you? Does it describe someone you’ve tried to work with? Every time you call and ask how big their “list” is they say some small number. It’s never bigger than 10 or 20. (LOL, you’re lucky if it’s as high as 20!!)

Don’t get mad at the people you’re working with who have this problem.

They’re not scared to call everyone they know. They just know that they have no influence with them, so the call will be pointless. They’ve probably never called these people before in their lives. If they do now, the person they’re calling will know there’s a purpose behind the call.

Don’t put them in that icky situation! Teach them to attract prospects naturally. Teach them how to find the people who are seeking them.

We’ll talk about how to do this soon…

If you’re in Network Marketing, you’ve most likely utilized two common business building methods: warm market and opportunity leads. We’ll cover the problem with warm market in another post. Right now, I want to talk about opportunity leads.

Purchased opportunity leads are a waste of time and money!

Just because you bought a list from a lead company, doesn’t mean that those people actually requested that information. Even if they’re telephone interviewed leads from a top advertising agency!

• Sometimes someone enters bogus information (I’ve suspected the ad agency of doing this on purpose just to make more money off its customers!)
• Sometimes the person didn’t know what they were filling out
• Sometimes they have no idea why someone is calling them to verify their contact information
• Sometimes they did request the info, but they’re really not serious, or not ready to actually start a business
• Sometimes they’re just looking for a job and not a business
• Sometimes they lie when you call… maybe they’re already tired of all the calls they’re getting
• Some are just freebie seekers
• Etc.

So, you see, you don’t always get what you paid for. (Ask me for access to a recording of testimony after testimony of how purchased leads resulted only in massive debt for many!)

That’s why I started using internet marketing techniques to generate my own leads.

I know that the names & numbers on my list actually visited my site and filled out a form. Otherwise I wouldn’t have that info. I also know which advertising method lead them to my site. So when I do call, I have that info and can mention it during my “hello” so they remember me. (Hi, this is Danni. You visited my GottaHaveAPlanB website and filled out a form for more information about working from home…”)

Generating your own leads is the ONLY lead generation method that you should trust. It’s the only method that you know gives you valid prospects. Well… unless they lie when they fill out the form.

Let’s talk about another problem with leads:

Fear of the Phone

I know a lot of people are just afraid of picking up the phone and dialing those numbers. (Mike Dillard admits that he use to be a telephone chicken.)

You pick up the phone and hope that nobody’s home. The last thing you want is someone blessing you out for calling them when they don’t want to be bothered… You are NOT bothering them. They requested the information and it is your responsibility to help them to the best of your ability.

Weren’t you in those shoes at one time, too? When I was working leads, I tried to remember that I use to be one. When someone called me, I sincerely wanted help. I was dead serious about finding a way to work from home, and with each call I was ready to do what ever it took to get all the information. Including going through all those interviews. That was my opportunity to prove how serious I was, but that I wasn’t gonna let them drag me into any odd business. I was picky.

You need to know that your prospects are just like you. There’s nothing to fear.

So, start generating your own leads, stop spending money with MLM lead companies that most likely are selling you bogus info, and don’t be afraid to answer someone’s request for help!

I’m currently on Twitter as danni63. Some of you already know me by that ID on instant messenger programs, but it’s not very creative, is it? Besides one of the first rules you learn about Twitter is to use your real name.

Unfortunately that’s proving to be a delimma.

You see, I started acting back in the early 90’s, then started working online in 1997. Everyone who knew me back then, knew me as Dannielle Wood. Everyone who knew me personally, knew as Danni. That’s how I knew myself. When I got married in 2002, I needed those who already knew me to still be able to identify me, so I just added my married name to the end. I’m still Danni, but my legal name, thus my formal identity, is Dannielle Wood Hixson.

But “DannielleWoodHixson” is too long to use as a Twitter ID. So is “DannielleWHixson.” Here’s what does fit and what my thoughts are about each:

• “DannielleWood” – my original, initially marketed name. That’s why my website is “danniellewood.com.” But my husband is very proud of his last name. “We have our own town, you know.” Yes, he’s a direct descendant of The Hixson of Hixson, Tennessee. Even though he wouldn’t say so, he’d be awfully hurt if I didn’t use his name. Well… if & when he finds out, he would say something. Not much – just enough that I’d know it bothers him. If it’s possible to avoid that conversation, I’d rather not have it.
• “DannielleHixson” – only family knows me as Dannielle Hixson. Maybe my current customers and prospects have picked up on the “Hixson” added to all my emails & websites.
• “DanniHixson” – if you call my home and ask for Danni, you’re gonna get “which one?” My husband is Danny, too.
• “DanniWood” – Yeah, that’s who I was for the first 39 years of my life, and most people know me as either Dannielle or Danni Wood… But there’s that leaving off my husband’s name again, and it’s not who I am “legally.”
• “DanniWoodHixson” – I like it best, mostly because I’ve been Danni all my life and it’s more my own identity – how I know myself. But EVERYONE else, just about it, knows me as Dannielle! And there’s that “Hixson” added to the end… “Who’s that?”

ALL that said, there’s this little voice in the back of my head that says, “Get over yourself! You’re not ‘famous’ enough to worry about the name you market, much less how people get to know you on Twitter! Who cares who you are legally? Besides, if you use Danni, that’s how you originally wanted to market yourself anyway, so you get back to your original identity!” (Yes, I couldn’t use Danni, my own name, because that domain was already taken for a porn site. I was furious about my name being misused!) So, there is that part of me that thinks that what ever I use is irrelevant – I can even keep danni63 and it wouldn’t matter.

I can’t decide for myself, so I’ve decided I’m gonna let everyone else choose. Leave your comments below – even if you have other ideas. The choice that gets the most votes wins.

Let the voting begin!