online prospecting tips

Online Prospecting: The Dos And Don’ts

At one time, prospecting for sales and team members if you are in network marketing was primarily done via the telephone or face to face. But in recent years, there has been a major development in online prospecting. But just like any type of prospecting, there are right ways to do it, and there are wrong ways.

When I float through social media sites like

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Linkedin
  • and others

I find that the don’ts in online prospecting are much more prevalent than the dos. So I am going to do my part in helping entrepreneurs understand the dos and don’ts of online prospecting. Follow along and learn how to prospect online. And, please share this with other entrepreneurs so we can help change the online prospecting reputation.

Online Prospecting Do: Stay Positive

The internet is full of people that we like to call trolls. They live in a negative atmosphere and they want everyone else to join them. It is important that you stay positive.

This tip goes for any type of prospecting. You cannot allow negative forces to have the power to influence your thoughts or emotions. If you do, it will affect your prospecting in terrible ways.

“Positive anything is better than negative nothing.” Elbert Hubbard

Online Prospecting Don’t: Prejudge

While I firmly believe that we should gear our prospecting towards our target market, we must not prejudge anyone. We cannot assume they cannot afford, or do not need or want what we have to offer.

There is a difference between qualifying and prejudging. If during qualifying stages you come to a point that you believe the prospect is not qualified instead of judging, I suggest you just get directly to the point – This is what I have, and this is what it costs…

Online Prospecting Do: Focus On Values And Benefits

One of the most common objections found is price. And entrepreneurs need to realize that the only way to overcome the price objection is with the benefits and the value.

You can halt the objection before it even comes by focusing on values and benefits in the beginning.

Online Prospecting Don’t: Use Negative Terms

When prospecting online, you can help your efforts by leaving negative terms out of your posts and content. I am breaking that rule all throughout this article, but I am not actually prospecting… I am educating.

Try to keep words like:

  • Can’t
  • Won’t
  • Shouldn’t
  • Etc…

out of your posts, and you will discover people being more positive toward you and your prospecting efforts.

Online Prospecting Do: Be Respectful

All I can say here is, consider what you say before you say it. Use respect and you will gain respect. You may not agree with the person, but do you have the right to disrespect them? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if everyone online learned to use this Golden Rule?

It is so much easier to be nice, to be respectful, to put yourself in your customers’ shoes and try to understand how you might help them before they ask for help, than it is to try to mend a broken customer relationship.” Mark Cuban

Online Prospecting Don’t: Talk Or Write Anything Inappropriate

This goes right along with the respect do… I say it is best to stay clear of writing or talking about your views on religion, politics and any other subject matter that could be construed as “debate” action.

Online Prospecting Do: Be Consistent

If you really want your prospecting efforts online to be successful, it takes consistency. If you post on Mon, Wed and Fri, don’t change suddenly to Thur, Sat, and Sun.

Online Prospecting Don’t: Lie

I shouldn’t even have to write this but there are still those out there that think it is okay to tell “little white lies.” No lie no matter how small is okay. If you are asked a question and you don’t know the answer, just be honest.

Sure, you may not win a sale, but you will keep your integrity.

Online Prospecting Do: Take Prospects Into Your Territory

Here is another area that entrepreneurs need to learn to use. If a prospect shows interest on social media, you should immediately invite he/she to your website or call them. I suggest taking the prospecting and recruiting efforts away from social media as quickly as possible.

Online Prospecting Don’t: Spam

This is another don’t that I believe I should not have to tell you, but many entrepreneurs still spam. You will get nowhere just “splashing” your link all over people’s social pages and such. Provide valuable information and people will want to see what you have to offer. But just “puking” your stuff will make everyone sick.

Online Prospecting Do: Be A Normal Person

Some entrepreneurs believe every post should be something about the business or opportunity. Hey, it’s okay to share that funny cat video or laughing babies.

When people realize you are just a normal person, they will take you more seriously when you do post business information.

Online Prospecting Don’t: Debate Or Argue

You may win the battle but you probably will lose the war.

Debating and arguing just drives a wedge into your possibilities of gaining other customers or recruits. Even if they believe the way you do, they will be apprehensive because you bowed down to an argumentative level.

I suggest just letting an argumentative person have their opinion and moving on to the next prospect.

Online Prospecting: Have Fun!

If you have fun, you will have better success. If it is stressful and boring, why do it? Life is short, so just have fun prospecting and I know you will be a huge success.

Conclusion

I hope these dos and don’ts help you understand online prospecting. If we all follow these “rules” the attitude toward prospecting online will have a better reputation.

I know that recruiting is a huge objective for many of you and this is why you need to understand how to prospect online properly.

While you are on that recruiting mission, I believe you will find Rocket Recruiting a great application to meet your goals. It is a no resistance recruiting method that works. Go check it out here.

Thank you for stopping by today… Will you share this with others so we can stop the bad prospecting and bring in the good?

Have a great day and

To The Top!

eric tippets

Simple Tips For Prospecting Online

As entrepreneurs, prospecting is a key function of our chosen career path. After all, the ultimate desire is sales. Who do those sales come from? People who at one time were prospects.

      • People

      • Prospects

      • Leads

      • Sales

As an entrepreneur who has been involved with many network marketing organizations, I know the basic principal for new network marketers is to make a list of every person they know. That includes family, friends, neighbors, etc… This is called their warm market, and the idea is to prospect each of these people.

The warm market prospecting system does work but…

How long will you have a warm market to work with? At some point, that list will go dry.

And, I am speaking to entrepreneurs here; not strictly network marketers. Let’s say your entrepreneurial business is coaching weight loss. Unless your whole list of family and friends is obese, which I highly doubt, your warm market list will go dry quite quick.

You need other ways to prospect so you can gain leads and turn leads into sales. Now you could:

  • Go door to door
  • Cold call people on their telephones
  • Advertise in publications

And all these methods are great and you should use them if you can but with technology, the top prospecting method is now online.

There are right ways and wrong ways for prospecting online

No one likes spam, even the people that are sending spam. I am not going to even delve into the wrong ways of prospecting online in today’s post; instead I am going to provide you with some simple tips for prospecting online the right way.

Determine your target market

First and foremost, you really need to know your target market. These are people who have a need for your product or service. Target markets can be large or small. If you have a line of weight loss products, your target market will probably be smaller than the entrepreneur who offers custom smart phone covers.

Make a list of keywords and phrases

Now that you know your target market, either open your notepad or get a pen and paper and start writing keywords and phrases that are within your business and products. For example, weight loss:

  • lose weight fast
  • safe weight loss
  • take fat off
  • etc…

and smart phone covers:

  • android phone covers
  • smart phone protectors
  • iPhone covers
  • etc…

Develop a website/blog

When you have a blog, you can put yourself in the role of expert in your particular niche. Using the keywords you found above, you will want to write posts that are not necessarily meant to sell, but to educate. As you educate your visitors, you then show them ways you can help them solve their problems by sharing your products along with possible affiliate products.

Prospecting on social media

Here is the primary location for online prospecting. And, it is also on social media that many entrepreneurs prospect improperly and get a spammer tag. Depending on the social media outlet, there are wrong and right ways:

  • Facebook – The best method for prospecting on Facebook is to create an entrepreneur page (business page) that briefly explains your business. As people see your business, they will press like or follow and you can start building a relationship with those people.
  • Twitter – On Twitter, those keywords and phrases can come in quite handy. Do a search in Twitter and see which people are tweeting about similar subject matter. You can then share your blog posts tagging those people with something like, “You may want to read this.”

With all social media, the idea is to slowly share your ideas along with others, build relationships and ask questions. Help them solve problems using your products or services.

Create a weekly or bi-weekly newsletter

By building a subscription list, you can draw prospects to sign up by offering a free ebook, white paper or something similar that is geared toward your area of expertise.

Having a method of subscribing on each social media page along with your blog, you will build a list quickly. This list are all prospects because they willingly gave you their contact information.

Now you can use a software to send periodic newsletters that educate and also shares your products and services. There are various newsletter programs such as Aweber and Mailchimp.

Forums and question sites

One of the best prospecting online methods is simply finding forum and question sites that fit into your area of expertise. One great one is Quora.com. Just do a search of questions using your keywords or phrases and you can use your expert advice to help solve their problem. You can also use your keywords and add forums behind it in search engines to find people talking about your area of expertise.

Start building relationships and you can discover prospects, turn them into leads and leads into sales.

I always suggest that you use a signature with all of these that links back to your website/blog.

Advertise

Running ad campaigns is a top way of online prospecting. You can run pay-per-click ads through Google Adwords and there are a few others. You could run Facebook or Twitter ads.

Just a simple message of “Get a FREE eBook on losing weight safely,” or “7 Steps to Protect Your Smartphone,” will entice prospects to click and be led to your capture page where they enter their personal information turning that prospect into a lead.

Just be sure that the free item you are sending gets delivered quickly and has value.

Online Prospecting Conclusion

By following the advice above, I know your prospecting goals will come to life. And as you see, much of the prospecting online is geared toward sending people to your website.

So to help you even further, I created a checklist to make your website CRAZY PROFITABLE.

You can get that checklist by clicking here.

Now get out and start prospecting! Build relationships and the profits will roll in.

Have a great day and please hit the share buttons below and let others have this information too.

Thank you!

To The Top!

Eric Tippetts

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