Getting The Prospect To Follow Through

“I can get appointments to meet with people. My call rate is very good with people I know or have met. But I can’t seem to get a follow through meeting, to go further.

“I’m told that, ‘You can’t say the wrong thing to the right person or you can’t say the right thing to the wrong person.’ I’m supposed to find the person ‘who is looking’ because if they are looking you ‘couldn’t beat them out of getting into Ambit with a stick.’”

-Warren

Great question, Warren. I do agree with the quote – with a few additions and perhaps some alterations. Sometimes, the prospect might “be ready” but isn’t looking or isn’t looking for MLM. Picture a person driving to his job and is pondering that he wishes he could own his own business. Is he looking? No. He’s thinking. If you know this person and do an effective invite (using the Inviting Formula), you will be able to take this person from “thinking” to looking. Rarely have I seen someone who was out looking for an MLM company. It does happen but not commonly.

Most often, your quote is a comment made by speakers from a stage who don’t know how to train on the specifics of inviting, so the quote is a variation of “just do the numbers.” It’s very easy to say, “Just do the numbers.”

It’s harder to say, “Let me show you how to do an effective invite call.” And it’s even harder to say “I’ll teach YOU how to do an effective invite call.” So instead people just say, “do the numbers” and find people who are looking.

The other thing is, you need to be the best inviter you can be when you do talk to that person who is looking. So no matter what you do, you’re going to have to learn good inviting skills. And by the way, follow through is part of the inviting skills!

As for your follow through question, I’m assuming that you’re using the words FOLLOW THROUGH as I discussed in Ambit Pro Inviter Series, which is different than FOLLOW UP. Follow through is once your prospect has indicated an interest to do the business that you follow through and deliver EVERYTHING the prospect requires to get him what he’s stated he needs/wants and/or doesn’t want (Meaning Their "WHY") – this you would have gotten by using the Inviting Formula.

Normally, this is way more than what is in your standard issue Ambit training manual. If you hand the training manual to the new person and the first thing they read is, “make a list of 200 people” and your new person doesn’t do it, have you delivered everything the prospect requires? No. Something is still in their way.

Inability to communicate may be in their way; it may be they need a better understanding of what they will be doing; it may be they don’t see themselves being a salesperson or it may be that they need to fly to the company so they have certainty that it’s a real business!

If you’ve listened to our Ambit Pro Inviter Series, you’ve heard our live calls and heard my mentor on the phone with Ruth and Nadira. The moment they indicated that they were interested in the business he moved toward an appointment. If I can’t meet with someone locally, I just continue the conversation over the phone. Now both Ruth and Nadira had things that were still in the way of doing the business that he had to help them overcome – and both of them were “looking.”

My point is, the key to FOLLOW THROUGH is NOT saying “Next!” as soon as someone is stuck on something! Help them through whatever they’re stuck on. Now I know many people will say that I have the Mother Theresa complex. Well, I don’t mind being compared to her because she was a very noble person and helped a lot of people. But remember, my sponsor would not have sponsored me had he not followed up and followed through with me to help me overcome my barriers.

When do I “quit” following through? When they stop taking my calls or they ask me to stop calling.

The speed at which you identify what the person is stuck on is critical. When you first sponsor someone or you have someone who has indicated they’re interested, do not let a single day go by that you’re not talking to them. Keep them close so you can get them past sticking points.

Also as soon as they start moving, gently (meaning very slowly) ease off so they don’t grow dependent on you. This is a topic I’ll leave for a later time, but I wanted you to see that some people make the mistake of connecting themselves to their people and never passing them the power to do it themselves … so they never do.

I hope this answers your question, Warren.

How to Get Your New Team Members Moving

I read this great question from John K. recently:

“You present your business. People get excited and join the business but do nothing. Most get in and drop out without knowing what they were in. How do you progress them to the next level to create momentum?”

Excellent question, John. It’s a good reminder of two things – why the InvitingFormula developed and why great training really is the key to success in this business. I want to address the two questions separately: 1) Why do people get excited, join the business and drop out without knowing what they were in? 2) How do you progress new members to the next level to create momentum?

The reason I’m breaking these questions up is because I think you have two types of team members here – those who don’t clearly understand their goals and why they are with you and those who are stuck with where to start.

Team Members Who Drop Out From Lack of Understanding

There may be a handful of people who fall into this category that should be in the next category – stuck on where to start. See how to fix this below. However, if a team member just drops out without knowing what they were in the business for, I’d call that a breakdown somewhere in the Inviting Formula.

Before you bring someone into the business, it’s really important to be crystal clear on what that person needs, wants and doesn’t want from this business. This happens in the Qualify step and I think it’s good to sit down with that part of Professional Inviter and see where things may be falling off. See if there’s a pattern.

Next, I want you to look at your follow through step of the Inviting Formula. Are you helping the prospect find EVERYTHING he/she wants, needs or doesn’t want from your opportunity? I don’t have room to break this down into deep detail here, but tomorrow’s post, Getting the Prospect to Follow Through, will help you determine if follow through is the problem.

Team Members Who Are Stuck With Where to Start

Something I said in the past is, “If you look upline for a training system that works and everyone you talk to is focused on personal development stuff; they’re not in the trenches – so you’ll have to create your own training system.”

What I meant by that statement is that you are often given inspirational quotes such as “Run through a wall” or “Just do the work.”

Well, that’s all fair. But what I ask you is this, “How do you ‘just do the work’ or ‘run through a wall’ when you don’t know what the work is or what’s causing the wall?

You must have training on how to do the job to do the job. Just like when my mentor was in the Navy, he had to run and swim and sometimes thought I couldn’t go one more step. But then he’d read his fellow officer’s t-shirt with a quote like, “Just do it.” That’s all he needed to keep going.

But you can’t keep going until you get going. So, there are five things your new team members must know to get going and keep going:

1.    Correctly set a goal (so they don’t chase something they don’t really want). 

2.    Correctly plan for that goal. 

3.    Correctly break that plan into projects.

4.    Correctly break those projects into tasks.

5.    Correctly reorganize their life so they actually do those tasks.

I hope breaking this question down gives you a place to start.

Now, I’ll turn it over to you. What would you do in John’s situation? Tell us about it in the comments below.