Meeting people and adding potential business prospects to your name list is crucial to your success in network marketing. In fact, the lack of names on your list to contact and share your business opportunity is one of the major stumbling blocks for most network marketers. Many network marketing business leaders will advise you to write down your “warm list” which consists of family, friends, co-workers, etc to expose your business and get it off and running. This is a great place to start. The people on your “warm list” are the people that you already know and they already know and trust you. But what happens when you run out of this “warm market” list of names? How do you continue to expose and grow your business? Well, for many network marketers, this spells the end of the road. They are unsure of how to meet new people offline to share their opportunity and they get frustrated and quit. The good news is that you don’t have to get to the point of quitting!

There are several ways to add names to your prospect list that can be done both online and offline. For the purpose of this post, I will focus on helping you understand and get comfortable meeting people offline as you live your life. In my opinion, learning to meet people offline and develop your people skills will make meeting people online even easier. So let’s get started!

Let’s face it, in today’s world where people would rather text you than call you, the thought of meeting a complete stranger in the marketplace, at a gas station, or in the mall can seem quite daunting. We have become a society that uses technology to communicate, but have forgotten the old fashioned way of simply having a face to face conversation with others. This makes meeting others even more complicated.

What I have found through my own experience in building a successful network marketing business is that the network marketer wants to meet people to expand his or her business, but they are not sure how to “break the ice” and start a conversation with someone. Walking up to someone and starting a conversation can intimidate even the most skilled people person out there. So how do you do this?

One of the best ways that I have learned and experienced in striking up a conversation with someone is to look for what I call free information. Free information is something that both you and the other person knows. It could be something like a shirt they are wearing, something that they are looking at in a store, or even the weather! When you identify the free information, all you have to do is make a comment on it and the conversation has begun! For example, If you are in a store and you see someone with a t-shirt with a college name on it, the obvious question that I would ask is, “did you go to that school?” Whether they answer yes or no does not matter. The fact is, you have now started a dialouge with them. The conversation can go in a number of different directions from there. I will explain more on that later. Another example of free information that you can start a conversation with is the weather. “Man, it’s hot out here today. Do you know what the temperature is?” or “We could sure use some rain, it is very dry.” Both of these examples are very open and friendly conversation starters. There are literally hundreds of ways that you can start a conversation with free information. Be creative and have fun with it!

Once you have “broken the ice”, you can now expand on the conversation. The best way to do this is to ask open-ended questions about the person. Open-ended questions are those questions that require more than a yes or no response to answer it. The person who you ask the question to will give you some more detailed information about themselves or the subject. In my previous example of the college t-shirt, if they say that they did indeed go to that school, you can ask them when they graduated, what their major was, what made them choose that school, what did or didn’t they like about the school, etc. Whatever their answer is, follow it up with another open-ended question in response to the answer that they just gave you. Resist the temptation to turn the conversation back onto you by responding to them about the school you went to, etc. Acknowledge that you heard their reply and then follow it up with another open-ended question. Keep this in mind, people like to talk about themselves more than they want to hear about you, and this is now the time to let them do it. This is the secret of a good conversationalist, and how I have had great success in building my business offline as well as online. 

The more you practice starting conversations with others, the better and more comfortable you will become. You will always run into the unfriendly person who may be having a bad day and really does not want to talk. Who cares! Just keep on moving and strike up another conversation. The key is, do not take it personal if someone is not friendly or does not seem to want to talk. You are looking for friendly people who you can connect with and potentially become business partners with. If you don’t connect, then they were not meant to be in business with you. Don’t worry, there are millions of other people out there just waiting for you to talk to them!

You can read another helpful post on the 5 Characteristics of a Likable Person to help you in communicating and developing your people skills.

Are you ready to start your own Network Marketing business now? I can help you! With years of experience and a great mentoring team, all you need to bring to the table is your ambition and willingness to learn. Click on the Join A Winning Team link now, fill out the information, and I will see you on the other side!!

To Your Success,

Ken Cloutier