I Love Cake!!

This tip is from Joe Stout, the corporate trainer for Prospect Planet. Joe was a successful network marketer and now helps thousands of people in MLM achieve success through trainings on how to build your business through nationwide sponsoring.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did and can relate to it as much as I did.

I Love Cake!!

I love cake. In fact, just yesterday I had a hankering for a slice of my Aunt Carmen’s double-chocolate death cake that is, without question, the best cake you will ever eat.

Problem was Aunt Carmen was four states away and the only way a heaping fork-full of ultra-moist, sinfully rich cake was going to touch my lips was if I made it. So I thought about it, pondered life without it and at one point even considered purchasing a cheap imitation at the local grocer. But after some serious soul searching, the answer was clear.

Bake the cake.

So, I grabbed my recipe box and pulled out the first 5 x 7-index card, and here’s how it read;

The Count’s Chicken Surprise.

Ingredients: 4-large chicken breasts, two eggs, celery, cream of chicken soup, red food coloring, NO GARLIC.

“Hmmmmm. O.K…lets see here, maybe I’m reading this incorrectly…somewhere here it should say something about chocolate?”

“I’ll keep reading.”

Quarter the breast and fry until golden? “Hey! What the heck is this? I’m after cake and I’m getting poultry!”

“Gosh darn it! I really, really want some cake. Maybe it’s on the back of this card?”

O.K., by now you are thinking who on earth would spend all that time continuing to read a recipe that is obviously the wrong one? Is this guy a moron? Why doesn’t he just move on to the next recipe card and keep going until he finds Aunt Carmen’s double- chocolate death cake?

Because I don’t know the difference between sorting and selling.

Do you?

Pulling out one recipe card and staring at it, wishing and hoping that it is the recipe you seek rather than recognize it as the wrong one is no different than sitting at your brother-in-law's kitchen table for hours selling your business opportunity.

Sorting is the art of recognizing the wrong person quickly by allowing them to identify themselves. You can’t say enough right things to the wrong person, but I can assure you that the majority of people in our industry will spend 30-60 minutes selling their opportunity to the wrong person who doesn’t know how to tell them no. And let’s face it, if you do sell someone in, you will be selling them on doing everything else they need to do to be successful.

This, my friends, puts the “P” in pain when it comes to prospecting, and ultimately becomes the reason 80% of the people who start, quit!

Keep in mind that the most genuine reason people are not interested in a Network Marketing Opportunity is because they don’t want to sell and they don’t want to hit on their friends and family.

Now as you sit on the phone for an hour and a half explaining your comp plan and the number of major publications your company has graced the cover of, you say to your prospect in all sincerity, “It’s got nothing to do with selling!”

Riiiiight.

Think about this. How many more people would be attracted to you and your business if the entire sorting process took 30-60 seconds? What if you told them that you encourage them not to talk to family and friends?

More importantly, how much better would it make your life?

As the corporate trainer for Prospect Planet, my job is to teach our clients how to utilize our system and become master prospectors/sorters, regardless of their skill or experience. As my friend Jeffrey Combs so often says, “In networking, we get paid for results.”

Joe Stout
Corporate Trainer
Prospect Planet

(c) 2001, Reprinted with permission from Cutting Edge Media's MLM Marketing and Sponsoring Tips Newsletter.