How to Get Leads in Network Marketing

If you get to the point where you are out of leads, you definitely have not adopted the philosophy that I’m about to teach you.

How to Get Leads in Network Marketing

If there’s one thing that I’m amazingly grateful for in network marketing, it’s that I adopted the philosophy that I’m about to share with you, and I can directly count millions of dollars because of this.

What I come across all the time is that people get into desperation mode and say, “Oh my God. I don’t have anyone to talk to. How can I generate leads like this”?

If you get to the point where you are out of leads, you definitely have not adopted the philosophy that I’m about to teach you.

You want to play the long game in network marketing and typically, what happens in most cases is we have a short term mentality.

We overestimate what we can do in a short amount of time, but we grossly underestimate what we can do over a long period of time.

Be Professional

People get into network marketing and they’re not really professionals.

They’re not thinking about 10 or 20 years from now.

They’re playing the short game and because they’re playing the short game, they have this massive sense of urgency.

There’s nothing wrong with a sense of urgency unless the sense of urgency is tied to scarcity.

What I’m talking about is not having the scarcity model of, “If I don’t get people in right now, I’m screwed”.

Yes, you want to have an abundance of leads. When you first get started, you want to run hard.

You want to talk to everyone you know and run through your contacts. Do all of that.

When I decided to be a professional in network marketing over 18 years ago, what happened was I decided network marketing was going to be my career.

That meant that it’s what I’m going to do for the next 20, 30, 40, 50 years of my life.

Play The Long Game

The reason why many people fail in network marketing is because they’re playing the short game.

When you play the short game, you’re not looking at the long term.

By doing this, you’ll leave a fortune on the table because of that scarcity.

When you play the long game, the philosophy is you always want to be meeting people and adding to your funnel.

We have an ATM in network marketing, and when you get people into the ATM, that is your contact.

If you look at your contacts in your cell phone, that’s like an ATM.

You’ve got to have the right debit card and you’ve got to have the right pin code to pull the money out.

Pulling the money out means enrolling them in buying your products or services, or sponsoring them into the business, but what happens is the reason why most people can’t pull any money from the ATM is because they don’t have any money in the ATM.

The money is in the contacts. The money is in the relationships.

Adding Leads to Your ATM

What I decided about 18 years ago is I’m going to get ridiculously good at adding people to my ATM.

If you were to look at my contacts today, there are thousands of names, and these are not imported from my downline or from a list.

These are thousands of people that I’ve met over the last 18 years.

What I started, whenever I added someone to my database, I would create a note that said something like “Talk to them on this day. We talked about this. I met them here”.

I’ve been keeping this database and got this ATM filled with money.

I’ve got to get the money out meaning I got to invite them. I got to pitch them, present my products or services, sponsor them into the business, all that.

I’ve got a ton of money sitting in the ATM due to the fact that I have a ton of relationships because 18 years ago, I decided everyone that I met was going to be put them into my database, and I was going to build a relationship.

There are people who I put in my database many, many years ago, and it took me 10 years to sponsor them.

That’s playing the long game.

The Relationships Story

As you develop more skills in network marketing, there’s going to be a lot of the people that you weren’t able to sponsor years ago, but once you’ve established some success, you’ll be able to sponsor them later.

However, you’ll never sponsor them later if you have this scarcity mentality of, “If I don’t get them now, I’m not going to get them later”.

So, you end up throwing away business cards and leads and delete contacts from your phone.

Relationships are always the money in network marketing.

Whenever I went to any event, I made a conscious effort to go meet people.

I didn’t just pitch them immediately on the opportunity.

Capturing Leads is Fun

I always had a fun goal.

If there are one hundred people at an event, I’d create a goal of getting a business card from 20% of the people.

I’ve got hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of business cards of people that I’ve met. And on the back of the cards, I’ll write how I met them.

Then when you call them, whether it’s immediately afterward, or two years later, you can remember, “Hey, we talked on this. We talked about this. I remember you being a really sharp person”.

Because I’ve done this consistently for so many years, if I’m in a rush and there’s a contest or promotion going on, and I need to sponsor four people this month, I can easily do that because I filled up my ATM over the last 18 years with lots of contacts.

I’m never in scarcity mode when it comes to recruiting, or selling my products or services because I’ve established this.

Stay in Contact

Obviously, it’s going to work way better if you stay in contact with people, reach out from time to time, and strengthen the relationship.

Because as someone forgets you, they kind of fall out of your ATM and it becomes a lot harder to sponsor them.

I remember getting into sponsoring mode, calling someone, and I was like, “Hey John, it’s Matt. Listen, I don’t know if you remember me, but we met a few years ago. I remember you being a really sharp guy and I just wanted to see if you’re open minded to looking at something else.”

The guy had no idea who I was, but he was open to looking because it was just the right timing.

The thing is if I hadn’t been doing this over the years, then I wouldn’t have any money in my ATM. Your phone is an ATM.

You’ve got to extract the money out but you need to be loading it up. So, play the long game.

Make a concerted effort today that you’re going to load up your ATM with lots and lots of relationships and if they don’t join you now, it’s okay because a year from now, five years from now, 10 years from now, the timing may be better.

Don’t Collect Leads, Make Friends

If you’re a pro and this is your career, it’s okay if it takes you 10 years to sponsor someone.

You’re going to sponsor a lot of other people along the way but because you’re building this amazing database of relationships and contacts, you never have to be in scarcity mode.

Decide you’re going to play the long game, decide you’re going to be a pro, decide this is what you’re going to be doing for the next 20, 30, 40 years.

This is your career. Start loading it up.

When you’re out and about, meet people. Don’t worry about sponsoring them.

What happens in the cold market world is that people get so pressured into thinking about having to sponsor someone.

No. Just make friends, get business cards, and exchange info. Don’t put all that pressure on yourself.

If you’re not going to get the number anyway because of the pressure, just get it.

Once you get good at getting phone numbers and business cards, then you can become more comfortable on actually calling, inviting, pitching, and prospecting and sorting through them.

I hope this added a ton of value.

If you feel like this can add some value to some others, definitely hit the share button.

For some advance strategies on becoming a powerful leader, recruiting powerful leaders, creating real time and money freedom, hop over to LeadwithMatt.com

If you’d like to learn about the law of expectation, check out this blog post.