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Prospects are basically the foundation of any business as they are the "potential" customers to the business. So just how do YOU find good MLM prospects?

Let's start out with a definition of the word promote which is the most important word in finding prospects for your MLM business. The word promote means: to make known.

I was recently helping a person in my downline with her MLM business, which was not growing. As I asked various questions I finally found the "nasty bug" that was stopping her network marketing business from moving forward. She didn't want to come off as being or sounding sales-y. This stopped her from promoting.

How does everyone else promote?

A politician promotes how he/she can make a whole community's life better - so he's/she's making herself known to the public by promoting and making known to as many people as possible what he/she can do for them. If you've noticed, politicians promote on TV, radio, signs stuck in the grass or on telephone poles along a busy street or maybe speaking at various group meetings.

A college promotes what courses it offers. It might promote on radio, might promote to high schools or through sporting events. A stockbroker promotes that he can help his/her prospect make money. A local restaurant will promote via radio, or mailing brochures or discount coupons.

The worst thing you can ever do in your MLM business career is to think, ponder, worry or even get the idea that it's unprofessional to promote!

You really need to know and understand promotion. The only way you can have prospects, therefore customers or distributors - is to promote. The only way for you to make money in network marketing is to promote. You can write down your dreams and goals and study them every night. But you're as effective as a billboard in the middle of the desert. No one knows you exist until you make yourself known. So if you ever find yourself where your business isn't growing or you don't have enough prospects, enough customers, or enough distributors - what do you do? Promote!

Why do you promote?

The reason you promote is to create desire for your product. If you don't create a desire for your product, it's very difficult to achieve MLM success. How would you know that someone desires your product or business? Well certainly if you sent a post card and someone called the number - that's someone showing desire in your MLM business or product. Even if a person called and asks, "How much is this?" - it would still be someone showing desire, or at least slight interest. If you called a friend and asked them to look at something and they said, "Send it to me." That's showing a desire. People sometimes refer to desire as "responses," as in, someone responded to my promotion.

Different types of promotion

So now let's talk about different types of promotion that create desire. You could promote your MLM business in:

* The Help Wanted, the Sales & Marketing or the Business Opportunity sections of a newspaper

* Advertising section of magazines

* Direct mail, such as sending out post cards to everyone in your zip code

* Door hangers

* Email, banner ads on the internet

* Networking. I'm sure you could have guessed that I would name that one. But you would be surprised at how many people when mentioning all the ways to promote, miss that one. In fact, if you use traditional promotion with the mindset of just finding a network of people to work - you will fare far better than most who only measure their responses with how many people respond to their advertisement. You can turn one response from a promotion into thousands if you properly network.

One other place to find prospects for your MLM business is to promote to MLM leads you purchase from a lead company. The advantage of this is you're only paying for those who've responded and you're not paying for all the people who didn't respond. If I send out 10,000 post cards and get 20 responses then I paid for 9,980 post cards that didn't get a response.

The advantage of writing your own ads of course is being able to target your specific audience with your specific network marketing product or opportunity message. Which is VERY important and should not be underestimated.

In contrast, when you buy generic MLM leads, you're buying general ads - perhaps people who've responded to wanting a home based business. The other down side to buying leads is that very often, lead companies resell their leads to more than just you - so you've got extra competition to deal with.

Three broad ways to promote

Now, it probably sounded like I just contradicted myself; I didn't. I just saved you years of running in circles trying to figure the advantages and the disadvantages to generating your own leads or buying leads. This is the game. You must promote. There are three broad ways to promote.

1. Networking - which costs the least. You're going to have costs of meals with prospects, costs of joining clubs and associations. So I have rock climbing club fees, I have mountain climbing association fees, horseback riding fees, mountain biking fees...these are like $50 to $100 dollars a year.

2. Buying leads is more expensive than networking and less expensive than generating your own...but has some advantages and disadvantages. Sometimes you get some hot leads and sometimes you swear you're calling a graveyard.

3. Generating your own. Most expensive, but has the advantages of targeting your prospects. Here's a list of advertisements that I've run to promote my own MLM business opportunity.

* Some people earn Ten thousand dollars a year. And some people earn One million in the same year. Click here to see difference.

* Need more money; NOW!

* Does it ever break your heart to leave your kids at daycare?

* Looking for a FUN business?

* Go to the golf course when it's not crowded.

* The truth about making money. A lot of it.

* WEALTH FORMULA. Click here. (Use with banner ads)

* Wealth formula that takes a lot of effort - but retires you in 4 years.

* Extremely well paying position available to right person. Must have sales & marketing experience. Sales training a big plus.

* Immediate Need for Effective Sales Person. Unlimited earning and growth potential. Self-starter, sales writing skills and team player will be keys to success in this growing, high tech organization. Will be responsible for generating sales leads, preparing and giving presentations on company products and training sales team for development company. Great benefits. Great FUN TEAM! Fax resume to:

Be "in" business
The bottom line is you must be using at least one of these three methods to achieve MLM success. If you're not, you're not in business - you're out of business. What you should be doing, if you see the big picture and want the very big income is you need to be doing all three. All the time. Ideally you start out by networking, which will create enough money to buy MLM leads, and then you'll generate enough money from the leads you purchased to generate your own leads. My point is, as soon as you start making any money in your MLM business, reinvest it in promotion.

One other thought. Don't measure your success by just your immediate responses. Any marketer who is of any value knows that how you measure return on promotion investment is based on the "life of the customer." NOT immediate return. Get one leader from a MONTH or 6 MONTHS of promotion and it can pay you for the rest of your life.

People often ask me, "How much money did you make your first year in network marketing?" I tell them, "I don't know, I'm still earning it."