Need Successful Home Business Strategies? 4 ‘Facepalm’ Blunders to Avoid

Are you looking to build a successful home business, that creates time freedom and leverage instead of running around to meetings all day?

Do you ever wonder how top earners run a successful home business, almost effortlessly recruit on demand while most network marketers struggle to barely cover their autoship?

Want to know how to get people approaching you about your business, instead of constantly hounding prospects and following up?

If you answered YES to any of the above questions…you may be making a ‘facepalm’ blunder which is blocking you creating a successful home business – if it is, don’t be embarrassed because I did this too at first, so I know how you feel and have spoken to many others who felt the same.

My goal today is to highlight the most common problems that I found a home business owner often avoids, and some solutions behind it which you can use in your business to get results faster with less effort, starting today.

Before I get into these four colossal blunders, I wanted to share with you a story about Tim and his experience in the industry, because chances are you can relate to a lot of this (I sure could!)

When Tim first joined the home business industry, he was sold on the whole concept instantly . See, he wasn’t a big lover of the corporate job world and could never get ahead in his career, in fact more often than not he was asked to stay late by his boss and do overtime because of workload requirements increasing as a result of recent job losses in his company.

Later Tim learnt from a friend who also worked there in a higher position that his (Tim’s) job was also at risk. Tim had absolutely had enough with the endless paperwork, office politics BS and being heavily overworked whilst being woefully underpaid without a pay rise for years, coupled with the fact that now his ‘secure’ job, like so many others, is not so secure now…even after all his hard work spent trying to climb the corporate ladder. Sucks huh?

Tim knew his value to society and decided he was worth more than a $25K a year job, so he searched online for a way to make money. He stumbled upon home business ideas and found network marketing. He was blown away by the possibilities of a successful home business.

Tim saw the vision of being able be financially free if he could just get five who get five and he was IN, sold and he signed up in a matter of minutes, hurriedly filling out his application form with sweaty palms and arms shaking from his excitement.

So Tim joins and does everything his upline tells him…hold home meetings, prospect strangers and chase friends and family.

This is Tim’s experience:

• Nobody shows up to the home meetings  (even though they swore on their grandma’s lives they would come!)
• The endless strangers he prospects say NO and he experiences stupendous amounts of rejection. Some places he starts soliciting in (sometimes not so politely) ask him to leave and some even threaten to call the authorities if he doesn’t. OUCH!
• His friends and family stop answering his texts, phone calls and messages because they see Tim as a salesman who only wants to make a commission from them.
• A month later he’s right about to throw in the towel, after getting ZERO sales and signups from all his effort. He has nothing to show for it and feels very sheepish for even attempting these things.

What in the world happened to poor ol’ Tim?

Well most people build their business backwards. They start a business, THEN try and market online. They don’t realise it’s the MARKETING that is important, not so much the company or product itself.

Take McDonald’s for example…do you think they have the best quality food? It’s not a defining factor when building a successful home business either, as long as the product solves a problem. Here’s more tips on how to start a business online:

Not at all but their marketing is so effective that kids who are barely old enough to speak can recall their branding AND they have systems that are duplicatable. You know exactly what to expect every time, at every single McDonald’s worldwide.

So here are the 4 blunders almost every networker makes at some point in their career…be sure to note these points below as it’ll save you YEARS of pain, frustration and time wasting.

1) They don’t know who to target, so they face rejection.

Back when I was building my previous network marketing company about 1.5 years ago, I would go out to coffee shops, gyms, health stores, hairdressers, beauty salons and many other local businesses to hand out ‘coupons’ (a flyer) which advertised our company’s products and had my contact information on.

I dreaded going out to do this; I felt so uncomfortable because it was as if I was intruding on busy workers and shop owners, which I actually was. Thing is I am actually good at going out and talking to strangers, and yet I still didn’t enjoy doing this and felt so anxious every single time I did this, so imagine what someone who is shy and not used to doing this is going through.

My upline re-assured me that “they won’t care about that once they find out about these life changing products!” and my favourite was “it’s not selling it’s selling” LOL. Looking back on it I realised no matter how you dress it up, it’s still selling and you come across as a salesperson.

I couldn’t just go out shopping and have a normal life…I had to go and hand out these flyers to get people interested in our products. To me, it didn’t seem like a viable strategy to build a successful home business as it involved too much rejection.

You may like these network marketing prospecting tips in this video below, and in my blog post on Network Marketing Prospecting:

Being a total newbie and not having a better idea I went along with it. So I spent several hours going out to hand out these flyers, just hoping and wishing someone would join really with no clue and no strategy behind what I was doing (maybe you can relate).

I just remember having to answer constant questions, put on a fake smile and then fake laugh at everything they said so I hoped they would buy from me. Looking back I was horrified I even did that. It made me wonder if it was even possible to build a successful home business this way, even though my uplines were insistent that you could!

After handing out over 150 flyers in the space of about a week I had one text from someone who had found my flyer, and that was it. This lady just so happened to be about to birth at the time I followed up with her, so I got back to her about a week later, and got no reply.

So you could say that I was a little disappointed as well as confused, why couldn’t anyone see the value of these products and see them in a way I saw them? I felt like nobody cared about them at all and felt extremely rejected.

I even heard stories from my upline that someone on her team handed out one of these flyers and the person who took it ripped it up and threw it away in front of this poor distributor’s face. That amount of rejection would be enough to make almost anybody want to quit.

See most networkers will go out and try to share their opportunity with every living breathing soul, who are usually total strangers once their warm market runs out.

The reason why you’ve maybe not experienced a lot of success with this (most haven’t) is because you are basically guessing if that person is interested or not.

There is also no prior relationship so even if that person was interested, they’d probably not buy from you. It just seemed like the most painful way to build a successful home business, even if this strategy would make you millions.

Instead of promoting facts, figures and features of your product or opportunity (which is really NOT what people are looking for) start thinking about your target market. My recommendation is to choose existing network marketers as your target market. Why? They understand compensation plans etc. and you won’t run into “is this a scam/pyramid” objection.

Although they’re already in a company, chances are down the line they’d be happy to join another one providing the support and training is there that they need to achieve success (most people don’t have this).  The majority of people in their current opportunity were in one prior to the one they’re in now.

Consider this; is it easier to sell a car to someone who has bought one before, or to someone who is buying a car for the first time?

It’s obviously going to be the person who has bought the car before, as they’re more familiar with how the process works and typically have done their research anyway.

Therefore doesn’t it make sense to market to somebody who has already bought into a business opportunity, rather than trying to convince someone to start one for the very first time? I would say so.

What I actually promote to other network marketers is solutions to their problems e.g. lack of leads, no cashflow and rejection, and I provide these solutions in the form of blog posts (like this one), videos and other online content also known as value based content (I talk more about this in #4).

If you’re looking for ways to generate more home business leads, this video will help:

The idea is that they begin to know, like and trust me and in time they will consider me as someone they may want to work with in the future, because I’m solving their problems and positioning myself as a leader by recommending ideas and information that can help them.

If you’re looking for some new information on an almost daily basis to base your online content on, one of my favourite resources is My Lead System Pro which is a community of 6 and 7 figure income earners who provide very detailed training on how to build a profitable home business without rejection.

2) Relying on warm market, which eventually runs dry.

I’m not knocking warm market as it has worked for some people, however a lot of people simply can’t build their business this way. If they haven’t already burnt through their warm market by joining previous companies, then on average people are left with maybe 100 contacts in their phone, 30 LinkedIn connections and a few hundred friends on Facebook (if they’re lucky).

Now here’s where the problem lies…wouldn’t your friends from high school or college sense something fishy if neither of you have spoken in YEARS yet you want to meet up with them for coffee with an exciting new ‘opportunity’?

See people really are very consumer smart and they know when they are being sold, and people don’t like being sold (but they like to buy!).

This was a breakthrough concept I learnt from Mike Dillard’s book Magnetic Sponsoring who is an 8 figure earner in this industry and this book has been the leading bible since 2008 on how to sponsor effortlessly through Attraction Marketing (the process of getting people chasing you about your business, verses you chasing them).

So anyway, you’d probably now agree with me that relying on warm market has its flaws and limitations. The solution here is to learn how to generate a consistent stream of leads on a daily basis, if you want a successful home business that produces results again and again.

Here’s a training I highly recommend on offline lead generation and one for online lead generation (this one specialises on getting leads via Instagram).

3) Three way calls, which zap all of your time.

Now the thing about three way calls is they do actually work and they can fill your pockets quickly. However your workload is going to increase as you start to do more of these for your team, and your day planner is filled just as quickly too.

I remember my mentor telling me horror stories of how he was on the phone as much as 18 hours PER DAY doing three way calls, often from 7am to 1am the following day. Although some thought he had a fairly successful home business, his income never exceeded $4000 per month even with a team of 6000 people.

Guess what though, this kind of thing is actually normal across the board with top earners. What gives? I thought the idea of running our own business was a dream of freedom…this sounds like the world’s worst nightmare to me.

We’re actually in the time freedom business not just the financial freedom business.

There are far more effective ways to build your business, I share a lot of these in my related blog post on finding Home Business Opportunity Seekers.

So how do we get over this hurdle? Start live streaming presentations via Google Hangouts and instead of only having 3 people on a call you can have up to 9 on a ‘panel’, as well as no limit to the amount of non-participant viewers to your live stream. You also have the advantage of being able to record any Google Hangouts to then send out to anyone at a later date.

I suggest you record a good quality presentation that covers all the details a prospect needs to know and use it again and again, so that people can spend time with you and your team, without you even having to be there! It’s significantly more efficient than re-explaining something that’s already in a video.

Also, if you need help with finding the best MLM leads to show your presentation to, this video will help:

Would you agree with me this would free up more of your time if you just sent a prospect to a video that had all the information in? This was a game changer for me once I realised you could do this. I realised I could get my life back and that I didn’t have to spend all day on the phone having my ears damaged from phone radiation! 😉

4) They brand the wrong thing…a thing that could become a successful home business, but they have no control over it.

Did you know that we are not in the health and wellness industry, or the telecommunications industry, or whichever industry your company is in…we are actually in the personal development and leadership industry. People don’t want to join a business in network marketing, they want to join a LEADER.

This is what you need to brand…YOU. Not your company or products. You can find out more about tips such as branding yourself in my Network Marketing Strategies blog post.

So think about it…why do your prospects want to work with the top earners in your company? It’s because we are attracted to leaders subconsciously without even thinking about it. So what you want to do is become the leader that people want to work with, and you do this by positioning yourself as a leader.

I’ve also recorded this short training video with 2 ways to market a successful home business:

You’ll notice almost all top earners have a blog, so if you want to build a successful home business long term I’d recommend starting with that. A blog is a place you can showcase valuable content that your target market is looking for as well as somewhere to put your story, testimonials and anything else your prospects would love to see.

This is the platform I recommend as you can literally set up a blog in just a few simple steps with no technical know-how required. You’ll stand out from almost every other marketer out there and position yourself as a leader very quickly. There is also this related Wikihow article on operating a successful home business you may like.

I also have learnt that people don’t like to be sold…but they LOVE to buy (especially if it was their idea). You can sell very passively and build a following without actually selling by writing a blog. Many content writing experts such as Ray Higdon have built a successful home business just from blogging.

The other benefit of doing this is being able to build a list of followers who come back to your blog time and time again, if your content is good enough. They begin to know, like and trust you which is something people have to do before they want to buy from you.

Another reason for branding yourself is that if something did ever happen with your company that made you think about leaving it, then you still have your own brand.

Companies makes change in their compensation plan all the time which could reduce your income, or company could close its doors on you. At least then you’d still have a ‘base’ on your blog and keep a successful home business going.

In addition, please comment below and share on social media if you got value from this post about building a successful home business. You may also like my related blog post on Marketing Your Home Business

Would love to know what you liked about the post here, and will respond in person. Thank you for reading 🙂

-Seb Brantigan

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P.S. got value from this post but still don’t have a proven, duplicatable system to get results?

Here’s the exact system I’ve used to generate over 3,746 leads online and make $8.7K+ in commissions from people who didn’t sign up in my primary biz, using no paid marketing.

Click here for the training video for successful home business tips (unless you already get 20+ leads per day)