A study of mobile phone usage in 2013 revealed that the average American adult checks their phone every six and a half minutes.
Think about this in terms of the ease in connecting with someone in today’s world. Working the process to build your networking business starts by making a contact (I call this an approach). The contact is essentially the beginning of the conversation. This is all the process is. A conversation to help someone understand how what you have to offer can help them meet a need.
It’s not any more complicated than this. And given the attachment to technology and phones, it has never been easier to begin a conversation than it is today! This is one of the drivers for the for the rapid growth of the networking industry. Certainly there are many other forces at work that are creating this boom, but for this article I will focus only on this one little BIG piece.
Nothing can ever be better than a live face to face conversation with someone. Ever. However, getting to the place where a real live conversation is possible is now a little different than it used to be. In today’s world, while everyone has a phone in their hand, and is constantly checking it, fielding a phone call represents a choice they have to make. Their phone is buzzing or ringing, and they are deciding, do I have time to talk to someone right now? Do I even want to talk to someone right now? More often than not, a ringing phone is ignored. Because the person being called cannot be certain what kind of time commitment answering it will require.
More often than not, a ringing phone is ignored
It used to be that a ringing phone was urgent. It had to be answered. But think about now. How often does YOUR phone ring and you choose not to answer it? How often do you simply text the person and say “what’s up” instead of answering?
This is a valuable lesson. The power of the process is that it is a conversation, and the power of technology is that it allows this to start whenever you’d like and continue as it goes. If you apply the same principles of the process for actually talking to someone, into the use of technology, you will find that you can go much faster in beginning the conversation via text or direct message.
The key to building a successful business is getting your story and information in the hands of as many people consistently as you can. The people in the process of evaluating your offer are in your “pipeline.” The more people you have in your pipeline, the more people you will sponsor. This is not complicated. While the business is a relationship business, the process is about numbers. The human nature principles don’t change. If 10 need your offer, 2 are likely to take it. The key is how many times you can work through the 10s (see my previous post on scalability).
The key to building a successful business is getting your story and information in the hands of as many people consistently as you can
Using technology the right way allows you to introduce a much higher rate of contacting, which lead to more people, faster, in the pipeline. It helps you also to smooth some of the rough spots in your learning curve because while you are still doing the initiating, the technology is controlling the flow and providing the information up to the point when you can have a live conversation.
A couple of simple ways to start this process:
- If you are comfortable on the phone, use the direct message to simple say “Hey, I’m trying to catch up with you, let me know when you have a minute to talk.”
- If you are not yet comfortable to make the first contact by phone, simply use the approach questions I teach in The Process. They are incredibly effective. But make sure you stick to what I teach. You may think it is better to tell the entire story in the first contact, but this would be a mistake, because you will lose control of the information flow. You have a responsibility to the person you are contacting to make sure they learn what is in it for them, and you can only do this by using the right information at the right time. Once they respond positively to your contact (and many will) you can then go to the information/story step, either by phone/in person/or targeted information.
