You are engaged in network marketing. This means you are out making new connections, turning connections into friends and bringing a great product and business opportunity into their lives. If you are like most, you may have found yourself asking questions like, “Should I lead with the product or the opportunity?” You may have found yourself getting to know someone and thinking to yourself, “This person would love this product and get great value from using it, but they are not going to be interested in the opportunity.” I am here to tell you that these thoughts are all signs of prejudging the prospect. Another way I see people prejudging prospects is deciding that the person would not be interested in the product or opportunity and that it would not be worth approaching them.
Prejudging the prospect is dangerous. We DO NOT know everything about our prospect’s life. We do not know all their likes, their dreams, their needs, or anything else. In addition we do not know these things about the people in our prospect’s life. To be honest, there is probably as much, if not more, that do not know about the people in our lives as we do know. Prejudging a prospect can cost your business some of its greatest assets. Let us build an example.
Let us say Jill meets Jack. As they get to know each other, Jill decides Jack would really gain great value from her product. She sees, very clearly, how much Jack would love this product. However, Jill cannot vision Jack having any interest in the opportunity of her company, or simply sees it as a bad fit. Therefore, Jill decides to approach Jack, show him her product but leave out the opportunity portion of the presentation. As she suspected, Jack loves the product and becomes a customer.
Why was this dangerous to Jill’s business? How does Jill honestly know that Jack would have no interest in her opportunity? Perhaps, unknown to Jill, Jack has a network marketing past and has been looking for a good opportunity. There may be a possibility that Jack has been having some unexpected expenses and has been considering finding a second income to supplement what he has been doing already. There is a chance that Jack has a family member or close friend that has mentioned that they are looking for a business opportunity. All these situations may exist without Jill being aware of any of them and she has missed tapping into this by not sharing the opportunity and the product and letting Jack decide for himself what is the best fit for him.
The same could be true for those people we decide not to share our business with. I have known some incredible distributors who did not have a use for the product at the beginning, but really wanted a way to make some “beach money.”
My advice, do not argue with yourself over the product vs. opportunity. Do not argue with yourself over whether or not your business would be an interest to someone or not. Just share it with everyone. Let those interested in the product decide to become customers; let those interested in the opportunity decide to become distributors; let those not interested in either have the knowledge of what you have to offer.
Watch your thoughts about prospects. Ask yourself, “Am I prejudging.” The only pre-notion you should allow yourself to have when you approach a prospect is that you are going to present your business, its product and opportunity, to the best of your ability.
