I bet you never thought you would hear that song in an Adrian Chenault video. Neither did I! Welcome and great to hang with you. I just had that “check yourself before you wreck yourself” pop into my head. And I thought it was funny. So here we are, but I want to talk about an actually serious and really common thing that I see happen all the time and especially in network marketing, but I see it happen to any business that is trying to genuinely help people. Here’s what ends up happening. And the biggest thing is I think it happens all the time and people don’t even realize they’re doing it. So even if you don’t think this is you, I want you to just to take a moment and step back and consider if it’s possible that maybe you are without even realizing it.
So here’s what happens. Maybe you’re in health and wellness. Maybe you are super into essential oils. Maybe there’s some new device out there that is going to save the world. Maybe you are totally passionate about a certain kind of cleaning product that is chemical for you or whatever it is. And you just, this has changed your life. It means everything to you and you fell so in love with it, that you decided that you wanted to build a business around it because you just it’s so important to you. And it means so much to you and it really helped you. Maybe, maybe you feel like it literally saved your life. And maybe you feel like you could save other people’s lives and you of course want to save people’s lives because who wouldn’t want to do that.
And so, all of a sudden, you’re out there talking to people and you hear somebody who maybe tells a story that is almost exactly like your story. And you go “Oh my gosh, I could really, really help this person”. And so you get excited and you tell them all about how this could help them. And probably your heart is so big. You’re there for them. You are so in the mode of trying to help that person. And you start to notice that you’ve done this a couple of times, and maybe they’re really polite about it, maybe they’re even really excited about it. And then all of a sudden they don’t buy it or they don’t follow through, or maybe they even ghost to you a little bit and you’re left wondering “well, what happened there?” And here’s what I think happened. Here’s what I think happens when you did that, is that you moved past the human being, you moved past the relationship and you move straight to the problem into the solution to that problem in a way that you hadn’t earned the permission to do and that you didn’t stop along the way to check in on the person.
So we were on a call earlier today and one of our premium customers, Ron, was amazing. He had a friend of him and his wife’s, who, unfortunately, came down with the virus. And so they were in a position where, those people really needed some help. They needed some support, but what did Ron do? He loved on those people. He checked in on them in a very personal way. He checked in on how they were doing. And it was only much later in that conversation, that anything about what Ron had to offer that could be of help to that person, maybe even have life-saving consequence to that person. But if he had led with it, it just would have felt like one more piece of advice or maybe one more piece of criticism, in the mind of the person receiving that.
And so he could have really blown it. He didn’t. And, instead, he had this incredible breakthrough where the relationship was strengthened. Not only that, but he made a sale and maybe even has an opportunity to create a business partner out of that conversation. But so often it goes the other way and I had to laugh.
So the other day we hosted a webinar, an incredible conversation with Ray Higdon, talking about mindset. Ray Higdon is one of the foremost coaches in network marketing. He’s an amazing human being. And he was a very significant earner a in network marketing company before becoming a generic coach. So he knows it all, right? He knows the field, he’s seen it all. He knows what’s out there. And somewhat as an aside, during the conversation, he mentioned something about that he is doing some things to be more fit and to create more wellness in his life.
And I’m watching the chat of this webinar as it goes by. And I saw somebody who I know and who I love and who I know has a good heart and who I know would be shocked at how she came across, who tried to spin this “Hey, sorry, I don’t want to be spamming in the chat, but you could really benefit from this thing that our company is launching. And it sounds exactly like what you need. And, you know, if you’re interested, feel free to hit me”. Like she basically like ran the script on Ray Higdon in the chat during this training. And you know, that’s maybe like a little bit exaggerated, but I see stuff like that happen all the time. That is very well-intentioned. That is meaning the best, but because of two facts: one, there is that the reality is there’s something in it for you. The reality is because what you’re talking about is something that you sell you really risk alienating this person by having them jumped to an incorrect conclusion that all you were about was trying to make a sale when your heart was really to help them. But you have to be very aware of that in that situation. And two, that what happened was that it violated the relationship in the same way that you violate the relationship with your significant other when he or she comes home from a really frustrating day. And all they really need to do is kind of vent about something that bothered them during the day. And if you’ve ever done this and you decide that you’re immediately going to jump to the helping and solving their problem for them and offering advice when all they needed to be was heard (most of us all we really need to be as heard). So jumping to a sale or a solution, even if you don’t think of it as a sale, in the moment when they need to be heard is not a recipe for success and can really be a recipe for damaging connections and relationships.
So what I want you to do is to examine in yourself, what is your level of enthusiasm about what it is that you sell and to ask yourself to think back, especially if you could think of a couple of conversations that didn’t go the way you expected them to recently, where you were excited to help someone and they didn’t respond the way you expected. Go back to that conversation and look to see if there is a fragment of this in there, because I would guess that there is.
And I just wanted to share that with you today, because I think it’s really, really important. And we are actually working on something. We have something that’s coming up on the 28th of this month. We’re not doing a ton of marketing about it, but we are offering a live Prospecting Masterclass on the 28th of the month where we are going to really dig into this, because I think this is a spot where so many people who I work with get stuck on trying to move the conversation to that point of a sales conversation without tripping over themselves in ways that they may not even understand. And so we’re going to go deep on that. It is going to be super powerful. If you would like to check that out, if you want some more info on it, just drop “prospecting” in the comments here, or send me a message and I would be happy to connect you with what that’s all about, and we’d love to have you, of course. So thank you. Hope you found this valuable. If you did, please share this or tag somebody who is from your team or who might benefit from hearing it. And like I said, just drop “prospecting” or send us a message if you want to hear more about the Prospecting Masterclass coming up, we’d love to have you. So thanks. Have a great one. Talk to you soon. Bye bye.
