Ever met somebody and then promptly forgotten their name? Sure you have, we all have. But you don’t have to admit it after all this is my blog not yours. The worst is when somebody calls you up out of the blue and mumbles their name into the phone as if it was not important.

The problem with this is that it happens to everybody, but if you can find a way to minimize it will help you in your relationships, closing sales and sponsoring new people into your business.

Some common strategies are to try and associate the person’s name with some characteristic unique to that person. If the person is Betty from the accounting and has green eyes you might try to associate her with green money and make a mental note that she is “green back Betty”. If the person is your top recruiter in your business you could say to yourself here comes “Terry the top producer”. My favourite is the “flat earth {name}” for people who call me in the middle of the night not thinking that because they are awake and it is sunny I should not be in the dark and sleeping.

But what do you do if you really cannot figure out where you know somebody who just came up to you in a meeting. After all we are network marketers and we talk to a lot of people every day. Well being honest and simply telling them how they are familiar but you cannot just place where you last met them. If you are with an associate, ask them to introduce themselves first and ask the person’s name. Make sure you if you do have to eat humble pie that write it down or get a business card because it is unlikely you will ever get a second chance.

Sorting out this problem goes a long way to establishing lasting relationships. Knowing people’s names is the first step in securing their trust.

When you join a network marketing company like ours, Tahitian Noni International, you have the option of ordering some product promotional literature to jump start your business.

As a rule you should get a single copy of everything that is being published so you can read it fairly quickly and find out what you are comfortable handing out. If you join with a group of people you can always trade some of yours for what they ordered so you all can get up to speed on the business as quickly as possible.

There is another real important reason why you need some promotional literature. Without something to hand to your first customers how you going to explain to them what you are doing? You do not have to be an expert on the first day, but you do need to have something to answer questions.

If you are in business to succeed have to behave like a business person planning to succeed. Nobody in their right mind opens a franchise or a 7/11 store and wonders if they will get 100 customers in the first day. They make plans to make sure they get 100 customers by 10 am on the first morning. If you are going to success then you have to think like that. We have a plan where we explain the thinking behind making sure you have more than enough customers to ensure you actually earn some money. You can read about our network marketing plan on our website.

Network marketing is a very simple business model. The distributor is only responsible to find customers and others who also want to be both a customer and a distributor at the same time so they can earn residual income.

The company, or as it is probably more appropriately referred to as the service company is supposed to do everything else. Everything else means, developing products, handing sales, shipping and returns, paying distributors like you commissions and taking care of all the government stuff like product safety and taxes.

You would think that having a business that only involves finding customers and recruiting new distributors would be trivial to operate and many people would be extremely success at Network Marketing. Especially those individuals with any kind of professional sales experience. It turns out however that Network Marketing is more like the race between the turtle and the rabbit. Flashy starts, big advertising and hotel meetings can always be beaten by steady everyday progress by unskilled workers learning as they go. The biggest names in Network Marketing training will tell you that success is always determined by people doing something small every day to find new customers but doing it every day over a long period of time.

This fundamental concept of distributors just doing what is their responsibility is really hard for most people to accept. What is even more startling is that human nature being what it is very few people are willing to give up the right to be arm chair managers of the service company. This is why picking your Network Marketing opportunity is so critical.

Nobody tells you this when you start your Network Marketing career because the person trying to recruit you wants you in their downline but what they should tell you is that you really need to take a look at the service company and ask a simple question: Do you trust them to continue in business, wisely deal with the government and regulatory agencies if you opportunity is a health supplement, and pay you on time every month. Basically do their job.

If you can trust them, then you can leave them to do their job while you do yours. We all realise that trust is always earned and this process is going to be a progressively growing relationship. However, the key to understand is that you have to let the service company be the service company, and you do your part finding the customers and new distributors.

Both new and seasoned Network Marketers would do well to focus only on the products that are successful in their personal markets and promote them along with the business opportunity while ignoring everything else. Basically doing only the activities that earns them monthly residual income.

Additionally a lot of training in the MLM industry focuses around the idea of duplication with rigid processes on how to find customers and present the business opportunity so that new recruits can do exactly what you did to find them. This is good for a person starting out as it sets boundaries to what exactly their part is. It also allows for lines to be drawn as to when they should walk away from a situation or prospect because the sales process is not heading in the yes I want to join direction.

Finding leads is a critical aspect of Network Marketing. Obviously we all have to have people to talk to about our products and opportunity. But once we have created a way to have an endless supply of leads, we can further reduce our part to simply closing the deal. Becoming an expert at finishing well by successfully selling products and recruiting new distributors is by far the most important activity any Network Marketer can be involved in. Finding leads is of course critical but you really only do this activity to get to the closing sales and sponsoring activities. A means to an end.

We have found that using My Leads System PRO is the best way that we have ever used to find leads. It is highly automated and has a lot of training videos that explain the skills you simply must to learn to become successful. It also focuses only on your part, finding customers and new distributors. We would highly recommend you review this as a tool to help you do your part – finding customers and new distributors in your downline business so that you can begin to focus only on what matters: earning residual income by sponsoring new distributors into your programs.