Star Builder

Background

Many people are uncomfortable with holding meetings in their own home, and would rather that prospective distributors met them at a cafe or attend a presentation in a hotel.

While the presentation can reasonably conducted in either of these, the home is a far more effective place to introduce people to the opportunity, this article explains why.

Cost

For each prospect you treat to a coffee or for every time a conference room is booked there is a cost associated with it. It is all to easy to forget the cost of doing business when running one, there is little point in generating an income to you of £500 a month if you don't admit that it cost you a £1,000 to make it!

The prospective distributor can also be put off by the cost of sponsoring, and the whole basis on which the network marketing model is built is sabotaged, in otherwords duplication does not happen, at best it fails to replicate at worst you lose a distributor.

Inefficient

If you went to a cafe you would typically be meeting face-to-face with just one prospect, though at an open business review meeting you might have 2 or 3 prospects come along. However if you were to run a home business meeting then it is quite possible to present to 7 of your own prospects.

Additionally after having carried out a presentation it is quite likely that people will stay in your home for another hour to discuss things, thereby increasing your convertion rate from prospect to distributor.
Over the course of just 1 month that can have a huge impact to your business growth potential.

Time

When you run a presentation at home, assuming you had the place reasonably clean before hand, there is no additional travel time involved, nor is there hanging around waiting for people to turn up.

This means you are making better use of your time, and realise this - not all time is created equally. It is far better to be spending time speaking to people than it is to be travelling to and from a seminar.

Not making proper use of ones time is a key trap that people fall into when they are part of an MLM. We'll cover this in another article on appropriate activities and make it clear to all you procrastinators out there.

So Why Run Seminars?

I often get asked, if home business presentations are so much more efficient, why run seminars at all. Well there are good reasons for running seminars irrespective of it not being as efficient, these include:

• Geographic location such as large cities which makes travel prohibitive
• It gives people an opportunity to ask questions to further their understanding
• Helps one to learn from the experience of others, and gives your potential distributors the opportunity to speak to others for their experiences

You just have to learn to live with the trade off here, and where possible run things in the home.

But I Don't Want Mr Prospect To Come To My Home

This is a valid point, we are scared about inviting those we may not know to well into our homes, it threatens our feeling of security. The point I would make to this is that you are expecting your newly sponsored distributors to do it, so why is it fine for them but not for you.

Remember what gets done gets mimmiced that is the nature of duplication whether you like it or not. The way round this issue is not to invite someone to your home that you have not at least built an element of trust and rapport up with first.

Indeed following the proper process means that not only can you screen out people beforehand, and those that come are more likely to join, but also that you are their sponsor so have to have a good working relationship with them after in ansycase.

Can't I Hold This At Bob or Joanna's House?

In short no, you cannot hold your presentation effectively at someone elses home, be it a distributor or a prospect. In the event of a distributor the message you are sending out to the prospects is that your upline will develop the business for you, and what you are reinforcing to the distributor is a feeling of reliance upon you - that is no way to duplicate.

If you choose to hold the event at a prospect's house, it is not under your control in anyway and can be sabotaged by the phone, kids, fido or any other number of things.

You are also sending out a message to the other prospects that as a sponsor you will need to feel comfortable in someone elses home. Yet again this undermines the whole point of network marketing.

Conclusion

If you can then do it in your home, though where totally not practical do it in a hotel with the support of your sponsor and other team members to share the cost.

Do make sure you properly warm up your leads prior to them arriving at either of these as it will be far more likely that they join - but there is a right way to do this and a wrong way to do this. Please liase with your upline on the proper way of inviting a potential distributor.

If you do need that more personal approach, then sure you can go for coffee - though do keep an eye out on the cost and realise you are using your time to far less effect.

Don't under any circumstances go off to present in someone elses home, it just sends out the wrong message to other distributors and prospects alike.