NO EXPECTATIONS

All our friends and family know about that too. Did we invite them to take a look at the business presentation? Sure, and I’ll tell you why we felt so comfortable inviting them. We did not intend to sell them. As you’d expect, not all of them saw a presentation, and we didn’t push them. We didn’t beg. We didn’t use false pretences to trick them into looking. We didn’t chase after them. We did nothing offensive.

Network Marketing is a business of duplication. People who join you in the business generally will use you as their “puzzle box picture”. You know, when you put a jig-saw puzzle together the first thing you do is stand up the box cover so you can use the full completed picture to help you assemble your puzzle. When you recruit someone they’ll look at you to help them assemble their business. With that in mind, we always try to be and do what we would like our downline members to be and do. The same goes for recruiting efforts. The folks you talk to will consider not only the presentation and opportunity itself, they will judge everything they see you do, thinking that they would have to do those same things if they got involved in your opportunity. They see you begging them and they will think they will have to beg people just like you do. They see you chasing, and they will think it’s part of what needs to be done. They see you handing out flyers in some parking lot, stapling posters to telephone poles, or making a pest of yourself at a party, guess what? You won’t be enticing them to join you. You’ll be scaring them away.

So many times I’ve been working with a new marketer and they’ll say, “Oh, my friend Joe would be great at this. He knows everybody. And he’s a great speaker and has been in sales for years.” All that may be true, but Joe may have zero interest. Joe may be interested but the timing for him is terrible and he just can’t see fitting in the time to build another income stream. Wouldn’t it make sense that a guy who knows everybody and is a great speaker and salesman might have a full plate of activities and responsibilities? Sure. But the new marketer, with such high expectations for Joe’s impact on their business, goes on to chase and beg and stalk Joe. If it was just a timing issue for Joe, after watching what the new marketer did, what do you think the likelihood is that Joe will ever join if his timing improves? He won’t. The problem is the high expectations of the new marketer!

Kim and I coach to approach people with no expectations. It’s a tough skill to master, but it will make a world of difference for you and your group if you take the same path. If I’m talking to anyone and invite them to look at what we’re doing, I don’t expect anything. If they agree to look, great. If they don’t, great. They won’t see any difference in the expression on my face- no sadness, no disappointment, and certainly no anger. So they won’t feel bad or uncomfortable about my asking them to look. If they agree to look and they don’t, I’ll follow up, but again with no expectations. If they change their mind about looking, great. It’s okay. I had no expectations. If they look and seem at least a bit interested, I’ll follow up. If they decide against getting involved, great. If they get involved but don’t live up to their potential, great. I had no expectations.

Not only is that posture the perfect thing to project to the people I talk with, it protects me too. If I have huge expectations and nothing happens, I’m in for a major disappointment. My attitude is one of my most precious assets. If I allow an outcome of one event to even temporarily damage my attitude, that’s a big mistake. If I can operate with no expectations from one event to another with my business, I don’t risk negatively impacting my attitude. Though we view success as inevitable if we continue to grow and move forward with a solid plan, we keep our activity level high and our expectations low from any one individual situation. It works.

Of course the other benefit of operating with no expectations is I’m not going to lose any friends or alienate family by acting unprofessionally. And we use this same approach with everyone because we don’t want to scare anybody away, whether we know them or not. We don’t want to project any “puzzle box picture” that we don’t want duplicated in our business.

So when someone joins us we coach that they should build their social networking system and lead generation program. While they do that they should build a list of the people they know and, with no expectations, invite those folks to look. Those who understand the why behind our coaching of no expectations, and are disciplined enough to live by it, are the ones who build the largest organizations.

Inspire, motivate, coach, and share your dreams- but don’t try to sell your friends and family, or anybody else. Just tell them- with no expectations!