Recruiting and building a Sales Organization is a “Sales Job”. Most people fail to be successful at recruiting because they forget that their “opportunity” is a product and the fail to take their prospects through a sales cycle. If you are selling cars, real estate, widgets or a business opportunity, the same fundamentals need to apply. Each potential customer needs to go through a “Sales Cycle”.

1.Prospect
2.Build Trust
3.Educate
4.Qualify
5.Take Away
6.Close

Prospecting – This is a fancy word for developing leads. Without a doubt, advertising online is the quickest most cost effective way to develop hot leads or prospects. The quickest way to do this is to develop landing pages. Effective landing pages offer something of value to your prospect for entering their contact information. You then drive traffic to your landing pages by advertising on search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing under keyword your prospects would search if they were looking for your products or services.

Building Trust – Building trusts starts way before a prospect ever contacts you. Large companies are always building trust. Ever see a commercial for a business and the commercial is not selling a product, it just shows the company? This is called branding. GE and 3M are always branding. Well that company is building trust with potential customers. As a new business or home business you probably do not have the money to build your brand to where your brand alone establishes trust.

When a prospect comes to your websites, before they give you any information, you’d be surprised at how many people will open up a second browser window and Google your URL, Your name or your company name if they are seriously looking for a business opportunity. You need to make yourself as transparent as possible.

A very simple way to do this is to display your phone number. As a business owner you have to have a dedicated phone line just for business calls. Now most people will not call you if you are promising additional information on another page. They will fill out your contact form. But by having your phone number displayed it will make a prospect feel more comfortable knowing that “Hey, if I need to speak to someone I can. This company or person is not hiding behind an email address. There is a real person to help me.”

If a prospect does call you first it is a GREAT thing, because that prospect is very interested and does not want to wait to get the information they are seeking.

Now once a prospect contacts you, you need to continue to build trust with that prospect. Do this by building relationship. Find out as much as you can about your prospect through a conversation and not an interrogation. Share personal information about yourself. The first 3 minutes of your conversation should be completely non-work related. Build a relationship. People buy people not products.

Educate- When educating a prospect about your business remember that this is not a training call. If you have a recorded webinar or conference call that explains the details about your business make sure that they have seen or listen to it first. If they have not listened to the recorded presentation send it to them and schedule a time to follow up. You do not want to waste your time answering questions that are explained in the recording.

After they have watched the recordings then answer their questions. Be completely honest and maintain control of the conversation.

Recognize buying questions. If a prospect asks a buying question you stop educating and move into qualifying.

A very common buying question that people shy away from is “how much money are you making at this?” If a prospect asks you that and you have established trust and properly educated the prospect it is a buying sign. They have related themselves to you, they are still interested in your opportunity and they are trying to envision themselves making money with you.

I will post a great response to that question another time but after you answer that question or any other buying question immediately go to qualifying the prospect.

Qualifying- If you properly qualify a prospect you will have prospects sell themselves into your opportunity.

Ask Why’s:

1. Why are you looking to start a home business?
2. Why now?
3. Why have you chosen to look into (Your Company)?

Ask Do You’s:

1. Prospect, if you were to become an agent with (Your Company) WE would invest a lot of time in you making sure that you are properly trained and set up to be successful. If we accept you into our program Do you have a student mentality that will allow you to listen to what’s working and then implement these techniques?
2. Prospect there are costs associated to running a business, such as phone and fax, advertising, business cards and such. Do you have the money it will take to get started?

Take Always- The purpose of taking the opportunity away from a prospect is to make them fight for it and take action now.

1. Prospect, I am really only looking to partner with individuals that share the same vision that I do. I can help you get there, but Do You honestly see yourself being able to do what it takes to be a 6 or 7 figure earner in this company?
2. Prospect I am only looking for serious people who are willing to make a commitment right away so that I can get them into or next training class. Are you willing to take the next step to starting a successful business?

The Close: – This is where so many people fall short. Take the lead and have your prospect follow you. If your prospect makes a commitment don’t wait for them to get registered on their own. While they are on the phone take them to your registration page and walk them through the process with credit card in hand.

Remember that you are SELLING an opportunity and every prospect needs to be taken through the same sales cycle. Don’t skip steps of change the order of the cycle and you will increase your closing ratios and your team will grow.

Good Luck!

Kyle Vonder Hulls is the founder and President for KV Management, LLC. KV Management is an emerging leader in the financial services industry with access to over $740,000,000 in capital to lend and over 500 independent sales offices and agents throughout the US. http://www.kvmanagement.com.

For information on a sales career with KV Management please visit: http://www.kvmgt.com/careers.html