How To Follow Up In Network Marketing

Today let’s dive into how to follow up in network marketing.

First I’m going to share the very common approaches that you should actually avoid when following up. Then we will jump into why follow-up is so important. Lastly, I’m going to teach you step-by-step how to follow up without being annoying.

How do most people follow up?

Most people follow up from a very check their pulse kind of way, in a very non-effective way. So you have reached out to someone and said, “hey, are you open to taking a look at (product, service or opportunity)” and they say “no.” You are like “okay” and whatever degree of dismay that you express. Then when you follow up, you say, “hey, has anything changed? Anything changed on your end…” it’s just not effective. You are missing a very powerful opportunity when you are connecting with that person. There’s not an unlimited number of times you can connect with that person and the less effective you are, the less of those times you are actually going to have because eventually they are thinking…”ugh, I’m not taking their call. I don’t even want to talk to them.”

By the way this is true of reps too. If you have teammates that you have tried to get them motivated and get them pumped up and they’re just not doing anything, don’t call and check on them. This is not a checkup. A follow-up is not a checkup. A follow-up is a bringing up. I want you to bring up something, not check up. If we are talking about a rep, it wouldn’t be, “hey, how you doing? How are you….” because that’s translated as “when are you going to make me some money, when you’re going to do something or you’re just a disappointment currently, is that status going to change…”that’s how it’s translated. I assure you, I know that you are trying to be nice, I know that I just want to show them that I care. I care more than they do, that means they are a disappointment. Check your premises on that. If you want it more for them than they want it for themselves, doesn’t that classify them as a disappointment? Well, they can feel that.

Instead of checking up on your rep or checking up on the prospect, give them an update or give them a deflection. Let me give you some some examples.

Maybe I’m at a convention or maybe I’m on a Zoom and I hear someone that was a realtor that came into our network marketing business as a realtor and is crushing it right now. Well that gives me very powerful information for anyone I know that’s a realtor. How do I maximize this relator’s story? Well, I will go to every realtor I know and follow up with them. Saying, “hey, I know when we first talked you weren’t interested in it but listen, I just heard this really powerful story from a realtor who’s crushing it and I’m just curious do you know any realtors that might want to crush it?” That’s a very powerful question. It may get them to think whether they are a rep or a prospect. It may get them to think about another realtor or it may pique their curiosity. That is a very different approach and much more effective than you just checking up on them.

Is follow up important?

Now that we have covered a little bit of what to do and what not to do…why is follow-up important? About three years ago I gave a hundred thousand dollars to Grant Cardone for six hours of his time. That probably sounds a little nuts, doesn’t it? But for those that don’t know, Grant manages over a billion dollars worth of real estate and is a very successful, author, TV star, sales trainer etc… and a friend. In hour one of those six hours, he helped me look at how I was running my business in a different way that helped me put an additional million dollars in my pocket that year. It was a very good investment.

One of the things when I invested with him is that I got to spend more time around him and his team. I spent time with his sales team and he has a very large sales team and these are pretty fairly aggressive mainly young males that pound the phones. They’re aggressive. I remember when I was 18, 19 years old I was telemarketing and pounding the phones making 450 calls a day, so I can relate with these guys. I asked the the head of sales.

I said, “hey I’m just curious….” Now first of all, just to paint the picture, he runs a very successful sales training organization, very successful real estate business and venture capital business. His sales people are required to take his sales training every day. Every day they have to study sales. Imagine that. Not only are they studying it every day, they’re doing it every day and they’re there on weekends. They are hard workers. Just to set the stage here….

I asked the sales manager, “hey, what percentage of your sales do you guys make on the first contact? What would you say?” These are highly trained sales individuals, very savvy with what to say, very savvy with their technology and when to call people and all that stuff. They have all that figured out.

What would you say is the percentage? Well the percentage of sales that that company closes on the first contact, two percent. 98% of their income comes from follow-up.

Why in someone that is most likely making fewer calls, most likely less experience, most likely less studying, why should it be different for you? Shouldn’t it at least be 98% of your income too? If you are not doing follow-up, you are literally leaving at least 98% of your money on the table. 98% of the money that your family could have, that you could have, that you could be putting into investments or travel or Pokémon cards or whatever you want, it’s your money. You have to learn follow-up and take this seriously. I really hope that you do. I hope you get this point.

This may help.

Before we get to my last point, make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel, Higdongroup.com/channel. If you are serious about crushing it your network marketing company and you want more of your leaders and upline and even maybe even your CEO to reach out to you and congratulate you on a job well done, subscribe to out channel so you learn exactly how to do that.

How do you follow up without being annoying?

I remember one time when I was teaching follow-up, I was doing an event in Fort Myers, Florida. I live in Naples, Florida. I was doing an event, I was teaching follow-up and this guy that I have known for a very long time, he raises his hand and he says, “hey can I share something?” His name’s Dean he was…I don’t know what he does now, but he used to be with a payroll company. He holds up his phone and he said, “I would like people to see that Ray practices what he preaches” and he hands me his phone. I’m looking at it and I don’t remember doing this but very typical, he has text messages from 2009 until 2016 from me. Now he never joined my team but you can look and I was just scrolling and every couple months, I’d be like, “hey man I’m having some people come over. I would love to introduce you to some new people.” “Hey man, I know you’re not interested but do you know anyone who wants to make some extra money?” “Hey bro, I just won a cruise. Do you know anyone that likes to cruise….”

It’s just year after year and the funny thing is I don’t even remember sending those because I’m addicted to my activity, not their response. I was not upset… “when is Dean going to reply…when is he going to come back to me.” I didn’t have a tear in my beer, I didn’t have a breakdown, I wasn’t sitting up all night… “Dean, Dean, is that you?” I was not crazy about it, but I was addicted to my activity.

There are probably hundreds, if not thousands of people that I did that with. Every once in a while their name would enter my mind. I would look at my journal and be “oh yeah, I haven’t sent them a message in a while….” Hundreds if not thousands of people I did that with and not one of the did I say, “hey man, you’re an idiot if you don’t do it. Hey, man this thing’s a no-brainer. Hey bro, shouldn’t you be making money.” None of them were insulting, none of them were aggressive, none of them were pushy or annoying. It was just me giving him an update, this thing just happened or given them a deflection. “Hey, I know it’s not for you, but do you know anybody that might ______(fill in the blank).” You can absolutely be following up very consistently without being annoying.

Additional tips for follow up.

We actually have a step-by-step video on every possible way you can follow up. It’s one of our bread and butter videos inside of Rankmakers University. Now if you have never heard of Rankmakers University, you can click the link, rankmakers.com/rmu and it will tell you all about it. This is our private label software that you log into that has an intelligent software where you fill out a survey and it will suggest to you what training would be best for you. It also has our very in-depth training on follow-up and closing. It’s something that has helped a lot of people create results in their network marketing career. If you would like to learn more about it, feel free to click the link.

Drop me a comment if this helped. Did this help you around the concept of follow-up? Have you been struggling with follow-up? Well I hope that this post helps and again if you want to dive deeper, click that link above.