Today we will cover how to follow up with your network marketing prospects.

First, I’m going to share why you should never ever check up on them. Secondly I will share how to follow up without feeling like you are bugging them. Finally I’m going to share with you  the best practices on what to actually say in follow-up.

Now, I don’t know about you, but a lot of times when I was planning my follow-up, I would feel the rejection in my head before I did the follow-up, I would feel like “I’m going to be annoying, I’m going to be a nuisance, I’m going to be bugging them or they’re going to laugh at me…” you know all that stuff. Knowing that, this post is really going to help you, because I understand the difference between someone who does follow up, someone who does not and the difference in results is staggering.

Why you should never “check up” on your prospects.

If you are not following up, you are working way too hard. You’re thinking that people will sign up faster than they normally do, which is just not the case. In your follow-up, stop just checking on them. “Hey, just checking on you.” Checking to see if anything’s changed is not very effective. Although it’s better than nothing. If you are not going to send anything then bad follow-up is better than no follow-up. So if you’re not going to send anything then fine, check on them, but why not make it a little bit more effective. We will talk about actual language in a few moments.

You miss an opportunity when you follow up with someone and say, “hey, just checking on you.” You’re missing an opportunity to talk about something exciting about your business, you’re missing an opportunity to go for a referral, you’re missing an opportunity to make that a much more impactful message. This also holds true of your reps. Checking on your reps is a little bit more dangerous actually.  Here’s what I mean. A lot of leaders, they’ll go to their the people in their team and say “hey, just checking on you. Seeing if you need anything or if I can help you in any way, how’s it going?” The way that that’s translated by the rep is…. “when are you going to make me some money? When are you going to do something…” and that can feel like a form of pressure. Kind of like the mom pressuring the daughter, “when you’re going to get married already?” It’s a form of pressure that most people don’t like. Not only is it not effective, but they don’t like it.

One thing you need to realize really quickly is network marketing is the most volunteer relationship that anyone is ever a part of in their life. Not easy to walk away from a boyfriend, girlfriend, not easy to get divorced, not easy to get rid of those kids. Really easy to cancel their auto-ship with your company, and you need to understand that. Don’t just check on your prospects or your reps either.

How to follow up without feeling like you are bugging them.

You should also stop seeing follow-up as bugging them. You shouldn’t look at it that way. I’m going to teach you how to follow up, what to say etc. in the next section. This is a very big thing, as long as you draw a negative conclusion to your follow-up, you’re going to keep struggling to do it. Now if you legitimately thought you were bugging people then who the heck wants to do that? You have to eradicate that from your mind.

I will give you an example. I had a guy that we had done some things in the past and I reached out to him and he told me no. I reached out to him again (I used a couple different methods that I’ll talk about in the in the last section) but I reached out to this guy seven times, he told me no six times. On the seventh time he said yes, he joined that company. He became a six-figure earner making over a hundred thousand dollars a year, he left his job and for the last eight, nine years he has been a stay-at-home business builder. He’s been working from home, being spending every minute with his sons, watching them grow up, going to their football games, taking them to school. He has completely changed his life because I followed up.

You’re going to have stories like that too if you start following up. There are so many people out there that maybe they didn’t catch the vision the first time you talk to them about it (that is extremely common) or maybe they had something going on. They had something stressing them out and they just couldn’t focus on it. You following up is actually you caring about them. I know that it’s really easy to say, “oh I don’t need the money or whatever….” Well okay, fine. You don’t need the money. Wink, wink. You don’t need the money, got it. But what about the impact? I love the impact that I made with him. I love the impact that he’s making on his kids, that he’s making with customers I’ll never meet. He’s not coaching people but he is making a big, big difference because I had the care to follow up with him.

You have to care more about the people that you’re reaching out to and actually helping them to impact. Now don’t be addicted. He could have told me no 25 times. I wouldn’t have been mad at him. “How dare you? I’m trying to help your life.” I wouldn’t have been mad at him, that’d be very strange but I’m going to care enough to follow up, to risk looking stupid…. “Oh my goodness, oh no.” I’m going to care enough to keep following up because I know how awesome network marketing is, I know that it helped save my life, I know that it freed me and although I’m not active in a company any longer, it led me to this path. Clearly the majority of our clients and students are network marketers. My life is still very much an ambassador for the network marketing profession and so you have to care more to do more follow-up.

Let’s hear from you.

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What should you be saying in this follow-up?

I said don’t do the checking on you. Don’t do that. My go-to plays are really just two plays: updates and deflections.

Now, I have a full video of this inside of our community and our software called Rankmakers University and that training is called my crazy follow-up. In that training I detail out every type of possible follow-up but today I want to share with you two of my of my favorite ones. Update, deflection.

What’s an update? An update, it’s something new whether you got a new flavor, you launched in a new country, you just earned something or maybe you’re following up with a realtor and you just heard of another realtor’s story in your company. An update could be, “hey, I was just at this convention and you know what? This realtor crossed the stage and she’s crushing it. Would you like to learn more about what we’re doing because apparently realtors are crushing it.” See, that would be- that’s an update.

Now you could take that same scenario and make it a deflection. Here’s how you could do that. So a deflection is when you are not going after them, you’re asking them if they know anyone. Now, I call it deflection versus referral because it’s actually more likely to get their interest than for you to actually get referrals, but sometimes you will get referrals. A deflection in that same scenario would look like this….notice the deflection. “Hey, when we last talked I know that you said that what I’m doing isn’t a fit for you and that’s totally cool, but last night I was at this convention and this realtor is just crushing it and so I thought of you because I know you know you’re a realtor. I know it’s not a fit for you. Do you know any other realtors that might want to make some extra money?”

Notice first I deflected the business. “I know it’s not a fit for you…” which is a very powerful way to communicate. Most people won’t do that because they’re so scared of blowing it, right? Well your fear of blowing it is making it too stressful and that’s why you blow it.

“Hey, I know it’s not fit for you…” that’s deflection number one.

Deflection number two is “do you know anyone?”

“I know it’s not fit for you, but do you know anyone.”

There’s two deflections in that one follow-up. Updates and deflections, that’s how I would follow up with people for years. I remember I was teaching this at an event in Fort Myers, Florida. I live in Naples but I lived in Fort Myers for many years. I was doing this event in Fort Myers, Florida and I was teaching follow-up. One of the guys that I’ve known for quite a while. He raised his hand and he said, “hey can I share something.”

I’m like, “sure.”

He showed his phone where I had followed up with him through text from 2009 to about 2015 for six years and I didn’t even remember doing it, because I did this with so many people. I wasn’t addicted to them responding or them saying yes, I was addicted to my activity, not their response. He shared those, it’s pretty funny and here he was in in network marketing now. Be more addicted to your activity than their response. It’s okay if they don’t respond, it’s not okay if you don’t follow up.

Want more help? 

Would you like more help with not just follow-up but also overcoming objections, how to reach out etc. You may want to check out our social media script book. It contains a ton of different information. You will notice that it’s branded Rankmakers from our Rankmakers community but this will help you with what to say in almost every situation. Now if you’re in, here is the link, Rankmakershop.com/social. Just click the link if you want to learn more and you will see some testimonials over there that may be helpful for you. 

Ray Higdon

Play Bigger. Make An Impact.


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