Internet Network Marketing

How To (Dis)Qualify Your MLM Prospects

Lena Bjorna — Mon, 20 May 2013 12:12:27 +0000

Watch this video on how to attract targeted MLM prospects, then read the below article on the importance of qualifying your prospects.

Many people are afraid to disqualify their prospects. They’re too desperate to get the signup, or they may be afraid to hurt the person’s feelings. (I’ve been guilty of both.)

For whatever reason, they’re bringing in people who aren’t right for their business, and end up regretting it later.

Why And How To Disqualify MLM Prospects

I used to be afraid to “reject” people because I didn’t want to make anyone feel bad. But as I grew in my understanding of what it truly takes to succeed in the industry, I came to realize that I was actually doing my unqualified MLM prospects a disfavor by sponsoring them into a business they weren’t a good fit for!

If they didn’t have the resources or mindset to succeed, I would only be setting them up for disappointment by getting them get started!

“Anybody Can Do It”…Or…?

In MLM you’ll sometimes hear the phrase used, “Anybody can do this!” (It’s usually something one will say to prospects to reassure them that building a home business isn’t hard and that “you can do it part time around your job, and without it affecting your current lifestyle”.)

But is this really true? Is it really true that anybody can build a successful business? Then why aren’t more people doing it? Why do so many fail?

Isn’t the reality that to succeed in the network marketing industry you need more than an average dose of determination, you need to be willing to make lots of sacrifices, and that yes – you better believe it – it’s going to affect most every other area of your life?

I tell my prospects that it’s going to be hard; that it will take everything they’ve got. You should, too.

But then also let them know that what they put in they’ll get back a thousandfold in the future. Of course this is the whole point with creating a residual income.

Mindset, Mindset, Mindset…

You need to start raising the bar on your MLM prospects if you aren’t already – I talked about this in my last post. You have to stop operating from a scarcity mindset.

Learn to state what you want, and the right MLM prospects will feel your posture, respect you for the fact that you are being a real leader, and want to work with you for this very reason.

Let me add that it’s also a lot easier to operate from a mindset of abundance and not be afraid to disqualify people when you have a steady flow of leads coming in, and this is yet another reason why it’s so critical that you focus on generating your own leads from day one!

How To Know If Someone Is Unqualified

Of course some people may just take a little more time than others to get plugged in. The slow starter may turn out to be the next super star in your downline. You just never now.

That being said, there are ways to know that a person is not qualified right off the bat, in which case you shouldn’t even sign them up.

So what would disqualify a prospect? I would say if they’re not doggedly determined to succeed, not passionate about the products or about helping other people, or don’t have a marketing budget and aren’t willing to raise one (the exception would be if they can carve out a lot of hours; what you lack in budget you can make up for with your time.)

Simply put, recruit only MLM prospects that you truly believe have what it takes to succeed in your network marketing opportunity!

What To Say To Qualify Your MLM Prospects

When talking to your prospects, and on your website/blog, you can say something like this: “Right now I’m looking for five extremely driven people who are incredibly serious about changing their circumstances. Given the fact that I’ll be investing my time and energy in you and that I have a financial interest in your success, I obviously want to be certain I bring in the right people.”

Do you see how strong that comes across? Do you think your prospects will get that you’re a real professional?

What’s so great about this is that your MLM prospects can also see that you’re the type of leader that works closely with your team – an added incentive for them to sign up with you.

<<<<< If you enjoyed this post, kindly share, tweet, and Google+ it so that others can benefit from it, too. Also, leave a comment below - otherwise, how will I know you were here?

PS: Hundreds have already joined and are using my “Her Success Blueprint” course, plugging into my very own award winning strategies to build a successful home business. Click here for the whole scoop!

Light & love,

Multiple Award Winning Marketer

Industry Top Earner

Where I Learned To Market

The Real Key To Sponsoring More MLM Leaders

Lena Bjorna — Wed, 15 May 2013 11:31:41 +0000

Want to attract more MLM leaders into your business…real action takers? We all do, right?

No one wants to spend valuable time trying to motivate their distributors to take action, or having their distributors constantly contact them with questions they can easily find the answers to themselves.

We want MLM leaders on our teams – the kind of people that take action on their own, who take responsibility for their results, and who set out to find the answers themselves, not expecting us to engage in constant hand-holding.

So then…how do you go about sponsoring more of these types of people?

Two Steps To Sponsoring More MLM Leaders

The quote in the image above really says it all. The more you become the right type of person, the more you will also attract the right type of people – MLM leaders – into your business.

It’s just like in our personal lives: Ask any relationship expert out there, and they’ll tell you that rather than focusing so much on trying to find Mr or Mrs Right, you should focus more on being Mr/Mrs Right.

Do this, and soon you’ll also find yourself attracting your dream girl or guy into your life. They’ll recognize you as being their right person!

And if you want to find Mr. or Mrs. Right in terms of reps and business partners, you’ve also got to start by raising the bar on yourself; by stepping up and be the LEADER.

You’ll see that you’ll begin to attract an entirely different caliber of individuals into your professional life.

If You Look Like A Leader, Talk Like A Leader…

As I talk about in great detail in “Her Success Blueprint”, you’ve got to come to a place in your own mind and heart where you ‘own your greatness’. We’re not talking about being cocky or arrogant or obnoxious here; it just means that you know your value and what you have to offer.

And this comes trough in the way you present yourself. On social media sites, in videos, through follow up emails, on phone calls, and through your entire presence online, the message comes across loud and clear that you are a leader worth following.

You do this NOT by showing pictures of your checks or pins but by giving advice, and doing so with authority. You do it by your choice of verbiage and your tone of voice.

Presenting yourself as a leader means you have posture.

People will always see you as you see yourself. If you look like a leader, talk like a leader, walk like a leader…then as far as your prospects are concerned, you ARE a leader. It really is that simple.

Developing A Leader Like Mindset

I stated above that you “know your value and what you have to offer”. Well, this is something you can’t fake.

You’ve really got to focus on honing your marketing skills. And the more knowledgeable you become, the more your confidence will also grow. And the more confident you become, the more of an abundance mentality you’ll develop in turn.

As a result, you’ll get better at discerning who’s a good fit for your business; you’ll stop being “desperate”, sponsoring just anyone. Which again will put more of the right people in your downline.

Finally, as you develop this confidence and self-assurance, other like minded people will recognize you as one of their own and be drawn to you.

Because MLM leaders want to work with other leaders!

Think about it: unless you yourself are the “right” person, why would those other “right” people – the serious business builders and up-and-coming MLM leaders that you’d like to bring into your business – want to join you?

The Two Steps To Being A Leader, Starting Today

To recap, if you want to sponsor more MLM leaders into your business, you have to first BE that person that those MLM leaders are going to want to work with. Over the phone and online you have to get the message across that you are a leader.

Second, you need to study marketing with a passion to become a true expert in your field. That being said, realize that even if you are new, you already know more than a lot of distributors out there, so you can always be a leader for someone.

The more you do these two things – presenting yourself as a leader, and studying to become a become an expert (the two really go hand in hand) – the more MLM leaders you will also begin to attract into your business.

Best of “luck” – you can do it!

<<<<< If you enjoyed this post, kindly share, tweet, and Google+ it so that others can benefit from it, too. Also, leave a comment below - otherwise, how will I know you were here?

PS: Hundreds have already joined and are using my “Her Success Blueprint” course, plugging into my very own award winning strategies to build a successful home business. Click here for the whole scoop!

Upward & onward,

Multiple Award Winning Marketer

Industry Top Earner

Where I Learned To Market

Lena Bjorna Interviewed On ABC Television’s “The Ripple Effect” (Extended TV Segment)

Lena Bjorna — Tue, 14 May 2013 17:07:04 +0000

Video Marketing: 3 Simple Ways To Double Your Clicks And Conversions!

Lena Bjorna — Sat, 04 May 2013 19:36:38 +0000

Video marketing is a powerful way to build trust with prospects, and to generate leads. You can’t “fake it” under the scrutiny of the camera lens – people will know whether you’re the real deal.

But before anyone will ever watch your video and opt in and become a lead in your sales funnel, you of course have to get the ‘click’…get them to click on your video!

Video Marketing: How To Get More Clicks On Your Videos

As I’ve talked about before on several occasions, even if you’re camera shy you can still succeed with video marketing. Screen shares/tutorials for one, is a fabulous way to train on a topic and come across as an expert to your prospects without you even having to put your face on camera.

But let’s backtrack just a little. Let’s talk about how to get more people to click on your videos.

In order for you to get the lead, you have to first get the person to watch your video, right? And to get them to watch it, you first have to get them to click on your thumbnail there on YouTube or wherever else they come across your video.

Which is why it all starts with the click – without the click, you have nothing! So here are three quick tips for how to get at least double the clicks…

Shoot Outdoors Whenever Possible.

Videos shot outdoors make for interesting backgrounds and therefore also interesting thumbnail images.

If the other guys (your competitors) have a boring white wall or an uninteresting looking office as a backdrop in their video, while you have a green meadow, a blue lake or a white beach – who do you think is most likely gonna get the click?

Weather bad? Can’t find a nice place to film outdoors? Then how about at least wearing something in a bright color in your video? This, too, will help your thumbnail stand out.

The Title Of Your Video Matters, Too.

Thinking in terms of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), you need to have your keyword phrase at the beginning of the title, but you should also look at it with the eyes of a copywriter: Your title has got to entice your prospect-to-be to click on the video.

That’s not to say you should be spending hours trying to come up with the perfect title, just give it a little bit of thought, that’s all I’m saying.

A terrific free website that will help you come up with headlines for your video marketing – as well as for articles, blog posts, even emails – is CopyBlogger.com.

In Terms Of Length, Think “Short & Sweet”.

In this day of information overload, people have incredibly short attention spans. I would say keep your video to 5-6 minutes, tops. (Screen shares or other types of video tutorials can be longer.)

This is not a die-hard rule, and you’ll see that I have videos running as long as 8-9 minutes where I’m on camera teaching on a particular topic.

If I have good, pertinent content to share, I won’t cut the video short just to get it to fit within 5 minutes.

But in a “lifestyle” video like the one at the top of this post, which is just for fun and doesn’t really teach anything, you’ll want to keep it short.

You may be wondering what this has to do with getting more clicks, and here’s the answer: On YouTube the length of the video will be displayed on the thumbnail image in the bottom right corner like you see in the visual right above.

So how long or short your video is can easily influence someone’s decision to click, or not click, on your video. Again, remember that browsers today simply don’t have the patience to watch more than a few minutes of a video.

How To Instantly Access A HOT, Free Video Marketing Webinar!

This may seem like much ado about nothing, but I can assure you it’s not. This is professional video marketing: Always be thinking of how you can get a leg up on your competition by being just a little bit more strategic. And much of it, as you’ve seen, is actually very simple. (At yet so many people miss it!)

The next video – that of your competitor – is never more than a click away, so you need to make sure yours is the one that gets, and keeps, the YouTube visitor’s attention.

And now I’d like to share with you some fantastic training on video marketing created by a couple of fellow industry leaders, good friends of mine, who are really killing it with video…

****Click HERE for this free 24 minutes training on video marketing.

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Upward & onward,

Multiple Award Winning Marketer

Industry Top Earner

Where I Learned To Market

3 Big MLM Recruiting Mistakes Distributors Make, And How To Fix Them

Lena Bjorna — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 15:57:43 +0000

Today, let’s talk about MLM recruiting and some of the big mistakes that network marketers make in this area.

Successful MLM recruiting always starts with relationship building – be it offline or online – and then, at the right time, you’ll need to demonstrate leadership and close the person on your offer.

Are You Making Any Of These Serious MLM Recruiting Mistakes?

The idea of “closing” someone is terrifying to a lot of people, but if the idea has got you shaking in your boots, it’s probably because you’ve never really been taught proper MLM recruiting.

Next, let’s look briefly at a few blunders new network marketers tend to make when it comes to MLM recruiting, and also what the right approach is.

1. Not identifying the need before proposing a solution.

Okay, this one is classic… Most of us have probably at one point or another done this: We approach someone with our business opportunity or product, expecting them to be as fired up about it as we are.

They, on the other hand, get turned off because all they see is a person with dollar signs in their eyes trying to push their MLM on them.

This happens because you haven’t taken the time to identify the need before offering them your “solution”. You don’t even know if they want or need your MLM yet!

Your “prospect” senses that you’re not really out to help them but rather that it’s about how you can profit off of them.

So, needless to say, this approach to MLM recruiting doesn’t work. The answer is to do the exact opposite: Make it about them. Find out what the other person wants and needs. In fact, you may discover that aren’t a good prospect for your MLM after all.

Before I learned to market properly, in my first two MLMs (this was a few years back), I remember my uplines used to say that “everyone is your prospect”. To that I have this to say: Baloney.

They’re ONLY a qualified prospect for your MLM if they’re already looking to start a home business, and for your product if they’re looking for your specific product, or a product like yours.

The great news is that qualified prospects are everywhere, and you can reach them on the Internet 24/7 when you learn how to use keywords properly in your marketing.

2. Trying to recruit unqualified people.

This is a symptom of a “poverty mindset”.

When you get desperate; when you haven’t sponsored anyone into your business for some time (or perhaps never); if you aren’t generating consistently 30+ leads a day; when customers aren’t reordering and your reps are getting off their auto shipments, it’s very easy to develop a poverty mindset.

Then any new rep will do.

But if this is your approach to MLM recruiting – in other words, you bring in people who aren’t cut out to be entrepreneurs and who are in reality looking for a job, not a business – you’re setting yourself up for failure and misery.

You’ll find yourself spending valuable time (time you could have spent honing your lead generation skills or working on other aspects of your marketing) with all the wrong people.

People that won’t last because they had no business being in business in the first place.

Bringing less than qualified people into your MLM may provide you with a feeling of momentary satisfaction…it’s a short-term fix but the truth is it will set you back, not help you take your business to the next level.

Recruiting unqualified people also requires a ton of energy because these are the folks that need “convincing” before signing up whereas the qualified people see the picture and only need a little “nudge” to get started.

The answer? Take a breath. You don’t need to be desperate…EVER. Keep working on your mindset and skill sets alike, and focus on becoming that leader others will want to work with. Continue to take consistent action, and you can know for certain that it will happen for you.

Remember also that the more qualified you become, the more qualified people you’ll be able to bring into your business, and that with increasingly less effort.

3. Not setting up the conversation.

In my experience, this is a concept that’s completely foreign to people involved in “traditional” MLM (cold-calling leads, going prospecting, wearing buttons, approaching strangers). Which is also why in traditional MLM you usually work very hard with little or nothing to show for it.

Here’s what I mean: If the conversation isn’t set up correctly, you’ll find yourself having to “prove” yourself to your prospect over the phone or when you meet in person, which takes takes a LOT of effort and quite frankly is no fun at all.

You see, if you haven’t built trust or credibility with your prospect beforehand, you have no authority in their eyes going into the conversation!

And now you have to do all the “selling and telling” over the phone or face-to-face because you didn’t pre-sell your prospect by allowing them to get to know you first through for example your personal blog, your Facebook page, your YouTube videos or your BetterNetworker posts.

To the contrary, if you have a strong presence on the social media, and you have a powerful sales funnel like that of MLSP, consisting of lead capture pages, sales pages, and a series of follow-up emails, then the sorting and filtering, selling and telling is being done for you online.

(My video at the top of this post demonstrates what an effective sales funnel looks like.)

Then, your prospect – because they have been exposed to all this valuable information beforehand – will be informed, and they will have been pre-qualified prior to their appointment with you.

Want Some Valuable Free Training On MLM Recruiting?

These are just a few of several serious mistakes new distributors make when it comes to MLM recruiting. But the solutions are also there – really right at your finger tips.

The absolutely best way I know of to master MLM recruiting is to learn from those that excel at it, and one guy I have learned heaps from on the topic, is my good friend Ray Higdon.

Not only is Ray an industry leader and a master at sponsoring but he’s also one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet.

So, that being said, I want to share with you an extensive training on MLM recruiting that Ray did recently. By the way, this recorded ‘nuts-and-bolts’ webinar is 100% free. You’ll also get to learn more about a fantastic course Ray has done on the topic of sponsoring more reps, which I highly recommend you add to your library.

****For all this top-notch training on MLM recruiting, click HERE.

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Upward & onward,

Multiple Award Winning Marketer

Industry Top Earner

Where I Learned To Market

Succeed In Your MLM Business Opportunity By Promoting The Lifestyle!

Lena Bjorna — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:38:00 +0000

When marketing your MLM business opportunity, are you remembering to promote the lifestyle?

Do you realize that even if you’re new to this industry; even if you haven’t yet had your breakthrough, you can still “live the lifestyle” – and promote it? AND get more customers and sign-ups as a results?

Let’s pull back the curtain on this in today’s post.

Your MLM Business Opportunity And “Lifestyle Promotion”

I normally work my MLM business opportunity out of my home in Los Angeles, but after going full throttle on some projects for several months, I was in need of some adventure and relaxation, and so a couple of months ago I booked an extended vacation to Europe.

Today I spent the day in Verona, Italy, where among other interesting, historical attractions, you’ll find “Juliet’s Balcony”, which you see in this picture behind me.

(If you saw the recent Hollywood movie, “Letters To Juliet”, this is the one!)

As I would find out when I arrived in Verona, it just so happened that today was a holiday that marked the departure of the German armies from Italy after the end of World War II.

Add to this the fact that the weather had turned warm and sunny after several days of rain, and you’re beginning to understand how crowded it was in Verona today. Still, it was a fantastic experience. And as I always do, wherever I go – near or far – I took a bunch of pictures, and filmed a bit too.

I hope you enjoy these photos and the video above! :-)

What Your Prospects Really Want

But let’s talk specifically about “lifestyle promotion”. I don’t know if you realize this but your prospects, when they decide to join you in your MLM, are really buying into your lifestyle.

Torre de Lamberti: I took the lift all the way to the top. Amazing view from up there!

By “lifestyle” I mean the opportunity to live life on their terms, being their own boss, not having to worry about money, and to come and go as they please. Simply put: FREEDOM.

Of course, your MLM and the money your sign-ups are going to make by working the business, is just a means to an end. Again, what people really want is the LIFESTYLE.

This is why, if you’re stressed out, over worked, or not having fun with your business, you’re probably not going to recruit a whole lot of people.

Because they’ll pick up on your energy, for good or for bad, and they won’t buy from you or join you if they don’t buy first YOU.

In their subconscious they’re thinking, “That’s not what I want. That’s not the lifestyle I’m looking for…”

On the other hand, when your prospects see that you’re truly passionate about what you do; that you have balance in your life and that you know not just how to work hard but to have fun, too, you and your MLM business opportunity will be their obvious choice.

Lifestyle Promotion On A Shoestring Budget

Did you know you can do “lifestyle promoting” even if you aren’t making a lot of money in your MLM business opportunity yet?

I’ve always loved to travel, and before I became a leader in the industry, my husband and I would often drive from California where our home is (at that time we weren’t home owners yet; we were renting an apartment) to the national parks in Utah and Arizona.

My trip today went from Brescia (A) to Verona (B).

We also drove along the California coast all the way up to Canada, and we took road trips to San Diego, Mexico, Las Vegas, and many other places.

It didn’t cost much, yet we had a wonderful time and took some amazing photos – pictures I then used for my marketing.

We also took one of our most memorable vacations ever while still working on getting our MLM business opportunity off the ground, namely a trip to Egypt.

For this, because we didn’t have much money at the time, we used a tour agency that specializes in low-cost travel to exotic destinations, called Friendly Planet. (If you live in Europe, you have the equivalent with Trail Finders. You can also travel inexpensively around Europe with Ryan Air, Easy Jet, and Easy Cruise.)

During times when money was super tight, we’d still go on camping trips, or we’d spend a day at the lake or the beach. And we’d always bring the camera – we’d take pictures and we’d film.

And then those pictures and videos would go out in email broadcasts, I’d put them on my blog and on Facebook, and wherever else they would help convey a lifestyle of fun and freedom.

Love Your Life While Growing Your MLM Business Opportunity!

You may not have the budget yet to travel to Italy or to spend several months in Europe. But hopefully what I just shared here – some of what I did while I was still building my MLM business opportunity to momentum – makes you better see how you, too, can still live and promote a lifestyle of freedom!

Sunset at Ponte Scaligero, in Verona, Italy.

Again, your prospects want to see not just that you’re a leader and an expert, but that you’re actually living the lifestyle they want!

So keep this in mind next time you’re invited for a ride in your friend’s sailboat…or you’re taking your kids for a hike in the woods…or you’re sipping a drink at an outdoors restaurant in beautiful surroundings…

Snap some pictures. Blog about it.

And that video you’ve been meaning to do – rather than sharing a marketing lesson from behind your desk in your home office, why not shoot it in a more interesting setting? Like outdoors…while you are living the lifestyle?

When you start doing lifestyle promotion, consistently, I think you’ll find that it can boost your results with very little extra effort involved.

And taking time off from your business to have fun becomes DOUBLE-FUN when you discover how you can use those experiences for your marketing, and become more profitable as a results! Try it!

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PS: Are you part of MLSP Mastery yet? MLSP Mastery has become one of my most significant income streams, and it can be for YOU as well! Take your three-day $2 test drive of MLSP here, and as you go through the training you’ll discover how you can become a “Mastery” member, which among other things will qualify you for live weekly private webinars with me, and 100% commissions on “Pure Profit” products.

Upward & onward,

Multiple Award Winning Marketer

Industry Top Earner

Get Her Success Blueprint

How To Automate Your Online Home Business (Part 3)

Lena Bjorna — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 11:57:23 +0000

Okay, so we’ve been looking at the fascinating question of how to automate your online home business so you can live your dream lifestyle, and we’ve come to the final part, part three, in our series.

Morning coffee in Italy…what’s YOUR dream lifestyle?

What I have attempted to do is simplify the concept of automation by grouping it into three parts:

Part 1. Making use of multiple income streams to stabilize your income (click here for that post)

Part 2. Getting content to rank on Google to automate lead generation (click here)

Part 3. Today’s topic: Using social media to build trust and credibility in order to automate your sales/signups.

Your Online Home Business And Social Media

By “social media”, of course, we mean social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, as well as all their lesser known cousins.

Chances are you’ve already heard how important it is for your online home business to have a social media presence.

But with all the hundreds, if not thousands, of social media sites out there, where do you start? Do you need to be on ALL on them? And how do you make it automated? (Seriously, doesn’t it just ADD to your workload?)

These were questions I had when started out, and chances are you have them too. So let’s look at them, one by one.

Where Do You Start With Your Social Media Networking?

You do not need to be on every social media site out there, and you do not need to jump onto every new thing that comes out.

Facebook, YouTube, my blog, and Better Networker are my personal social media/networking platforms of choice.

As I’ve said in previous posts, and on training webinars I’ve taught for MLSP, I personally only use four: Facebook (not a regular profile, though; I use a fan page exclusively), YouTube, Better Networker.com, and my personal blog.

Your blog isn’t actually a social media site but it serves much of the same purpose, so I’m choosing to include it here.

As for what that purpose is, we’ll talk about that in a minute.

You may find that one or more of the sites above doesn’t resonate with you – maybe you prefer LinkedIn instead, or Twitter, or Pinterest, or something else.

That’s perfectly okay. Just don’t choose too many to begin with. And make sure they are sites that gets loads of traffic. The four I mentioned are the only once I’ve used consistently and they’ve always been sufficient for me.

What if I had to start with just one? Well, if I had extremely limited time and/or technical know-how, I would start with a Facebook fan page.

Are You Just Wasting Time On Social Media?

Chatting with people one-on-one on social media sites will not do much to automate your online home business. Neither will manually sending out friends requests, birthday wishes, group invites, and so on.

You’ve got to think in terms of time efficiency. Always ask: Is this particular strategy allowing me to reach a large number of potential customers all at once?

If the answer is no, ditch it. It ain’t worth your time.

Much of the reason Facebook pages are so effective is that they allow you to communicate with lots and lots of people simultaneously – all the people that have liked your page.

You update your status, and voila, your message appears in the news feed of each and every one of your followers, or “fans”, as we call them. And it needn’t take you more than a few seconds to do a status update.

Not just that, but when your fans like, share or comment on you status, this then shows up in the news feed of your fans‘ contacts. So now your message is suddenly going viral!

That, my friend, is great leverage! :-)

Helping Your Prospects Believe And Trust In You

The use of social media is critical for building trust and credibility with prospects.

Every time your fans pick up tips or nuggets of inspiration on your Facebook page…every time you bring them back to your personal blog where you teach and train, demonstrating your expertise, you help them trust you a little more.

Fans, likes, comments, shares, and other positive reinforcement on your social media profiles, provides social proof that you are a leader worth following.

Remember, your prospects are naturally skeptical. There’s a lot of hype online, so of course they’re skeptical to whether your products/services will do what they promise.

Beyond that, they doubt whether THEY can succeed. Many people have very little faith in their own abilities.

Which is why you need to not only demonstrate that your products work but to also install belief in your future customers.

Help them see they can do it! :-)

And when your prospects are motivated this way…when they follow you on the social networks and see that you’re genuine…when they see social proof in the form of feedback from others on your Facebook page or your blog…they gradually come to know you, trust you, and like you.

And more and more you’ll then see that they’ll buy from you and sign up with you in your online home business without you needing to pick up the phone and “prospect” them first.

Creating Lasting Automation In Your Online Home Business

If you’re new to the online home business industry, this may all sound too good to be true. But I’m here to tell you that when you master the concept of building trust online, you will greatly limit the need to work the phones.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t call your leads as a new online home business owner. I’m just saying there is a way to make it more automated with time.

So…to recap in a few words what we’ve covered in our last three posts: Keep building your social media presence with patience and persistence…learn to leverage multiple income streams…and learn how to get your content to show up in the top spots of Google…

Do this, and you too will – little by little – be able to create lasting automation in your online home business and get to the place where you’re working your business just a few hours a day around your life, rather than trying to maneuver your entire life around your business.

<<<<< If you enjoyed this post, kindly share, tweet, and Google+ it so that others can benefit from it, too. Also, leave a comment below - otherwise, how will I know you were here?

PS: Hundreds have already joined and are using my “Her Success Blueprint” course, plugging into my very own award winning strategies to build a successful online home business. Click here for the whole scoop!

Upward & onward,

Multiple Award Winning Marketer

Industry Top Earner

Where I Learned To Market

How To Automate Your Online Home Business (Part 2)

Lena Bjorna — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 10:20:42 +0000

Last time (click here if you missed that post) we started looking at how to automate your online home business, and we talked about why it’s so critical to tap into multiple income streams.

Today, let’s cover another aspect of your business that will affect your ability to automate it – namely your choice of marketing methods.

Marketing Your Online Home Business SMART

I’ve always used paid strategies, primarily – this is how I built my multiple six figure online home business and recruited reps across 20+ countries.

In recent months, however, I’ve made a significant shift in my marketing and my choice of strategies…more on that in a minute.

It’s All About Testing And Tweaking

A little bit of background first:

Paid marketing works! I used paid strategies to become the top female income earner in PRO in 2009-2011, my primary company at the time.

As a new marketer, I started advertising on Google Adwords back in 2008, and had tremendous success with this strategy.

Then, about a year or so later, Google went on a rampage against anything that smacked of MLM, online home business and affiliate marketing.

Like so many other online home business owners who subsequently lost the opportunity to continue marketing on Adwords, I moved on to Facebook ads.

Just as with Adwords, learning Facebook for me involved a good deal of testing and tweaking.

But this is the way it is with marketing: You’ve got to look at the money you spend as your “test budget” and understand that once you just determine what produces results, you’ll recoup (usually many times over) what you spent during the testing phase.

The Steps To Automating Your Online Home Business

Although I went on to enjoy great success with Facebook ads, just as I had with Adwords, I didn’t find that it was a method I could easily automate.

It was something I had to monitor very closely or I would find that I would run up my credit card bill very quickly. (Remember, you are after all paying every time someone clicks on your ad, whether or not the click converts to a lead.)

This is why I recently I moved on to “free” strategies that don’t have to be monitored the same way.

I’m putting free in quotation marks here because there really is no such thing as genuinely FREE marketing.

What you save in marketing budget, you’ll have to make up for with your time…and your time, of course, as an online home business owner, is extremely valuable.

Getting Your Content To Rank On Google

I knew it would take time to get results with free strategies but at the same time I was also looking to create more automation. And the good news is that with time free content marketing can become largely automated – and it usually also produces very high quality leads.

What I did back in the fall of last year was that I started to learn how to rank videos on Google and YouTube. Mind you, this time when I say “Google”, I don’t mean Google Adwords – we’re not talking about paid ads here.

No, I’m talking about the organic, natural, NON-PAID listings on Google. And because Google OWNS YouTube, it tends to rank YouTube videos high in its search results.

Learning The Skill Sets That Will Pay You Forever

To get videos or any other type of content to rank, you need to learn to optimize them for Google. I won’t dig too deep into this here as it is a huge topic, but it’s something that you should make it a point to study if you truly want to build your online home business for longevity.

Enjoying pizza at an authentic Italian pizzeria in Brescia, Italy, earlier this evening…and coming back to the hotel to an inbox filled with leads.

If video is not your thing, you can take the same approach with blog posts, although these will generally take longer to rank.

Either way, whether you’re using videos or blog posts/articles, or a combination of the two, it is critical to go through some solid training on the topic (such as that found in MLSP).

This is what I did back in the fall – I went back to school, so to speak, and embarked upon learning the latest techniques for getting my videos to rank.

It took a few months to start seeing consistent results, but now, ironically, as I’m on an extended vacation in Europe, I’ve started to see a steady and quickly increasing flow of leads from those very videos.

Choosing Your Marketing Methods – Where Do You Begin?

If you are just starting out, don’t be too concerned about automation yet.

I recommend you get going with one or two PAID strategies – something that fits your marketing budget, skill level, and that you are truly passionate about. Some examples may be: Facebook ads, Solo ads, Banner advertising, LinkedIn ads, or Youtube video ads.

In your MLSP members area you have access to cutting edge training both on free and paid marketing strategies.

Paid strategies will almost always give you faster results, and right now for you, if you are brand new, getting some sort of results in your online home business is essential because you need “proof” (i.e. documentation) to use in your marketing.

Your prospects always want to see results. Before long, though, you probably want to make your marketing a bit more hands off.

This is where getting your content to rank comes in.

Bottom Line: Create And Implement A Massive Action Plan

In the perfect world you would do some paid advertising to quickly get the lead flow going while you at the same time would be working on optimizing your content for Google.

In the real world, though, most new marketers won’t have the time or the capacity to start with that much on their plate.

That being said, what you’ll want to do right now is take a step back and rethink your strategies. Are you focusing on the right thing? If not, what do you need to change in order to create more of a consistent lead flow and, over time, also automation in your online home business?

The important thing is to have a plan, and then take massive and consistent action to bring that plan to fruition. :-)

<<<<< If you enjoyed this post, kindly share, tweet, and Google+ it so that others can benefit from it, too. Also, leave a comment below - otherwise, how will I know you were here?

PS: Hundreds have already joined and are using my “Her Success Blueprint” course, plugging into my very own award winning strategies to build a successful online home business. Click here for the whole scoop!

Upward & onward,

Multiple Award Winning Marketer

Industry Top Earner

Where I Learned To Market

Oh, Gosh, I’m In Italy! (How I’ve Automated My Online Home Business, And How YOU Can, Too)

Lena Bjorna — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 13:22:52 +0000

Would you like to build a truly profitable online home business where you do not have to be tied to the phone?

Visiting my friend Fruzan in Brescia, Italy.

Would you like to travel the world and make money at the same time…or, if travel is not your thing, maybe just spend less time working your business and have more time for fun and for the people you love?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you need to understand how to AUTOMATE your online home business. And to automate your business, one thing you need to do is tap into multiple income streams.

This is how you build for longevity and create a “laptop lifestyle” – the kind of lifestyle where you’re making money (good money!) whether you’re home or away.

How To Automate Your Online Home Business

I’m currently spending a few months in Europe, away from home (Los Angeles), sightseeing and catching up with old friends. I just arrived in Italy where I’m visiting my friend Fruzan. We’ve known each other for years and have been in touch on and off, and it so happened that I arrived in Brescia, where she lives, on the day of her birthday!

In today’s post as well as in a couple more posts coming your way in the next few days, I want to share with you some concepts that are crucial to understand and implement in order to create automation in your online home business, so you can truly live life on your terms.

Shall we get started…?

Creating Multiple Income Streams In Your Online Home Business

First of all, if you want to automate your online home business, you need to tap into multiple income streams. We’ll talk about why in a minute.

To use myself as an example, one of my income streams is My Lead System Pro (MLSP). As you may or may not know, MLSP is a marketing system/training platform that also comes with an income opportunity. It is not an MLM company but rather it was designed to help you market your MLM.

Because I have positioned myself at the Mastery level with MLSP (this is where the biggest commissions are made), I earn anywhere from a few hundred dollars to $2000+ per person I refer to MLSP – simply for sponsoring them into a program that teaches them how to market their MLM more successfully.

Where Your Network Marketing Company Comes In

Independent of MLSP, I also have a network marketing opportunity.

Celebrating Fruzan’s birthday at her boyfriend’s restaurant in Brescia, Italy.

However, I never promote this MLM up front because I know that A) people hate being pitched on MLMs and B) my prospects aren’t REALLY looking for a company to join but rather for a leader to follow.

This is why I only introduce my MLM on the back end, after my prospects have come to know and trust me and I have earned the right to sell to them (i.e. “attraction marketing”).

So, then, my network marketing company is a second income stream. In fact, my new reps that come in to my MLM are usually people that got started with me in MLSP, and when the trust and credibility were in place, they wanted to see what else I have to offer and some then decided to also join me in my network marketing company.

A critical concept to grasp is that when someone has spent money with you once, they are extremely likely to come back and purchase other products and services that you have – this because they have come to trust you, and they know you have real value to offer.

Additional Ways To Monetize Your Leads

Moving on, I also have my own personal training products, which would be an example of another income stream. We often call this type of products “information products”. (An example would be my course, “Her Success Blueprint”).

Training products can also be coaching services, and if those coaching services are one-on-one appointments, you can charge good money for your time.

Northern Italy. If you look closely, toward the center of this image you can see two points marked “A” and “B”. These represent Bergamo and Brescia and the train ride I took yesterday to visit Fruzan.

How much you can charge will depend on your “reputation” in the industry. The more knowledge and experience you gain, the more, obviously, you can charge for coaching.

Next, there’s affiliate products, which are generic info products created by other marketers – maybe a course in lead generation, blogging or social media…truly, it can be anything marketing related. These products, too, you can promote and earn commissions on.

I have all the above income streams built into my online home business, plus a couple more not mentioned here: 1) I have a network marketing company, 2) I use MLSP to earn substantial recurring commissions on MLSP member referrals, unrelated to the earnings from my MLM.

3) I also have my own training products and coaching programs, and, finally, 4) throughout my sales funnel, more or less passively, I promote various affiliate products created by other industry leaders.

Overwhelmed? Confused? Then, Do This…

If you truly want to learn to automate your online home business, you should aim to create a similar diversity in your income. BUT, remember, one step at a time.

I have been marketing online since 2008 and have gradually added these various income streams as I’ve become more and more proficient as a marketer.

Automate your online home business, and you too can have breakfast in Italy! :-)

What I recommend you do if you’re new is get started with MLSP, and if you already have an MLM, by all means keep building your MLM as well, which the MLSP training will help you do.

Additionally, promote affiliate products in your follow-up emails and on your blog to monetize your leads properly, offering your prospects courses that will help them market their own MLM better – should they choose not to join yours.

Start with those three but no more. Later you can (and you should) incorporate additional income streams.

This Is SMART Marketing…

It’s smart because you aren’t leaving money on the table. You also aren’t putting all your faith in one company or source of income.

You know you always have money coming in from somewhere…if one stream of income suddenly dries up, there is still revenue being produced from other income streams.

So this is the first key to automating your online home business: tapping into multiple income streams to create more stability. There are still two more concepts you’ve got to get in order to grasps the concept of automation, and we’ll cover those in our next couple of posts.

Till then…CIAO! :-)

<<<<< If you enjoyed this post, kindly share, tweet, and Google+ it so that others can benefit from it, too. Also, leave a comment below - otherwise, how will I know you were here?

PS: Hundreds have already joined and are using my “Her Success Blueprint” course, plugging into my very own award winning strategies to build a successful online home business. Click here for the whole scoop!

Upward & onward,

Multiple Award Winning Marketer

Industry Top Earner

Where I Learned To Market

How To Turn The Trials In Your MLM Opportunity Into Triumphs (Notes & Audio From My Inspirational Wakeup Call)

Lena Bjorna — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 13:12:30 +0000

Let’s talk about the struggles you’re having in your MLM opportunity business right now.

In fact, what I’d like to do is see if I can help you look at your challenges a little differently, and I want to do this by sharing some notes from a brief training call I hosted a few days ago for My Lead System Pro (MLSP). If you missed the call, you can listen to the replay HERE.

In the case you aren’t familiar with MLSP, is an educational company and community where you learn to market your MLM opportunity using professional marketing.

Although I own a beautiful home in Los Angeles, California (the city of my dreams, and where I’ve been wanting to live since I was 12), I’m currently spending a few months in Europe.

This particular training call on how to turn trials into triumphs I did from Bristol, United Kingdom – although I didn’t actually host the call from this phone booth, lol.

Struggling In Your MLM Opportunity?

That being said…maybe you’re just starting out learning to market online and you’re really frustrated because you keep running into issues and everything seems to be taking so much longer than you expected.

Maybe you’re even a bit technically challenged, like I was when I started out a few years back. (All I knew when I got started was how to email, and to do simple searches on Google.)

Well, let me share a couple of personal experiences with you in the hope that they’ll encourage you to keep pressing on – experiences you may be able to relate to.

How Losing 40K Turned Out To Be A Blessing In Disguise

A lot of people don’t know this, but I actually lost 40K in my traditional MLM opportunity before I got started with MLSP and began to learn professional marketing (i.e. leading with value rather than a pitch).

Of course, it was horrific to think of at the time, that I had squandered so much money on buying overpriced leads that didn’t convert…until I learned to look at it a little differently…

Rest assured, ALL successful leaders have struggled to get to where they are today! With MLSP co-founder Brian, and fellow MLSP leaders Michelle and Jordan.

I came to realize that my struggles are part of my story, and I began to use it in my marketing…I began to share it.

I could relate to other MLM’ers and understand their pain. I knew what it was like to go thru those particular struggles… working so hard and getting nothing back…the rejection… spending all that money with nothing to show for it.

You know what happened as a result?

My very best market for my new network marketing business that I would go on to build through MLSP would in fact be be…drum roll please… struggling MLM distributors!

See, not only could I relate to them, but they could relate to me. Therefore they also trusted me. And trust, of course, is a prerequisite for someone to buy from you!

Your MLM Opportunity And The ‘Red Eye’ Syndrome

Next real life example: When I discovered online marketing a few years back and embarked upon learning to use the Internet, I made the mistake of trying to do everything at once.

I never gave a strategy enough time to work but just kept jumping from one thing to the next. And as the results didn’t come, I became disillusioned.

Maybe you’re finding yourself in that situation too. Maybe you’ve had a lot of days lately where you’ve felt like throwing your computer out the window and just SCREAM.

If it’s any consolation, I know what that feels like. I can’t tell you how much of my social life I gave up, temporarily…how many long nights I spent in front of my laptop…I’d go to bed with my eyes red and itchy, and I still couldn’t go to sleep because I’d be thinking about my business!

My Big Epiphany (And What You Can Learn From It)

But then, just as in the case with the $40K that went down the drain, I had an epiphany of sorts… I realized that to determine what worked it was obvious that I also had to test and explore a lot of things that DIDN’T work!

I realized I had actually become more valuable in the market place exactly because of all things I had tried that didn’t pan out – NOW I could in fact help my future reps avoid mistakes!

And I started sharing my experiences online. On my blog I’d say something like this: “I’ve tested banners and Facebook ads, solo ads, social media…I’ve spent hundreds of hours and several thousand dollars on marketing…I will teach you not only what works but what you should stay away from…”

Can you guess what happened?

YES, it actually helped me sign up more reps into my MLM opportunity…it also helped my residuals because I taught my new reps to market smarter than what I’d been able to do at first! So although my “failures” cost me time and money initially, I got it all back in the end.

Why Perspective Is Everything

We’ve all heard stories of famous entrepreneurs, writers, singers, actors and movie makers who were rejected over and over…household names that we all know today…folks who were at the end of their ropes, but instead of letting go, they decided to tie a knot and hang on.

Inspiring others with my story from stage. Soon it will be YOUR turn!

Of course, in the end they made it, and now their stories live on to inspire others…

One day soon YOUR story, too, will inspire others who are struggling. But it can only do so if you don’t give up.

Which is why you can NEVER give up no matter what. Rather work on changing your perspective.

Every day, try to be thankful that you get to do what you love to do… That you are in the process of changing your life (even if at times the change seems long in coming.)

One of my mentors taught me to always ask, “What’s good about this?”, pointing out that there is something good to be found in practically every situation.

You can’t always choose the experiences you have in your MLM opportunity, or in the rest of life for that matter, but you CAN choose how you react to them. And so often, months or years later, when you look back on the events, you realize that what seemed like a curse at the time, in fact was actually a blessing in disguise.

<<<<< If you enjoyed this post, kindly share, tweet, and Google+ it so that others can benefit from it, too. Also, leave a comment below - otherwise, how will I know you were here?

PS: Hundreds have already joined and are using my “Her Success Blueprint” course to learn professional marketing, plugging into my very own award winning strategies to get results in their own MLM opportunity. Click here for the whole scoop!

Upward & onward,

Multiple Award Winning Marketer

Industry Top Earner

Where I Learned To Market