Dear Readers: Here's the advice I offered to someone who is in a
big mess and wants to get out of it via EcoQuest. It's for Xxxx and for anyone who
wants it. I don't know Xxxx and would not ordinarily be able to write a thoughtful response
to his random question. But I decided to write
this advice for ChippyNews.com and my many readers. This way
hundreds of people
will be able to read it. Here's what I received from Xxxx:
Dear Bob,
Recently I have been introduced to
your ChippyNews.com website and boy am I blown away! Awesome
tools and advice. Thank you for providing this information. I am
actually listening to your 6:30 am (California time) nutritional
call as I write this.
.
I am a Master Dealer who has been in
EcoQuest for about 2 years, but have only dabbled. Because of
certain recent events, I have committed myself to exploding my
business. I have 4 Fresh Airs, 3 Breeze ATs, 1 Blaster, 1
MI-1500B (out on trial), and 2 Living Water IIIs.
Because of some legal problems, my
credibility and reputation are shot. My warm market is gone and
I had just mailed out 50 warm market letters. I've given up TV,
coaching, beer, overeating, and sugar as my 5 things to give up
that I feel will contribute to my success.
Every time I ask for advise from my
upline, I am directed to a new program to spend money on. I
don't want to flip flop around with this business any longer,
and I don't have much money to invest as I have lost my regular
job. I am committed to building a solid business as quickly as
possible.
How would you proceed in this
situation? I value your opinion on this matter.
Sincerely,
Xxxx Xxxxxxxxx
--- --- ---
No two people are alike, and no two people's circumstances are
exactly the same, but I can give some general advice. I've
hammered out my success on the anvil of 34 years. I paid a
big price and now I'm on top. This is good advice ... but you'll
have to figure out how to take my ideas and build them into a
specific plan for you. But as far as I know, there is no way for
one man to lay out his experience in such a way that it will
work like a silver spoon for the next man.
Xxxx, you have an advantage over a lot of other folks because your life is really in the pits (I
deleted a few details from your letter). You have a
clear need and you'll have a fantastic story if you make
it to the top! It doesn't sound like any other opportunity is
readily available for you. Okay, let's give it a try....
You've already taken
Step
1:
You've made your
DECISION
to
do this. I'm going to assume that you have some basic people
skills and a lot of drive. EcoQuest is not for people who lack
skills or have no drive.
You've taken
Step 2:
You have some
INVENTORY
to work
with. This is needed both for selling and for recruiting. It
also becomes a part of your story. Other people are going to ask how you got started. People who don't have money must find
their own way to solve this. One of my
Online Newsletters discusses what I call "Plan
B." It involves recruiting people with money and using their
equipment.
You are also well into
Step 3:
FIND WAYS TO LEARN. You've
begun to study
www.chippynews.com. You have an interest in our conference
calls. Please keep reading my website. There are many links;
some contain jewels of wisdom that are just right for you. Find
them. Read the link called
New Prospect Evaluation. Read the link called
Online Giddens Meeting. Those are a couple of my favorites.
Subscribe to my newsletters, too.
Step 4:
TAKE RESPONSIBILITY. I can give you these
guidelines. Many different programs will work. You might even
have an upline leader who will offer some hands-on
assistance. But YOU are the key. If you are a man of prayer I
want you to look up toward the heavens right now and ask for
strength. If you succeed or don't succeed, it's not up to your
sponsor. It's up to you. "God, I pray for courage, vision,
persistence, good judgment, and sensitivity toward others. I'll
also accept good luck."
Step 5:
TAKE ACTION. You will discover that steps 7 and 9
and 11 are all related. Action. More action. Keep taking action. So
let's get started with some really basic stuff:
a. Experiment with those machines like crazy. Try them for
everything you can think of. Find the good. Find the bad. Find
ways around the bad. And have fun. Keep your eye out for good
product stories.
b. Put 5 machines out ASAP -- get this done in one or two days.
DO NOT sit around and wait for the outcome of demo #1 before you
proceed to prospects #2, #3, #4, #5. Do not postpone your
contacts until you have more knowledge. You will never know
anything if you don't get started.
c. Make five prospect lists. Read my March 2004 Chippy News on
the
Spiral
Notebook Plan (
"Prospects
Are Everywhere And They Are Free"
-- this link doesn't explain the Spiral Notebook Plan. It is a
report by David Dyer who utilized the concept) and put (1)
your MASTER LIST in a spiral notebook. From the MASTER LIST make
four smaller lists: (2)
retail customer prospects (on a separate
sheet of paper),
(3)
dealer prospects (mark these with stars in
the Spiral),
(4)
your SIX MOST WANTED LIST, and (5)
your geographical expansion list.
c. Follow up on your demo units. Hopefully you will make some
sales. But keep putting the machines back out on demo, even if
you don't make sales. Put them out with dealer candidates and
with retail sales prospects.
Step 6: MAKE
A PLAN. You have a little bit of experience
and a little bit of knowledge -- plus you have all the ideas
you've found in my newsletters and website. Decide what you
want to achieve in the next three months and map it out.
a. Plan activities, not results. In other words, don't say, "I'm
going to sell 10 machines this month." That sets you up to feel
bad if you fall short. It is better to say, "I'm going to do 20
demos this month. No matter what else comes up, I'm going to put
out 20 units and call back on those people. I only have 5 demo
units so I have to keep them rotating."
b. Set a prospecting goal. "I'm going to call ___ prospects
every day." Set a goal that's realistic and don't let yourself
down. Letters or fliers or emails can be substituted for some of
the calls. But you'll have to send 10 - 50 letters to have the
same impact as 2 personal conversations. You may have to send
50 - 500 emails to have an equivalent impact. In your Spiral,
put Stars (κ,
κκ,
κκκ,
κκκκ
- depending on how fantastic each prospect is)
by the good ones and draw an X through the bad ones.
c. Set a presentation goal. "I'm going to do ___ business
explanation appointments every week." Track all this stuff in
your Spiral.
d. Set a meeting goal. When are you going to have your first
meeting?
Step 7:
DO IT!
It is important to hit or surpass your
goal almost every day. You can lapse every now and then, but
don't lapse more than once or twice a week. Don't get bogged
down in office work. Keep putting out machines. Keep setting
appointments.
Step 8:
LEARN SORTING. Not all prospects are equal. Not
all dealers are equal. You will NEVER achieve a large goal if
you adopt a policy of going after everyone that breathes. That
sounds good from the stage but it's not a good practice. Figure
out what qualities you want and go after that kind of person
with 90% of your energy. I decided in 1995 to go after people
who would consider making EcoQuest their life's career. I wanted
people who had an income goal of $150,000 a year or more. I
wanted leaders. I wanted people I could enjoy working with. I
wanted people with some MLM experience and with some maturity
under their belt. Learn how to evaluate people by their upfront
qualifications (before you meet them) and
learn how to sort them even more carefully after you talk with
them. My initial goal was to find one "leader type" per week. By
the end of 92 days I had 43 leader types. Fourteen months later
I had developed 71 Managers in my organization (on
average, each good Managership has 3 or more leader types within
it).
Step 9.
MORE ACTION!
After a few weeks most of us lose a
little of our initial enthusiasm. We see the
disappointments and the work that's involved ... and under this
pressure our dreams become less clear.
We start running short of easy prospects. We find ourselves
working more and more with strangers. This becomes our first
trial by fire. Can we keep hitting our action goals even after
the initial excitement starts to be blurred by disappointments,
distractions, and rejections?
Step 10. Step back and
EVALUATE YOURSELF. Are you a
"natural"? Are sales easy to make? Are you recruiting someone
new almost every day? Do you jump out of bed very early each
morning with your head filled with activities? Do you enjoy
explaining and teaching EcoQuest at meetings? Or are you
smashing into a brick wall with most of your efforts? If changes
are needed, you have to figure them out. People who aren't able
to figure their own changes usually fail at anything they try to
do.
People who aren't able to figure their own changes
usually fail at anything they try to do.
Step 11:
MORE ACTION.
By now some of your ACTION has to
be directed down into your group. You have to begin thinking and
acting like a leader. You must be as concerned about network
growth as you are about personal growth. Are your people being
taught to take the 10 Steps I have already outlined? If not, why
not?
Step 12:
LEADERSHIP.
I don't know how you will feel
about the business when you get to this point. Some people end
up being in love with Trade Shows or Commercial
Marketing. Some invest hundreds of hours in calling cold Internet
leads and running those leads through a process. Some focus
on a market that is known to them. Real Estate, for example. My
focus was on being a leader. I began investing more and more of
my time in communicating, training, planning, motivating,
problem solving, giving meetings, traveling, doing conference
calls, creating emails and websites, sending letters and
postcards, helping the company, etc. I also had to keep
recruiting until my group was STRONG and WIDE.
Step 13:
Work MULTI-Level.
This is probably the most
difficult part of EcoQuest. Some people can only see the selling
side of EcoQuest. Others see sponsoring as a way to get salesmen
or as a way to sell Success Packs. These are incomplete views of
what we do.
The
BIG PICTURE
comes into play when you start envisioning leaders under leaders
under leaders. You have to "see" that someday 100s of leaders
will be woven into your group. Then you must watch your group
like a hawk. When a leader-type person enters your group you
have to reach down and make contact.
In a couple of days about 300 EcoQuesters will be going to
Hawaii for the Manager Development Convention and the
President's Club Trip. What if all our planes collide out over
the Pacific Ocean? What if all the top leaders in EcoQuest are
suddenly gone? [Mike
Jackson liked this illustration. He used it during his talk in
Hawaii.]
Here's what would happen. People like you would rapidly emerge
as the new leaders in this company. Individuals would step
forward to hold the meetings, write the newsletters, design the
websites, conduct conference calls, and so forth.
A
healthy network has leaders at all levels, and this does not
happen by accident. You have to envision it that way and build
it that way.
Fortunately,
anyone can move up in EcoQuest. The top leaders don't have to
give their lives so others can move up. A person who wants to
move up has to BUILD A
DOWNLINE TREE. That puts him on top. But the only
way a tree will get HUGE is if a network of sub-trees under
sub-trees is allowed to develop.
Step 14.
GET ON Triple-A.
Our consumables products
business was quite small prior to 2005. That has all changed. By putting
more emphasis on Triple-A (Autoship)
we are creating a "feeder system" whereby greater
numbers of
people are recruited. In each case we
present the air and water products and a certain percentage of
our new people get active in our traditional lines.
The biggest money is still made through our technology
products. But Infinity2 nutritional products and our other
consumables are playing an increasingly important role in our company.
Step 15.
BE A LEADER AND GIVE, GIVE, GIVE. I hope you
will be able to fall in love with EcoQuest.
Sincerely and enthusiastically,
Step 3: FIND WAYS TO LEARN
Step 4: TAKE RESPONSIBILITY
Step 10: EVALUATE YOURSELF
Step 13: WORK "MULTI" LEVEL
Step 15: BE A LEADER AND GIVE, GIVE, GIVE
