I believe that no matter what your business, it is crucial to be able to recruit the right talent. It doesn't matter whether you're involved with a fortune 500 company or a direct marketing company. If you cannot do this effectively you will not succeed. For this article I'm going to focus primarily on how this applies to running your own home-based business, but the concepts can be applied for any business.

Set Goals

Like any project you'll need to set S.M.A.R.T (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely) goals before you begin. Since we're talking about recruiting I'll use the following goal as an example:

Goal: I would like to recruit a minimum of four new distributors during the month of January.

Now, what do we need to do to be able to meet this goal? Lots of leads! With most network marketing businesses you should typically follow the 3% rule. This means that for every 100 people you attempt to recruit into your business approximately three will eventually become distributors. Just remember that most people will say no and you need to make sure that you do not become emotionally attached to the outcome of their decisions. Since our goal is to recruit four new distributors we will need at least 125 leads to contact. We might get lucky, but we should not plan for this.

Your Perfect Distributor

One terrible mistake that many new distributors make is to show desperation rather than leadership. Because of this they end up contacting potential distributors and trying to sell them on the business or product. This is exactly the opposite of what you should actually be doing. You should always remember that this is your business. Do you want to be spending all of your time following up with a distributor that is not motivated? Would you partner with someone that has a weak work ethic? Of course not! So why would you recruit a distributor that does not have the right strengths?

You will need to effectively identify whether the potential distributor is driven, goal oriented, motivated and has a strong work ethic. I recommend conducting an initial phone interview with the prospect to determine whether they fit these criteria. Think of it like a normal job interview for a large company and the candidate needs to convince you that they are a good fit for your team.

The Interview

Your goal of the interview process is to determine why this person wants to be involved with your business and whether they will be a good fit for your team. Understanding the reason they are looking for a business opportunity should assist in determining whether they will be a strong fit in your organization.

Here are a few sample questions:

• What motivates you to get your job done?
• How do you define doing a good job?
• Where do you see yourself five years from now?
• What proactive steps did you have to take to increase the output of your position?
• What is causing you to look for a business opportunity at this time of your life?
• What kind of income are you looking to generate in a business of your own? 
• What are you looking for aside from money?

During the interview process you need to be sure that you maintain focus and control. Because this is extremely contrary to how most people are used to being introduced to a direct marketing opportunity it will enable them to sell themselves on the business and ensure that you are only recruiting the brightest candidates for your team. Remember that the person asking the questions is the person in control of the conversation. Keeping this in mind will help you remain focused on finding the right people to sponsor so you can grow your business much more efficiently.  

Luckily it appeared that the driver was not hurt and neither were the other two trucks that had to avoid hitting him.  I think that if we had been there a few minutes earlier it could have been us avoiding the truck.

A little bit further we arrived in Santa Ana where we had planned to sleep for the night.  Unfortunately we stopped at 4 different hotels and each one was full.  We decided it would probably be best to continue on and sleep in Hermosillo instead.  At about 3am we arrived in Hermosillo and found that the hotels there were all full as well.  The holiday rush was upon us and we were unprepared.  After a bit of searching we finally found that the Holiday Inn had a handicapped room available for us.  We were quite happy to be able to finally get some sleep.

After a short four and a half hour nap at the Holiday Inn I woke to Maria bribing me with the back seat of the truck.  She said that if I would get up now she would let me lie down in the back seat and Miranda would sit up front.  Since I’m still trying to kick a nasty cold it appeared that my body wanted more sleep than four and a half hours so I got up and climbed into the back seat.  Rather than head for the highway immediately Maria wanted to stop at her favorite taco stand called “Taquerias El Chino”.

I’m not sure why they named the place the way they did as there are no Chinese people working and they don’t serve anything with a Chinese flair.  In spite of this, the tacos they serve are still really good.  The first time I ever had tacos de ojo was here.  They are a little juicier than tacos de cabeza, but definitely not anywhere near as gross as they sound.  With a little salsa and cilantro they are pretty damn tasty.  Since they did not have a drive-through, Maria went and picked up some tacos while Miranda and I stayed in the truck. 

We figured we would try to eat them on the road, but this didn’t work out very well since they are so messy.  We ended up eating them in the parking lot of the Kumon which had some nice pictures of kids playing together.  Their slogan was a little weird and I wasn’t sure how to translate it properly.  After our stomachs were full we hit the road once more.

Since I was still in the back seat I decided that I would take advantage of the time and go through an awesome ACN getting started book that Jeff gave Maria and me right before we left.  It has some great forms and ideas for getting the business up and going.   Since Maria was still driving I helped her get some ideas for people to contact when we get back to Tucson.  She used some of the memory joggers to think of people she knows that might be great distributors.  After a little while we lost track of the subject and I started listening to a Xango CD my mom made for me and then dove into my Critical Thinking book which is very interesting.  It was a text book that I purchased for a class at the University of Phoenix a few years ago, but never got the chance to use it because I had to cancel the class.  I will get some more info about this posted later once I’ve had a chance to read more than the first few chapters.

The next four hours went pretty quickly and soon we were passing Los Mochis and Maria began getting very teary eyed.  She was missing her grandmother who passed away earlier this year and we had just passed her house.  She asked if we could stop at her Tia Mapy’s house to say hello since this was where her grandmother had been living prior to her death.  We stopped by the gas station that her aunt owns, but she wasn’t working so we continued on to her aunt’s house. 

When we got to the house Maria and her aunt hugged for a solid minute or two and I think Maria needed that very badly.  Soon we were ushered into the house and saw little Pilarcita who is now about 14 months old.  She is the cutest little girl I’ve seen in some time.  She is still very small and quiet and seemingly curious about most of the world around her.  She and Miranda ran over to the Christmas tree and began playing with all of the lights while the adults were telling stories.  After about twenty minutes of chit-chat we said our goodbyes and got back into the truck.

Maria wanted for us to go through La Palma which is a small town where her dad was born.  To get there we needed to take a small dirt road that separates a few of the bean fields a few miles and then turn.    She gave us a guided tour of the town and where she remembered playing when she was young.  There can’t have been more than the equivalent of 1 city block of houses and I believe most of the people were farmers.  About a half of a mile outside of the town we finally entered our final destination which was Angostura.  It only took about 20 hours of travel to make it from Tucson to Angostura.

After saying hello to everyone we quickly began unpacking the overloaded truck.  It turns out that Maria’s parents had 2 brand new rooms added to their house and we were going to get to stay in one of them.  They are not huge by any means, but they were perfect for Maria, Miranda, Fito, Megan and I to crash in for a few days of partying.  I told Maria’s dad that if he added a few more rooms he’d have the perfect setup for a small hotel.  Considering the fact that Angostura only has a population of about 30,000 people and no hotels it could come in handy.

Soon after unpacking we all gathered around the table on the back porch to catch up and have a drink or two.  Since I don’t usually drink beer I grabbed some of the whisky that they had and mixed it up with some soda water.  We had also brought some Disorono and Megan came up with an awesome idea to mix some of it in to sweeten it up a bit.  This worked beautifully and when mixed with the Marlin dip and some tortilla chips I was quite content.  The weather was perfect.  It was about 70 degrees once the sun went down which was cool enough to keep the mosquitoes at home and keep me from sweating.  As always Maria’s mom was running around serving food and drinks, and trying to make sure that everyone is having a great time.

                David and Fito decided that they needed some beer so I hopped in the pickup with them and we headed for the Tecate stand.  While figuring out how many cases of red and how many cases of light beer to purchase there is a crazy old Mexican man that comes over and starts questioning us about where we’re from.  He keeps yelling “MEXICANOS GABACHO” which I didn’t understand at the time.  It turns out that he was telling me that he was from Mexico and that he knew I was from the United States.  Luckily my Spanish isn’t very good and I told him “nice to meet you” which I believe kept things friendly all around.  David later told me that since the guy was older he didn’t take it offensively.  If it had been younger people it might have started a fight.  We took our Tecate and headed back to the house.

                When we arrived back to the house Maria’s sister Cynthia had proclaimed that her pregnant belly would like some carne asada tacos from one of the local taco vendors.  The ten of us piled into two vehicles and headed to the taco stand.  They have a special menu item there called Vampiras which translates to “female vampire”.  It was a regular carne asada taco that has been flattened like a tostada and then they add some extra picante sauce and tomatoes and toast it until the tortilla is a little dark.  It turned out that even though I didn’t order one of these I got one with my dinner.  I think it was supposed to go to Tia Florida, but it was misplaced in front of me.  Since I don’t know the difference I had it almost finished before anyone had even noticed the mistake was made.  It turned out just fine and the ten of us ate dinner for about five hundred pesos which is equal to about forty dollars.

                We took two small bags of tacos to go and headed back to the house.  To our surprise Maria’s older brother, Javier had arrived while we were out eating.  He brought along his wife and four children from Monta Rey, Mexico.  They brought some very weird looking fruit that his wife Jaqueline likes called cherimoya.  It is about the size and color of a green apple, but the outside is shaped like a human heart and has many small divots in the skin that allow it to be held very easily.  It tasted very sweet and was quite refreshing.  We all continued to hang out and visit for a while more before bed.  After only getting a few hours of sleep the previous night I was exhausted and slept very well.

After a full day of insane domestic catch-up, security companies, sales calls and other necessary evils we were finally able to begin packing for our trip.  We have everything you can imagine crammed into the back of this poor little Tacoma.  We’ve packed in luggage, clothes, chairs, booze, Xango, a television, and quite a few other assorted goodies.  Needless to say it took quite a while to get all of this into the back of the truck and we were finally ready to leave my house around 10pm. 

Of course by this time our light dim-sum dinner from earlier had worn off and we needed to make a drive-through pit stop for some greasy Sour Dough Jacks.  I ate mine in about three bites and since Maria was driving it took her a little bit longer to finish.  We were all done with our second dinner before we even made it to I-10.  Miranda fell back asleep only a few minutes afterward and it allowed Maria and I time to catch up since things have been so crazy lately.

Around 11:30pm we arrived at the “Centro De Importacion” to get the permit for Maria’s truck.  Since we’re heading all the way to Angostura which is in Sinaloa we need one.  Miranda was still out like a light in the back seat, so I stayed in the truck while Maria went to go deal with the slow people working.  I’m not sure whether it was because it was only about 4 degrees outside or because they had a fresh pot of coffee, but tonight they decided to move a little more quickly than usual.  We were fortunate enough to be back on the road by about midnight. 

Maria is happily telling me about some of the strange dramas that have occurred at Costco during her last few days there.  Her stories continue to remind me that we need to work very hard to get her to a point where she can leave if she’d like.  My dreaming is shattered by some fancy footwork by our driver.  I look ahead and see police lights and smoke.  It looks like one of the sleepy truck drivers has jack-knifed his eighteen wheeler and completely blocked all of the southbound traffic.  In typical Mexican style all of the traffic proceeds to the opposite side of the highway and drives into oncoming traffic with their emergency lights on.

Continued..

I was just watching a small video from Mike Dillard on how important it is to find your target market and I thought this quote was right on.  Most people involved in network marketing incorrectly assume (or are told) that EVERYONE is in their target market, but this is not the case.  Mike mentions that most leaders in network marketing teach the “shotgun approach” to marketing because most people involved in network marketing have no prior business experience.  I agree with this completely, and from my prior business experience know that it is very difficult to identify a target market.

As humans we tend to assume that we know what other humans will like.  Unfortunately, this is not always the case and we should do a little more research before jumping into anything. Here are a few ideas to help you with defining your target market:

1. Who is typically going to buy your product (age, gender, qualifications, interests)?
2. Why are they going to buy it (what functional, financial and emotional needs are they looking to meet)?
3. How many customers are there?
4. What’s special about your solution (is it better, easier, faster or cheaper than the competition)?
5. How could you talk to them (what associations, conferences, magazines, websites)?
6. What are the customers currently using and how much effort would it be for them to change?
7. Are they aware of your product and, if so, what do they think of it?
8. How can you gather this data?

Because of the nature of network marketing you should be able to get the answers to some of these questions directly from your company or upline.  Once you have it I would recommend that you work to refine it so that you have a good feel for the types of customers you should be targeting.

Keep in mind that this is intended to help you define a solid starting point and you will most likely encounter potential customers outside your core audience.  You should devote the majority of time marketing to your core audience and any remaining time to folks outside the core.

I found a great extension for BlogEngine that will automatically tweet your latest blog posts automatically. 

You can check it out here:  http://www.migueljimenez.net/post/2008/07/02/TwitterPing-10-Twitter-Extension-for-BlogEngineNET.aspx

Well, my site has been completely dead for quite sometime.  I’ve been horrible about keeping my blog on http://www.myspace.com/aaroneden updated, but I’m hoping I do better with this one.  Only time will tell!