30 Days "Take Action" Program - Day 22

Instant Marketing – Johnny on the Spot!

Well let's just call this lesson the one on how you use instant messengers to generate leads, or prospect for leads. As you know there are quite a few Instant messengers available on the Net – some good, some bad and one of two are really bad.

Let's do a short laundry list of some of the more common messengers:

• AIM
• AOL
• YAHOO – 250 million people online
• SMS
• MSN.com – 150 million people worldwide
• ICQ – 150 million people worldwide
• GoogleTalk
• Windows Live Messenger

Great, Now What Do I Do With Them?

You get out there and meet people with them. And you do that by finding the best places to talk to them. That often means you will be surfing for people who have like interests – for instance, internet marketing, networking, home business, making money at home etc.

When you stop to think about this, instant messaging is one of the best ways to literally access millions of people worldwide. You can establish friendships and business relationships here too. It's recommended you first start with being friends (relationship marketing) before you jump in and get enthusiastic about your business opportunity.

Once you start a conversation with them you can pretty much figure out within the first 10 seconds if they are going to be a valid prospect for your business. You just need to be reading the signals they give back to you and also read between the lines.

The longer you do this, the easier it gets. It's really just chatting with friends, but you call it networking. No mysteries about it – it's the friends are strangers you have not met yet approach to network marketing.

Chatting with someone of like interests is one of the best ways possible to introduce yourself and your business or product. And, this is one the MOST easily duplicatable way of making friends, developing relationships and doing some nifty positioning to be able to tell just about anyone all about your business/product. Imagine what you could do with Instant Messaging and chatting about FOL.

It's not hard to find people with common background and interests, all you have to do is take a little time to think it through. What are YOU interested in? Chances are there are others who share your passions too. You just have to search for them and start talking.

And, once you've starting talking to them, you need to stay in touch as well. No sense in just having the odd conversation now and again and expecting them to want to join your business is there?

Getting On Lists

There's a an instant marketing adage that says "when you are sitting three feet in front of the world (referring to your computer screen) you can reach out and touch anyone, anywhere in the world." Or rather, the world is your oyster, the pearl is your potential customer/recruit sitting within the shell of your computer. Nice play on analogies there.

There are two features about instant messaging that you need to be aware of that are crucial for you and building your business. The first is that you need to have buddy or contact lists of everyone you know. Keep track of them, put them into folders, fold, spindle or mutilate them, but make sure you have them in an organized fashion on your computer.

You can literally keep track of 5,000 people this way. You likely won't be doing that, but the point is that the possibilities are seriously unlimited. Figure you are going to get confused and not remember what you said to whom? Bonus, Yahoo records and saves all conversations. So if some days your mind is a sieve, then Yahoo at least has a bowl to save you.

Getting On Lists

Don't know where to begin to find people? Well, aside from looking for people with similar interests to you, you can cruise the member directory. There's an amazing amount of personal information about people listed there. You can strike up a conversation with ANYONE, about anything they have listed in their personal profile.

You're thinking, well that's fine, but what if they say NO when they find out what I am marketing? Simple fact of life in network marketing is that you will likely get at least 100 NOS before you get a YES. That is what happens when you talk to people you don't know.

But when you "know" them thanks to their personal information, you have already cut the ice. How beautiful is this – you don't spend ONE CENT on generating leads. Not one red cent.

And you don't have to spend all day doing this unless you want to, but even one hour a day and making contact with three people will generate returns later. The part that's so crucial here is making the contact, and keep on keeping on.

Talk to Me!
How do you get people to talk to you? Easy. Create a really unique screen name, something that makes people go – Whoa, cool name, I like it. It will make people curious about what you do and that means they will contact YOU.

The name you create (the first impression people have of you) will set the tone for all your future conversations. Example: say your screen name is ZooKeeper and you happen to have a web site that sells dog biscuits, you train animals and you do pet web sites as a specialty.

You an write to other pet people and say you just love your work, don't they love theirs? You can bet your patootie if they do not like what they are doing, they will tell you. Bingo – the door is open for you to tell them what you do i.e. promote GDI for the website aspects and how you got there – FOL.

Going out of town on business to a place you have never been? Find people in that place and write them asking for recommendations for a good restaurant or hotel. You will likely yak about business, as they will ask (or you will tell them) what business brings you to town.

Notice that most of these examples has you asking questions. Well, that's the key to pre-qualifying people – ask questions and you will be able to tell quickly within a few short conversations, if they have the potential to be a part of your FOL team. You will know them by how they answer your questions.

The Point and an Added Piece of Information
The whole point of instant messaging is that it IS instant. You are chatting on the fly and getting answers real time. It's the "moment" of marketing opportunity you can shine at by merely being friendly, personable and KISS. KISS meaning Keeping it SHORT Silly. And that is our final point.

When you're talking to people online via instant messenger, do not be sending them great long notes about what you are doing. They don't care and don't want to hear it. You need to proceed slowly and parcel out bits of information based on their replies to your notes. And do not send them long emails outlining what you do either.

They do not have the time to read them and unless they do know you (after you have laid a solid foundation with them through relationship marketing) they will hit the delete button. Go slow, use your head, keep it short, and read between the lines. You WILL know when they have lost interest or are losing interest by the way they reply to you.