MLM Success 101: Warm vs. Cold Market Prospecting – Which One Gets Results?

Prospecting is the single most important task that a network marketer engages in; success in MLM absolutely depends on it. Prospecting, or sponsoring reps into your primary business opportunity, is the way the industry’s top earners build their businesses into residual income empires that provide financial security and stability for their families.

The debate comes in when one tries to address the proper way to prospect. Let me try and explain.

There are some MLM professionals who have been involved in the industry for years, even decades. These folks run their organizations the old-fashioned way – they tap their “warm market.” They prospect largely from their own personal contact lists, sharing their business opportunity with family members, close friends, colleagues at work, fellow church parishioners, social groups they belong to, and fraternities and sororities, to name a few. These MLMers hold home meetings or parties a few times a week, and regularly attend company conventions and other large events.

Contrarily, there is a group that many refer to as internet network marketers. The main factor that separates this group from the first is that these people do the vast majority (or, in some cases, all) of their prospecting using the internet – in other words, they tap their “cold market.” They advertise their business opportunity on internet forums, social networking sites, and on the major search engines like Yahoo and Google. They may also engage in other cold market prospecting, like purchasing lists of potentials and then contacting them by phone or e-mail. Some of these folks are completely closed to the idea of prospecting their friends and family, while others simply don’t give it much thought or focus.

Here’s the argument: The old-school MLMers insist that prospecting from friends and family is the way that network marketing has always been done, and many large fortunes were created by sharing household cleaners, cosmetics, and such, on a person-to-person basis. Also, the old-school folks insist that this method is highly duplicable, and duplication has traditionally been a huge selling point to illustrate that “anyone can do this business and be successful!” (I’m sure you’ve heard this just as much as I have!)

Conversely, the internet money people assert that prospecting friends and family is the formula for network marketing disaster. They cite that leads generated from friends and family members are untargeted (meaning they may or may not be looking for what you have to offer), and they do not convert into successful business owners or loyal customers. Additionally, the internet MLMers note that prospecting becomes a serious problem once a business builder has gone through their entire list of potentials and there are no more people to sponsor. According to the internet marketers, internet prospecting solves these problems by targeting people that are actively looking for a business opportunity and providing a virtually endless list of leads using the world wide web.

So which method is the best?

BOTH!

Okay, people, let’s use some common sense here! It’s pretty hard to argue with a person who made his fortune in network marketing by signing up friends, family, and acquaintances. And let me tell you, there are lots of these folks out there! However, this is the 21st Century, and we are in the Internet Age. And there are many folks out there that are running incredibly successful empires by marketing themselves to people searching for a MLM opportunity. The trick is to successfully marry the two philosophies so that you’re “showing the plan” to as many people as possible.

The bottom line: Combining both warm and cold market prospecting techniques is a great approach to expanding your MLM organization. This way, your business doesn’t have to die when you run out of friends and family to prospect (and you don’t have to continuously bug the heck out of them either!). You also don’t have to remove the “network” from network marketing by automating the entire process. (After all, the “networking” is the part of the business that offers one of the best personal growth opportunities.) But as usual, don’t take my word for it…take it for checking!