There are many reasons why many distributors believe the friends and family methods of prospecting allows you to build a deeper relationship then generating your own leads.

After all, you already have a deep relationship with friends and family.

Even if the prospect is only a referral from your warm market or someone you met using the 3 foot rule, you still have the ability to build a deeper relationship in person.

Isn’t that the best relationship you can build when prospecting for your network marketing business?

It is, but the challenge is this thought process neglects one critical point.

Prospects generated from friends and family, referrals and 3 foot rule prospecting are not targeted prospects.

This means you have no idea whether they would be interested in the business until you expose them.

This causes you to waste lots of time on people who are not interested or not right for your network marketing business because you have no way of pre-qualifying them before you prospect them.

Now there’s certainly a right way and a warm way to build an organization using online network marketing  for generating your own leads.

There are many people who have build the business the wrong way.

They are so reliant on technology that they neglect the personal relationship that is so important in this industry.

While you can certainly grow a organization fast using online marketing strategies if you fail to cultivate the relationship, these organizations typically don’t last.

In the early days of the internet, the internet attracted a lot of people who wanted to use the sheer large numbers to generate a tremendous amount of leads for their network marketing business.

Relationships meant nothing under this scenario.

The name of the game was to expose as many people as possible and hope that some stick around and produce.

While this type of strategy works very well if you are participating in some type of affiliate marketing program, this strategy is a recipe for disaster if you are building a MLM business.

With MLM, in order to build an organization that lasts, you must invest in developing your leadership skills and building a deeper relationship with the members of your network marketing organization.

There is a saying in the network marketing industry that is very true.

It goes like this…

“People join for the money but they stay for the relationships.”

By taking the time to build deeper relationships with your prospects and distributors you will have a larger amount that sticks around and your network marketing organization will be more productive and effective as a result.

With the internet, you can leverage it to generate your own leads while actually building closer relationships with more people.

This will have a long term lasting power to build a team in MLM if you decide to build your business in this fashion.

There are many ways you can build a deeper relationship online.

For instance, you can create a Squidoo lens or a Hubpage about a particular topic of interest that would also interest prospects for your network marketing business.

By providing great content on this topic, your prospect will want to learn more.

They will come to your page where hopefully you will have some type of lead capture page where they can fill out their name and email address and get on your list for automatic email follow up.

Generating your own leads is great, but won't do you much good if you don't follow up with them.

The email follow up is key as this is how you continue to build and grow the relationship.

Your prospect will come to expect and look forward to your emails.

Some of them will actually write you back and you can build a relationship that way.

Other examples of content pages that you can use to spark that initial interest are blogs, a web site as well as social networking web sites like myspace.com and facebook.com.

By using these strategies for generating your own leads, you can indeed build deeper relationships, and more of them,  than you could ever do using other methods.

This is because the emails and the system can go through a much larger number of prospects than you could do on your own.

The key is to leverage the internet properly to generate your own leads.

To learn more about how to leverage the internet properly to generate your own leads, take a look at Marketing Merge.

This web site offers step by step tutorials on the entire network marketing leads generation process for you to follow along with and apply to your network marketing business immediately.

Why Lead Generation is More Effective than Hotel Meetings and Home Parties for Building Your MLM Business

Lead generation is one way to build your mlm team. Another method is to invite prospects to a hotel meeting or home parties.

Have you ever wondered why people you have recruited into your network marketing business opportunity don’t do anything with it?

Part of that is just the normal nature of network marketing. Some people just aren’t going to do anything to build a business no matter what you do.

However, another factor is the way you bring them into the business.

If you bring a lot of people into the business using hotel meetings and home parties, that might be one of the reasons a lot of people you recruit don’t do anything.

Here’s the challenge with hotel meetings and home parties. They work in terms of getting the person in. The challenge though is that they don’t work in terms of getting the RIGHT person in.

What do I mean?

When the Party’s Over; Buyer’s Remorse Sets In

Hotel meetings and home parties can be very convincing environments for people to sign up to do the business. The speaker leading the meeting is likely very charismatic and very convincing. As a result, if you get prospects to the meetings there is a very good chance that they will sign up.

However, what happens when you try to call them the next day and they are nowhere to be found?

It’s called “buyers remorse” and it happens all of the time whenever anyone signs up to do something in a high pressure situation.

Hotel Meetings and Home Parties Are Hard Work!

Another challenge with hotel meetings and home parties is the amount of work involved to get someone out to a meeting. You typically have to invite at least 4 people to the meeting to get one who will show up.

Why is that?

It’s because in most cases you aren’t talking to the right prospect. The right prospect is someone who is actively looking for a business opportunity. Someone who has the financial resources to invest in a business opportunity. Someone who has the time necessary to invest in a business opportunity.

Where are you getting these prospects that you are inviting to the hotel meeting or home party?

Are these people who contacted you about the network marketing business opportunity? In most cases you contacted them.

Because you contacted them, the posture is in their ball court because you are the one trying to recruit them. They aren’t the one going after you. That’s why it takes so many invites just to get someone to show up.

Lead Generation Systems Do the Hard Work for You

If you are using lead generation, you are significantly less likely to have to deal with these same challenges. This is because you have a system in place that is actively doing the prospecting for you.

Your system draws the prospect in, using targeted content designed by you or someone you hire, to draw the prospect into your marketing funnel. Your system follows up with the prospect automatically to warm the prospect up to your marketing message.

Your system can even present the offer for you or get the prospect to call you. Even if you decide to call them, the system makes the prospect a much warmer prospect to talk to.

A lead generation system is going to make prospecting a lot easier. This is because you are going to be dealing with prospects that actually WANT to start a home business or check out the products your company offers.

How Do You Set Up a Lead Generation System?

Marketing Merge offers step by step tutorials that teach you exactly what you need to do from A to Z to get your marketing system up and running. With it, you will be able to start generating your own leads quickly and easily.

Even if you still decide to use hotel meetings and home parties, you will have a much higher show up rate, a much higher sign up rate and a much higher retention rate.

That is because the people you prospect using your lead generation system will already be pre-qualified and more serious prospects than any other type of prospect you could invite to a hotel meeting or home party.

So take advantage of the Marketing Merge system and start generating quality leads for your network marketing business today.

Generate prospects online or go to friends and family?

Have you ever been taught that the best way to build your network marketing business is to make a list of your friends and family and share your business with them?

There are reasons you should share your business with your friends and family, but none of them is because they are the best prospect you can get in front of.

Why Do Network Marketers Believe Friends and Family Make the Best Prospects?

One reason is because for a long time it WAS the best way to prospect. Prior to the internet, advertising was extremely expensive. Therefore your only real options when prospecting were going to friends and family or prospecting strangers.

Of course, you’re going to have a better shot at recruiting someone you already have a relationship with than some stranger you met on the street.

Another reason people believe approaching friends and family is the best way to prospect is because if your leaders look at their top producers, there is a very good chance that these top producers were recruited by friends and family. As a result, your leaders believe friends and family are the best prospects.

Approaching friends and family is the most emphasized and trained method for the majority of network marketing companies and up line organizations.

Whatever is focused on and taught most, that’s what’s going to duplicate throughout the network marketing organization and that is where the best producers are going to come from.

Why Recruiting Friends and Family Is Ineffective

However, it doesn’t mean that’s the best or most effective way to prospect.

Just because you have a relationship with somebody, doesn’t mean that they make the best prospects for your business.

Some of your friends and family are simply not interested in being wealthy.

Some of your friends and family are simply not motivated enough to do what it takes to be successful in business.

Some of your friends and family are busy with other things in their lives.

Your family is not pre-screened or highly targeted. Your family simply has a relationship with you. That relationship may get you in the door but it will never guarantee a customer.

If your family member doesn’t see the value in your product, they are not going to buy from you. Even if they buy from you once just to “support” you, they won’t continue to buy.

Attracting Qualified Prospects is the Most Efficient Method for Recruiting

A prospect that you generate yourself is going to be a significantly higher quality prospect than a friend or family member because this prospect has sought you out instead of you seeking the prospect out.

Who’s more likely to buy an iPod? A friend or family member that is buying one to “support” you or a person that comes up to you and says “do you sell iPods because I’m looking to buy one?”

The second person of course!

It’s no different in network marketing. A person who is looking for what you have to offer is dramatically more likely to join your business or become a customer for your product or service than one who is not.

It makes business sense to focus on generating your own leads for your network marketing business.

Your time with friends and family will be much less pressured when you are no longer trying to recruit them and are able to sit back and enjoy your time together.

Your time with your qualified leads will be less pressured because they already want to hear about your business and services and you will no longer be spending your time trying to convince them.

To get the help you need to grow your business, click for step-by-step Internet Network Marketing Training.