How To Generate Legitimate Leads
For Your Business Opportunity
By John Alexander
One of the more difficult tasks you will face as a business person is
generating legitimate business opportunity leads. It certainly can seem
difficult generating any kinds of leads, but finding the ones that will
benefit your business the most is the challenge at hand. So where do
you start?
Before you begin generating your business opportunity leads, you have
to do a few things. First, put together a plan of what your target market
is and how you intend on reaching them. Your plan can and will change over
time, but it will assist you in the beginning phases. Having a plan
will help take you from the mediocre leads to those who are genuine diamonds
in the rough.
Next, before you start to generate legitimate business leads
for your new
business opportunity, you are going to want to study up on the business and
know everything about it inside and out.
When I started teaching Search Engine Workshops way back in January
2002, I spent some time examining the types of training that were available.
At that time, there were what most people referred to as "seminars." While
the bigger seminars seemed popular, they mostly were conducted like "trade
shows" with presentations by a variety of different speakers.
Then there were the online forums, of which some were helpful, while
others constantly seemed to be bickering between personalities. The one
weakness with the early forums, was that everyone used funny aliases (so you
never really knew the source of information for sure.)
Back in 2000 to 2002 there were no such things around as "hands-on
Workshops"
where you could join a small group of participants and actually get
some detailed
training and drilling with an instructor over a period of several days.
Typically the big seminars were great for finding SEO clients or for
networking
or just having fun. But this is where I decided to start conducting a
new type
of hands-on Workshop at Http://SearchEngineWorkshops.com and from
there
our classes became known as the Search
Engine Academy and grew across the
United States and Canada and then Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia,
The United Arab Emirates and as of January 2013, we are still opening new training
Workshops in Dallas, Texas, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and now in Central and
Eastern Europe.
So let's get back to talking about how you can find your
best "diamonds in
the rough" as business associates:
Selling people on your business opportunity is not an easy task,
especially if you are unfamiliar with it. Knowing everything there is to
know about your products, services and business as a whole will make
it much more comfortable while selling to potential leads.
As soon as you have developed a plan and become an expert in the
business, you are ready to begin generating your business opportunity leads.
It can feel somewhat difficult determining where the best place will be to look.
But to make things easy on yourself, start ton ask friends and family first.
This way you can potentially reel in a few people that you really know
personally
and ones that you can put your confidence in.
One of the things you may want to do, is spend some time screening your
candidates for people you think fit your style of business. For the Search Engine
Academy, I learned to watch for people, who are good communicators. People who
enjoy working with people is one of the first criteria for me. I reasoned that I can
teach just about anyone who is "teachable" all of the technical skills, but the one
thing no one can really teach, was "how to genuinely
care about people." It seems
like some people care about people, and some people do not.
The Importance of Screening Your Candidates:
Screening can be in the form of meeting your business associates for
interviews or
you can learn a lot about how people treat others just by watching them
work in a
class. When you are building a list of prospects, make sure they all
fit with your
style of thinking.
Building a list does not happen on its own. You have to be willing to
work at it and be direct with people. When talking to your friends and
family members, do not be afraid to ask them if they know people you
can contact. Keep in mind though that you want a list of people that will
truly benefit you, not just take up all your time.
The type of people I seem to end up with are people who most likely
would be
successful at whatever they do, because their attitudes are that of achievers.
Watch for those who carry some self confidence and do not
seem afraid of
challenge.
Part of being direct, is collecting information from people. Whether it is in person,
over the phone, or even in an online meeting, you want to collect as much
information as possible for your list. This means getting people's phone numbers,
email addresses, business cards and past experience. Whatever you can get from
them that will help you better understand their strengths
and/or weaknesses.
Watch for those who are people persons and seem to be interested in the
business opportunity. It much better to work with associates who are enthusiastic
about being part of what your building rather than having people who are wanting to
do things their own way or are simply un-teachable. You want to build your business
in a way that each new person, strengthens your team as a whole.
If you are struggling to come up with business opportunity leads, do
not give up just
yet. You can also purchase leads for your list through most business opportunities,
but be very cautious. Make sure you look into the quality of these leads because
they can sometimes be just random people with no interest at all. While this method
is an option, you need to use wisdom.
In some cases, if you started building your organization somehow with
the wrong
foundation, it may be necessary to tear down any broken foundation before starting
to build your solid new foundation. You can not build a strong, structurally sound building
on top of a crumbling or weak foundation.
Putting together a list of business opportunity leads is critical to
your business for a
number of reasons. It will allow you to stay in touch with customers,
inform them of
specials and new products, and it will allow you to keep a personal relationship.
One of the best bits of advice I can give you, is that you need to keep
a very clear
vision in your mind of what you are building. If this is your business, then you need to
use wisdom and continually listen to what your customers and client experiences
are. Be very careful especially if it is just a brand new business and stay focused on
your vision. It can be good to surround yourself with some people who offer good
counsel. But be especially aware of any voices you hear that may be trying to burst
your bubble. Not everyone will embrace your vision or grasp it, so it's
important to
focus on those who are team players.
Another thing that can help you grow, is to find a mentor (someone who
can offer you
good, trustworthy counsel.) Someone who has a strong success ratio and has
done this type of thing before.
A word about Different "Thinking Styles":
Remember, that business is often best suited to a number of
different thinking styles.
There are those who are highly creative by nature. Then
their are those who are more
analytical or logical thinkers. It's good to involve both
thinking styles. It was Walt Disney
who use to say that he believed there was enough room in his
organization for all types.
The Early Disney Corporation Used both Thinking Styles:
The highly
creative people, he put together in a room and
called them his "Imagineers." However, he
knew that the analytical thinkers were not always
helpful in a brainstorming session, as they tend to
always be trying to analyze what was being
brainstorm which can easily stall the creativity
flow. So what Disney did, was he put the analytical
thinkers in a separate room and that way the
Imagineers could come up with non-stop creativity
with everyone positively building on the ideas of
other creative conversations.
Once the creative team came up with the result,
Disney would take it into the next room and give it
to the analytical/logical thinkers and just say to
them, "here....build this." The logical
team while they were not creative, were excellent
builders, so they could take what the creative
team dreamed up and being "builders," they
could figure how to make some new Theme park
ride and actually make it work.
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About John Alexander:
John Alexander is Founder and Director of Search Engine Academy and he works together with his network of globally located
Search Engine Academy SEO Trainers who teach hands-on SEO Certification Workshops in communities across Canada, The
United States, Australia, Asia, in the United Arab Emirates. John also is a writer of the Free SEO Tip of the day which offers you
literally hundreds of free SEO tips (one fresh SEO tip each day for free.)
If you are interested in training for an SEO career please visit one of our local community based SEO training Workshops
located closest to you. Read a few SEO graduate success stories here.
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John Alexander
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