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by Eric Worre - Agel Diamond Director
How would you like to learn how to never run out of class-A prospects? When I got started in this industry, I have to tell you that I was very concerned about my ability to identify and recruit top level people. One of the big reasons was that I had very low credibility. If you know my story, I had 18 different jobs before the age of 22, so no one was real excited about joining my streak.
With my poor prospecting skills, it took me about 2 years for me to run out of warm market people to talk to. And by warm market, I mean someone who knew my name. By that time, even though I’d tapped out my warm market, I had worked hard enough to be making around $100,000 a year which wasn’t too bad. Because of that early success, I was invited to a special meeting of company big shots at one of our annual conventions.
I remember it like it was yesterday. Here we were, in this meeting and trying to act like big shots and we got to a question and answer session with the top two income earners in that company, so I took my shot. I asked them what to do when you ran out of people to talk to. It was completely embarrassing when they all looked at me like I was the biggest loser in history. Their answer was basically, “be a man and figure it out”. I felt like crawling under a rock.
Luckily for me, shortly after that convention, I attended a training session on how to never run out of quality prospects and that turned everything around. In a very short period of time, I had more prospects than I had time to talk to and my career really took off.
Today, I’m going to share what I learned in that training session.
In previous posts, we’ve talked about the formula for financial independence being your ability to get a large group of people to do a few simple things over a consistent period of time.
Identifying great people is one of those things. I think we’d all agree that great people are the foundation on which all successful companies are built. But, how do you find them?
People are busy. People are skeptical. People are stressed out.
How do you find a way for people to look close enough at the Agel opportunity to get involved?
One of the first things you need to understand is that we’re in a sorting business, not a convincing business. It’s not our job to convince everyone to join us. All we need to do is find a way to sort through them to find the ones that are hungry. See, if really have to convince someone to join you, chances are excellent that you’re going to have to constantly convince them to stay with you. And, believe me, that is a very tiring experience.
Building a large organization with Agel Enterprises, like anything else, is a numbers game. And like any numbers game, you have to look at the law of averages. Understanding these numbers was very helpful for me.
In general, here’s how they work?
Out of every 100, there are about 5 people that have what it takes to be great at building a successful business with your company, and in turn, helping you to build yours.
On top of that, there are around 25 people that will give it a shot if the timing is right and they’re approached properly. Many of those 25 will join you, do a little bit, and then fade away. If you’re lucky, a few of them will make the move into the 5% group and become long term players.
That leaves about 70 out of 100 that aren’t available for you. At least not now. 7 out of 10 cannot be bothered with your opportunity for any number of reasons.
You may or may not like these numbers, but I can assure you, they’re close.
One of the top income earners in this entire industry once told me that the entire purpose of having a big recruiting meeting is to get everyone out of the way and to find just one person who’s really serious about changing their life. I can tell you from many years of experience that he was right. If I was able to hit that mark for my career in this industry, I’d have more money than I could count.
For a while, at least in my early years in this industry, I tried to fight these numbers. I used to say that everyone should see the opportunity I see. I used to try to take a 70%er and convince them to be a 5%er. I would give them my most persuasive arguments and they would just never join. I also tried to make 25%ers into 5%ers. That just about killed me. When someone faded away, I took it so personally. My attitude was to make a person successful no matter what. Only over time was I able to realize that these numbers were real and they held true in just about any sales relatd industry you could imagine.
So, if I can get you to buy into the 5%, 25% and 70% groups, where do we go from there?
Here’s the big problem? no one will identify themselves. In fact, they go to great lengths to trick you. 5%ers will look like 70%ers and vice versa. What happens a lot is 25%ers will convince you that they’re 5%ers when they’re not.
So, what do we do? We accept that they’re all camouflaging themselves and we treat them all the same. We show them the opportunity in the best possible way. We believe the best in all of them. And we let results show us who is who.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been tricked. But if you can learn to let results show you the way, it will eliminate many of the emotional hurdles you must deal with.
Our job is to sort through as many as possible, recruit some, and let the results take it from there. What most people like to do is to say more to a few people. A more successful approach is to say less to more people.
So, what’s step one?
One of the most valuable tools in building your business is your list of contacts. What I call your personal database. The first thing we’re going to do and what we’ll ask everyone in your organization to do is to make a list of at least 100 contacts.
Why are 100 contacts important?
1. It will give you something to work on personally
2. Your organization will tend to do what you did
3. We all have the capacity to remember. If we empty our minds on paper, it helps to remember more. Your subconscious is full of people. You’ll find that the list will continue to grow once you begin to write it down.
Anyone who has not joined Agel counts. No pre-judging. Just empty your brains on paper.
Start with your existing lists. When you finish with that, a great approach is to grab any yellow pages and to just go through the categories in the front. It’s very hard to go through that without coming up with a bunch more names.
Once you get your list, here’s what you need to do. First, qualify the people. When you’re writing the people down, you’re not to pre-judge them. After you write them down, I’ve found it helpful to grade them. I’m not saying we won’t contact people with a lower score. I’m saying you can use this to contact the highest scoring people first.
Here’s a basic qualification system that I’ve used for years. It consists of 5 simple questions:
1. Do they have the financial ability to join your company? If they don’t have two nickels to rub together, contact them a bit later. If they have the financial ability to join, put a star next to their name.
2. Are they ambitious? If they are, put another star by their name. After these two questions, you should have 3 categories of people on your list. The “no star” people, the “1 star” people and the “2 star” people.
3. Do they act like they want more out of life? If so, give them a star.
4. Are they dissatisfied with some aspect of their life, to the point that they would be willing to do something to change it? If so, give them a star.
5. And do they have a good self-image? If they do, give them a star.
Once you go through these 5 questions, all you have to do is start by contacting the 5 star people first, then the 4 star, then the 3 star, 2 star, 1 star and finally the no stars.
We’re going to talk about how to contact these people, invite them to take a look at your opportunity, present the opportunity to them, get them to take action and get them started right, in future posts.
For now, we’re talking about the concept of never running out of class-A prospects.
Here’s how it works?
You’re going to have some number of 5 and 4 star people on your list. Those are who I would consider to be class A prospects.
You’re going to present the Agel opportunity to them until you get one person to say yes and join you.
Once that happens, what is one of the first things you’re going to do with them? Right, you’re going to have them make their own list of 100 and grade that list. Now, how many people do you have to talk to? Your 100 and their 100 for a total of 200. Some portion of those 200 are going to be 5 and 4 star people.
Working together with your new recruit, you go through their 4 stars and above until you recruit just one more. What’s one of the first things you’re going to do with that person? Get their list of 100, grade the list and then the 3 of you can work on recruiting one of their 4 stars or above. You now have 300 people to talk to from just 2 recruits. Your 100 and their 200.
This process doesn’t ever have to stop.
If you recruit 10 people, there is no reason not to have 1,000 people to talk to with a solid chunk of them sitting at the 4 star and above status.
Through this process, one of the things you’ll find is you’ll work better with other people’s contacts than you will with your own. As we’ve discussed in previous posts, 3rd party is just more powerful than 1st party.
All of this works great unless you fall down.
It’s up to you to start this process on your own. It’s up to you to make it part of your recruiting process and to help your new recruits understand why it’s so important for them to do also. It’s up to you to overcome people’s reservations about contacting people they know. Some of those reservations include a lack of belief of the company’s products or opportunity, a lack of self-esteem, a fear of losing credibility, an embarrassment from prior failures, any number of things.
One of the things you must show them is why it is in their best interest to make their list of 100, grade that list and begin to contact them with a systematic approach. Not just for the results that they’re going to get from doing that, but for what will happen when everyone in their organization does the same.
What’s the formula for financial independence again?
It’s in your ability to get a large group of people to do a few simple things over a consistent period of them. By doing that, you get leverage.
So, here’s your assignment. If you haven’t built your list, start one today. Grade it. And begin to expose those people to your opportunity. If you’ve been around for a while and have already done that, I’d suggest you do it again. In addition, you need to use all of your existing leadership skill to convince everyone in your organization to do the same.
If you do, you’re on your way to never running out of quality prospects to talk to and let me tell you, that’s a great feeling.
Your friend and partner,
Eric Worre
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