Phoning Prospects (or are they Suspects?)

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Our team's mentor, Malcolm Peters, gave another training yesterday and I'd like to share some of his thoughts.

First, I don't believe I had heard the following acronym for TEAM before, but I love it:

Together
Everyone
Achieves
More

Isn't that cool :). And so true!

If you've been involved in network marketing to any degree, you understand that making calls to people you know and people you don't know is the only way to grow your business. Nobody is going to sign up after only a visit to your website. It just isn't going to happen! It's absolutely imperative that you talk to people.

That's where many of us fall apart. "Oh no! You mean I have to pick up the phone and talk to someone?"

Yes! You have to talk to people. Many networkers have "phone fear" and put off making calls. But here are some questions you can ask yourself if you find it as much of a challenge as I do:

1. What stops me from making a call?
2. Do I understand and believe the fact that someone is waiting for my call?
3. Do I know that making 2 to 3 calls to the right people at the right time can change my life?
4. What is each call worth to me?

If you haven't managed to answer question #1, I'll tell you the answer: Say "ME!" I'm the only thing stopping me from making a call. But I have to remember that if the person on the other end of the line is someone I've never met, probably never will meet, will never come to my funeral (as Malcolm says), and doesn't know what I look like, or even what I'm wearing, then what does it matter what they think?

I may not get the words right, but the words really don't matter. It's the melody that people go for (more of Malcolm's wisdom).

Better pick up the phone... I guess!

Xocai Healthy Chocolate

We're all familiar with chocolate... at least the candy bars available at most supermarket checkouts and corner stores. Why do you think chocolate takes up so much valuable store "real estate"? It's because one BILLION people eat chocolate every single day! And half these consumers are addicted to it.

It's the guilty pleasure that we indulge in when we're depressed because it makes us feel better, or eat to fill a gap between meals. It's also the bane of all diets due to the high sugar content and high caloric value.

Now there's a healthy version, but it isn't like anything you've ever eaten before. The taste is equal to any delicious, high quality, dark Belgian chocolate, but that's where the similarities end. Xocai Healthy Chocolate contains no refined sugar, fats, caffeine, waxes, fillers, artifical flavour or colour.

What it does contain is raw, non-alkalized cacao which is cold pressed using a patented process. Acai Berries and Blueberries are added to create the highest antioxidant food known.

Compare the ORAC values of various foods on the left. By the way, ORAC stands for Oxygen Radical Absorbency Capacity which is the measurement used to determine how many free radicals can be absorbed by the antioxidants in a food. More on free radicals later! It's hard to believe, but one small Xocai Nugget has the same amount of antioxidants as 1/2 lb spinach!

Dark Chocolate in the News

The health benefits of dark chocolate have been studied all over the world. From high blood pressure, to heart problems, to cancer, to diabetes, to tooth decay... they all benefit from eating dark chocolate. There are a number of article links available on this web page.

Introducing Donna Markov

As you may already know from a previous post, Donna Markov is a member of our "HOT" Chocolate Team. Her "proper" name is Gordana, but to us she will always be Donna.

She is a stroke survivor and passionate about sharing her story, either in person or in her book Easy to Give Up, Hard to Fight. At our fundraiser for the Stroke Recovery Association (Cambridge and District), Donna gave me a poem written by a member of the association:

A stroke Survivor's Prayer

by Norma Rudy

I am a stroke survivor

Dear God you know it's true

It struck me without warning

And nothing I could do.

Please grant me hope and courage

And strength for each new day

To strive hard for recovery

And joy along the way!

Donna is an inspiration to anyone with a physical challenge. This is what she has to say about Xocai Healthy Dark Chocolate:

My name is Donna Markov and I’m a stroke survivor. The stroke left me with multiple problems. I couldn’t get a good nights sleep, my shoulders hurt and I couldn’t formulate my words correctly. This speech impediment was very embarrassing for me. Since being on Xocai Healthy Chocolate, I now sleep well and have no pain, plus my speech is much improved. And... to cap it all, I’m loosing weight!

Sincerely, Donna Markov

Proud to be in MLM

Many people are confused about MLM and Network Marketing, mostly because it's had a bad rep in the past. However, several well-known individuals such as Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki openly promote it as a viable business for those who want to build a large organization and earn 3, 4 or 5-figure weekly incomes without huge investments in time and/or money.

This is certainly possible with MXI. One particularly successful person passed the $2 million mark in 28 months! Thousands more are earning large weekly incomes as you can read here. This isn't hype. It's verifiable facts.

What other business could offer such amazing rewards with an investment of $1,500 US or less and a monthly overhead of as little as $130 US? It certainly isn't possible with any franchise that I know of, and since I owned a small business for 7-1/2 years, I know that long hours don't guarantee success and rarely ever provide those earnings. Plus, network marketing is based from your home and you can actually write-off some of your living expenses come tax time!

There's another reason why I'm proud to be in MLM: It's one of the only businesses where helping others is the only way you can benefit personally. You have to give more in "use value" than people pay in "cash value" as Wallace Wattles explains in The Science of Getting Rich. I wrote about the subject in an article on my website which you can read if you'd like to know more. It's titled Proud to be Part of the MLM Profession.

This truly as a remarkable business and I highly recommend it for anyone wishing to take control of their personal financial future.

The Benefits of Being Part of a Team

One of the things I like most about being part of our team is that there's always someone to go to for help, encouragement, or support. This is especially true for the "HOT" Chocolate Team as we are also part of a much bigger support system led by a marketing expert with 30 years experience in the business. I've already mentioned him in an earlier post. His name is Malcolm Peters and we get training from him twice every week.

The last training was especially relevant for us and turned into an in-depth look at the team's marketing. This remarkable man who is so willing to assist those who make an effort to help themselves, took a look at what we've been doing and suggested ways for us to make a better connection with leads. We're getting leads OK. Our problem has been in converting them and Malcolm got involved to help us change that.

Marketing is always a matter of test - result - and test again. There's never just one way to attract people and we have to remember that this is a learning curve. None of the team members has any prior experience in this business so having a system-based model is a huge plus for us.

Usually, you need to have had previous network marketing success in the form of numerous contacts/recruits, a penchant for 'selling', a knowledge of network marketing, and the resources to place advertising and pay for your own website and squeeze pages, etc. This doesn't even remotely guarantee success, but it can help tremendously in the self-confidence department if nothing else :).

Our team doesn't have any of this experience or resources, hence our co-op was created, plus we joined forces with someone who does have the experience. The fact that we're taught a four-step system is a tremendous benefit for us. We simply have to follow what we're taught!

As long as we continue to perform simple tasks on a consistent basis we cannot help but be successful.

The "HOT" Chocolate Team's Purpose

As you can see from the picture posted earlier, my team members and I are no spring chickens and you may be wondering why would have come together. Well, we're all MXI distributors and had been very frustrated with our attempts to grow our business. One day, we decided to meet and brain-storm how we could move things ahead.

At that meeting, it was decided that we would form a co-op where we would pool all our efforts and all our rewards! From that point on, everything we did would be for the benefit of the team.

It was the best decision I have ever made! And I've been so excited about it ever since.

We meet on a weekly basis and decide how we're going to advance our business, whether it's advertising in a local seniors' paper, distributing post cards, holding a fundraising event for the Stroke Recovery Association, or any number of other promotional and marketing activities.

Around the same time that we decided to form our co-op, we also heard about a marketing trainer who held regular conference calls to help individuals with their MXI business. His name is Malcolm Peters and he lives in the UK. The website he designed is absolutely amazing and has everything anyone could ever want to know about MXI and Xocai Healthy Chocolate. You can see ours at http://www.hotchocolateteam.com/.

I can't say enough about the benefits of subscribing to a website such as this. It's a library-type site with so much information it's overwhelming! The best part is that Malcolm is constantly updating it, so even if you've already seen it, if it's been more than a few weeks, I can almost guarantee that it's been improved since your last visit.