Do you get stuck when you are asked questions about your business? Questions like what do you do? Why should they be interested in anything you have to say? What is your business about? How your business could help them? If so, then what you are missing is a solid story for your business – one that will allow you to answer all of those questions and more. In this post, we’re going to explore how to craft a great story – i.e a personalized business pitch – for your network marketing business that will lead to more growth and opportunities.
How to craft your networking business story.
The first step in creating a network marketing business story is crafting the necessary elements. The goal for each of the elements of your story is to help people get to know you, get them relate to you, get them to trust you, and get them excited about what you can offer them. A great network marketing business story should be composed of the following eight elements.
Don’t worry about putting it all together just yet. We will discuss the art of it all in the second half of this post.
Introduce yourself.
The goal of the first element of your story is to simply introduce yourself to give your listener a mix of information about you personally and professionally.
“Hi, my name is John. I’m a stay-at-home dad (two girls – Ann and Jane) and CEO of PowerUp Health. My wife was a top marketing exec at DMA, a national digital marketing agency.”
You don’t have to go into your full blown personal life story unless you have the time or it relates directly to your business. In this storyline example, your listener is probably intrigued at how you can be a stay-at-home dad and a CEO with a wife who is now no longer in a high-powered career.
Describe what led to your search for a new business opportunity.
The goal of the second element of your story is to get your listener to relate to you.
“Before we had kids, my wife and I had agreed that I would be the stay at home parent while she continued her career.
When we had Jane, our youngest, two years ago, my wife decided she wanted to transition to a less demanding job. It wasn’t that she didn’t love what she did or that she wasn’t good at it. She just wanted more time with our kids, something that her 50 hour work weeks didn’t allow for.While we wanted to make that happen, I didn’t want to give up my time with the kids either. But we weren’t sure what our options were as we needed steady income to survive. We were by no means independently wealthy at the time. So we wanted to find something that we could both do that didn’t tie either of us into a 9 to 5 or worse job scenario.”
Now you’ve brought the story to a relatable level. You’ve introduced more snippets about your personal life and how you wanted more for yourself and your family. You’ve introduced them to the possibility that there is something more than a traditional job to make your family’s dreams reality.
Explain how you discovered your network marketing business.
The goal of the third element of your story is to take your listener through the discovery of your network marketing business.
“Over the past few months, I had been following updates from a friend of mine on Facebook. He and his wife were doing some kind of weight loss challenge together. They had always been a tad on the overweight side, so it was good to see them trying something new. And that program really worked for them. So well that I messaged him to learn more about it. Because my wife and I were in the same boat they had been, health-wise.
He told me that he thought my wife and I would love this program. They had gone from couch potatoes to living active lives. They had replaced their favorite weekend hobby of Netflix binging to hiking the local trails.”
At this stage, your listener is likely excited because you are describing the excitement of your own journey into your network marketing business from the start as a customer.
Disclose your doubts.
The goal of the fourth element of your story is to remove some of the doubt your listener might have of network marketing business by sharing your own doubts.
“I began to realize that the program he was talking about was one that I had heard of over the years. Honestly, I had my doubts. I kind of thought it was another one of those schemes that people are roped into for a bit and then fall out of favor with.
But at that point, I also thought that even if my wife and I got into better shape, all wouldn’t be lost. And if it had even the slightest potential of helping us generate income while spending more time with our kids, then it was worth exploring, right?”
This revelation should let your listener know that you didn’t enter into your network marketing business without some reservations. Sometimes, if you make things seem to much like rainbows and unicorns, people will assume that your entire goal is to sell them. And while that may ultimately be your goal, you want to make sure that they see you as someone sharing a genuine opportunity and not just serving up a generic business pitch.
Expose how the network marketing business has changed your life.
The goal of the fifth element of your story is to let your listener know how the network marketing business has changed your life.
“My wife and I spent some time using the program ourselves. We documented our progress. Since we had tried different diet and exercise books in the past, we didn’t really expect a huge difference.
But after a month, we were surprised to see a remarkable difference – and we had the photos to prove it. Granted, I still cringe at sharing our before photos, but the after photos make it worth it.At that point, it was a no brainer to transition from a customer to a consultant. Everyone who knew us – my wife’s coworkers, the neighborhood dads at the park, our church group – asked what we had been doing differently. They didn’t just say that we looked great – they wanted in.”
Excitement for this stage and going forward is key. You don’t have to say that you are passionate about what you are pitching if you show that you are passionate about it.
Reveal how the network marketing business has changed your customers’ lives.
The goal of the sixth element of your story is to show your listener how they can make a difference in other’s lives.
“At this point, you’re not really selling people on something. You’re merely offering a solution to their problem. Not just another run-of-the-mill solution, but one that works. One that you are living proof that works.
I can’t tell you how happy I was when one of the dads at the park came up to me after a few weeks and thanked me for changing his life. He said his wife was more interested in him, he was more confident, and he even got a promotion at his job. Likely due to the boost in confidence more than anything, but still an indirect result of using the program.He, like my wife and I, wanted to do more than just use the program. He wanted to start selling it himself.”
Many people want to do more than earn a living – they want to make a difference in people’s lives. Sharing the pride you felt when you made a difference in a customer and consultant’s life will show that your network marketing business will not just make you rich, but it will make your life more meaningful.
Divulge how the network marketing business has changed your life.
The goal of the seventh element of your story is to bring it all together and talk about how your networking business solved the problem you addressed in the early part of the story.
“It’s been a couple of years since that moment. My wife and I now have dozens of consultants who have both used the program and just can’t stop talking about it. So in addition to getting into shape ourselves and helping our friends and family get into shape, my wife got to resign from her job last May and both of us now work in a business we love while getting to spend lots of time with our kids.
Honestly, I’m not going to pretend that we’re mega-millionaires. We didn’t want a Ferrari, a yacht, or a bungalow in Bora Bora. We just wanted to be able to work a few hours from home while our kids were in daycare and earn enough to not have to worry about our finances on a daily basis. Now that we’ve paid off our mortgage, our cars, and our debt, we can live comfortably and with less pressure.”
The average person might be turned off if you appear overtly successful as they don’t see it as a reality. Making the success of your network marketing business a realistic, attainable goal makes people more likely to believe that it can work for them to.
Add your call to action.
The goal of the eight element of your story is a simple call to action. What do you want your listener to do next?
“I’d love to tell you more details about the program!”
Ideally, you will want to sit down immediately to share more details about your network marketing business while people are excited by your story. In situations where you can’t, you will want to get their information so you can schedule a follow up to get them on board to start them on their customer to consultant journey.
How to format your network marketing business story.
The second step in creating a network marketing business story is putting it all together. If you have someone’s undivided attention for a good length of time, you may want to tell them the full story. But you should also have shortened versions that you can use to get someone’s business card for a follow up chat or to simply pique someone’s interest in the time it takes to ride up an elevator (i.e. the elevator business pitch).
These various lengths will also come in handy in your online marketing as well as your offline networking. You will need to fit the important parts of your story into a 160-character Twitter bio, a paragraph on your LinkedIn profile, and a full page on your website’s About Us page.
The key is to put together the perfect story for the time (or space) you have to tell it and the intended goal.
- Are you introducing yourself to a stranger on an elevator?
- Are you trying to sell your product to a coworker at lunch?
- Are you enticing people to click on your website link from your Facebook page?
- Are you explaining what you do to a friend at a party?
- Are you sharing the reason why you entered into network marketing with a family member at dinner?
- Are you introducing yourself to a new lead through your email autoresponder?
All of these will require you to share a different portion of your story in the time your listener has allotted to you. Since you have the material to work with, mix it up. You might try one version of your story with one person, and another version with another. In online marketing, you use A/B testing to see what changes get the best result. In offline networking, the same principle applies.
In Conclusion
Having the perfect network marketing story will prepare you for any potential business opportunities you might find offline and online. Look for those opportunities – networking events, social profiles, podcasts, etc. – and start telling and refining your story with our pitching tips in order to get the best results for your business! Here are 12 Tips to Getting Started and Succeeding in Network Marketing.