John Dilbeck Musings

Hi,

This week, I’ve been thinking about a couple of issues that are gaining in importance for reasons I’ll mention below.

I was a bit out of the loop last week because my mother was scheduled for surgery on Thursday. The surgery was a success and she’s back home and doing well.

(You may not know that I’m a full-time caretaker for her after her cancer surgery a couple of years ago. I help her during the days and do most of my marketing work from the next room during the nights and early mornings.)

So, now, my mind is back in the game and I’m looking for ways to help you grow your SFI Marketing Group business.

Some thoughts about marketing and selling

As I’ve said before, we are a sales organization. No sales, no business.

Most people hate selling, but that may be because they have a misconception about what selling is all about.

Look around you. Everything you see was sold by someone and bought by someone.

Selling is difficult when you are trying to convince someone to purchase something she doesn’t want.

Selling is easy when you talk to your customer and find out what he or she is most interested in. If she’s interested in what you have to offer, tell her about it.

Selling is easiest when you find what a group of people want or need and then you find a way to provide that product or service to them.

It is much easier to sell ice to a hot person in the summer than it is to sell it to a cold person in the winter. Few people can sell refrigerators to Eskimos, but practically anyone can sell a cold soda to a hot sweaty person in the summer.

You don’t have to do a hard sell. Just mention the benefits and how to get it.

Don’t know how to define the benefits? That’s pretty easy once you know the trick.

First, take out a sheet of paper and draw a vertical line down the center of the page. On the left side, list all the features you can come up with. On the right side list the benefits of each of the features.

How?

A benefit must answer the question “What’s in it for me?” or “How does that help me?”

Try to think as your customer would think and then list how each feature will be of benefit to him or her.

Once you know the benefits of your product or service, don’t list the features any more. Tell about the benefits, because that’s what we’re all interested in.

Now, you’re not trying to make someone buy what you have to sell, you’re offering a list of ways to help someone get what he or she already wants.

Are you selling when you tell someone that you saw a good movie they would probably like?

Are you selling when you recommend a good restaurant?

Are you selling when you tell someone about the SFI business opportunity?

Sure you are.

You may or may not be getting paid for your selling efforts, however.

That’s the beauty of affiliate selling. All you have to do is get someone to go to your gateway or a specific page in your Veriuni store and purchase from that link, or sign up as your sponsored affiliate. Then you get paid.

It’s not hard, it just takes some effort. When someone likes what they see, buying is easy. Remember how easy it was for you to become an SFI affiliate? That’s just how easy it will be for someone else to sign up as your affiliate and that’s how your sales team will grow.

The more you learn about selling, the more money you make in commissions.

Of course, it’s not just about learning. You must take action. Knowledge without action accomplishes nothing. Action without knowledge may or may not accomplish something. Sometimes it can work against you.

So, make sure you know what you’re going to do before you just start doing it. Set your goals and plan how you’re going to accomplish them.

Then, work your plan.

Does your upline answer your email?

It occured to me yesterday that there may be several reasons why you don’t get a reply when you email someone for help.

One of you — I won’t mention who — sent me an email last week that I almost never saw.

Because of all the virii (viruses) and worms, I no longer open an email with the subject of just “Hi”, “Heya”, or “Hello”. I have programmed my email program to drop those directly into the trash without seeing them.

I get over 1,000 email messages every day and several hundred are spam. Of the others, I have a couple of hundred filters defined that send the messages into over 50 inboxes. Some — such as my SFI inbox — are a high priority. Others are low priority.

When I check my email, I read the messages in the high priority inboxes first, and if I have time I eventually get to the others, but it may take days or even weeks, if I ever get to them at all.

Last week I got an email from an affiliate with a subject of “Hi” and a body that consisted only of “What do I do next?” No name. No company mentioned — and I represent several. No discussion of what had been done before to lead up to this point.

It was automatically filtered into the trash. I only read it because I had a few extra minutes that day — unusual — and recognized the email address.

It took a while to respond to the message, because I had to find the affiliate’s name, and what he/she may have done already. It would have been much easier and faster with some basic information in the email.

So, I’m going to ask you, whenever you write me, to please include the following:

1. Your full name.

2. Your SFI affiliate ID.

3. Your city, state, and country — whatever is appropriate.

4. Put “SFI Affiliate” at the start of the subject line.

5. In the body, ask questions that can be answered and provide information about what you have already done and what I can help you with.

6. If you reply to a message from me, please quote the previous conversation so I don’t have to go searching for it. These simple steps will make sure I see your message and will make it much easier to respond to you.

That’s assuming, of course, that some ISP between us doesn’t throw the message away or refuse to deliver it for whatever reason.

Because email is getting more and more unreliable, I’m opening up alternative forms of communications. I’ve created a Residual Income Forum and I invite you to register and participate there. We can discuss SFI in the SFI Marketing Group section.

How do international affiliates become MIQ?

I define “international affiliate” to mean anyone who lives in any country other than the United States.

As you may know, it’s sometimes difficult for international affiliates to purchase anything online. We’re getting more and more international affiliates in our sales team, and I welcome you! I want to find a way to help you transfer money back and forth between the US and your country.

There are two issues: how to buy something here and how to get paid there.

Be aware that you are never required to purchase anything from SFI. You can become MIQ by selling rather than buying and I highly recommend selling. However, you may have decided that you’d like to join the IAHBE, but don’t have a way to do it if you don’t have a credit card.

I have to admit that I was rather ignorant of this whole situation until recently and now I’m trying to find a way or ways to help you. I’ve sent some information to a couple of you. If you find it helpful, please tell me and I’ll pass it along to the entire team.

I’d also like to know if it wasn’t helpful.

I think SFI must find a way to make it easier for international affiliates to play a bigger part in the company and I think that’s under development. After all, Gery Carson — the founder of SFI — has announced that he’s changing the name of the organization from Six Figure Income Marketing Group to Strong Future International Marketing Group, and if he’s going to position it as an international organization, it’s necessary to make it easier and more profitable for anyone who lives outside the US to be a part of the effort — and to reap the rewards.

I’ve also learned that it is difficult for some people to receive their commissions from SFI. Some of you have to pay very high fees to cash a check from the US. Som you may want to accumulate your commissions until they reach a certain level before SFI sends you a check, so the fee will be a lower percentage of what you earn.

I’m still looking into this and I’ll be checking the SFI discussion board every few days to see if any news is forthcoming in this regard. If you learn something that works for you, please share it with us.

(Update: September, 2006 - SFI has made some dramatic improvements in working with international affiliates. I’ve written about some of them in my SFI Sales Team blog.)

That’s all for today.

As usual, if you have any questions, comments, feedback or want to talk to me about any of this, I look forward to hearing from you.

I’d like to recommend that you read the SFI discussion forum on a regular basis and post there if you have questions or comments. We’re a friendly bunch and there are some very helpful people there. Just remember that you can’t post contact information on their forum.

If there’s anything I can do to help you grow your SFI business, please let me know at your convenience. I always try to answer my email within two or three days or so.

All the best,

JD

PS. Want your own SFI business? If you’re willing to learn, set goals and work to achieve them, and have at least a couple of dollars per day to invest in growing your business, please click the link and join my sales team today.