• Acquire internal motivation. When I joined network marketing, I bought into the hype and really believed that I was going to be making a lot of money within a year. After all, that’s what everyone in my upline said. Silly me – little did I know of the skills and hard work it was going to take. So, initially, I had lots of motivation – which really consisted only of what I had heard and what was bouncing around in my head. My motivation level went from 10 – 0 within a couple of weeks. I could see the plan I had been given was not going to work. So, expect to be disappointed – but then get over it and keep moving forward using effective tools and resources to help you.

With a realistic plan and goals in place and then staying in consistent action, my internal motivation was finally developed. I was getting results. It takes, on average, three to six months to develop the internal motivation needed to sustain you through the “hard” times. Don’t give up and give in to disappointment before you really get started!

• Have a mentor standing by. This could be your sponsor, someone else in your upline, someone on your marketing team, or perhaps a reliable confidant. There is priceless information to be learned from people who have already spent time in the trenches, so-to-speak, who can quickly point you in the right direction for the answers you need.

• It is critical to continue to learn, adapt, and change. Technology is simply growing too fast! In today’s economy, the most important skill is the capacity to learn new things.

Ann Sieg says in her Renegade Network Marketer e-book, “It is always better to be effective than it is to be efficient.” By aligning yourself with people who have the proven track record to guide you on how to be the most effective and profitable business builder you can be, you will save tons of time; first, by pointing your downline or prospects in the right direction for the help they need (creates duplication and leverages your time); and second, save lots of money – by avoiding things that just don’t work.

Some of my favorite mentors:

Ann Sieg - author of The 7 Great Lies of Network Marketing, The Renegade Network Marketer, The Attraction Marketers Manifesto, Renegade Professional (a joint venture with Mike Klingler), (AND... my MLM sponsor).

Mike Klingler - original creator of Renegade University/Professional and currently in a joint venture with Ann Sieg and Renegade Professional and their advanced mentoring program called Renegade Breakthrough. (If you have the marketing budget and are serious about building your business, the Breakthrough program will definitely pay for itself many times over.)

Alicia Bausley - Ann Sieg's #1 MLM top performer, co-author of How to Build Your MLM Business, website: simplemlmsteps.com

Wendy Mills - trainer for TheWorksTeam, website:  ahomebusinessworks.com

Check the joint venture website of Alicia Bausley and Lisa Hanfileti, authors and founders of Empowered Business Entrepreneurs

These talented and successful marketers have additional resources available. If you want to learn more, just Google their name. It's very inspiring to keep abreast with leaders in the network marketing industry who have learned what it takes to succeed.

Be patient with the process. Building a profitable home-based business is a journey, not a get-rich-quick-scheme. It could take a few years to see a substantial profit.

Colin Powell says, "There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparing, hard work, and learning from failure." You must take action before you can reach the financial rewards.

~

“Brick walls are there for a reason.
They let us prove how badly we want things.”
Prof. Randy Pausch

Step 1: Write down an overview of your company’s current situation, i.e. short description of your product and/or service, problems you are facing, and a short overview of solutions.

Step 2: Identify and focus on your target market.

Step 3: Set goals. A business cannot run efficiently without a clear picture of the short-term and long-term goals. Make these goals measurable by time. Be sure to place your goals in a place where you can read them every day.

Step 4: Write a list of your strategies - what you’re going to do, and tactics – how you are going to achieve it.

Step 5: Establish a marketing budget. You won’t know what you can do to promote your business if you don’t know how much money you have to spend.

Step 6: Review and update your marketing plan often. Changes will happen, so adjustments will need to be made to your marketing plan.

Quoting from How to Build Your MLM Business: The Complete Step-By-Step Guide to Inter-Network Marketing:

“Think of a marketing plan in terms of who, what, where, when, why, and how. Simply take the necessary steps addressed above to write your marketing plan and know who you will be addressing (target market), what you have to do to reach this market, (budget), where you need to go (strategies), when you want to achieve them (goals), and how you will get there (tactics)."

It is critical to add a personal sales element to your marketing. People want to work with real human beings. They don’t want to just be plugged into a system.

When you take the necessary steps to build a business relationship first, you will differentiate yourself from marketers who are relying only on automated systems.

~

"The job of your marketing is to bring you qualified prospects. The job of your sales process is to close the deal and build a relationship with people."

~ Ann Sieg ~

You don’t have to hurry out and buy all of the necessary tools at once. In fact, you should really take the time to determine which tools you really will need and when, relative to the kind of business you are trying to build.

I remember ‘back in the day’ (January 2005) Ann Sieg teaching me the importance of having a pen and notebook readily available to write down important information while talking to potential customers.

Wow – have times ever changed!

I even bought a little gadget that allowed me to record the telephone conversation so that I could go back and listen if I thought I might have missed important information. But, it quit working not long after I purchased it. By then I had developed my listening and writing skills enough that I didn’t replace it.

You can probably forget the telephone recording gadget, but a telephone headset is very important. A headset frees up your hands to write the critical information needed to know how you can best help your potential client or perhaps retrieve something, if needed.

Most likely, if you are internet marketing, you will need a long distance telephone service. You might want to check out Skype.com, a service that lets you make free calls to anyone else who has signed up with Skype, anywhere in the world!

If your internet connection is dial up, well... better get that changed as soon as possible. That alone could be frustration enough to cause anyone to quit!

Using a notebook and pen should be replaced with a professional contact management program as soon as possible. A contact manager will save you a tremendous amount of time and help keep your whole business and marketing system organized.

I currently use Oprius. I love Oprius because I can: 

• Create a history for each contact

• Set up an Autoresponder - You can set up a whole sequence of auto responder messages going out on any day you choose. If you want, you can have campaigns where everything is done automatically for you because it's triggered when a prospect submits their email address.

• Schedule calls

• Generate Leads (create unlimited Lead Capture Pages and web forms)

• Use my personal Oprius email and create List Mails

• Create task lists

• Schedule appointments, including reminders

All of that for only $14.99 a month. You can read more and even try Oprius free for 30 days at: http://tinyurl.com/NancyCOprius

You might also want to look into AWeber or iContact along with a myriad of other choices available. Be sure to check the features with each one.

It’s important to use the tools that will be the most effective for your business.

The tools I’ve mentioned here are just basic essentials for building a successful home-based business.

If you have purchased The Renegade Network Marketer e-book, you have access to the Renegade backend system which is full of training and a wide variety of tools to help you effectively build your business. Alot of the training and resources are free.

I strongly encourage you to start a blog and then build your own personal website as soon as you can.

Company replicated websites aren't likely to get noticed by search engines. By marketing with your own customized websites, you not only help build trust with your potential clients as you move them through the marketing funnel, you also control the content!

I use SquareSpace.com for my blog host and SiteBuildIt! for my website (working on it now...).

If you are a member of Renegade Professional, you have access to all of the training you need to set up a profitable Square Space blog and SBI! Website. Again, there are many other resources. I recommend these two because I know the training that is available will ensure my sites are effectively monetized.

Besides training and skills, having a marketing system/plan is the most important aspect of your business.

But remember, you can have all the bells and whistles available, but you still have to give people a valid reason of why they would want to do business with you above anybody else. It’s about building relationships, and when people feel connected to you, then they will take a look at what you have to offer.

Setting up your tools and understanding this process can seem overwhelming at first. Once you understand that this is a marketing process, it will become easy to see the larger overall picture. One of the most difficult tasks we have is just remembering who we've contacted and what process of the sales stage they are in.

To read my article about "5 Point Prospecting For Home Based Businesses", click here: http://www.squidoo.com/5-point-prospecting

If you haven't already, be sure to download and study Ann Sieg's free e-books (links below) to learn more about the importance of building relationships first and being a 'solutions provider.'

The 7 Great Lies of Network Marketing - http://nancycmarketing.com

The Attraction Marketer's Manifesto - http://nancy.marketersmanifesto.com/

Please believe me when I say a lead is only as good as your skill level. You can’t ever stop gaining knowledge and working on your sales and marketing skills. That is an on-going process. But, it is important to have access to a fresh supply of leads.

There are numerous company's selling leads online, unfortunately, with many of them not living up to their claim of providing fresh leads, sold only once or twice... Often times it's at least four or five times. That's not a winning combination for any marketer.

The best leads are those you actually generate yourself. However, when a person is first starting out, or just learning how to generate their own leads, they might need to purchase leads to start 'filling the pipeline.'

You want to make sure you are getting leads who have actually requested information about a home-based  business. In addition, cost alone is no indicator of the actual quality you will receive.

When I learned about a lead company that had been generating its own phone verified and phone interviewed leads since 1987, I wanted to know more. Some members of my marketing team did extensive lead testing of 10 of the major lead companies out there, and Opportunity Connection came out on top, by far.

I can confidently recommend Opportunity Connection. One of my Renegade affiliates, M. Davis from California told me, “The leads from the Opportunity Connection have turned out to be quite fruitful for me and we’ve been very busy.”

Of course, the way to ensure a long-term, rewarding, and profitable marketing experience is to generate your own 'fresh supply' of leads. You do this by marketing to YOUR Target Market.

Most people do not understand Target Marketing and have not been educated on what a true prospect really is. Only those who have already expressed an interest in building a home-based business before you talk to them are true prospects.

If you spend your time talking to folks who you have no idea if they are remotely interested in building a home-based business, you are wasting your valuable time, money, and energy. One of the saddest things I hear from a prospect is, “I have spent all (or perhaps most), of my money trying to build this business and nothing has worked.” Invariably, it is because they haven’t been contacting their target market.

The best way to acquire a true prospect is to generate your own targeted leads, thereby creating your own list of people to contact.

You can become skilled at doing that by using the step-by-step training offered at Renegade University. There is no cost to join Renegade University. Yes, it's free!

Mike Klingler, the founder of Renegade University/Professional, trains you a step at a time, how to effectively utilize many social marketing resources on line. If you are serious about building your home-based business, Renegade University will help you take your business to the next level.

It is way past time for 'out with the old' -- 'in with the new' way of thinking if you are still contacting friends and family and anybody else that breaths, plus many other unproductive strategies.

It is estimated that 30 million people are looking for a home-based business. To successfully present yourself and your opportunity to them, get educated about network marketing!

Whether your new to network marketing or have been at it for a while, you will save yourself a lot of time, money, and effort by implementing the following essentials:

*  training/education/skills

*  fresh supply of targeted leads

*  marketing tools

*  marketing system and plan

*  effective action

If you haven't already joined an opportunity, don't! Not until you read this ebook, The Renegade Network Marketer. This book has taken the MLM industry by storm. Thousands of marketers have been able to change a course of failure to success by reading and then implementing the concepts and methodologies taught by Ann Sieg in this ebook.

You will not only learn about all of the essentials I mentioned above, but also:

The concepts and how to implement those essentials...

It's not about the product...it's about the marketing...

Network marketing is about building relationships...

Be a solutions provider...

Differentiate yourself from all the others...

Identify the most effective activities...

And much, much more...

As Ann Sieg says, "People are absolutely starving for good, high-quality information.

It is our  job, as marketers, to give them this information."

You can learn all about it and get your copy by clicking on the book: