Cold Calling v Warm Market in MLM

When trying to build your MLM business, whether it’s customers or partners, which is best; Cold Calling or the Warm Market approach?

For those that don’t know what the above terms mean; Cold Calling means calling or approaching people who are not known to you. Warm Market is people that you either know directly i.e. friends, family or work colleagues, or people who are directly introduced to you.

Before we try to decide which of the two methods work best when trying to build your MLM Business, we first need to discuss the two methods in more detail.

MLM Cold Calling

“Cold Calling” can be done several different ways;

Making telephone calls to people picked out of a directory or a list that you have purchased. Door Knocking by simply picking an area & going house to house. Approaching people in the street or supermarket or other such venues.

All of the above methods involve talking to strangers or people whom you have not met before. The majority of people would quake at the knees at the thought of approaching strangers with a business proposal & so this method is definitely not for the faint hearted. Generally people who get involved in this type of “marketing” are very thick skinned as the rejection rate is very high. Just put yourself in the shoes of the “stranger”, what happens when somebody knocks on your door & attempts to sell you something? I would wager you will say you are not interested even before the caller has had a chance to go through their sales pitch. A lot of people won’t even answer the door or will close it in the callers face. There have been many horror stories over the years about people being mis-sold goods or services at their doorstep by unscrupulous salespeople. Indeed many service industries in the UK no longer use this type of marketing due to pressure from licensing bodies.

Warm Market

Marketing to friends, family or work colleagues should be simply a case of referring them to a product or service that you have recently used or purchased. Indeed we all use this form of “marketing” every time we make recommendations to people we know, usually it will be a film we have recently watched or a book we have just read. In the case of MLM people ( reps, distributors or partners ) are being paid to recommend a particular companies services or products. So in essence the Warm Market approach is not selling as we would normally think of it, it’s simply making recommendations.

I hope that you can see the major difference between the two methods i.e. selling v recommending. At first glance you would be right in thinking that the 2nd method is the way to go, as who in their right mind wants to try & approach strangers & try to sell to them? However it’s not quite as simple as that, for instance what do you do if you have exhausted your warm market? Is it better to be “rejected” by a friend or a stranger? What if you have credibility issues with your friends & family? Maybe you have been involved with other businesses in the past that have not succeeded.

Let’s take just one of the preceding questions; Rejection – There is no doubt that for people first starting out in MLM that rejection is a major reason for quitting the industry. Nobody likes to hear the word “no” when trying to promote something. All new MLM recruits are taught to first approach their warm market & it’s a fact of life that no matter what product or service you are promoting a lot of people will say no. The thing that new MLM recruits have to learn quickly is that the customer/prospect is not saying no to them, but to their companies offering. Rejection should not be taken personally, once this is learned recruits will find marketing much more fun.

At the end of the day it’s all about your own personal philosophy & what you are comfortable with, some people are not comfortable approaching their friends & family about business & would rather talk to strangers. As already said above, some people would faint at the prospect of having to approach strangers. There is no right or wrong so pick a method that suits your style.