Setting Goals in Network Marketing

There is no doubt that just like with anything worth achieving in life; setting goals in network marketing is a smart thing to do.

Having said that the actual process involved with creating goals for your MLM business has always been a peculiar and over complicated process to me.

As a result you will find in this blog post that I have a slightly different view of how to go about setting your goals than most MLM trainers you will come across. 

Most goal setting workshops or trainings come across as an overly complicated and time-wasting process to me.

People go to goal setting workshops where they spend hours and even days learning and working on how to set goals.

I personally believe this is a waste of time and in most cases simply a money grab by the person hosting the training session or workshop.

I warned you I have a different perspective on setting goals than most.

Don’t Misunderstand Me

Now do not get me wrong. I believe setting goals for your network marketing business is an important thing to do.

As the great Yogi Berra once said: “If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up somewhere else”.

I just believe most people are going about it all wrong and complicating the heck out of it.

By all means you can take a course or study how to set SMART goals. These are both great things to do if you have the time.

The problem is most people do not have the time.

This is a Part Time Business

Most people are building their network marketing business part-time and simply don’t have the extra time to spend trying to learn all of the fancy goal setting strategies.

If you do have the time and truly want to dig right into the subject than I recommend you study how to set SMART goals.

SMART stands for:

S – Specific

M – Measurable

A – Attainable

R – Relevant

T – Timebound

This strategy was created by George T. Doran way back in 1981. It makes the most sense to me out of the all of the goal setting programs and is a valuable exercise to go through if you have the time.

You can read all about it here if you like.

Robb Are You Against Goal Setting?

Absolutely not. I just have a different perspective on it and I guess it stems from experience.

My personal experience in the MLM industry as well as what I have witnessed from other successful people.

You can read about my story here.

Long story short I joined the network marketing industry because I came across a magazine promoting an opportunity and in that magazine there was a testimonial of an old friend of mine who was crushing it.

At that time he was making around $15,000 per month. Well needless to say I got excited as I knew if he could do it I could also.

I signed up and I went to work sharing the opportunity with everyone I knew.

I launched by business fast and I came out of the gates flying. And as a result I created a 6 figure yearly income in only 8 months.

Now notice what I just said, or rather what I did not say…

I did not say that when I joined I sat down and started writing goals. I did not take a goal workshop.

In fact I gave no thought to any goals whatsoever.

I simply went to work sharing the business opportunity with the people that I knew as fast as I could in the time I had available to work my business daily.

I Recommend You Do The Same Thing

Your main goal and focus needs to be to share your opportunity with as many people as you can in the time you have allotted for building your business daily. It is absolutely as simple as that.

Success in network marketing is not a hard thing. In fact what is involved in becoming a success is actually very simple.

We simply share our opportunity with people who are open to taking a look at it.

That is it that is all.

So if you have 2 hours available a day, you need to be spending those 2 hours meeting and sharing your opportunity with people.

If you have 3 hours you need to be spending those 3 hours doing that.

Yes you could sit down and “try” to figure out how many people you need to approach with your business opportunity in order to get 5 people to sign up each month.

Yes you could try to bang some numbers together and attempt to work out how much product has to move in your organization in order for you to earn $5,000 per month.

You could even break out the calculator and try to calculate how many new reps you need to sponsor this week, next week and the 10 weeks after in order to rank advance to star fleet commander by June.

Sure you could do all of that stuff.

But why?

In the end it is going to come down to you doing the exact same activities.

Which is sharing your opportunity with as many people as you can in the time you have allotted daily to build your business.

Which leads to the more important question of:

How Are You Going to Build Your Business?

In the end how many people you are going to share your opportunity with daily comes down to you.

How much time you have available daily and how you are building your business. Meaning what prospecting and recruiting strategies are you using?

I truly believe that everyone in this industry should start with their warm market, the people that you know already. I believe not doing so is a huge mistake.

When working your warm market your goal is going to be simple.

Decide how many of the people you know right now will you be able to contact daily about your MLM opportunity. Make it a realistic number, but also one that is going to push you.

Then just go and do it.

Set that goal and make sure you stick to it. If you are going to contact 10 people daily than make sure you do, do not let any of life’s little excuses get in the way.

Change Your Goal if Needed

It is also OK to revisit and change your goal if you need to.

If you find that you are having a hard time reaching out to the number of people you set as your goal than dial it back. But if you find you are reaching that number no problem than dial it up.

The key is to figure what that number is, set it as a goal and than stick to it.

You can learn how to work your warm market the right way here.

Setting Cold Market Goals

The cold market adds an additional step or “goal” to the equation.

On top of deciding how many people you are going to prospect daily, you now also need to decide how many people you are going to meet daily as well.

The strategy you use to work the cold market is going to determine this number. There are a number of cold marketing strategies you could choose to use.

Personally I recommend people start recruiting on social media once they have run out of people in their warm market.

There are 2 strategies with social media that you could choose to use:

Strategy #1 – The Direct Approach

The basics of this strategy is you are going to join groups where your target market hangs out.

You look for people in these groups who appear to be good prospects for your MLM business.

Then you simply send them a message telling them you are in the same group as they are. You tell them that you noticed they were from wherever it is they live. Let them know you are looking to expand your internet business there and are wondering if they are interested in looking at an opportunity or know of anyone who would be.

There is more to this strategy but that is the general concept of how it works.

You can learn more about it here.

Your goal with this strategy is to decide how many people daily will you locate in groups and send that message to.

When setting this goal keep in mind that you will also have to allot time to follow up and actually share your opportunity with the people that say they are interested in taking a look.

Strategy #2 – The Passive Approach

The passive approach is similar to the direct approach except it has more of a friend’s first focus associated with it.

You still join the groups where your prospects are located. But instead of going in for the kill right off the bat, you spend time developing a friendship or rapport with your prospects.

You do this by simply becoming active in the groups. Commenting and liking people’s posts and adding value to the groups by posting information they will find helpful or entertaining, etc.

You start to make friends. You will get friend requests and you can send friend requests.

You than continue the relationship on your personal page by making posts they will enjoy. By commenting on posts they make. By sending direct messages to them and starting conversations with them once they are your social media friend.

Your goal is to become friends or develop a relationship of some sort.

Once a relationship of some sort is created, you than reach out to them, tell them how great it has been getting to know them and that you noticed they were from wherever it is they are from. You have an internet business you would like to expand there and were curious if they would be open to taking a look at it.

Again there is more to this strategy, and you can learn about it here:

MLM Leads That Work.

The goals you will want to set with this method would be:

• How many people you are going to meet daily (send friend requests to)
• How many people you are going to ask if they are open to looking at your opportunity.
• How many people you are going to follow up with daily.

Setting Goals in Network Marketing Recap

There you have it my friend my simple and probably controversial thoughts on goal setting for your MLM business.

Keeping it simple is my philosophy and how this business is supposed to be built.

Focus on the activities and not the results. Decide how many people you can meet and approach daily and just go out and do it. The results will follow.

Some people have success faster than others and that is fine. If you do the activities on a consistent basis you will reach your goal of being successful.

If you have any questions on this feel free to drop them in the comment section and I will be sure to respond to you.

Cheers to YOUR Success

Robb Corbett

P.S. Clearly your biggest goal needs to become good at recruiting new distributors into your downline. It is a simple process when you learn how to do it correctly. I have put together a Free Boot Camp to help you master this skill set. You can sign up for it on the side of the blog.