The #1 Skill You Must Know!!!

PROSPECTING | SKILLS | TRAINING The #1 skill you must know How you can become a "Professional Inviter" a conversation with Tim Sales plus AUDIO and ATTACHMENTS | 5652 words | 21 pages Tim Sales teaches a three-part formula: invite, present, train. Of these, by far the most critical is inviting. You can have tools and other people do the presenting and training for you— but inviting? That part’s up to you; that’s what you’ve got to get good at.

What gives Tim the right to be telling you all of this? He's truly a been-there, done-that seven-figure income earner who’s not only done it once (after all, he could have been lucky, right?), but then started all over and did it again. From there, Tim has become internationally recognized as a speaker, trainer and author— and most famously, as the creator of the enormously successful “Brilliant Compensation” program, which has millions of copies in circulation.

There are two things I admire most about Tim. First is his commitment to people and to doing whatever it takes to help them learn how to do this business right. And the second;

Tim is such a no-BS guy: he will not allow the people he trains to have anything in front of them except something he’s proven works in the field again and again and again.

Tim is ex-military, an underwater bomb squad guy, so there is nothing wishy-washy or unsure about him; yet I’ve heard him do things on one of his recorded live cold calls that spoke with such humanity, it touched my heart. I asked him to talk about that call, because it shows how powerful and at the same time how human and caring his approach is.

Tim, will you describe the genesis of this three-part formula? It came purely from experience: it was something I needed to do to make the business simple for me.

When you first enter this business, it’s daunting to look at all the information available and try to figure out what you actually need to do. The first thing I did was observe the typical opportunity meeting and typical training meeting. In the training meeting, they covered the product, the comp plan, what you must do, what you must never do, how to have posture... all these different categories of data were flying at me. I quickly saw how easy it is to get focused on things that don’t necessarily make a difference in your ability to build a business!

So, I broke it down into three basic categories: 1) invite someone to look at the business; 2) present it to them; 3) then show those who are interested how you did the first two steps.

Once I had that simple foundation, I could put my attention on the right thing first. What this also shows you is that if you don’t focus on inviting first, then you’re getting off track.

How so? Here’s what often happens: let’s say I just sponsored you into the business, and I start teaching you all about the compensation plan. But the compensation plan is not something you are ever going to need— unless you can already invite!

Inviting is the first step of the process: it’s the most important step, and the first thing that everyone in this business needs to know.

Here’s something else this formula shows: you can be terrible at presenting and training and still make it in this business! Why? Because if you can invite well, then you can put those people you’ve invited in front of good presenters or good presentation tools, such as videos, audios and Web sites; but if you can’t invite well, then you’re going to have a tough time getting anywhere in this business.

Let’s go back to the step that comes before inviting: what do you do to connect to people, so that you can do the inviting? Prospects can come from all sorts of sources. There are people you know, referrals from people you know, direct mail, including e-mail, postcards and any other kind of outbound campaign; then there are advertisements in newspaper, radio, different media; it can be people you meet while you’re sitting on an airplane, or at a party...

Do you favor any one of these? No, I don’t have a favorite. I like to be effective at all of them. If someone comes into my business and is reluctant to approach his warm list, I want to be able to teach that person how to do the cold market— which means I need to be able to do any one of these things myself.

Tim, what’s your opinion of the directive to “Go tell your family and friends”— the pure warm-market approach we’ve been doing for 50 years? The philosophy itself is very accurate— but the method through which we typically go at it has degraded our reputation as an industry.

Networking in the truest sense is what the very top businesses actually do. It’s what all business- es did, across the boards, prior to about the mid 1800s, when advertising began. Before that, we were all professional networkers. That’s all we did.

Then in 1850, the first public advertisement came out: the tobacco industry created a portrait of a man with an American flag draped around him, looking at a cigarette with a smile on his face. That was the first real ad, and in the century and a half since then, advertising has pretty much taken over as the medium through which to communicate business to masses of people.

But even today, when you look at the top echelons in any business, that kind of pre-1850 networking is still what occurs. If one company wants to buy another company, they don’t put out an ad: it’s all done through networking.

The top people sit down for lunch and have an exploratory conversation: “You have a business; I have a business, what’s the possibility of us taking our assets and combining them together…?” This is professional networking at its best.

That’s pure networking: contacting people you know and getting a referral. What I teach is to go back to that kind of business. So yes, write a list of the 200 (or 2000) people you know— but don’t destroy the relationship in the process!

In terms of destroying relationships, are there a few common traps people fall into? Let me illustrate it this way: I created something I call the Inviting Formula. [Tim's 'Inviting Formula" is detailed in a PDF attachment you can download at the end of this article.] The first step is to greet the prospect: you get them to talk freely and openly to you. That’s the requirement: they must be talking freely and openly before you can move out of the greeting step.

The next step is to qualify: find out what that person needs, wants or doesn’t want in life.

Once they’re qualified, then and only then do you open your mouth concerning what you have.

In the process of teaching this formula, I found that I could give one of my new distributors the exact scripts I use to do this, but they wouldn’t get the same results I was getting.

For a trainer, this is quite a frightening thing. So, I would take the phone back and call a few people, and they would say yes to me, but no to that other person. And my training efforts began to crumble— until I started to identify what the difference was between what I was doing and what they were doing.

I started to pinpoint what I call the 10 Communication Qualities: ten qualities that a person possesses if he has learned how to be a great communicator. [The 10 Communication Qualities are also in a PDF you can download at the end of this article.] Being a great communicator is not something people are born with. All you have to do is take a trip down the maternity ward and look at all the screaming babies: I dare you to try to pick out which one of them is a born communicator! You can’t … they’re all screaming.

One of those communication qualities is called “Too Much Assertiveness". To assert means to force your opinion on another. If you use too much assertiveness in communicating with your warm market, then you’ll blow a relationship. If I come on a little too strong, you step back just a little. If I come on way too strong, you hide— you see me on your caller ID and you don’t answer it! This is a behavior I’m trying to limit, minimize and even eliminate in the industry.

When you say “too strong,” the first thing I think is the classic aggressive used car salesman. But there’s another kind, which is a huge pet peeve: The careless network marketing amateur who calls up and says, 'Hi Tim, how are you, Gosh, haven’t talked to you in a long time, how’s the wife and kids... hey, do you keep your business options open?” Absolutely— and you know why that’s too assertive? Because you didn’t get a good greeting! You didn’t get the person talking freely and openly to you before you qualified.

“Do you keep your business options open…?” is a qualifying question. But if you come out with a qualifying question without having completed the greet step, it will be experienced as too assertive, and you won’t get any kind of productive response.

Something I especially appreciate about your approach is that you allow that “greeting” step to take whatever time it takes- is that right? Absolutely. It can take time. I’ve done a greeting for three months. That’s “courting.”

If you went to a singles bar you wouldn’t walk up to someone and say, “Hey, will you marry me?” That’s coming on too strong! But if you say, “Hey, would you like to have a cup of coffee together?” it’s a whole different ball game. It can be, “Let’s have coffee” or even, “How have you been?”— but really, sincerely asking it like you care, not like when you step up to the grocery store checkout and say, “Hi, how are you?”

Say a more about that? There’s this fictitious question we ask, “How are you?” The person’s not really asking that question, it’s just another way of saying “Hi.”

I’ve heard this a number of times on airplanes: somebody says, “So, what do you do?” and then they don’t listen to a word the other person says from that point on: they just say, “Uh-huh, uh-hah, uh-huh,” and all they’re listening for is a point where they can get an angle to pitch their company on the person. Instead of saying, “Really … systems engineer? Really! Tell me more about that— what’s your typical day like?” and really finding out who that human being is.

I did a call with a lady named Nadira that started off with an objection. She was a purchased lead, and someone had already called her prior to my calling her, so our call began with her objection. Obviously, that’s where we needed to start. But once I moved her past the objection, I still needed to get the greeting.

The formula is the formula: you always have to get the greeting before you move on.

In that call, her last statement is, “Well … I guess I’ll try something else.” The key question that turned that call was when I said, “Well, what are you gonna' do? What are you going to try?” Then I just listened.

She went on to tell me that she was a doctor and started telling me a little about her life and what she’s doing and why she’s doing it. And it was like having a canvas unfurl in front of me, and I began to paint on it… Who is this person? What does she want, what has she not been able to accomplish? There’s so much you’ll find when you’re genuinely interested in someone, when you want to work to help that person.

I’ve heard this call you’re referring to, and it was remarkable. I loved and admired your working with this lady. As you learned more about her circumstances, I could hear your excitement for her connecting with your opportunity— it was tangible. She was trying to raise the money to reunite her family, wasn’t she? Yes: her husband was in Algeria. He had gotten her and their daughter out of harm’s way by sending them to America, and now she needed to make enough money to bring him over too.

And she was a doctor, but couldn’t work as a doctor because of red tape. What happened to her? Here’s how we got to the “qualify” part of the call.

I kept asking questions and listening. I learned that she’d been trying unsuccessfully to find a way to get her husband over here for two years.

Whatever it is a person wants, they’ve already proven that they can’t get it without your help. How do we know this for sure? Because they don’t have it. So our job is to listen. If you get a good greeting, they will then tell you what they have not been able to accomplish so far.

So I asked her, “Is your husband going to come here?” And she said, “Yes.” I said, “When?” And she said, “Well, I don’t have a date yet.” I said, “Oh, how long have you been here?” She said, “Two years.”

That was the moment I identified her need. I felt incredibly compassionate right at that moment— and I knew exactly what she needed help doing. And, I knew I could help her.

When you’ve done this many times, you know that you can help most anyone, but some people don’t want help. There’s a perfect combination that occurs when you locate a prospect you know you can help and who wants the help. When you find that combination, it makes you very happy.

That’s the way it happened. She didn’t come in without objections, I might add. When I met with her, it turned out to be an issue that she was a doctor and not a salesperson, and we had to move her past that point too.

Do you want to say anything about that? When someone has not been successful at doing something, there is always a reason. All I have to do is keep working with that person until I identify what they put up as a barrier that prevents them from accomplishing the thing.

I knew it was only a matter of time for me to surface whatever that barrier was for her. Once we explained the whole program to her, She started saying, “Oh, I can’t do that, I’m not a salesperson….” So I had to walk her through this scenario:

“Let’s pretend you just did an X-ray (she is a gastroenterologist), and you found a cancer as big as an apple in my colon. What are you going to advise me?”

She said, “Well, we have to cut it out.” And I said, “But wait— no, no, no! I’m afraid! I don’t want to do that! I am not going into surgery!” What would she say then? And she responded the way she would in that situation to move me toward accepting the surgery.

I showed her that it isn’t about sales, it’s about communicating, helping someone get what they need in life. This isn’t sales— it’s communication.

Now, she closes 82 percent of all the prospects she talks to. So much for not being a salesperson!

Tim, will you speak about what you call a “vertical selling organization”? We’re building a different kind of organization from what people typically do. Instead of a vertical consumption organization, we build a “vertical selling organization.” We emphasize moving product to the consumer, so that you have a really solid, residual check.

Is that something you’ve done organization-wide? No. When I first started building, I built the 80s way.

The “80s way”? Basically, this is what was taught all the way back to the 50s and 60s. The same approach threaded its way through the industry, and you can trace its lineage as each large leader would break off and form a new network marketing company. It started with California Vitamins, which then became Amway, and then a few of those leaders broke off and created Herbalife, and more leaders broke off and created other companies— and the same basic thing ended up being taught throughout the industry... which is to build a vertical consumption organization.

If what you’re teaching is to consume the products and find others to consume the products, it will typically take an organization of 5,000 people to start making some real money.

If you teach this to people with the seduction of telling them that they can make money, you really should tell them the part that they don’t usually hear—that it’s gonna take 5,000 people consuming the product for them to make anything.

This is what the 80s taught, and it built these large wholesale consumption organizations. But today I’m finding objections that tell me that we need to be more focused on vertical selling organizations instead.

And that means an emphasis on retailing the product? Yes, but not to the point where we’re a direct sales organization. I like to teach that if I’m going to bring John into the organization, then I’m going to teach John how to actually sell products and assure that he can actually sell products.

With Nadira, we put our prospects in front of her after we had trained her, and she had to close 50 percent of those prospects before we would allow her to go and get her own prospects. That’s how confident we were in our training. Once she could close 50 percent, then she could go out and close her own customers.

Then, once she gets a certain volume through customers alone, then and only then is she allowed to sponsor someone. Because...

if she can’t get a customer, when she recruits a new distributor, what’s she going to train that new person to do?

And you did this with her before you sponsored her? We sponsored her into the business and immediately started training her in how to tell people about the product.

So you withheld having her bring people into the business until you were sure that she knew what she was doing and had proven results.

Right. If I bring you in and say, “Go recruit others,” what are you actually going to do with them? You’re going to ask them to invite someone else to look at the business and then have them do the same. You’ll soon have eleven levels deep of nothing but consumption!

I don’t like to teach people to sell and sell and sell; that’s inefficient in network marketing. I only want the person to go out and get enough customers so that they are effective and they don’t ever have to buy volume to hold a pin level. This way, you’re bringing them in, training them how to get customers and how to get distributors— and you’ll know how to do all those things because you’ve done them.

Is there a rule of thumb number on how many customers that takes? That depends on the compensation plan. It all depends on where that tripwire is— the particular volume requirement that takes you to the next pay level.

Let’s say that in your program, you make 10 percent on those you personally sponsor once you get to $500 in volume; you’ll want to have enough customers so between them and your own consumption, you’re going to consistently hit that $500 figure.

One thing I admire about you Tim is that if you haven’t proven that it works in the field, again and again, you don’t do it, you don’t talk about it, and you don’t allow it. That adds tremendous credibility to your work and your training. I’ve noticed that when someone is unwilling or unable to train their downline, because they don’t really know how to teach what they do, then they will often alter the system to bypass the training part.

Can you give us an example of that? If I say, “John, write down a list of your 200 people and call them and tell them why you’re excited,” and you say, “Well, how do I do that?” And I don’t really know, because I don’t really know how I created my own success, then pretty soon I’ll just think you’re taking too much of my effort and go find someone else.

What ends up happening is that people change the system so they can bypass actually training someone.

I believe everyone has been trying to simplify, simplify, simplify, and the industry’s gotten to the point where there is really no bona fide training going on.

I believe in holding a standard with training. When I created Brilliant Compensation, I actually sponsored 200 people myself using the system before I made it available to others. And the whole reason I included the live calls in my new product [Professional Inviter] is that I wanted people to hear not what you “should do,” but to hear it actually working, with real, live people, with your own ears!

I want to add that in the Professional Inviter, you don’t just have the recorded call; you also add your comments, like the director’s commentary on a DVD. You take us by the hand and point out exactly what’s going on at each step of the process. That’s because this is exactly what worked as I was building my organization.

People would want to see me in action, so I would have them come spend the day with me. I would be on the phone for a while; then I would hand the phone off to them and I would critique what they did; then I’d make a call so they could critique what I did.

Then, so they could hear both sides of the conversation, I’d let them listen on the other line, so they could hear what I did in context of where the other person was at that moment.

Then I started recording the calls, so I could play them for people and stop them and say, “Hear that? Right there was when I knew I had the qualify. Right there, when she laughed, I knew I had the greeting.” That’s why I interject on the calls and explain what I’m thinking at each step.

One call is kind of funny, because I mess up in it. This was a referral that had an objection about MLM. We went on for about 20 minutes until I had gotten her past this objection, and then I went right straight to the invite, without ever going back and accomplishing the qualify step— that is, discovering what this person wanted, needed or didn’t want.

Now, in Professional Inviter I teach that you don’t ever do that. When you get through the objection, you have to go back to the formula and pick up where you left off. So, right at that point in the call, I interject and say,

"Now I successfully got the invite— but I have to tell you, I flunk! Because, yes, she said yes, but I don’t know why she even wants a business!"

Why would she do this? I don’t know! Now, when I call her back, I don’t have anything to go by!”

Which is what you did so brilliantly with Nadira. With Nadira, when I called her back the next time after I’d had her watch Brilliant Compensation, the first thing I said was to ask if she’d watched it. She said, “Yes I did.” And I said, “Did you see a way to get your husband here?”

That’s the statement— that’s what you have to state. There’s no other reason for you to be in communication with this person other than to help them get what they want in life. That’s why you need the qualify.

Let’s go back to the greeting part and wrap that up, then let’s get into inviting itself.

Greeting is what comes first. This is not the same thing as what are typically thought of as greetings: “Hi, how are you?” That’s an opening line, an icebreaker— not a greeting.

The purpose of the greeting is to get the prospect to be willing to talk freely and openly with you. No matter how many times they say, “Just get to the point!” you do not leave the greeting until it’s complete.

How do you know when it’s complete, Tim? When they’re talking freely and openly. If they are in a stage of saying, “Just get to the point!” then they’re not talking freely and openly!

What do you do with that? I’m sitting here on the phone with you and I say, “So, what’s the point?” “The point is that I’m looking for someone I’m going to work with in business, and I would like to get to know you a little bit before we actually get into that. I want to know who it is I’m going to be working with. What do you want in life? Would this even be a fit? I’d like to find those things out. And if you don’t have time right now and would like to schedule it some other time, let’s schedule it some other time. Or we can continue on right now. I’d just like to kind of find out who you are, is that okay?”

If I start on again, “Get to the point, I don’t want to talk about that, I want to know what you’ve got...” is that an indication to you that there’s no fit here? It could be. But remember what I said: every person has something they want that they’ve not been able to get yet — and you know that they can’t get it without you, because they haven’t been able to do it yet.

So let’s say I’ve got this arrogant, rushed physician on the phone who’s in a hurry to get to the point. I know that what is preventing him from getting what he wants is that he’s in this time commitment zone where everything’s in a hurry. And one of the steps I have to accomplish is to help this person get past this point.

So no, I’m not necessarily saying I just learned I don’t want to work with this guy. With Nadira, it took a while before I identified what was her barrier. Well this rushed physician, I’ve identified what his barrier is right at the start. Now, I just have to care enough about this person to help him move through it to get the greeting.

Because...

I assure you, if you go right in and start telling people about the opportunity before you’ve got the greeting, then you’ve got nothing.

Clearly, if they’re not talking freely and openly, you’re not going to get the truth, the whole story, the values they so dearly want honored, and you’re not going to make any emotional connection. He’s never going to know I really care about him— and that’s a requirement. You have to get to some point where this guy says, “You know what? This guy really gives a damn!”

Tim, would you ever say something like, “Look, it’s clear to me, because of your insistence on getting to the point, one of the challenges you face is time. Is that true?” One thing you have to be careful of is that you don’t put a judgment or invalidation of any kind on the person. Your statement and mine are very similar, but there’s a difference. I said, “If you’re in too much of a hurry right now to discuss this, maybe we should schedule another time, because I’d just like to get to know you a little before we dive into business.”

So, once they’re talking freely and openly, then you move to qualify them; can you say more about that? To qualify is to find out what that person needs, wants or doesn’t want in life. That’s the qualify step. For example, if the person doesn’t want to work at the factory any more, or be in traffic any more, those are don’t-wants.

Notice, it’s critical that you don’t ever change their words into your words.

When I called Nadira back on the follow-up, I stated her want: “Did you see a way to get your husband here?” because that was exactly what she had said. “I want to get my husband here.”

I don’t like to alter what they say at all, because when you find out what that person wants or doesn’t want, and then you use those words in conversation, you keep that person’s attention.

Do you take notes and write this exact wording down? Yes. When I ask a qualifying question and they start talking, I write that down verbatim.

Exactly how did you start that follow-up call with Nadira? The first thing I said was, “Hi, how are you?” You see: I go right back to the formula, even though it’s a follow-up call. And she says, “I’m great.”

So you take them through the greet stage, where they’re talking openly and freely… That’s right; of course, it’s a lot quicker the second time. And then I qualify her: “Did you watch the video?” “I did.” And then I say, “Did you see a way to get your husband here?”

All I had sent her to was Brilliant Compensation. She did not know that I was “the” Tim Sales. She didn’t know that I made six figures a month; she didn’t know the name of my company or what my company did. All she knew was that I cared about her, and she watched the video.

So on successive contacts with people, you’re still doing greet – qualify – invite, greet – qualify – invite? You do that over and over. Let me play a little game with you. I’m going to invite you to do something: listen for the formula. Okay? I’ve just called you up.

Hey John! Hey, Tim! How are you? I’m good. Hey, you wanna play a game of golf today?

Oh, man, I don’t have time. I’d love to, though. Well, when’s a good time? Oh, Lord... I haven’t played in two years. I’m not sure which end of a club to hold. Well, hey, come on; let’s go play a game of golf. It’ll be good. All right....

Okay, let’s pause just a second. When I said, “Hey, John, how are you?” that was a greet. When I said, “You wanna play a game of golf?” that’s a qualify. You threw out that you haven’t played in a long time, which is an objection. I got you past the objection, and now I’m on the invite.

What time you wanna play? Let’s go tomorrow, what do you say? Um, no, I’ve got things tomorrow, and the next day is Father’s Day, so how about Monday? Monday works perfect. What time? Can you break away at noon? You know, I would actually enjoy going earlier, because I’d like to put about five hours in on the range! Okay, so you want to get to the range about seven, I’ll get there about eight? You show up at nine and we got a deal. Who’s gonna get the tee time?

There— right now, we’re through the invite, and now we’re going to close to action. In fact, you already started it. And it came naturally, because this is the most natural, organic way to communicate.

The close to action step is when you conclude what’s you’re discussing and make the future real by putting it on the calendar.

We divvy up the responsibility: you do this, I’m gonna do this, and then we’re gonna meet at this time.

And that happens naturally all the time? Absolutely! You do it organically, innately. In this case, I’m inviting you to play a game of golf— but when you listen to all my calls, you’re going to hear the exact same thing happening, only in the context of business.

It’s just a natural flow, from one step to the next, no matter what you’re inviting someone to do. So let’s go back to our close to action.

Okay, John, I’ll meet you on the tee-box at exactly 9 o’clock, is that good for you? Great!

I got your agreement, and now we hang up.

Here’s the thing: it’s not a crime to help someone get what they need.

A lot of people hear that point about assertiveness and think they need to be wimps. This is absolutely not the case. When Nadira started explaining to me why she couldn’t do this, about how she was a doctor, a professional, and not a sales person, it would have been a crime to let that objection stop us and not help her get what she wants. So I had to actually walk her through this— not force her through it, but walk her through it.

And all of this is covered in Professional Inviter? I see people in network marketing struggling and having a tough time because they’ve been burned before, so they will hesitate and not get the very tool they need. I suggest very strongly, get it and listen to it. It’s got hours of live calls where you can hear me actually talking to live prospects. You listen to these calls and it gives you confidence to go out and do the same thing. People listen to these calls and say, “Wow, I can do that! He’s not selling; he’s just talking to them!”

Note: I say we have no advertising in the magazine, but every feature, story and article is an ad. It's selling an idea and often a product or service. This conversation with Tim was both. Our intention is to turn you on to people and their products in such a way that no matter what your next step— in this case, to learn more about Tim Sales and what he has to offer, or not— you learned something of lasting value to help you build your business.

If Tim and what he's teaching is a fit for you, you can learn more about Professional Inviter in the REVIEWS & RECOMMENDS section of this issue. And you can visit Tim's website and sign up for his free newsletter with our affiliate link here: BrilliantExchange.com ATTACHMENT PROSPECTING | TRAINING | SKILLS Tim Sales Inviting Formula The six parts of the formula: Greet, Qualify, Invite, Handle questions and/or objections, Close to action, Follow-up and Follow-through, with explanations of each. by Tim Sales downloadable PDF ATTACHMENT PROSPECTING | TRAINING | SKILLS 10 Communications Qualities Being aware and becoming competent with these important distinctions will be key to your being a confident communicator. by Tim Sales downloadable PDF