Marcus Roman

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

7)  Become a Goal-hitter, Not Just A Goal-Setter
We’ve covered some good ground in this series, and although there are many more steps needed to become successful in your direct selling career, I believe these seven steps form a great foundation from which to build off of.  Once again, the first six are:

1)  Be Crystal Clear About What You Want From Your Opportunity

Success is all about achievement

2)  Focus On The Next Level

3)  Don’t Alienate The People You Showed Up To Your Opportunity With

4)  Learn to Read Between The Lines

5)  Develop The “Necessary” Skills ASAP

6)  Avoid Becoming a Self-Help Junkie

The last step is to become a goal-hitter, not just a goal-setter, which is infinitely more important in the long run.  I feel I can write about this with supreme confidence because if they could give out awards for goal-setting, I’d be the undisputed champion.  I’d go to goal-setting workshops, sometimes several times a year, and write out all these elaborate goals lists, that were supposed to be tied into my deep desires and wind up accomplishing only 1-2% of my list.  In my experience, this happens far too often with people who take time out to write out goals.  Now I am not saying you shouldn’t write out goals, but it’s important, if you’re going to write them out at all – to write them out knowing you’re going to accomplish them.  Too many people write out these goals, many of them aren’t even that important to the person to begin with, and end up forgetting about them altogether.  If you’re going to do that, you might as well not go through the hassle of writing them out in the first place.

On the other hand, I am not one of these guys who believes you should write out your goals every single day . . . But, I do think it makes a lot of sense to think and talk about your everyday.  In fact, I think you should be talking about your goals as often as possible.  Now this doesn’t mean you become an annoying braggart who everyone does their best to avoid because you’re an arrogant jerk.  I don’t believe you should be be telling everyone your goals and dreams in the first place.  Too many times I have done this and have been bombarded by people giving me their uninvited opinions of what I should really be doing with my time.  Instead, talk about your goals with your core group of friends and family you feel confident in confiding in.  More importantly, think about your goals throughout your day.  It’s my belief that you can condition yourself into believing you can accomplish any goal just by keeping it in front of you as often as possible – if you speak things enough, eventually they will come to pass.  I have seen it too many times to believe this is just luck or coincidence.  I’ve seen people with I.Q.’s much lower than mine, blow me away in terms of lifestyle, life experiences and wealth, simply because they talked a big game, believed it with every cell in their bodies and worked on creating that in their lives whenever they got to work.

It got me thinking, maybe I need to start “feeling” this stuff a whole lot more than just writing it out a few times a year and forgetting about it, only to wind up going through the same process all over again and never accomplishing anything that had major impact.  Earl Schoaff, “the millionaire maker” was in favor of writing out your goals once, putting it away and getting to work on them.  Brian Tracy favors writing your goals every single day in the morning on a 3×5 index card and carrying it around with you wherever you go.  Many other self-improvement gurus have their own spin on what they feel works and what they believe can work for you, and although I won’t go so far as to call my self a “self-improvement guru,” I do have my own process now when I go through my goal achieving process.  The first is to change the way you feel about the whole process.  “Goal-setting” has been used for so long and in my case, has meant more failure than success, I felt it necessary to give it a whole new label altogether.  I refer to it as the “Goal Achieving Process”, versus a goal-setting workshop and it consists of writing your goals out at least once a week and meditating on them once in the morning before you start your day, and at night while you’re falling to sleep.  I believe if you do those 3 steps on a consistent basis, you’ll automatically keep those goals in your head, thus, causing you to “feel” like working on them, instead of procrastinating or worse – forgetting about them altogether.

A challenge of the goal-hitting process for most is accomplishing the least important goals and totally giving up on the rest.  For example if your goal list had 10 items on it and you only accomplished one thing off that list, but it had the most impact out of all 10 – then that percentage would not really mean so much, would it?  But, if your list looked anything like mine, it would have over 1,000 different goals and accomplishing 1% of that comes out to about 10-12 accomplished goals.  The problem with that number is that the goals I accomplished had very little overall impact, as opposed to some of the other goals I had.  Now goals are subjective and the value they have is dependent on how the goal-setter perceives them, so with that understanding, some people are going to see their accomplished goals as having deeper impact than maybe an outside objective person would have.  In any case, if you have 100 goals (let’s keep a nice round number for simplicity) and you accomplish 10 like:

1)  Bought a new laptop

2)  Bought a new wardrobe

3)  Joined MLM business

4)  Read 3 sales books

5)  Got my presentation down cold

6)  Learned everything about my company’s products and history

7)  Took my significant other to their favorite restaurant for our anniversary

8)  Researched the fitness equipment I plan on buying

9)  Went to the dealer and drove the car I plan on buying

10)   Made a game plan to shed 20 lbs and become healthier

After sitting back and looking at this list of “accomplished” goals, and comparing them to some of the other goals on the list they came from, your view of them might change. For example, some of the other goals on the original goal list might have been:
1) Shed 20 lbs
2) Visit with 30 people in my first 30 days of starting with my new MLM company
3) Earn $2,000 in one month with my new company
4) Take my significant other on a 5 day cruise
5) Save up $5,000 and use that, along with my current car to get my new car

After looking at just 5 other goals off the same list, which list would have looked more impressive to you if both set of lists had been accomplished?  So in the end, you want to go for ALL your goals, but you want to keep the most impactful goals in your purview at all times.  I think if you mix that idea with the others ideas I shared with you throughout this series, you will find yourself way ahead of your competition, and earning more money, while enjoying yourself – all at the same time.

6)  Avoid Becoming a Self-Help Junkie

What Direct Selling does better than any other selling-vehicle I know, is provide their reps with top notch

Be Wary Of All That "Motivating"

self-improvement material.  Be it books, audios and/or videos, many of these self-improvement materials have been used by some of our greatest achievers.  Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Lee have talked about reading the book Think and Grow Rich, Marketing legend Dan Kennedy talks about the book Psycho-Cybernetics helping him boost his self-esteem and calming his stutter, while Oprah Winfrey raved about “The Secret,” and its message about the Law of Attraction.

I believe the self-improvement field is wonderful and important to be a part of . . . but there is a dark side to all this though, I know about it all too well.  I grew so in love with self-improvement, I went into debt just keeping up with it.  If that isn’t stupid, I don’t know what is!  But certain things are said by people of influence, whether it be a high-earning leader in your company or even a success guru, that cause you to believe in the idea of “needing” self-improvement to maintain an edge – and it’s a very slippery slope.

In an intimate conversation with one of the highest earning direct sellers in the industry, I was told what I felt was already true – there’s but a handful of books you need to get your hands on to develop skills to make you wealthy many times over, and everything else is just the same stuff reorganized or repositioned.  I knew this before that person ever said that to me, but these leaders and gurus are at the top of their fields for a reason – they know how to get people to act, again and again.  I allowed them to condition me into believing I had to keep buying all this “stuff” that was coming out just to keep up with my competition – and it’s simply not true.

I say “allow” because at the end of the day, YOU make up your mind, no one else does it for you.  I saw many people in the same seminars I sat in, stay in their seats as I ran to the back to buy up all the products the speaker brought in to sell that day.  Many in the crowd probably stayed sitting because they were flat broke, but I believe a good amount felt it just wasn’t valuable enough to make them part with their hard-earned cash or even get into debt over.  I was under the illusion that the “stuff,” be it a book, audio or video, was going to make me successful.  So in that frame of mind, it only makes sense to get as much “Stuff” as possible, throw it all against the wall, and see what sticks.  In reality, what sticks are a few key ideas, if implemented, will cause you to reap the benefits everyone is looking for when they first get started.

Success in anything starts in the mind.  If you make a decision to build your mind up, like you would a muscle, then it’s only a matter of time before what you “SEE” in your mind, becomes REAL in your life.  If it’s one thing I hope a newbie takes away from this article, it’s this – focus on your WHY and the HOW will make itself known to you.  All the techniques in the world won’t help if you don’t have a real plan in place to use them, and the plan would’ve been in place if you had a strong enough reason to create one in the first place.

Self-improvement presupposes improving oneself, and I’m all for that.  If you want to learn how to speed read because it’ll help you gobble up necessary information you need to keep up in your industry – go for it!  That’s self-improvement.  If you want to learn a new language, because it’ll open up new markets for you – get it done!  That’s self-improvement.  If you want to learn better time management skills, so you can be as productive as possible – make it happen!  That’s self-improvement.  Reading 10 books ABOUT self-improvement, and all the benefits it brings, is NOT self-improvement.

I understand the idea of gleaning just one new idea from everything you experience, but time is of the essence, especially in today’s world, where competition isn’t the guy across the street anymore – it’s literally you against the world.  The internet has caused the world to shrink and if you’re going to be competitive, you need to be on your A-game as fast as possible.  If you take too much time looking for perfect visualizing technique, perfect time management system, or perfect closing questions, like I did for many years, you’ll be left in the dust and it won’t be because you weren’t involved with using all that stuff, that’s just the obvious answer.  It’ll really be because you lost sight of your WHY or never had one to begin with.  Understand the power of your WHY, focus on it, and implement your plan daily.

If there’s a million ways to skin a cat, then in reality any which way will do.
How fast you get it done depends on the answer to this question – why do you want to?

I sent out a question on Twitter about a week ago and the question was, “Did any of you ever play Manhunt w/bikes like we did back in the day? Did you play Manhunt at all?!”

Monique Forrester, founder of “Lyrical Movements,” wrote me a poem on the subject a few days later. I felt inclined to share it with you, tell me what you think:

“How do we influence the youth/Tell you the truth/I have no idea/I wish I could say let’s just show them/how we used to play

When the block was filled with children/By the dozen/Everyone used to be my cousin/I wasn’t in any gangs/We used to sang/On the stoop/Love our group outings/No gang bangs/No trains/Just games/What happened?/Where goes our Generation Lost/The cost

Too steep/These kids are in too deep/Let’s save them/Re-pave them/Bring them into our lives/Re-train them/Lets stop blaming them/They learned from example/Where are the samples/Robbed from the fruit/They were robbed from the booth/It pains me/Just the profiles/The lifestyles/The aspirations/The inflation/The Playstations/The XBOX/The Wii/& Then you have me with skelzies!

Screaming Red Rover/Come over/Or RedLight GreenLight/They’re thinking get a Life/I’m thinking I did/The kids/Tag/ManHunt/Stapu

So how do we infuse yesterday into today/Maybe we can start by re-teaching these games/Lest we be known for never/Giving it a try/A shot/Or oblige/I just hope they begin to aim higher than the Movie screens/Where are all the Astronaut dreams? Peace!”

5) Develop the “Necessary” Skills ASAP

Both Skills Should Allow You To End All Meetings This Way

I’m going to be even more controversial now – you’re ready?  If you’re new in your opportunity and all you do is “educate” people on your company, product or service – you’ll never make it.  You’ll be out of business within six months, a year at most.  I’ll be the first to say, “phraseology” plays a huge role in direct selling because phraseology is a huge part of “selling.”  In case you haven’t noticed, that word happens to be on the end of the label stamped on your industry – Direct SELLING.  A big part of phraseology happens to be ‘semantics.’  And that seems to be the case nowadays with the word “educate.”  All of a sudden, we don’t sell anything to anyone anymore.  Now, we educate them into making the right choice for them and their family . . . yeah, right!

I don’t care how nice they glaze it over for you, at the end of the day you need to do two main things to have any shot at earning real income and building a residual cash flow – you need to know how to SELL and RECRUIT/SPONSOR (whichever word your company favors).  Don’t get me wrong, there’s a whole host of stuff you’re going to need to learn along the way as well, but none of them match up with the ROI (return on investment) that those two high-impact activities can bring.  I believe, based on my own experience and what I’ve seen and heard from leaders in the industry, it’s easier to learn how to sell than it is to recruit.  The ability to show someone the value of your product or service seems to be an easier task than getting them sold on YOU, which is what recruiting is all about.

Knowing how to sell your product or your service can be done within your first 2 weeks of getting started if you’re serious about SELLING.  The problem is most direct companies are afraid to say the word “selling” anymore, so they talk to you about educating your customers and asking them to buy.  That’s a nice start, but that’s just the beginning of all there is to selling.  Business philosopher Joe Ensor used to say, “don’t mistake the beginning of all there is, for the end.”  Selling is an art . . . with pieces of science thrown in there, if you think your education presentation and one buying question is all you need to succeed – good luck!

The key to selling, now I’m giving you a gem here so pay attention, is to learn the “science” part of it right away.  Learn about why people buy and don’t buy, learn why certain questions work in one situation and shouldn’t be used in  another.  I’m telling you, if you’re serious about earning an income through selling, you can learn the “necessary” parts of scientific selling within two weeks and that will be enough for you to go out and start earning income.  I didn’t say you’d be good at it, in fact, you’ll be pretty bad – BUT, you’ll be “selling” your products or services versus educating people on them.  Remember, no one gets paid until something is sold – that’s the oldest axiom in sales and it holds true in direct selling as well.

Once you become comfortable with the robotic aspect of sales, (canned presentations, memorized answers to concerns, syntax and sequence of steps to closing the sale, etc.), you’re automatically going to start observing patterns in people.  These observations are going to become markers in your mind of what to do next based on how much you fail or succeed with certain parts of scientific selling.  This is the beginning of you learning the “art” of selling, and after awhile, you’ll start reading people right away and know which parts of your presentation should be used, or which close should be used to secure the sale.  The “Art Part” is a longer process and can take anywhere from a few months to a few years, but that’s neither here nor there because if you got involved with direct selling to really “BE” successful, does it matter how long it takes for you to get it down pat?  As long as you’re earning income and learning all at the same time, do you care how long it takes?  I don’t think it should but then again, many people never really get into direct selling to be successful, they get in to give it a “try.”  Trying is the codeword “cowards” use to cover their failures.  Like Yoda told a young Luke Sywalker in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, “Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.”

The same holds true for recruiting.  This has always baffled me but many teachers, including leaders in direct selling, create this divide between selling and recruiting.  There shouldn’t be one, because they should both be happening all at the same time.  Recruiting or sponsoring is nothing more than a sales process, but instead of selling a product or service, you must sell the prospect on why they should be joining you and your team.  Selling is easier to learn than recruiting but if I already explained that you can learn sales within two weeks of starting, would it be so bad if it took you just a few more weeks to learn how to recruit like the leaders in your company?  I believe you can and will if you make a decision to master the necessary skills upfront, asap.  Learn the science of selling, the mechanics of it and transfer those ideas over to recruiting – if you can do that, and stick to it, you’ll be on stage at your next big event ,while everyone who joined with you, will be clapping along with everyone else for you, wondering how you managed to achieve so much, so soon.

4) Learn to Read Between the Lines

Follow the Truth And Nothing But The Truth

This is going to be a touchy subject for many of you reading this, especially the “greenies.”  By the way, you know you’re a greenie when you don’t know what a greenie is.  Anyway, you’re brand new in your opportunity and everything is wonderful and great.  You love your upline and he/she has told you what you need to succeed, so you get started.  You start having some quick success and before you know it, you’re headed to the company boot camp or convention or some regional event, where a multitude from your company get together to talk about what’s next for the company, training and recognition for those who’ve accomplished something.

It’s at these big events where the wheels come off many reps’ success trains.  Ironically, this meetings are billed as “life changing” events and although that might be true in some cases, in general, they do more to confuse people then anything else.  Now, just to be clear, this article is not about the “Big Event,” because the same thing applies to tapes, or CDs, DVDs, MP3s or whatever else can be used to get a message sent across on.  It’s about what is being taught at these big events or audio/video products.  Because here’s what causes people to lose their way – you’re told “follow your upline,” but you’re also introduced to a bunch of people, and many aren’t even on your team or line of sponsorship, who tell you how to build a business.  The problem is each person gives you his/her system on how to be successful.  After awhile, you’ve got 10-12 different systems swimming in your head and you don’t know what to do and fall victim to “analysis paralysis.”

What makes this process even worse is the fact that some people giving you their “testimony” at these big events might not even be true “leaders.”  Many times a person will get recognized on stage for what they’re accomplished over the span of three months, and I think that’s awesome.  Everyone should be recognized for their hard work, but if they had a poor track record before that three month run and a poor track record “after” the event is over , would you want to invest any of your time on someone’s “system” when it really isn’t working for them?  So we have multiple systems floating around in our heads and now we have systems from people who may not even be true leaders . . . what the heck do we do?!!

What usually happens is the exact opposite of what was trying to be accomplished through these presentations.  Instead of helping you in your process, they stifle growth . . . BUT, “only” if you weren’t trained to “read between the lines.”  The key to all these messages, to all these talks, systems, presentations, boot camps and whatever else they throw at you – only follow that which resonates TRUTH with you. Sounds a little too mystical, doesn’t it?   Maybe, but it’s true.  There’s a caveat in here though, “don’t replace truth with fear.” Ok, now I’m going off the deep end, aren’t I?  Let me quickly explain – Truth, will jump out at you when you hear it, see it or read it.  It’ll jump out at you off the pages of the book you discover it in, it’ll hit you upside the head after the speaker on stage says it.  You’ll hear it and you’ll know it’s something that will work or can work if you work up enough nerve to go out and do it.

The problem with that philosophy is that it’s very easy to fake yourself out.  You can hear something that you know is true, it can work but you might be too afraid to do what the activity or the system entails.  Maybe one guy says, “Go out and talk to 10 people today and give each one a 2-minute presentation and by the end of 30 days, you will have talked to 300 people. If you have a 10% success ratio, you will have had some results with about 30 of them.  You have results with 30 people in one month and believe me, you’re off to the races!”  If you listen to that and say to yourself, “That may work but I could never speak to 10 people.”  You just replaced truth with fear.  What that speaker said is absolutely true and is but ONE way to get some activity going if you’re flat.  The “truth” of the matter is that they are many other ways for you to get it going but his way IS one way, and for you to not do it, simply because you’re afraid, is a quick way to make sure you never accomplish much in your direct selling career.

So, in summary, there are going to be many teachers coming into your life in your new career.  Make sure you’re “reading between the lines” by finding out how consistent their track record has been and whether or not what they’re saying rings true with you.  If it doesn’t and you attempt to do it anyway, you’re never going to have any real results because subconsciously, you “know” it’s not going to work – and whatever you tell yourself, whether you’re right or wrong, is true . . . at least for you anyway.  I know I’ve thrown a bunch at you today, take it all in, mull it over and see if anything I say here rings true or hollow, only you will know that.