One of the most incredible opportunities that you get with network marketing is the opportunity to create a global business straight away, without all the usual costs and challenges that come with it.
Being able to build a business globally is one thing, but how do you prospect internationally? Don’t worry; it’s not as daunting as it seems. Although, you must know it will be tougher and more work than simply building in your local area. Some of the things you’ll need to consider when building an international team are:
- Time difference – you’ll need to make yourself available to support them and that could be the middle of the night for you, depending on the time difference
- Language barrier – getting your message across and ensuring you understand each other is one thing, but you’ll also need to make sure the training and prospecting tools are available in their language too.
- Local support – every new business owner needs support in their country, whether that’s attending local company events or working with other business owners so you’ll need to research the support your company provides in the countries you are targeting so you know your team members will get the support they need to build successful businesses.
So, now you have an idea of the effort involved in building a global team, let’s look at how you can prospecting internationally…
- Personal contacts – this is probably an obvious one, but your personal contacts are the first place to start. You may be thinking you don’t know anyone abroad, but the chances are you do, you just might not know they now live abroad. People’s lives change for many reasons and we grow older so it’s not uncommon for someone you were friends with at school to end up on the other side of the world as they decided to bring their family up somewhere different. It’s quite easy to find out where people are now with a quick social media check. Or you even try something a bit more interactive and ask the question on social media – for example, post on Facebook something similar to this:
“My friend and I were recently discussing how interesting it must be to live in another country and wondered how long it would take to adapt. Have any of my Facebook friends moved abroad? If so, where and how find you find it?”
Be sure to keep your business out of it, as this stage is all about finding potential prospects who you can start building a relationship with. Only once a relationship is established should you consider inviting them to look at the business opportunity.
- Join and contribute to online communities in those countries – to make new friends in new countries you’re going to have to socialise, but don’t worry, this can be done online. Join communities where you can meet new people such as Facebook or LinkedIn Groups. You will even find that on Facebook there are lots of groups for specific countries or even cities – try searches for ‘Entrepreneurs COUNTRY’ or ‘Mums COUNTRY’ and you will see there are lots of different types of groups that come up. Have a look through and see which ones you might be able to add value to and build relationships on. Once again, remember, the focus is on building new relationships and not sharing your business opportunity, that comes later.
- Visit that country – another option is, of course, to visit that country, that could be a holiday or even a temp/perm move there. It all depends on you and what you want from life – if you want to live in another country then why not move there and build it when you’re there? But for many of you that’s probably not the most appealing or viable option so try making friends with locals when you’re on holiday; make the effort to get to know people and start building a relationship then connect with them online and continue investing in the relationship even when you return home. If you do this, a hot tip is to make sure you continue developing your relationship as soon as you return while you’re still at the forefront of their mind.
Now you’ve read these tips, you should be ready to start seriously considering building an international business. If you have any other tips for growing a global MLM business, please share them in the comments below.
