I used to be a very slow learner. If we keep doing stuff that doesn’t work, common sense tells us to change. I wasn’t listening.

My good friend, Tom, had huge success in network marketing many years before we met. His career was short. Only 11 months. But he rocked it. And then his company went out of business. It happens. But Tom never went back to network marketing. He took on a new career. Ah, but I had plans. I convinced Tom to give network marketing another try. He enrolled his best friend. And then did ... nothing. No problem. I upgraded Tom’s skill set. He now knew exactly how to talk to prospects. But, he talked to no one. End of story.

Lessons?

Lesson #1: I am an idiot. I kept feeding Tom new skills, but he never used them. So I continued doing what didn’t work. Pathetic.

Lesson #2: Tom didn’t have a skills problem. Tom had a mindset problem. He didn’t want to approach others about the opportunity.

Lesson #3: When someone is not working, there are two possible reasons. First, they don’t know how to do it. These people need skills. And second, they don’t want to do it. These people need to change their mindsets.

Now I check which problem they have before I give advice.

Controlling the decision to buy or join.

Humans hate making decisions. They put off tough decisions until later. Why? We hope our circumstances will make the decisions for us. Then we won’t be blamed for our bad decisions.

In the real world, this causes prospects to say, “I need to think it over.”

Here is one solution. Force prospects to make a choice. How?

Tell our prospects they have two choices.

Choice #1: Do nothing and keep their lives the same. They won’t have the benefits of our products, services, or opportunity.

Choice #2: Improve their lives by taking advantage of our great offer.

Now there is no more, “I need to think it over.” Thinking it over just means they took Choice #1.