When you deal with a small number of people at one time instead of filling the jar with lots of possibilities, you tend to focus on specific individuals because they are the only opportunities you have. As a result, you come across apologetic, pushy, desperate or overly aggressive when you try to prospect and recruit these individuals. By “cultivating” possibilities instead, you will find prospects that want to try the business, and those prospects lead to even more people when they become sponsored or customers. This is similar to the process of “sowing” and “reaping.” You can’t expect to plant one seed and have an entire crop. You need to plant hundreds of seeds, and then you need to cultivate them. You need to water them and fertilize and till the soil. With time, continued cultivation and nurturing, some send germinate and grow. Some eventually bear fruit and can be harvested or “reaped!”
The process of prospecting people we meet or already know is similar. Any person we talk to, or see on a repeated basis, we “cultivate” by developing a relationship with them. We have a conversation with them, and we ask questions.
People generally talk about three things:
1. What’s happening (Chitchat or small talk. When they do this for more than three minutes it almost always leads to options 2 and 3!)
2. How terrible things are (Complaining or what they do NOT want)
3. The way they wish things were (Their wishes, wants, goals or WHY)
As a result, if you cultivate them properly, one of four things will ultimately happen with every possibility (person we meet):
1. They want in or want to do a trial run or Apprenticeship with Market America.
2. Through referral, they will lead to other people.
3. They become a customer.
4. They are not interested or the timing was not right and they are out.
In the case of option 4, move on! “Thank you for not wasting my time, NEXT!”
This is what filling the funnel and bean jar is all about and it is how the business really works. You need to develop large numbers of possibilities before you start trying to recruit. You want to continuously have at least nine possibilities. Filling the funnel or bean jar with people and then shaking it up (by cultivating your prospects) is a natural process. Just keep cultivating until the nuts rise to the top! They are the people who do it and are your GO NOW team members! They in turn fill new bean jars. As strange or silly as this demonstration is, it is very real and very accurate. It is how it really works. Look at it again!
