Magnetic Sponsoring is a book written by a notable network marketing success named Mike Dillard.
As Mike explains he initially wrote Magnetic Sponsoring for the purpose of helping his own MLM down-line to produce better results in their network marketing businesses.
Since the text was producing results in his own teams it then began to circulate around, and eventually to be sold by Dillard as an income product.
While it is not my intention here to rehash all the concepts in Magnetic Sponsoring, as you can get the book and read it yourself if you’re interested, there are a few concepts that I wanted to go over, and some observations about how this applies to marketing you business and also to current trends in the industry that I wanted to comment on.
In a nutshell, Magnetic Sponsoring is founded upon the concept that one can exhibit certain characteristics which will then draw prospects to him or her, rather than chasing after leads.
In the book Mike explains the difference between two main personality types which he notes as Alpha and Beta. The Alpha being a more dominant and strong type of personality, and the Beta being more of a follower, or weak type of personality.
He expounds upon the different traits of each and he explains that in order to be “magnetic” to your prospects you must be more Alpha.
This could be taken as a sort of reverse psychology if you will. They will want to join you because they perceive that you couldn’t care less whether they do or not.
On the other hand, one who is continually chasing a prospect and will not leave them alone about the opportunity, could be perceived as a wanting, desperate, or weak character, and thus not as desirable as a leader to others.
This Magnetic Sponsoring concept has soaked it’s way into various systems sometimes being the basis for the entire lead generation and funnel system. MLM Lead System Pro is a good example of this.
The entire system is designed to brand you as a leader and thus create an Attractive character and make you “magnetic”.
One of the most important points of Magnetic Sponsoring is the idea that pitching your primary MLM opportunity to a new prospect at the onset is a big “no-no” as this is a turn-off for people because in essence they are not interested in your opportunity.
Part of the reason for this is because the philosophy directs that your market is network marketers and those who are looking to become network marketers. This takes a lot of work out of the mix as you then are not in a position of trying to combat a prospects mental condition to pull them from a JOB mentality over into an entrepreneurial mentality.
What this means is that you are prospecting other marketers and almost all of them already have their own opportunity. So to begin by presenting them your primary MLM opportunity is a big turn off because they are interested in building their opportunity, not in being pitched on another.
This allows one to provide “help” in the form of instruction in marketing as an opportunity to build value in oneself so as to position oneself as a place to go for help, and as a leader. This increases the odds of people joining with you and your opportunity down the road.
In the meantime, your help can be provided in the form of books, tools, marketing programs, systems, Magnetic Sponsoring books, etc.
And you collect affiliate commission by selling these items to your prospect list, wither they join you primary opportunity or not.
This has resulted in a huge wave of people, particularly those who have become part of a system such as MLM Lead System Pro, and who have no real accomplishment of their own in this industry, but who have listened to training recordings or read Mike Dillard’s book, and are now pretending to be a leader and offering help to others who need it.
I find this very funny as the internet has now become saturated with thousands and thousands of self-proclaimed experts, 90% of which have never recruited anyone.
YouTube is full of videos of people telling you to “not follow your up-line” but to “brand yourself’, and so on.
Not only does this make it more noisy and confusing for new people to try and sort out who is real, but it is creating a situation where there are more people pitching help and trying to build their own value, in some venues, than there are people pitching their primary opportunity.
I dare say that on Facebook, any group you join which is an MLM group will have a wall that is absolutely plastered with Magnetic Sponsoring type pitches. “Get 20 Leads Per Day Using Facebook”, is one that you will see over and over again.
Most of the time it is placed by a person who has never recruited anyone but is simply brand new to an MLM marketing system in which Magnetic Sponsoring is the basis for the program.
So we are now being spammed incessantly by “How To Get 100 Free Leads Per Day!” ads, rather than “Best New MLM Opportunity!” ads.
I’m not convinced one is better than the other.
I have a theory that the reason Magnetic Sponsoring works is due to the fact that it is different from the majority of what is being done. In other words, in a situation where you have 100 people pitching you on their primary business and everywhere you go you hear stories about how great their opportunity or comp plan is, and then one day you come across a guy who is not pitching his primary opportunity, but is simply offering you some help to build your business, and you perceive that that guy is legitimately skilled to offer that help, well, then this could be very attractive. Thus the term “Attraction Marketing”.
However, when it gets to the point where you have 100 people per day offering you the same training on “How To Get 20 Leads Per Day On Facebook For Free!”, then this offer of help then becomes the noise –the spam– and the one guy who is left pitching his primary opportunity then becomes the refreshing and different approach.
Part of this is simply the fact that the free sites, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, and the like, are inundated with new network marketers who are broke and are trying to milk all the leads they can from the free advertising media. So these social sites then become overwhelmed with the latest and greatest trend in marketing.
I find it hilarious when MLM Lead System Pro puts out a training seminar or has a live webinar on a particular marketing strategy and then the very next day my Facebook in-box has the same email from about eight different people, all making the same offer because they all just listened to the same webinar the night before.
So to summarize, I believe this Magnetic Sponsoring approach is most effective in an environment where the approach itself is in the extreme minority, not where it is the main form of prospecting.
In those areas where you have 1000 people making essentially the same offer to help you generate 50 leads per day for free, or whatever the going pitch is, the winner will be the guy doing something different, which may just be something as simple as telling people about his primary opportunity.
