When All Else Fails

The book that helped me the most to build my business as an Independent distributor of Essential Oils was not even a book about network marketing. Yet it radically improved the way I worked the business and the results I experienced.
Here is my story!

I was discouraged. Do you know what it’s like to be so discouraged that you want to cry? That’s the place I found myself in. Physically, however, I was standing in our local library, waiting for my children to finish finding their books. I was so discouraged that I did the thing that desperation often calls for. I prayed. It was not a long or elaborate prayer. It consisted of looking up towards heaven, or at the florescent lights at the ceiling, as the situation would have it, and silently mouthing my one-syllable plea: “Help!”

You may not believe it, but when I looked back down I noticed something I had not noticed before. I’m not saying it wasn’t there before, just that I had not seen it. A colorful book was lying on the table where I was standing. It had an interesting title: The Six Hat Salesperson.

The biggest misconception about network marketing, as you may have come to see, is that we are not in sales. We’re in sales. We can call it marketing, distributing, retailing, sharing – doesn’t matter. The fact of the matter is that if we don’t sell anything, nothing happens and we don’t get a check. End of story (and, eventually, end of Business). But I had been clinging to that misconception. I wanted to believe it because I believed something else; something about myself. I believed I wasn’t good at sales. This wasn’t a misconception – it was true!

Sure, I could be persuasive when I believed in something, but that sometimes resulted in the opposite of selling [Yes - the opposite does exist!] Tell me if you can relate to this. We’re so excited about the oils that we seize any friend or family member who comes within a thirty-mile radius, stick an open bottle under their nose and say “You’ve got to try this!” which for some strange reason results in this response: “Get away from me,” although it’s not actually said out loud. ;-)

You probably assumed the title to this article refers to praying. Well, it does but it also refers to something else. Let me put it in one sentence: When all else fails, educate yourself! The simple point is this; if you are in sales, you may as well be good at sales.

I checked the book out of the library. And not only did I learn a lot, I fell in love with selling. That was a surprise. I was able to absorb the concepts quickly and easily from this simply laid-out book. It made so much sense! It was like being given a map to the labyrinth – not so intimidating or scary anymore. I found the information in the book to be so valuable, that I taught it, chapter by chapter, to my downline during our weekly conference calls. It changed how I did business because it explained how to sell! When, years later, we started Terra Cotta Pendants, I used all the knowledge gleaned from that book to build that business. I even put the link on the Distributor’s Page of our web site and recently followed it to see that the author, Dave Kahle has changed the name of the book to Take Your Sales Performance Up A Notch.

Read about the book and order the Printed Version or EBook here: www.davekahle.com/upnotch.html

What's The Best First Step in Planning For Success?
That's a question for the next article. Stay tuned!

©2007 Terra Cotta Pendants About the author: Lori Gosselin has worked in network marketing since 1997. In 2003 when Terra Cotta Pendants www.Terra-Cotta-Pendants.com was born, she found herself back at square one, educating herself, now, on Internet marketing. To assist Essential Oil Distributors build a successful business she shares what she has learned through this series of Articles.

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