MLM Prospecting Letters (the Little Known Secret to Passive Business Building)

In this article, I'll discuss how you can use MLM prospecting letters for warm marketing, cold prospecting, training your team, and getting more customers.

Are MLM prospecting letters worth anything? One of the first questions you may want to ask is, “What are MLM prospecting letters?” When you are in the network marketing business, you have to make the effort to build your downline.

This means that you have to work towards getting people to join your network marketing team and sometimes doing things differently than what your upline teaches you. I do understand that this is unconventional and it’s not part of your company’s “system,” but I believe that this is a powerful strategy that you can use to build your business.

Prospecting letters are a great way to reach out to an audience of thousands of potential customers and to also help build relationships with current customers. A prospecting letter is actually a sales letter that is targeted towards a particular audience. As a network marketer, you are trying to reach as many people as possible as potential customers, and the prospecting letter is a great way to reach out to them. The internet has made business easier to do, versus mailing out a bunch of paper-based letters. However, I still do feel that old fashion letters still have a place in this business and I find them to be very effective if you can use them in a profitable manner.

To avoid any confusion, I’ll be using letters and emails synonymously. At the end, I’ll discuss reasons of why you should use a digital email versus and old fashion letter.

Table of Contents

1. What is AIDA and How Can You Use It to Build Your Network Marketing Business?
2. Warm Market Prospecting Letters
3. Cold Market Prospecting Letters
4. Using Prospecting Letters to Sell Products and Services
5. Using Prospecting Letters to Train Downline
6. Sending Emails vs Mailing Letters
7. Conclusion

What is AIDA and How Can You Use It to Build Your Network Marketing Business?

I learned the framework for writing these types of letters by studying direct response sales letters.

What is AIDA? It’s a framework that was created for advertising. It provides a guide to help you create marketing messages that catch the audience’s attention, get them to feel a particular way about your product or service, and then to persuade them to take a desired action. AIDA stands for Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. The AIDA Response was developed in 1898 by E. St. Elmo Lewis, a pioneer in advertising, as a way to help companies market their products more effectively (Fame – A Journal for Advertisers, Vol. 6, December 1897, p. 442).

• A: Attention
• I: Interest
• D: Desire
• A: Action

Warm Market Prospecting Letters

Are you new to MLM and want to know where to start? The first thing you need to learn is how to prospect for warm market prospects. Warm market prospects are simply people you already know. By starting with warm market prospects its much easier to get started in MLM. Warm market prospecting letters are a good way to get started. By sending out a short, personal letter to your warm market prospects it will help prep them before discussing things over the phone. Nowadays, people are so tight on time and building up some interest beforehand can be helpful.

Warm market doesn’t just consist of your friends and family. After building your MLM business for months, you’ll have customers. This is another little-known MLM business tip: People buy from people that they know, like, and trust. A previous customer has trusted you enough to spend their money on something that you’re offering.

A big mistake is not considering your customers as part of your warm market. I’ve seen distributors work hard to make the 1st sale, then move on. They want to get the numbers by recruiting and selling horizontally. However, building vertically and driving in deep is one of the fastest ways to build your business and you can use warm market prospecting letters as a tool to do this.

Cold Market Prospecting Letters

As every network marketer knows, finding prospects is a difficult task. Finding quality prospects that turn into customers is even harder. When you are just starting out, and you still haven’t established a marketing system to help you find prospects, you need to have a plan of how to find prospects. A prospecting letter is an excellent way to build your business through cold prospecting. The letter introduces a business opportunity. It informs the reader about a business opportunity that they may not be aware of. It also includes a call-to-action that encourages the potential prospect to take action and contact you for more information.

When I started building my business through cold market prospecting, I was skeptical at first. I was shy and was thinking, why would anyone follow me or buy into my business. The key to using prospecting letters is to build a massive list. This list is your contact database and people will become part of your list because you’re sending these letters to people that are already interested in building a business or buying a product just like yours. If you are not generating quality leads, you are missing out on this opportunity. If you’re just sticking to warm market and get lucky, you can build a thriving business. However, most of us aren’t lucky and so tapping into the cold market is a must.

Using Prospecting Letters to Sell Products and Services

I’ve already mentioned how you can generate leads and connect with your warm market. You can also use these letters to sell your products or services. This happens after you convert prospects into leads as I mentioned in my warm market and cold market sections of this article. After observing the network marketing industry for years and applying foundational sales principles, I soon realized how powerful this is.

You might have been told by your upline that you need to follow-up. An effective way to do this is through prospecting letters.

You might be wondering, why am I doing this after I already qualified the prospect – they’re already a lead!

A friend of mine in the business used to tell me that these people are still suspects until they do business with you or give you a firm no, especially if they say “add me to your Do Not Call list.”

So instead of following-up through social media DM’ing or phone calls, you can use prospect letters. There have been times when people end up buying months or years later. Just because you feel rejected after the 1st attempt, it doesn’t mean that the person does not want to do business with your. Sometimes the timing just isn’t right and the person will buy based on their time, not yours.

Using Prospecting Letters to Train Downline

Prospecting letters are a great way to train your downline. Once they receive a letter, they can learn more about the business. Most businesses use in-person training sessions, but some times people can’t attend. So these letters can be used to provide team training and to also augment what they might have learned in person.

In a traditional MLM, I remember that my upline used to judge team members by seeing how involved they were in the meetings. I’ve seen that in traditional businesses as well. However, I think that everybody has a different timeline, and they will build the business if and when they want to.

For example, if a person just had a kid, they have different priorities in their life. From my own experiences, I know that having a baby can lead to crazy sleep schedules and even different levels of energy throughout the day. Sometimes, working at 1 AM might be more effective and that’s not when the team meetings are happening. In this case, I’d rather learn and do the business on my own schedule. This doesn’t mean that I’m not motivated enough to build my network marketing business, it’s just my preference based on the circumstance. As a leader, when you realize that your whole team can’t do things based on your schedule, that’s when you can utilize the power of prospecting letters to train your team.

Sending Emails vs Mailing Letters

The advent of email has certainly changed the way we communicate with people. No longer does it take days or weeks to get a letter or package in the mail, as email can be sent almost instantly. However, some people still prefer the old-fashioned way of sending letters and packages through the mail.

When someone sends a “personal” letter or a postcard to you through the post office, there’s a good chance that you’ll react to it in a different way compared to an email that you get from a stranger. If it’s very personal or unique, then there’s a good chance that you’ll check it out unless you’re the type that avoids all traditional snail mail.

Before you start emailing people, you’ll need them to opt-in first. Nowadays, unsolicited emails are called SPAM. So before you start emailing people, give them a reason to get your emails first (ie. by providing a lead magnet). From there, you can follow-up using your email marketing service.

With any type of advertising, you should be measuring your return on investment (ROI) too. The time and money that it takes to send out traditional snail mail might seem expensive, but it’s your ROI that matters the most. You might discover that spending more money upfront might convert more prospects into customers and be worth your time. You’ll never know unless you test out your mailings (or emails) and measure how effective they are. Look into metrics such as response rate (phone calls, emails responses, lead generated) and the bottom line (dollars made).

Conclusion

If you want to start using MLM prospecting letters, I recommend starting with the AIDA formula that I’ve mentioned. Another tip is to pay attention to what other leaders do and ask yourself if their emails or letters have any impact on you. If they’ve created a way to grab your attention and build up your interest, then keep that message in your own personal ad archive and use it for inspiration in your prospecting letters. The more that you learn from others and write your own prospecting letters, the better that you’ll become.