Should You Attend Network Marketing Annual Events?
The annual “big event” that your networking company holds each year is where you get to learn from the best of the best in your company. It’s your team’s most important meeting of all.
By now you have heard the coined phrase “Ready, Fire, Aim” a few times in your team meetings. Of course the actual expression is “ready, aim, fire”. The point is to get you to take action. No matter how you turn the phrase, the first word should always be “ready”. Each year your priority should be to attend your annual network marketing event. That’s the hub of your success. But if you are not ready, how will you “ever” go? Preparation is something that you do ahead of time.
Since you know that your event is going to happen at least once a year, you can prepare well ahead of time. Many corporate events happen each year around the same time. Most likely they will sponsor the event in the same places. Based on that, you have some idea of how much it is to travel to the event and the expense involved. This is how you invest in your own company.
So let’s discuss the expense. You obviously signed up with your networking company to earn income, right? At this point you’ve probably invested a bit into your business already and have yet to see the returns roll in. Now you’re being asked to spend more money to attend this big event.
For many of us at the start of our MLM careers, the first response about attending a big event is “where in the world am I gonna get the money to go to this event and why”? Sure enough, your trainer’s typical comeback is “If you can afford it, then you really need to be there”.
Now you are there contemplating your next move. One thought is that investing in your business is essential. But the flip side is that you are already living on a thin budget, you might be just scraping by on minimal income with no extra to spare. At any rate, spending money on a big event just seems to much to ask. So now what? Are you going to watch other people put it on the line while you sit home and play it safe?
There is a way to make it happen and I’m taking this from my own experience. You start out by planning for the event in advance saving some here and there each time you get a paycheck. You know the event is coming! It happens like clockwork every year. Therefore, if you put aside maybe $50 bucks a month for business events, in a year you have $600 of it.
I once bought a one-way ticket to a big event and slept on my team leader’s hotel room floor. My family back home managed to put together enough funds to get me home. If it weren’t for them, I’d probably be living in the bus station today. But upon my return from that empowering event, I caught on fire!
That event experience created focus, momentum and results that could never have been measured or predicted. Our team had some of the most unexpected successes that came out of the sacrifices from each one of us attending that event.
In just a few months, the payoff was unprecedented. I personally made the company’s top twenty-five list of marketers and won the team’s third top producer and recruiter’s award. Our team leader (who gave us her floor to sleep on) won a brand new Mercedes C-class car from our company contest. When we were all piled up in that hotel room, you could never have told us the amazing things that were coming to meet us. So hopefully, knowing that can give you incentive to be ready and go to your next big networking event. The positive results cannot be calculated.
Homework:
1. Budget for your next event
2. Design your team marketing strategy around the event
3. Teach your team how to do the same. (If you have no team, pretend you have one
that fills the room)
Then sit back and enjoy the fireworks. Your business will be forever changed.
