Words to Avoid When Talking to Prospects About Network Marketing

We don’t want our potential prospects to activate their sales alarms. There are words to avoid when talking to prospects that make us look like salesman. When we talk like a salesman, they immediately set up barriers.

There are words to avoid and there are words that kill. They not only activate prospects’ sales alarms, they also do the following:

• Start feeling negative about everything we say.
• Become skeptical of our facts and benefits.
• Feel like everything we say is too good to be true.
• Feel that we have an agenda just to sell them something.
• Fear that we are just trying to make money off of them.
• Remember that their parents told them that salesmen will always lie to them.
• Want to close down mentally and protect their money.
• Begin to feel that we are untrustworthy.
• Get scared because they don’t want to change.

Oh my, things can’t get much worse. Words to avoid in sales and words to avoid in your network marketing business are all the same. They shut down the mind of our prospects so they can’t hear our message.

If our potential prospects hear our message, they can determine if our message will serve them or not. We don’t have to be salesmen, and we don’t have to manipulate their decision.

All we have to do is deliver our message in a way that gets inside their heads. Then, they can decide if our offer will serve them or not.

Words and Phrases to Avoid

Words to avoid and phrases that kill in Network Marketing are words and phrases that sound like a salesman, look like a salesman and act like a salesman.

Unfortunately, we do things to sabotage our message. So, let’s get started and see what we do that gets our listeners to think “SALESMAN.” And let’s look at words to avoid talking like a salesman.

1). I Want to Come Over to Talk to You.

Avoid these MLM prospecting words. Imagine your daughter is getting married. You telephone your neighbors to invite them to the wedding. You say, “I want to come over to talk to you. When is a good time? I need about 30 minutes.”

Your neighbor’s reply, “What is this about?”

You answer, “I can’t tell you. I have to talk to you and show you this in person.”

What are your neighbors thinking? Something smells wrong. This is not how you ordinarily talk. They feel a sales pitch approaching.

If you wanted to invite them to your daughter’s wedding, and they asked the purpose of the visit, what would you normally say to people? Normal people would say, “I want to tell you about my daughter’s wedding, and invite you to come.”

The mystery approach is words to avoid. It refuses to give details and sounds weird.

But it gets worse. We bring a flipchart and a 30-minute PowerPoint presentation about the reasons for why our daughter’s wedding is the best and why our neighbors are obligated to attend.

Weirder still, right?

This is not how we talk to our friends. This is now how we introduce new ideas to our friends.

Will holding a flipchart, giving PowerPoint presentations, carrying brochures and samples, and forcing our neighbors to watch a video trigger their salesman alarms? YES.

You can only make matters worse by pressuring and forcing your neighbors to commit to attending your daughter’s wedding.

(2). “Breakthrough.”

Want to trigger the salesman alarm even faster? Just use salesman words. Certain words will tell our prospects that we are selling them something.

Words to avoid is the word BREAKTHROUGH. The word “breakthrough” is words not to use.  When we say, “I have a breakthrough product,” we have just committed suicide with our prospects. That is salesman talk. If someone uses the “breakthrough” word, we know that they are selling to us.

Listen to this sentence: “Our company has developed a breakthrough product that…” Feel the salesman alarm? In fact, “breakthrough” is one of those overused words and no longer is the cool words to say.

Other words to avoid are

• “Unique,”
• “Endorsed and recommended by an out-of-work movie star,”
• “Highest quality,” “trademark,” “patented,” “copyrighted,”
• “Revolutionary,”
• “Never been done before,”
• “Game changer,”
• “Most awesome.”

And the list can go on and on. You get the idea. We say things such as, “This incredible once-in-a-lifetime miracle product was personally formulated by our almost-Pulitzer-Prize winning scientist who is part of a team that discovered something wonderful in the past.”

It sounds good to us, but our listeners are shaking their heads, “No.”

(3). We Only Talk About Our Products Instead of What Our Products Can Do For Our Prospects and Customers.

Words to avoid and sound like salesman should follow this principle.

Salesmen only talk about their products. They talk about the milligrams of each component of the vitamin. They describe how this skincare product penetrates through 1,600 layers of skin. They describe the unique booking engine the travel services uses to get a discount on a hotel room.

So what should we say? How can we avoid talking about our products?

Instead of describing our products, we will describe what our products do. We will describe the experience that our listener wants.

Let’s look at an example to illustrate this.

Discounted Travel.

Salesman: “When you book your travel through our online search engine, we send a request to the 32 most popular competing search engines and aggregate the results. Through our massive buying power, we negotiate the lowest commissions and rates, so that we can pass the savings on to you.”

Ugh.

Because the salesman described his wonderful product, his audience felt their salesman alarms ringing.

Now let’s look at a different approach. We will simply describe the ultimate benefit to our listeners.

Us: “When you use our travel service, you arrive at your chosen hotel. When you check in, you notice that your bill is about $85 less than what you expected. So, you decide to use that savings to go out and have a nice dinner with your spouse.”

Our audience sees the movie inside their heads. They visualize taking their spouse out to a nice dinner while still staying within their vacation budget.

Is our audience sounding the salesman alarm? No. They are thinking about that dinner, a quite evening with their spouse enjoying their favorite food.

Nutrition.

Salesman: “We have the exclusive rights to a proprietary formula with the main component found 300 feet below an active volcano that is mined by Tasmanian devils. Over 200 independent studies prove this is the most powerful mineral element and unique formulation known to mankind. This has never been done before… and we are the only company that will ever have this one-of-a-kind miracle product. This is the next big thing.”

Groan. We can do better.

Us: “When you take our vitamins, you won’t worry about that 2 PM energy slump. Instead, you will feel like finishing your projects and work quickly. Why? So you can go home early from work and have fun with the family. Life is so much better when we have more energy.”

Potential customers care about results much more than they care about technical ingredient reports and sales words and phrases. Good phrases to use are benefits that describe the experience of the product.

What If…?

But what if we forget and start talking like a salesman? What if we use technical words and technical terms or complicated jargon?

It happens. The quick solution is to practice the phrase WHICH MEANS. As soon as we catch ourselves talking like a salesman, we use the words “which means” to explain what we are trying to say. Some examples.

“All natural and organic… which means you won’t be eating any chemicals in our food bars.”

“Smart rate… which means every month we look for the lowest rate. We guarantee you will save money.”

“Dermal absorption ionic transfer… which means our moisturizer goes into the skin, not just on top of the skin.”

So words to avoid are those words that sound too salesy. Be direct, honest, and simple.