In an effort to always increase efficiency, I came up with 7 tricks that most people do not think of when running MLM home meetings. Feel free to share this with your downline or anyone you feel can benefit.

One question might be, well Ray, why the heck would I want to go back to the old school way of building MLM by doing home meetings? Well, not one billion dollar mlm company was built with webinars or conference calls alone. Every single person you bring into your business has a phone and a place they live. MLM home meetings are very easy to duplicate. Not saying I do not do webinars, I certainly do, in fact, I have recruited A LOT of reps from the Internet that I have never met but I still place a lot of vale in the power of the home meeting.

1. Be Upfront About Your Intentions. The success of your home meeting has a lot to do with how you introduced the meeting to the people you invited. DO tell them there will be a short presentation on how you are making extra money. DON’T tell them this is just a dinner party, you have no idea how offensive and insulting that is to people. Also, tell people this is a way to see if the business is something they would be interested in and that they may determine it is not for them. This lets them know it will not be an uncomfortable hard sales, time-share like meeting.

2. Over Invite. Here is a newsflash for those that have never done an mlm home meeting. NOT EVERYONE WHO SAYS THEY WILL SHOW, WILL! For anyone who has done any number of mlm home meetings, you know what I am talking about. You want to start off with inviting at least 100 people. Typically about 30-50% of the people that swear on the bible that they will be there will show.

3. Have Apps Ready. Have paper applications already printed out and on clipboards with pens attached. I recommend never trying to enroll people using the computer at a home meeting. It seems like the time when you most need your computer or the Internet, neither will work. Talk to the person speaking or your upline about when to pass the apps out. I like to have them passed out by the host toward the end of the presentation when we are talking about how to join.

4. Place Marketing Materials. A lot of people will want to look at something about the business before the meeting starts. Place your company’s marketing materials around the places where people will be sitting. Another place you don’t want to forget about, is the bathroom. A lot of quality reading goes on in that room so don’t forget it!

5. Make It Fun! Tie balloons around your mailbox, have upbeat music going on, make it more of a fun atmosphere than a stuffy presentation.

6. Have People Commit to Bringing Something. This is something my company teaches that I had never heard but absolutely love. When someone tells you they will be there, ask them to bring something, such as, a bag of ice. This psychologically makes it more of a real commitment to them if they feel you are depending on them to bring something. I recently had a meeting at my house where I had an entire sink full of bags of ice. One of the women that joined my business that night laughed when she saw my recorded training on asking people to bring ice.

7. The Power is in the Follow-Up. You may have everyone join on the spot or you may have several people on the fence looking around to see if anyone else was going to sign up. The key is in the followup and I mean following up with the people that did and DID NOT make the meeting. For those that did NOT make the meeting, do not browbeat them or chastise them for having no integrity, apologize to them.

“Listen I just want to apologize about last night. I am sorry I did such a poor job explaining what we were doing, we had a fantastic meeting, a bunch of people got excited and I am now working with several new people. I will be sure to inform you of the next meeting but I did want to call you real quickly and tell you I was sorry I didn’t do a better job of explaining it. Well, I gotta run and call the guests that made it, I will be in touch.”

Now, isn’t that powerful? Doesn’t that make it seem like they really missed out on something? Exactly.

BONUS TIP: Leverage. You may talk to people during the invite process that get interested in your business. A small percentage of them you may be able to use leverage to get them into the business. You never make promises but a sample script could be:

“Listen, you sound really interested in this. You know, the way this thing works is when people jump onboard, anyone new that comes in falls under the people already there. I am planning on having a kick butt party and if you did decide to jump in BEFORE the meeting, anyone who joins would fall under you.”

Now some of you are thinking, how would someone join before seeing a presentation? Stop thinking that everyone has to know as much as you did to decide if they wanted to join or not. I have used this tactic many, many, many times to get people involved before a meeting ever happened.