Marley and Me

Have you seen Marley and Me? It’s a romantic comedy wrapped up in the life story of a mischevious golden Labrador puppy – which basically means it’s a a sure-fire hit.

But for me it’s about the newspaper columnist who owns the dog – and who yearns to be a go-getting globe-trotting reporter. Because I was a go-getting globe-trotting reporter and I yearned to be a columnist. A columnist can write what he likes. 

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Nobody goes through a columnist’s copy taking out all the jokes and adjectives. In fact I often suspect that nobody in the office reads the columns at all. They just slam them into the paper like dumping beans onto a supermarket shelf.

Maybe that was how I managed to get one in the end – inhabiting a small space on the Daily Telegraph’s travel pages for three years and later on achieving my life’s ambition and breaking through the £1-a-word barrier in the Daily Mail Weekend section.

And what has all this to do with Network Marketing?

Well, in May The Network Marketing Blog broke through the 1 Gigabyte barrier. That means 63,707 hits; 26,500 page views; 7,883 visits and 2,735 unique visitors – and I find that immensely gratifying.

Of course I’m not getting £1 a word for it. In fact I’m not getting anything at all for it – at least not directly. But I can tell you that if you know 7,883 people are watching you, it does make a difference.

Take today for instance: I had an appointment in the morning – or at least I did have until the prospect sent me a text from Ireland saying she had decided to stay on until the weekend so could we re-schedule.

Then I was due to meet a potential distributor in Caffe Nero in the afternoon. Normally I would check the evening before and ring when I set out to make sure there had been no last-minute hitches. But do you think I could find his number…

There was nothing for it but to turn up and hope for the best – but there was nobody in Caffe Nero looking expectant and answering to the name of ”Anthony”. There was nothing for it but to sit and fiddle with the Blackberry which is what everyone does in coffee shops when they’re on their own … and that was when I discovered the very peculiar spelling of his surname. So that was why it hadn’t come up in a search.

I rang him – and then had to hold the phone away from my ear while he emptied a conscience-full of apologies for forgetting. So next week he’s coming to my house (providing he remembers).

All of which meant I had no success story to tell here – and that would never do.

But with the wind gusting 40 miles and hour round the car park, a Prize Draw was out. I thought of going home and making some calls – but nobody would use up precious bandwidth to read about that. And that was when I had the idea: I would do what we tell people to do on training. I would call on a customer – and I knew the very couple.

We had met through the Prize Draw in the car park on December 21st and they had signed up in early January – which meant I could call this their “six month check”. I phoned, said I was passing their door and wondered if I might pop in. Ten minutes later, I was sitting on the sofa, drinking tea with their dog’s head resting comfortably on my knee. I liked to provide a personal service, I explained.

They told me they were very happy with everything. In fact they were most enthusiastically happy.

“Well that’s good,” I told them. “Because now you’ve been with the company for six months, you’re qualified to recommend the services. I can take ten names today…”

I would love to be able to report that they opened their address book and gave me ten names – it has happened in the past. However, whatever liberties I may have taken with the newspapers over the years, only the truth is good enough for The Network Marketing Blog – and I have to tell you that I walked out of the house with just one referral.

But who knows where one referral might lead?

And here’s the thing: I would never have gone and asked for it if it hadn’t been for you looking over my shoulder at this screen.

For which I thank you.

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