Understood that you would be involved in providing company and team information – but you would not be the focus, only the conduit. Any would rely on company information for the process – (team information could be harder).

The Social Media route suggests building the relationship up front, with “effectively” a warm rather than cold market. Probably restricting interactions to

F- family
O – occupation
R – recreation
M – money

being sparing in promotion of business etc. Viz operating in a “Pull” mode.

The building of the business side of prospect awareness of you being at the end of the funnel when you explain why they should join you.

Eric

There’s no more viral form of networking than social networking, so I’m not sure where the distinction you draw between them falls, or what that distinction might be.

Stage 8 isn’t the first appearance or contact involving you. Stage 6 involves YOUR opportunity, stage 7 involves YOUR support team and stage 8 involves YOU as sponsor and mentor.

If you weren’t involved long before this, there’s no way they’d make those decisions in your favour.

Social networking and bookmarking, etc are a key part of the lead generation function, not the funnel itself. This is why you need more than one blog.

As far as separate personae are concerned, I think it’s vital to project an integrated, wholistic view of yourself so that the prospect gets to know the whole person, not just “managed” aspects. That way they get a more balanced impression and are less likely to feel that the process is being “stage managed”… that what they see is what they get.

The other aspect of all this is the time frames involved. They can be extremely short. I’ve seen processes that would previously have taken weeks, even months (because of hostile spouses, bad past experience, etc) turn around in literally HOURS.

Remember the thrust of this approach is QUALITY, not QUANTITY. Keep it manageable and personal, especially once they reach around stages 4-5 of the funnel. The quantity will come through duplication, not through personal recruiting — although that needs to be maintained to keep your own excitement high and to set a valuable example to your team.

Hope this helps to clarify things a bit better.

John

I have an observation. The Qualifying funnel and indeed much of the foregoing Viral Networking suggested that the input to the funnel was substantially viral and automatic, and in particular did not involve “you” at the early part of the proceedings. “You” featured at step 8 of the funnel.

Introducing Social Media means that you are up front central at the mouth of the funnel, potentially the first point of contact not the last. That does not preclude vitally generated prospects, and it would be interesting to have your thoughts on the potential percentages of prospects generated via Social Media -vs- Viraly generated (via publications and funded proposals).

But accepting the Social media component and the sponsor mentor role at the end of the funnel, I assume that one needs to project two different persona.

The front end (social media) relationship building, demonstrating ethics, personal interests, character, adding value etc. Whiles as the sponsor – business interests, training skills, mentoring, business knowledge.

Did I get that right – because it affects the way one develops the Social Media element.

Interesting – Eric

PS – this approach is great for me as it does not require numerous upfront phone calls (cold calling). So I hope that it works, so I can restrict phone calls to a few people I have build up a relationship with.

Glad the connections all worked properly.

Like I always say, technology is like your MLM downline… brilliant — when it works!

John

Looks good – and it updated my Twitter status and it copied through to Facebook. Looks all systems go -now to do the same for my second blog.

Fantastic.