When it comes to sales, one of the most important lessons I learned while with Wells Fargo is that you should only sell something to someone if they both want it and need it. There was this one story that sticks out in my mind, its form a sales trainer whose class I attended 20 years ago.

He said, “You can only sell a red car to a person who wants to buy a red car.” The point being that you can’t see blue cars to people who want red cars, because if you do they will end up not being happy with what they bought and therefore not happy with you. In fact in order to sell a product, you need to only offer it to the people who want and need it. Trying to sell the wrong product to the wrong person is a huge time waster and network killer.

Having this mindset, I’ve continually been baffled by the sales tactics I see with so many network marketers I know. I mean I hate coffee, never had a taste for it. But having that key piece of insight hasn’t stopped almost a dozen of my friends from trying to get me to be part of their coffee sales MLM.

If you sell coffee, then the first thing you do is go down your list of friends and eliminate anyone who doesn’t drink coffee. Now I know, there is always a chance they might be a source of new leads, but honestly trying to get someone to sell something they don’t use themselves if really just another waste of time.

SO if you take an analytical approach, you would eliminate the long shots. Not just non-coffee drinkers, but also one who cant afford to buy the coffee. It doesn’t do much good to hard sell someone who cant afford your product.

You would be better off seeking out new network connections by joining groups and forums where your target market is. If you are trying to sell red cars, look where red car owners end up online. Where do the go to talk about their red cars and share photos of their red cars. Or maybe you sell vitamin supplements… then you should be marketing to health care professional, people who exercise regularly or are health conscious. Selling vitamins to someone who doesn’t care about their health is another uphill battle.

So the key starting point for using more analytics in your sales strategy starts with building a demographic profile to define your target market and exclude people who will more likely than not be a waste of your precious time.