One of the old techniques on how an MLM works is to have distributors draft a list of targeted prospects from their warm market.

Now that you've run out of your warm market, how do you build an MLM business beyond your friends and relatives?

The problem with this MLM list is two fold:

1. People might not have the need or the desire to consume the products you're marketing or just are not interested in the so called "opportunity" to generate an additional income.

2. If this is the second, third, or even fourth time around you talk to your warm market about another one of your "business ventures", they have grown immune to your pitch.

Warm market marketing is the hardest market there is. As long as you are not making tons of money, expecting to build a business talking to your friends and family will lead to failure unless you learn how to break out of your limited circle of friends and family and find other prospects for your business.

Your warm market list alone is not going to help you build a residual income business in the long run.

So how should you grow your business?

Go back to marketing principles.

Here are four steps that you would need to master to be able to advance your MLM business beyond the prospecting barrier of your warm market.

1. You must learn to target your market for your products. Position your products or services in the market place. Define your target market, what are the benefits of consuming your products, what value they bring to an individual.

Once you answer these questions, you will be able to identify your potential customer base.

2. You need to deliver the right message to that targeted sector of the market. The "right" message should be the message that solves their problems. This message is based on their own desires and needs, not based on the fact that you would like to make another buck when they purchase your products.

3. You need to facilitate the purchase by basing it on what is the best choice for the consumer, the ease of payment, shipping, follow up and support calls.

4. This prospecting message needs to be delivered to the right targeted audience at the right time based on the consumers' own time table.

These 4 essential marketing principles bring me to my point on how an mlm works:

Learning about marketing, learning how to market your products is an essential component to building a thriving business in network marketing. This is a grossly understated component in any company sponsored MLM training.

If you were to take what's being taught in any MLM program and bring it into another field of business, for instance, retailing, those techniques would never stand a chance of surviving.

Can you imagine Coca Cola having its employees draft a list of its employees' warm market to sell its products to?

A good upline leader who has spent any time studying marketing principles should be able to tell his downline members:

' How /where to find leads for your products/services for not more than 20 cents per lead as opposed to $5, $10, or even $20 for so-called opportunity seekers leads.

' What to say to a lead once you find that prospect based on his needs.

' How to facilitate the purchase for that consumer.

' How to determine if the consumer is ready to make a purchasing decision solely based on the consumer's own time table.

These basic components should be addressed as you embark to work with your mentor/sponsor in your network marketing company.

In order to break the friends and family barrier, you need to learn how to put the marketing back in network marketing. Develop the skill set of a marketer, learn how to position your products in front of a hungry consumer market that is seeking the very same products you offer.