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Making Recommendations and Your Reputation by Liz Canham
#204 - 11 - 3 - Making Recommendations and Your Reputation by Liz Canham
[ 2007-09-01 00:00:00 ] - lizc
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Have you ever worried that you may be recommending a product that isn't all it's cracked up to be, but you can't resist the huge commissions on offer - think again!
Recommendations and the way we view them are interesting aren't they? Personally, I receive umpteen emails a week recommending this or that fail-safe program, tool or whatever and I'm sure you do too. Most of these emails go straight into the trash but if they're from someone I've worked with a bit, who has previously recommended something I liked, who is responsive when I question them about their recommendation, then I'll take a look. This is the art of building a reputation online, a good reputation, a reputation for honesty so that your associates, customers and downlines will trust you not to do the dirty on them.
Equally interesting is the fact that if you inadvertently recommend something which seems good at the time but turns out to be not so good, it's very rarely that anyone will mail you and say "that was a rubbish program which you put me on to" so that you can at least apologise or better still, explain why you were mistaken; they just don't trust you any more. Now this is really bad news because you have just got yourself a bad reputation and it only takes one person bad-mouthing you around the internet and before long, your name will be mud.
How do you avoid getting yourself the wrong reputation? That's a hard one because everyone makes mistakes, but the number one rule is don't join a program and immediately start telling your list, newsletter readers and downlines all about it. Try it out, check if it works for you THEN tell your associates about it. Explain to them why you joined in the first place, how much you have used the program, which of its facilities you have used and the results it has given you. Make it absolutely clear why you are making this recommendation - oh, and "because it will make me lots of money in commissions" is NOT what people want to hear! Above all, invite questions about the program. If you can satisfactorily answer someone's queries and they subsequently join your recommended opportunity, they have to realise that you've done all you can and that the rest is up to them - there's no such thing as a free lunch - hard work is the key to success.
Keeping records of your own statistics is one way of sharing how a program can work with your associates. I don't mean one of those scrolling email lists showing how much mail you receive nor those pictures of PayPal accounts with oodles of payments coming in on a daily basis, just genuine records of visitors, sales or whatever it is that the program claims to do.
We live, these days, with a blame culture, so be very careful; one thing you can be sure of - it may be absolutely no fault of yours that someone has utterly no success with a program, but if you recommended it, you can be sure that they will blame you rather than themselves.
Copyright Liz Canham
As well as helping newcomers to the world of internet marketing with tools, tips and training from her Liz-e-Biz.com website, she has a love of Asian Food and Cookery and Travellers' Tales.
If you would like to reprint this article in any medium, you may do so on the condition that the above copyright notice is reproduced.
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