By Jeremy Hoover

The story of the sower of seed in the Bible is an example of how someone can grow a network marketing business.  In this story, a  sower goes out and cast seed everywhere.  Some falls on a path where  birds pick it up and eat it, some falls on rocky ground where it  can't take root, some falls among thorns where it is choked out, and  some falls on fertile soil and takes root and grows up into a great crop.

This story illustrates three principles of network marketing:
1. The network marketer must plant seeds, and must plant lots of them.  Just as in this story, the more seed planted, the bigger the  harvest.  The worker will cast seed here and there and some will fall  where it can't take root, but some will land on fertile soil, take root, grow, and produce a bumper crop.  Seed can be sown from direct  mail lists, from a web site, from email marketing, from face-to-face  meetings, and from a number of other sources.  The seeds are the  prospecting tools of the network marketing company--the tapes,  brochures, websites, etc., that the company gives the worker.  At  this stage, all the worker can do is cast seed, and cast seed she  must.

2. The network marketer must harvest only the ripe harvest.  Just as in the story of the sower, very few of the worker's seed will  actually take root and produce.  The worker should be focused only on  the seed that produces.  As a general rule, seed will land on fertile soil only about 10% of the time; the other 90% of the time seed falls  where it cannot grow.  The worker wastes his or her time chasing the seed that cannot bear fruit.  Many people are skeptical of network  marketing products and companies and are not interested.  The network  marketer must not spend time trying to convince the skeptics but must seek only those who are already sold--the mature harvest.  Someone  once said, "Professionals sort.  Amateurs convince."

 3. The network marketer must harvest the crops at least seven times through follow-up.  As most marketing types acknowledge, it takes at  least seven contacts to achieve the maximum harvest with a person.   Focusing only on the ripening fruit, the network marketer must tailor his or her follow-up to prune the ripening fruit, cutting away a branch of misconception here and planting the fertilizer of  understanding there.  But serious and honest follow-up must be done in order for the harvest to fully mature

If a network marketer follows these three principles, his or her seed will produce a bumper crop that will yield produce for a  long time.

Jeremy hosts a free business articles distribution group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/business_articles and ghostwrites business articles for people needing content for a website, newsletter, or e-course.