From the time you were born,you were influencing others to get what you wanted. As a baby, you cried when you were hungry and that crying influenced your mother or father to give you what you wanted, which was food or a change of clothes. If you ever threw a tantrum that ended up with your parent giving in to you, you successfully sold yourself.

Throughout our entire lives we influence other people to get what we want, need or desire. Even when it doesn't apply to money, what we are doing is marketing.

A successful home-based business owner understands that marketing a product requires the same mindset to get anything in life. It's not about convincing someone that your product has a ton of benefits for the sake of making a sale. There are lots of products out there they can buy with similar benefits. It's about finding people who already have a need, want or desire for what you have and using the same skills you learned throughout your life to influence that person.

You must learn the art and skill of influencing others in order to succeed. Think back on some of the memories you have where you went out of your way to really convince someone of something. What did you say? How did you say it? Who was the person? How bad did you want what you were after? If you analyze all of these variables, you will realize that there is a formula to each successful "sale" that you had.

For example, if you begged and pleaded for a brand new bicycle when youw ere a child, I'm sure you did your research and planning before you approached your parents. You knew their hearts would melt if you showed them those big blue sad eyes, and you were probably armed with a back-up plan. Maybe it was a list of your most recent accomplishments or some extra chores you were willing to do. No matter what it was, you were ready to influence your parents. Nothing is different now. You are just marketing a product instead of yourself.

In order to influence others, they must perceive you as a person of talent and virtue. The people you have influenced throughout your life valued your character and you had a certain skill-set that increased your chances of success. Part of that skill set was knowing who your audience was. You knew that they had a valued interest in you, so you used that to influence your approach. The same technique is required in marketing.

Most sales people aren't persistent enough to get past being told no. No usually means something other than no, and if you know your audience you can narrow the real reasons down. Find out who they are and what kinds of struggles they have gone through to get them to the point where they needed to talk to you. When you know their pains, you can go beyond taking their no for an answer and truly show them how you can help.

The more targeted your audience is, the easier it is to help them. You really don't want to keep rattling off benefit after benefit hoping that one of them will hit your target. Your goal here is to fullfill their want, need or desire. The focus should be on helping them with what you have to offer.

If you are marketing weight loss, for example, you need to be more specific. Every news stand on every corner is full of weight loss magazines trying to sell people the latest fad diets. The market is way too saturated to generalize on such a broad term. Find out why they need to lose weight. Everyone has different reasons and challenges and if you know them specifically, you can show them how your product can help them personally.

Another helpful lesson you already learned from your life experiences is that you cannot share what you do not feel. You had a passion for wanting that bicycle. You saw it in the store and took it for a spin around the aisle. You knew what it felt like enough to envision yourself riding it down the street with the breeze flowing through your hair. You simply can not generate that kind of excitement by seeing a picture in a magazine. Not enough of an excitement to make you want to sell your soul to your parents for it.

What this means is that you must be a product of your product. You have to know what it feels like to experience it before you can explain it to others. The more different benefits you can experience from your product, the more people you can help. The passion you feel about your product will also come across with how you present the benefits to them as well.

And don't forget, when someone gave you something that you truly wanted and they filled a need, what did you say? "Thank You." So the difference between selling and marketing is extremely important. When you are selling something, you say "Thank You." When you are a marketer and filling their need, they will say, "Thank You." The bottom line is that you need to learn how to apply what you already know to the art of "marketing" not "sales."

Anyone can get better at marketing if they apply the principles of every day life to their home-based business. This alone is enough to get a stalled business moving in the right direction. This is just one principle you can apply from a proper marketing education. Unfortunately, most network marketing companies won't teach you the rest because they play a numbers game to benefit the company as a whole. They are teaching you how to "Sell" not how to "Market." There is a difference. That's why there is a 95% drop-out rate in the industry.

No matter what the statistics are, it is possible to succeed in network marketing. All you need is a willingness to change your education and start thinking outside of the box.