Earlier today, Eng Hai reminded me why, as a Networker, I am not a sales person, but a people builder.

I was researching for ways to prospect for recruits for my organization on the internet, during which I chanced upon a forum post about "an automated prospecting system": Apparently some forum members were discussing the probability of having a unified system which automatically 'harvests' and qualifies prospect even when we aren't looking. I was thrilled: at last, a way to recruit lots of people with minimal effort! So I told Eng Hai.

"That's a good idea", he agreed, "what we now need, though, is not a new system of doing things, but more success stories from what happens after people sign up."

And Eng Hai's absolutely right about that. You see, what keeps our business going profitably isn't the number of people we bring in; it's the number of people who sticks on and succeed after joining us that counts.

This means that they have got to make money first before we do. Just simply signing up as a member isn't enough. Maybe it is for sales people of products who get one-off commissions, but Networkers like us make profits from having sustained, positive activities in our network. So when we tell our new recruits "I want to help you succeed", we really mean it :)

And so, we are a people-building business; building them to be confident, building them to be positive, and finally building them into leaders, who will then go on to build other people.

I suppose I will eventually look into setting up a self-qualifying prospecting system, yet I will never, ever, forget why I am prospecting: to help the people who wants to make life better, have their lives made better.

That's almost the only way to do this business.