My Long Rant About Network Marketing Secrets!
“My Long Rant About Network Marketing?”
Is Network Marketing For Everyone?
99% of the people who start in a network marketing company know nothing about what they are getting themselves into.
There are no Network Marketing secrets once you have been in the business for a while, but the fear of not knowing what to do and being overwhelmed are some of the main reasons the majority of people quite within the first 90 days of joining. Not making any money is right up there as well but that is totally due to the fact that they don’t know what to do next. Maybe if they are lucky, they have sponsored a couple of people, but that’s been about it.
After a couple of three way calls, I bet the friends and family really enjoyed those calls, a few meetings sprinkled with some people telling them that they are in a pyramid scheme and why did they join that thing, too many no’s and not enough yeses to look at their business opportunity, spending more money than they are making and they are done.
Given up before they even got anywhere … all the excitement and enthusiasm turned into confusion and frustration. And they had such big dreams when they first started. Cars, big homes, dream vacations, free time to spend with the wife and kids but that all faded away over the coming days and weeks.
What happened? That fantastic Network Marketing opportunity sure was not as easy as their sponsor had made it out to be. Just get two and help them get two and you will be successful. Well if that worked for the majority of new distributors, there would not be a 95.9% failure rate in this industry. This failure rate has been steady for as long as the Network Marketing industry has been around.
The other figure that is pathetic is that the average distributor sponsors a whopping 2 people in the span of their careers as a network marketer and over 90% make under $10.00 a week. That won’t go far to fund their financial freedom.
The question is “what went wrong and what can be done about it?”
Are you starving for honest, high quality training on how in the heck to actually find some leads … recruit new distributors and create the full-time income you’ve been promised?
When you see how it works, you will want to use it to significantly increase your odds of success!
Network Marketing is a business and all too often people, who come into the business, are not reminded that they are starting something new and they will have to learn how to do it! You have to learn how to do anything new no matter what it is.
Did you ever have to learn how to do something when you first started a job? I’m sure you had to learn and it took time. If you were fortunate, you had someone to train you who had experience doing what you were about to learn to do.
That is only part of the learning curve, because not everything can be taught or learned from some else. You have to grow from your own experience through trial and error, making mistakes along the way, but eventually finding your way of doing things.
It was that way for me when I joined a small new company years ago, who were just starting to expand their business. I had to go outside of the company because the owners knew squat about the industry we were about to enter, they had kind of fallen into it. They had no clue of what you needed to sell to wholesalers and distributors or how to find and sign up reps.
In fact, I had no practical experience either as I had always been on the other side of the fence. I had experience in sales as a rep for one of the largest food companies in the world, managed a retail store and had tried my hand at different jobs but now I would be the marketing and sales guy on the manufacturing side of the business.
My solution was to go out and find companies and people who had been doing this business for between 5 to 10 years and literally copied what the methods and systems they were using. We were in the licensing industry, which was still quite new in the market back in the mid 80’s. Licensing is basically paying a royally for the rights to use the trademarks and logos of sports, entertainment and/or corporate companies to put on your product so that you can sell it. Today you cannot go far without seeing someone wearing or using a product that does not have some kind of logo or trademark on it.
Most products today, which carry a famous person’s name or company’s logo, are not manufactured by them as it is licensed out to others who pay a royalty on everything they sell. Back when I started in this industry, it was just developing into the giant you see today. To think that George Lucas, with the first Star Wars movie, was the first one to bring licensing in a large way to the consumer. The licensed toys, school supplies, clothing etc you see today when ever a new movie comes out or singer hits the top of the billboard charts, was all brought about by Star Wars.
Ironically, the majority of those first companies that paid millions of dollars to Lucas to use the Star Wars logo failed to make any money. Some of them even went bankrupt! Consumers were just not ready for the bombardment of so many Star War logoed products. Yet, by the time the second Star Wars movie came out the licensing industry never turned back and it has grown to be a billion dollar a year business.
So why am I telling you all this?
Because it comes back to not knowing what it takes to be successful at anything when you first start out. It is very rare that anyone achieves ultimate success with the first try. But those that keep trying and learning as they go forward and don’t quite find the greatest success.
The same goes for Network Marketing. I am sure that you, the person who sponsored you into this business and probably their sponsor do not have the experience to share with you on how to grow a successful Network Marketing business. All they do is pass on what the company says to do and far too often, they are telling you the same old school method that has failed for over 95.9% of those who follow it.
Yes, some people, although very rare, have had success but most were very fortunate to have stumbled across a serious business builder or two who made this possible. The problem with the older methods of talking to everyone you meet is that most people do not have that type of personality that is required by the old method or have the burning desire that is required to start a home base business.
The shear numbers of people you would have to talk to everyday to weed out the no’s just to get to the one’s that would even look at your presentation, let alone the few who would actually join is far beyond what the average person can do.
Trying to do this the old way is almost like trading your job for anther job and although you can make more money this way, you still end up spending a huge amount of time prospecting and recruiting. The reason for this is that the majority of those you sponsor this way end up being the average network marketer who lasts 90 days and sponsors a few people and you have to continually replace them.
I gave that way a try and was one of those 95.9% who failed miserably.
I love the Network Marketing industry because of it’s business model, but even though I had sales and marketing experience, the typical recruiting methods were not for me. With my background, I am sure that the people who sponsored me were dreaming that I was the one; I was going to make them rich.
You see I wasn’t going to be successful doing something I wasn’t good at and if the training I was given allowed only for a success rate of less than 3%, than the odds were stacked against me too. Remember in this business to be successful you have to build a successful team and if less than 3% of the people you sponsor have a chance to succeed than what are the odds of being successful?
You see real marketing in Network Marketing has been missing for so many years. In all the other industries out there, to have any degree of success you must market your business and product to the businesses and people who would actually be interested in and benefit from what you are offering.
As an example, if I manufactured a line of high-end exercise equipment I would not waste my time or energy blindly going into every retail store in a mall to try to convince them to carry my line. I would bet that no matter how excited I was about my product and how much it can help people I would get more and more frustrated with every no, are you kidding, or stares as if I had two heads until I would probably leave the mall disappointed. Yet that is very similar to the prospecting methods that were taught and are still being taught on a whole by network marketing companies.
In other industries, I would do my research and find who the buyers for high-end exercise equipment were and where they went to buy them, locate someone who has experience selling to this market and is willing to help me learn how to do the same. Then equipped with that knowledge, I would present the benefits of working with me and how my products could help them.
That is how I learned how to become a successful marketing professional in the licensing industry, someone who from Canada, was headhunted and hired by a Fortune 500 company in the US to supervise their licensing division, sold over 20 million dollars of products during my career and was sought after by hundreds of entrepreneurs asking for help on how to do what I did.
I am not telling you this to brag, just to let you know that I knew nothing when I first started out and yet because I found people to guide me with realistic business plans, that I could follow, I was not only able to achieve great success, I was able to help other entrepreneurs do the same.
Now as much as I loved doing what I did, it was still a J.O.B. It had all the everyday stresses associated with the hard work and planning that went into achieving a successful month, quarter and year. I had to start all over again all the time and of course was always expected to do better, no mater what the economy was doing or the problems that were out of my control in the company.
I did this for over 20 years …. I know that it does not matter what work you do, if you have been at it long enough you can relate!
During all these years, I was always looking back at Network Marketing to see if there was a way I could make it work for my wife and me. I wanted something that I could work hard at for a few years and then enjoy that allusive long-term residual income I heard so much about.
My wife and I tried many Network Marketing companies over the years but never had the success we had hoped would be ours. We loved most of the products but not all of them. Companies came and went and so did our sponsors and leaders. I could fill a book with the stories of our experiences in Network Marketing good and bad.
Why I am sharing this with you is to let you know that I am no stranger to the Network Marketing industry and although I had not seen the success, I had sought after in this business, I had not given up hope.
Today, I can say thank goodness for my stubbornness!
Last fall I got a call from our old sponsor from the Network Marketing company that we still buy product from, to see how we were doing. We had moved clear across the country a few years back and had not talked to him for a while.
He knew that we were not actively trying to recruit anyone into the business and hadn’t for many years, but we were still using the product and have been for over 10 years. We love it and would not be without it. And yes we have shared our story with many people over the years, some tried it and some didn’t. Some even had terrific results but others convinced them that it could not have been the product and they stopped using it. Human nature I guess.
Anyway, he told us about another Network Marketing company that they had just joined and were wondering if we would be interested in looking at it. Ah, we were the perfect lead! I had been studying online marketing, learning all about affiliate marketing, sales funnels, squeeze pages, wordpress, PPC, CPA, SEO, traffic and all the other online jargon. Therefore, I decided if we were to get back into Network Marketing, we would have to do it online and so began my research and journey online to see how Network Marketing was being marketed on the Internet.
I knew most Network Marketing companies had a presence online with their corporate websites and some of them had designed special landing pages that their distributors could personalize and send their prospects to so they could watch a business opportunity presentation. This sure beat having new distributors stumbling through the presentation using the old flip chart at the kitchen table. OK, I am dating myself, but that’s how it was done before DVD’s.
However, the Network Marketing Company that our sponsor got us into still followed the old-school methods. The day that we were welcomed into the company by a local high level leader, he immediately told us to put together a list of our warm market and that he would help us with three way calls to recruit them into the business. Even though we had spoke to him about wanting to work online since this this was our intention, as we would be moving to a warmer climate to live.
That was a real disappointment for me. They provided us with the token sales pages that we could send our warm prospects to, but that was it. After you finish telling all your friends and family to go look at your brand new shinny website, have given out your cards to strangers on the street or tried to drag people into a meeting, what do you do now?
This particular company and leader did not believe in using the internet to generate leads, so what was someone to do next? And he is not alone! No new 21st century marketing going on here.
I went online to see what other Network Marketing companies were doing and really didn’t find anything new and thought that I would have to take my new found knowledge of selling on the internet and build my own sales funnels, landing pages etc.
Boy was I happy when I came across somebody’s website that said “Do you want to generate 10 to 20 quality leads a day online?”
So, I looked at what he had to say and the company he recommended. I could not believe all the stuff (meaning squeeze pages, sales funnels, online marketing methods) this company had produced already and that they were offering it in a package that included training from people who have been successful with all different type of marketing methods and were sharing step-by-step of how they did it and more. This was more than what I was looking for.
Finally, someone had put the marketing into Network Marketing and I or anyone could do it online. Now a large portion of the 95.9% of people, who had trouble making it following the old outdated methods of building a Network Marketing business, had a way to turn that around and actually have an opportunity to build a success home based business.
All one would have to do is figure out the marketing method they felt most comfortable learning how to do and find a person who was successful utilizing this method and was teaching others what they know. Add their desire, passion, time and work required using this method until they reached the goals they had set for themselves. WOW!
And so I joined this awesome group of individuals, have met some extraordinary people and I am seeing everything unfold in front of me and can for the first time being involved in this industry see a real opportunity to build a successful Network Marketing business and help so many other people do the same.
Being surrounded by young energetic and successful people who have taken Network Marketing to a whole new level is very exciting and gives me a charge each and every day. So many baby boomers, young adults and everyone in between who desire to make a difference in their lives and those of their families now have a unique opportunity to do so.
The internet is expanding so rapidly and with it new ways to market products and ourselves. As one major system develops, new ones arise to help those who may not yet have the skills, experience and/or time to take advantage of the power of marketing online. There will always be lots to learn but the learning curve is shorter and the technological skill needed to get started online is not required.
Today nobody is left behind who truly want to make a difference in their lives and build a successful Network Marketing organization.
Thanks for reading my long rant about Network Marketing!
I am here to help …
“Build your business with people who believe what you believe!”
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