I am going to start with a short story that may sound familiar to you if you have any experience with MLMs or Multi Level Marketing companies. I have had a few MLM businesses including a Amway/Quickstar business, webtv and a couple more; and I was actually pretty good at all them. I am an consistent truth worthy guy so I am told and so I was able to sponsor quite a few people in a short period of time in all of these businesses.
However, on every occasion as I began to get through my list of prospects things would slow down a little and I would be left struggling to motivate my group and continue to sponsor more people for both me and them. Sounds like a lot of work right? It is!
In every case I would be left with a few very nice people in my MLM business and plenty of motivational stories about the guy making the real money at the top of the MLM business. (my upline) Well I started to notice a pattern after a while, I really didn't have a business, I was just in my up-lines group and the system was designed to keep me hungry for the dream by attending weekly meetings full of success stories. (see update below)
Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against those who got in early and did the work to have an awesome residual income lifestyle. I did realize one thing however, the number one thing you have to do to be successful in MLMs is to sponsor/help as many people as you can over a fairly short amount of time. How many, 20, 30, 100 it really doesn't matter, the more the better.
The question is do you have the ability or vehicle to do this? If you don't, read the above story again and get ready to live it in most cases. Unless you are a person with considerable influence where people are hanging on your every word and will follow you into whatever you suggest; you probably are going to struggle with getting enough people. For instance, I know a guy that was pretty successful in one MLM and took his whole group and dropped them into a new program at the ground level, all at once. He is a millionaire now.
Now, if you notice, I have not said MLMs are all bad. There are some very solid companies out there that are helping large numbers of people live there dreams. But there has to be a better way to sponsor the large number of people over a few months time that will springboard your business.
The ideal business in my mind would look something like this. The company's financials would be top notch to insure the checks keep coming.
The sign-up would be free. The company would use or allow me to use every online marketing tool I could find. (legal of course) With all the online networking going on sites like Squidoo, MySpace, blogger, email, YouTube, and so on, it seems to me that all you would need to do is briefly explain that if you get in (for free) and spread the word to all that you can, everyone that gets in after you will serve to fatten your monthly check! (see update below)
In today's economy not knowing about something like this would have to be the only reason for not getting in. The company would have to have a product that everybody needs and can be benefit from. (at a affordable price) And preferably the product would be pretty new offering ground level entry to the business.
Even if you are in another business with a large contact/email list or whatever kind of network list, you could use the above example and inform and then drop your list into the business. Wow!
I think the term is to go viral with it! Promote it online until it is literally beyond anything you could imagine. That is the way a modern day MLM business should work! No meetings (except maybe a periodic webinar) No phone calls! Viral, viral, viral! This is the only way I would do MLM again!
Wow man, (UPDATE) I wrote this article sometime ago about my previous experience and detailed the conditions under which I would go for MLM/Network Marketing again. I have found the answer to all of the above recently.
I was way off considering the company too much. I was dead on when I spoke of the out dated sponsoring techniques. The above text of this article are proof of the before and after of knowing and not knowing the latest MLM/Network marketing techniques. Don't wait any longer get the right info and get going! Wow! this article is a good example of the saying "be careful what you ask for, you might get it"
Listen, people will do Multi Level Marketing if you can show them a way to succeed with the sponsoring/recruiting aspect of the business. Stop the madness! Get more information at the link below and build a great business. Good Luck.
