Network Marketing 101- From failure to Success

Have you ever failed in Network Marketing or an MLM business? Have you seen others around you absolutely kill it but you couldn't make it work?

Multi level marketing (MLM), also known as network marketing has produced so many millionaires, that have never had to have an office, hire a staff, maintain a distribution center, conform to endless business paper filings, and so on. So why does anyone fail?

I am passionate about Network Marketing and believe it is the greatest business model that can yield you a lifetime of incredible residual income.

I will update this with blog with many reasons. Check back periodically.

I wish you great success in Network Marketing!

Let's take a look at what causes failure and, conversely, why so many Networks produce multi-millionaires.

Reason for Failure #1- Rejection

Many times the enthusiastic Networker runs face first into a series of devastating rejections.
We've been told, that the best way to start your business is to develop your "warm list" first. Your warm list is the people who are the closest to you; your friends and family. What happens when your warm list dismisses you or just says, "No!"?

Rejection by family members:

One of the most painful forms of rejection comes when you enthusiastically try to share your new business with family members. Usually you can see why it's a great business opportunity, but you don't know enough (haven't had enough training) to adequately present it.

Rejection by close friends:
Similarly your undertrained enthusiasm causes your friends to become cold, flakey or even avoid you.

Being rejected by you warm list is very difficult to endure. Some of the common rejections are:

"Sound like one of those MLM scams..."
"I tried network marketing before and I only ended up alienating my friends."
"Sounds illegal."
"It's a ponzi scam."
"I don't have any money."
"Someone told you you can become a millionaire, so you believe it. What a dork."
"You're going to take Dan's (or any other name) mentoring? You even said he's lazy and not driven."
"I've done the research on XYZ company and they're under investigation."
and the list goes on.

There are probably a million different ways someone can say, "no." But no should be expected. Not everyone you know or meet is going to see what you see. There are some ways to reduce the amount of no's that you'll get and actually maintain a relationship with those you approach.

1.) Don't approach anyone with the opportunity until you have been fully trained on the program/product. You are setting yourself up for failure because you are regurgitating memorized rebuttals. Your lack of true knowledge can hurt you and even cause you to get into a passionate argument that could sever the relationship.
2.) Understand that it may not be the right timing for that prospect right now. Use the six month rule and revisit at a later date.
3.) If your product/program requires a certain amount of visuals, don't present to a prospect that you know will defer to a spouse. Invite them to come and learn about the opportunity together.
4.) Understand your business thoroughly. You will need to answer some great questions that a prospect poses. Know your business, so you can speak professionally and without canned rebuttals.

Don't let rejection destroy your enthusiasm. Expect it. Many people quit network marketing after these experiences. Apply this lesson to your momentum. Share it with your downline. Many of those rejections will come back around when they see your success. Some, you just have to show one of your paychecks. I like to use the family rejections and criticism to ignite my passion to succeed.

Reason for failure #2- Reluctance: Say Nothing, Do Nothing

In our first reason for failure, Rejection, we’ve seen that those we care about most, our friends and family, can take the wind out of our sails. In all of that, we learned to expect it, grow from it and move on. Most importantly, we learned not to share until we really know what we are talking about.

The second reason for failure is being crippled by reluctance. Maybe the wind was taken, or you experienced a few no’s in you effort to gain new recruits. It drove you into a frenzy of endless prospecting. If you are reading this, you are probably bombarded by people promising to get you 50-100 new leads a day. You may have stepped away from your warm list and started gathering “qualified” leads of your own. However, you want to avoid the pain of rejection and you inevitably get absorbed with lead gathering, but reluctance to work them.
You can’t be successful if you don’t work. You’ve gathered, now you must reap your harvest.

It is important to push through your own reluctance and be proactive.
1.) Rebuild your self esteem- Listen to tapes, seminars, attend meetings to enhance your personal growth.

2.) You are not alone- Remember that you are in a business for yourself, not by yourself. Utilize your upline.

3.) Make contact with your prospects- Pick up the phone, write emails, invite to meetings or webinars; start the process of conversation, invitation and presentation. Only then can you bear the fruits of enrolling new prospects.

4.) The more the merrier- Remember that network marketing is a numbers game. The more interactions you accumulate, the more you will experience a return on your efforts.

5.) Follow up- Many of those people you first approached, may be in a better position to listen to you at a later date. Maintaining a relationship with all of your prospects, even those who turn you down at first, will give you a stable footing to revisit your business conversation in the future.

6.) Don’t Prequalify the people you know- You’d be surprised how many people you know would love the opportunity to build a stable income in your business, but you dismissed them as prospects.

7.) Maintain your enthusiasm- Once you’re deflated, you will be worthless in your efforts to acquire new business partners.

8.) Don’t put all your eggs in one basket- Rejection by the small number of people you approach is far more crippling than a few rejections in a larger group.

Reason for Failure # 3- Reproduction Breakdown by over Management

I had a call from several people in my downline that said, “Hey, I thought you were going to put people in my organization.” It frustrated me. But it made me realize that there are some out there that are looking for a great opportunity, but not the work it would take to build a strong team and profitable organization.

The key to being effective in network marketing is duplication; reproducing yourself and your efforts, by the people in your organization. We all have friends and family that we would like to help by giving them a spot in our organization and helping them build a profitable business. But most of the time, this turns out to be a major factor in failure.

What we teach, is what is learned

If you set out to build an organization and offer to subsidize your downline with new distributors/licensees to build their business, you are setting yourself up for burnout and failure. You will spend endless hours listening to complaints and trying to build a team that will not be effective.

They will complain about someone else getting your “recruits” and not them.

They will complain that you gave them bums.

They will complain that this business is a waste, because it isn’t growing and your promise to “help” them is not realized.

Eventually these people will fall away.

I often tell a story, that drives my wife nuts because she heard it so much.

When I was just out of highschool, the neighborhood old timer approached me and offered me $400 to paint the trim on his house. He told me he had all the tools and would teach me how to do it. Four hundred dollars seemed like a lot of money at the time, so I walked over to take a look.

The house was small, maybe 1000 square feet. “Piece of cake,” I thought to myself and I agreed to the deal.

I showed up the next day, it was in the Summer of 1988 and it was hot in California. He walked me over to his tools and handed me a heatgun. It looked like a hair dryer but focused an intense heat. He told me to got up a ladder, point it at the fascia board and scrape it when it bubbled off. It took me 4 days to strip the paint off . After that, he made me sand everything: the fascia, under the eves, the doors and trim and the windows. Every step had to be done by hand. Scrape, sand, primer and 2 coats of paint.

The days stretched on and I was a little miffed that I was only going to make $400 on the deal. But I agreed to it! I had to honor my agreement. I finally finished the job and it took a whole month.

As I pocketed the $400 another neighbor approached me with compliments and asked me to paint his house. I was no sucker. I walked over to a similar sized house and bid $1400. The neighbor agreed. Now I needed tools.

I took the $400 and bought all the necessary tools and discovered a great time saver. I bought the Wagner Power Painter. It held only a quart of paint at a time, but it would spray in all the corners under the eaves and allow me to roll in the rest. That machine allowed me to finish that house in 2 weeks! But I didn’t clean it properly and had to replace it.

Many neighbors asked for my services and my painting business was born. After a couple jobs I discovered the Campbell/Hausfeld airless spray unit, about $250, that would allow me to actually spray the paint on everything. It applied evenly and I cut my application time in half. I babied that unit. It had to be immaculately cleaned to prevent clogging and a sticking piston. It made me money.

My profits grew. My clients were coming to me and I couldn’t keep up. I went to a paint store and bought an industrial sized Graco for about $1600. I could prep an interior one day, tape and mask the next morning and blow out the entire house in one day. I was spraying money. Needless to say, I babied it too.

I tell all this because of a simple principle I’ve learned. Appreciation. I learned to appreciate the value of such a great tool. If it was handed to me on the first job, I surely would have miscleaned or neglected it; resulting in the loss of the spray unit.

Managing our business, and our tools is extremely important. Care and nurture of a great tool, will produce great dividends.

It is much the same with our downlines. If you want them to be productive and produce great results, you have to care for them. On the other hand, the story speaks to our downlines. If you hand everything to them, without them going through the trenches, they are going to neglect and damage your downline.

You have to be a good team manager.

• Don’t waste time building codependents. Teach them what they should be doing for themselves.
• Subsidizing friends or family will not reproduce your success and will likely cause failure.
• Supporting your downline means providing encouragement, giving guidance, encouraging growth and talking to their prospects. They are tools in your business and cannot be neglected.
• Your goal is to create duplicates of you and your successes.
• Giving your downline their recruits will yield nothing but neglect, lack of effort and eventual fallout of business associates. There are times when you can assist filling someone in for your associate because they have been very productive, but just need one more. They show they understand the value of the placement.
• Teach your recruits to be more productive than you, and they can surpass your success.
• Mismanaging your dowline through subsidizing and managing their business will result in a downline that waits for your “feeding” and likewise teaching the same to their downline.
Buying another position in your dowline’s organization can lead to an overwhelming workload for you and expectations form your distributor.
• The business associates that deserve the extra help, are the one’s that you observe working the hardest and show productivity.
• Continually focus on building your business while effectively managing your downline.