Enter the group of successful multi-level marketing people!
Successful multi-level marketing is the desire for many but a nightmare for many MLM marketers. To transform your business into successful multi-level marketing activity, you can easily achieve this by taking the correct actions.
Multi-Level Marketing (MLM ), also known as network marketing or referral marketing, is a marketing strategy that has existed for many years. It is a marketing strategy whereby a marketer sells directly to consumers and encourages or persuades them to join the marketing chain, also known as the “network.”
It is based on a system of various distributors and recruits. They form a unique network of individuals and have agreed to work towards a common goal. Your MLM members are compensated for their sales and those made through other salespeople that they recruit.
Most MLM requires members first to purchase starter kits. At the same time, some of them impose on members to obtain a minimum monthly order value to maintain their membership.
There are more than one thousand firms in the United States alone. They are using Multi-Level marketing as a marketing strategy to get their products across to various consumers worldwide. This means Multi-Level marketing is big business in itself.
Even though MLM is a legal business, it has been a subject of criticism. Just mentioning MLM, people think of Ponzi schemes or pyramid schemes. In most countries, that is forbidden by law. The business strategy is controversial as one recruit’s action can significantly affect other members on that network ladder.
The Synergy Between Direct Selling and Successful Multi-Level Marketing
The direct method of selling has existed for a long time. The first direct sales business to consumers I know about was introduced approximately 100 years ago. The creator was the Swedish founder of Electrolux, Axel Wenner-Gren.
Even though he was not the vacuum cleaner inventor, he designed and constructed the first domestic vacuum cleaner. His vision was to help households to get cleaner and thereby maintain healthier homes. The vacuum cleaner was a “must” in every home.
The strategy was to get many vacuum cleaners out there and as fast as possible. It led him to make a demonstration in the customer’s home. From there, probably the modern direct sales industry started.
The concept was successful. For sure, some of you reading this have even had a live experience from a demonstration. A skillful Electrolux vacuum cleaner sales representative showed you all the dust you have at home.
For many years, the cold canvassing method worked well, resulting in an impressive number of sales. This method involves knocking on the potential customer’s door, getting in, doing a demonstration, and closing the deal. Every day, he (no female sales representative at that time) would need to talk face-to-face with people. The more he did it, the more he would turn homeowners into prospective buyers and increase sales.
Doors are closing
However, with various changes in society, such as the higher level of crimes and fraud, it has become more difficult just to go out, knock on people’s doors, and turn them into potential customers. New strategies with pre-booked demonstrations over the phone have been a reliable method to solve the changed habits in the market environment.
Making the “original” direct sales method obsolete, multi-level marketing, better known as MLM, started to get more air under its wings. It is not a pure coincidence that many previous successful direct sales representatives can now be found as successful MLM leaders.
The truth is that the skills and knowledge gained from “genuine” direct sales undoubtedly helped many business owners develop sales in other areas, like multi-level marketing.
There is no better sales academy than selling directly to various consumers in their homes. Some 30 years ago, the most skillful and highest quoted salespeople came from segments such as encyclopedias, insurance, and vacuum cleaners.
For Successful Multi-Level Marketing Changes Must Happen
Did you know that 97% of all people doing network marketing make less than $50 a month in their MLM business? Another survey says that nearly 60% of MLMers earned less than $500 over the past five years. Are you one of them?
Network marketing, your MLM, or whatever you would like to call it, what they all share can be expressed in two words: Direct Selling.
According to Direct Selling News, there is no defined date when direct selling started. Still, this business format can be traced back a couple of hundred years.
The idea was to eliminate the middleman and sell from the manufacturer directly to the consumer. The prospecting method, by then, was the most basic. By knocking on the door of potential customers, the sales process started.
The direct selling method became famous, popular, and in many niches, very successful without any doubt. The development of the business concept continued, and the next step in the direct selling evolution was network marketing.
Network marketing consists of engaging other people to amplify the customer base. The most famous models are home parties. Products like cosmetics and cookware are favorite products for this format. The business’ leverage starts to take off by engaging various potential customers simultaneously.
From networking to MLM
From network marketing to MLM, or multi-level marketing, it’s a short step to take. In fact, MLM is a form of network marketing. The variable added to the MLM model is the recruiting process. Salespeople can earn money in two ways, by selling and by commission based on what other people in their network sell.
Since writing one of my first articles about multi-level marketing more than four years ago, network marketing has continuously changed.
The modern MLM system encourages people to recruit. The reality is that without always adding new people to your network, there will be no attractive earnings if any.
The question now is if the multi-level marketing is also going the original direct selling way or not. From experience, one can still say that the same way that the “genuine” or “original” direct selling had its lifecycle, at least in its original format.
The logic also points out that multi-level marketing will pass through the same lifecycle “drama.” I call it drama because it will be troublesome if your MLM system does not adapt to the new circumstances. That’s the business environment we are facing more frequently than ever.
The exploding digital world is one fundamental reason.
The main part of society today, in one way or another, is digitally connected. The speed of change is much higher than before.
While a digital marketer has access to more than one billion people daily (for example, using Facebook as a marketing medium), the multi-level marketers, no matter the size of their network, will be local guys compared to the Facebook marketer.
With these two completely different market potentials, it is easy to think that your MLM business, which has a critical expansion factor in its business model to be successful, can run into saturation mode.
The Bottleneck of Network Marketing
From the first direct selling company recruiting sales representatives to their business to the modern form of network marketing companies, recruitment has always been, still is, and will forever probably be the most crucial part of the business.
No matter which part of the direct selling industry you belong to, recruitment is the every-day-battle.
People who are doing network marketing use to engage with family members, friends, and neighbors. At a certain point, the existing social network becomes “consumed.” But the show must go on, and without more people to engage, the business starts to stale. It’s the bottleneck most network marketing people struggle with.
In a certain way, MLM solves the problem by using an organization of different layers. The recruitment process continues on each level in the organization. The downside of this model is the quality, which tends to decrease by the distance you are from the recruitment process. Retention starts to be a problem, and in the end, the worst scenario could be that the whole sales force starts to fall apart in pieces.
From basic door-to-door canvassing to modern MLM, the whole direct selling world is built on baby boomers and how they developed it.
Right now, we are at an exciting point in network marketing, as it has grown and matured over the last couple of decades. The Coronavirus pandemic is an essential catalysator to speed up all changes going on.
The Tools to Turn Your Business Into a Successful Multi-Level Marketing Machine
On one side, you’ll find the younger generation coming out of school and being exposed to the profession of network marketing. On the other hand, you’ll find the baby boomers in between careers. They are eager to move on or want their next step.
The technology is here to support the next development step in network marketing.
The older generation learned the profession the hard way, making appointments over the phone. If you tell a younger person coming out of school to sit at a desk for 7-10 hours on the phone, they think you are crazy.
So how to merge high-tech and high-touch? Well, the Internet and online marketing could be the answer.
For example, Facebook, the world’s largest social network online, could be an excellent platform for your network marketing activities.
If you prefer video marketing, you can use YouTube. The platforms and ideas are almost endless. You can target your potential customer base the way you like; by location, age, gender, etc. The vast number of people you can reach out to is tremendous. Use the online strategy instead of the old traditional offline method.
Your Successful Multi-Level Marketing vs. Affiliate Marketing
The daily headache for serious MLMers is how to add more people to their network. If the network does not add more people, it will die sooner than later. One reason for this is the dropout rate that will always exist among the network people. They do not perform but only occupy space in the system without producing anything or adding value to the network.
The other reason is the necessary organic growth of the network to leverage the expected commission payouts and keep the system members happy. Could this be the reason why some MLMers sometimes claim that the market seems to get saturated?
Relationships or networking is vital for people searching for success in multi-level marketing. Not very seldom do you start to invite close friends and relatives to join the business, which can induce other types of problems of more emotional nature. It is not a pleasant task to ask family members, relatives, and friends to join to keep your MLM network growing, which is how it must grow for success.
The digital marketer has access to a non-limited audience.
The world’s population having access to the Internet is limited but changing with high speed. The latest statistics show that almost 69.5% of the world’s population is connected to the Internet.
You can easily connect to millions of potential customers depending on the countries chosen for the campaign. You don’t know who they are, but you know where they are.
We already have several successful MLMers in our community. They have found this online marketing system exciting and a potential complement to their multi-level marketing business.
In principle, both,
multi-level-marketers and digital marketers work with the same basics,
which is a vast network.
The whole business is based on the fact that the network is significant and growing consistently.
As an MLMer, you will need a tool to find laser-targeted individuals interested in joining your network. If you prefer to stay local, you can do that. If you want to go regional, national, or even global, you will also have that option.
As the markets develop and the digital world expands, it will not take long before all multi-level marketing organizations understand the importance of building global MLM networks. It will be more the languages, cultures, and habits, setting the frontiers for the business, not the physical country borders.
The pandemic pushes everything a step further
In the same way that the “original” direct selling had to make changes and adapt to new market conditions, Your MLM will have to do the same. Everything is going faster nowadays, and affiliate marketing surely will be an indispensable marketing tool for successful MLM.
The smart and successful MLMers jump up on the digital affiliate train now. They will be ahead of all other people in the industry when they notice that it is a must to have their business going digital.
Are you getting sick of traditional downline-building techniques? Listen to Stuart Ross, the Six Figure Mentors co-founder, to reveal something exciting about Multi-Level marketing.
Stop! …Change…Action!
“It sounds good,”
you may say.
“Let’s go ahead and try it.”
BUT first, you need a system that can handle all the traffic and leads you will get. You need training and education on how to manage these new tech tools. And you need somebody you can talk to when you struggle with problems. It’s no rocket science at all, but you need to have the knowledge.
Click here to access a mind-blowing video series showing you how to speed up your network marketing or MLM business using the Internet.
Click the box below and start today!
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