Network Marketing 4 Today

I got a comment on one of my blog posts today relating to retention in your network marketing company and it started me thinking. And since I was thinking, I may as well be writing, so here goes.

This is the comment I received:

I have been in several network marketing deals throughout the years. This is no easy proposition. Perhaps you can garner a few people for your down line, sell some products etc...However the attrition rate is so great and hard to keep up with. Most people getting into it have a shelf life of a year. The big thing is that the people you recruit do not feel as passionately about it as you do… and eventually fall by the wayside. Remember that most people are not that aggressive and constantly working. Enthusiasm gets lost. So the solution is that you have to add people to your down line and constantly sell the product.

Carol

Well Carol, I feel your pain!

I recently read an article by Mike Dillard addressing a slightly different subject, but it had some interesting facts in it. Mike broke down the typical downline into three types of people:

1. Retail customers who love the products and don’t want to have anything to do with the business. This makes up between 20 – 50% of a typical downline.

2. Leaders who pursue their business as a professional in a full time career. This makes up .5 to 1% of any downline, or approximately 1 in every 100 to 200 distributors.

3. The downline members who are struggling to develop themselves and achieve success. This group is the largest part of any downline and makes up about 50 – 80%.

Your goal as a leader is to get group 3 to stick around as long as possible because they make up a large portion of your business, and consequently your check. The tricky part is how to do that. Here are a few ideas:

1. Choose a good company. This is the very important. You want to align yourself with a company you can be proud of and that has exceptional products, so that they will want to stay involved even if they aren’t making much money. The best type of company for this is a nutritional-based one because people will get sold on the fact that they need to keep taking the products to protect their health. That’s a very powerful motivator if you can get people to buy into it. Many nutritional companies have powerful testimonials that lead people into this type of belief system.

2. Sign them up with the most expensive option your company offers. My company has a startup package that costs about $1200. This package has basically all of the products my company offers, plus several sales tools and vouchers for events included. That way my new recruit can try everything that applies to him, and turn around and sell the stuff that doesn’t. The other reason I have them make this large of an investment is that they have more to lose if they walk away. Plus, I know that they’ve got some money to invest. You don’t want to find someone who’s been out of work for 6 months, and has to scrape together $100 just to buy the minimum startup pack. If it’s that hard to come up with $100, they’re not going to last because they’re going to have to try to scrape that money up every month to meet autoship requirements and to purchase sales tools. It always takes longer to get making money than people think, so you need to find people that have some financial resources.

3. Show them how to monetize. If you can help them earn some money right away, it will help them to sustain longer. There are various ways to do this, but the one I like is affiliate marketing. This is the process of promoting other people’s products and earning a commission on anything that is sold by that person to someone you send to their website. Read my articles What does it Mean to Monetize Your Website? and Why Monetize Your Internet Network Marketing Business? for more information on this. Also take a look at The Renegade University for a free step-by-step system that get’s you going on attraction marketing and monetization.

4. Get to know them. In order to develop loyalty and accountability, you need to have a personal relationship with the people you sign up. If you just enroll people automatically on the internet or some other way, you may be able to sign them up in bunches, but you’ll also lose them in bunches too because no one will know or care if they walk away. Network marketing requires personal contact, if you’re not comfortable with that, this isn’t the business for you.

5. Give them a plan. Train them. Let them know what to expect. Don’t oversell, don’t tell them they’ll be making $1000/month in 6 months, or that they can retire in 2 years. It’s probably not going to happen, and if you tell them that in order to get them into your business, you’ll be damaging them, which is not cool. Tim Sales talks a lot about responsibility and not damaging people in his Professional Inviter program. He’s brilliant and down-to-earth, and whatever you can learn from him is worth it.

6. Don’t pigeon-hole them. Just because you like to work on the internet, doesn’t mean they will. Maybe they like to make cold calls, or send out postcards. Maybe they just like to talk to everyone they come in contact with. Be open-minded, and don’t try to make the new recruit do what you do. There are many ways to skin this network marketing cat, so whatever you do, don’t make someone do what they don’t want to do.

These are a few tips on how to keep new recruits in your business. Remember, every month they stay involved is another month of income for you and another month closer to success for them. For more information on monetizing and attraction marketing, go to www.matthellstrom.com. It might make the difference between success and failure for you and your team!