Every 2nd “guru” these days seems to be promoting some kind of great, new, turnkey, unbeatable, frustration free, downline builder system that supposedly will catapult your network marketing business into the next galaxy.
You’ve seen the ads online, “98 leads in one day”, $50,000/month, some kid standing next to a yellow Ferrari in front of a huge mansion. If you were to believe these guys it would be as simple as sending them your money, making a few YouTube videos and the money would come rolling in.
Network Marketing Systems in itself are not a bad thing. In fact you should, have some kind of system that you use to work your MLM business. What’s the problem then with the systems these guys advertise?
Well typically two things. They are usually not Proven (how long have they been around and has anyone actually build an organization using them?) and, even if the creator of the system is successful himself with his system, has anyone besides him, been able to duplicate his success. Those are key points to find out before you invest any of your money. Is the system Proven? Has it been successfully duplicated by someone other than the inventor of the network marketing system?
If your answer is “yes” to these two questions, the next thing you need to figure out is…. Is the system going to attract people that would be interested in your network marketing business? Not going to help you a lot, getting 98 leads per day but all these people think Network marketing is synonymous with Pyramid scam.
So, the system needs to be proven, be duplicatable and target people that would be interested in the business opportunity that you represent, in this case network marketing.
Finally, why are these guys selling their systems anyway? If the systems were really that good, wouldn’t they be better off spending their time building their primary business. If the systems really generate all these leads, who is following up with the leads while they are marketing their systems?
I’ve heard the argument that the system automates everything, that is- presents the opportunity and signs the new person up without you having to do a thing excepts cash your check from the company. I don’t quite buy that, even if the system does do everything on autopilot, you are going to have more people quitting your business than any system can sign up. People still need human interaction. Someone that depends solely on autopilot will have an attrition rate that is through the roof.
So, you may be making money of initial orders every month but you are not really building an organization that you hopefully one day can retire from, because most of the people your system signed up for you is going to be gone the second month. May as well be in direct sales, why bother with network marketing. Which is what most of these guys are, they are direct marketers, that is they are looking for the one sale, so they can move on to the next one. Nothing wrong with that but that is not network marketing. That is direct sales.
So don’t expect to be successful building a network marketing company using a system that was designed by a guy with a direct sales mentality.
If you are a sales type, great. I’m not, I don’t like to sell and I don’t like to be sold. The following fact may be news to some. Only 15% of the population have the sales person personality, and half of them, don’t like to be sold.
So my idea of a good network marketing system would be a system that is duplicatable, proven, targets people that are interested in Network marketing and does it in a way that appeals to the 92% of the population that does not like to be sold.