Why MLM distributors get beat up, clobbered, and chopped into little bitty pieces when they market in the real world.

By Big Al, Tom Schreiter

How many things have changed in your life since 1985? Not much? Check out these possible changes:

• Did you have a computer in 1985?

• Did you have a FAX machine in 1985?

• Did you have a CD player in 1985?

• How much did you pay for long distance telephone service in 1985?

• Did you have voice mail in 1985?

If so, you're at a definite marketing disadvantage. In fact, if you're still using old information and methods, chances are you are not only "road kill", but a permanent part of the pavement.

Of course your competition is other network marketers and direct salespeople. But the real competition is everyone else in the world.

For example, let's say you invite a prospect to your opportunity meeting.

Your prospect can come home from work, change clothes, grab a quick bite to eat, make excuses to the spouse and kids for not staying home, drive the car 10 or 15 miles to a hotel room, listen to a boring speaker in front of a chalk board for 90 minutes, get high-pressured by the potential sponsor for 60 minutes, and try to get home before midnight without spending money for a distributor kit or products.

Or, your prospect could choose to:

• watch MTV

• play with the children

• visit with friends and neighbors

• enjoy an infomercial on "how to get rich"

• listen to CD's

• go shopping

• enjoy hobbies

• get in some serious computer time

• or any other activity, commercial or non-commercial.

• Did we learn new cross promotion strategies recently?

• Did we apply reverse marketing techniques to our sponsoring methods?

• Are we attracting new prospects with new and improved networking contacts and techniques?

• Have we located and targeted new niche markets for our products and opportunity?

• Is our U.S.P. the same one we used ten years ago? Do we have a U.S.P.?

• Are we using contra contacts to expand our reach?

• Is our frequency and relationship marketing organized? Computerized?

• Are we exploiting add-on premium strategies or are we losing with out-dated discounting technology?

• Are we fighting a tank battle with squirt guns? Worn-out squirt guns from 1985?

The only thing holding us back from better marketing is ourselves. We either refuse to learn and change, or we believe the famous 1899 quote:

"Everything that can be invented has been invented." -- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.

If we refuse to learn and change, that's our problem.

If we believe there's nothing new, well, that would be our parents' problem. They gave us some bad, bad I.Q. genes, and we're using those damaged genes to keep our head in the sand and our incomes at mediocre levels.

Okay, let's imagine we're free of those two fatal problems (refusing to learn and unable to learn). What are we going to do to compete with the other marketers of the world?

Remember, we're competing with cable TV, the Internet, our prospects' favorite hobbies, great music, in-person presentations from the family, $100,000-a-year copywriters for Publisher's Clearing House, The Home Shopping Network, the beach, and a general lack of ambition and desire for change from our prospects.

Whew! That's pretty tough competition.

Our solution?

Get more ammunition. Get bigger guns. Get an army of reserves to help us build our business. Get better!

How?

By learning new ways to compete.

That means investing some time and money into ourselves.

Now, some people won't invest the time. They think, "Hey, I'm so broke from doing things all wrong, I can't afford to take any time off to learn how to make money. Don't bother me with seminars, company trainings and conventions. I need all the time I can get to fail and fail and fail . . . "

If you know someone working really, really hard, and that person is not making progress in their MLM career, chances are he is too busy doing things wrong to learn how to do them right. Yes, it's sad. But true.

Besides taking time to learn better ways to market your products and opportunity, many times a financial investment is needed.

For instance, it costs gas, wear and tear on the car, and maybe even a registration fee for your company's convention. Sure you'll learn new techniques, meet successful people, but it costs money. And why invest in your business when you can starve your business instead?

Crazy thinking? I don't think so. How many distributors were not at your company's last convention?

One of my favorite sayings is: "Invest in yourself . . . unless you feel it would be a bad investment."

Plus, investing in yourself creates a long-term payback.

Let's look at two ways to invest $20.

Way #1:

Print and mail out 60 or 70 postcards to prospect for your opportunity. Maybe you'll get some leads, maybe not. But here's the $64,000 question: "After you spent your $20, then what?" I mean, you're broke. You don't have any more money. You don't have any other way to prospect. You're out of business.

Way #2:

Buy a book on how to recruit or attend an upline training seminar. Now, what do you have after you spent your $20? You have knowledge. You have skills. You have the ability to continue building your business. That's the difference. You have something that won't go away . . . knowledge and skills. No one can take them from you, they can't be spent, they're yours forever.

Actually, there could be a Way #3: Borrow the book from the library and spend the $20 on chocolate.

However, I'm sure you see the point: It is better to learn something forever . . . than to spend and be broke.

Back to learning new techniques to compete in the real world.

Just one little technique can change your business dramatically. For example, at our Power Marketing & Promotions Workshop last January, one participant just couldn't get prospects to look at his opportunity.

Now, this same workshop participant is drowning in leads, three-way phone calls, two-on-one presentations, in-home meetings . . . he has even disconnected his cellular phone. Too many phone calls from hot prospects kept interrupting his recruiting presentations.

What changed? What happened?

He learned how to make better offers (see Super Prospecting: Special Offers & Quick Start System). He learned a simpler way to make a presentation that instantly duplicates (from a company sponsored seminar). And he learned how to focus the presentation quickly to rivet the prospect's attention (from a conversation with another distributor).

The difference? No more frustration. No more dead time hoping for something to happen. Fun, fun, fun doing his networking business. And, an open mind that not every method under the sun has been discovered already. Yes, there's always something new we can learn to enhance our business.

What's the bottom line lesson here?

Some distributors will continue with their "job thinking". That's the kind of thinking that says, "If I put forth this much effort, I deserve to get paid."

Well, effort means nothing in the real business world. Let's say you hired a painting contractor to paint your house. Well, this painting contractor had a bad argument with his spouse that morning. So, instead of leaving on time, he got caught in traffic. Then, there was that flat tire, the stop in the bar for a drink or two, the broken ladder, and then one of the workers forgot to bring the paint!

Well, your painting contractor tried, made a pretty good effort, but not a drop of paint was applied to your house.

Are you going to pay the painting contractor for making an effort?

No!

You'll only pay for results.

"Business thinking" says, "It's not the effort that counts, it's the results."

That's why business constantly learns new and more efficient ways of getting results. Now what?

Are we going to get into the race? Are we going to learn new ways to compete?

Or, are we going to be road pavement and complain that we worked really hard, but it just didn't work.