Here are some of the ways that was practiced in the traditional way of building a Network marketing business:
1. Make a Prospect List
There are many set-back with this approach as people will eventually run out of prospects. Once they run out of prospects, they will stop building the business. By the way how can you build a huge network with only a few hundred prospects?
2. Invitation
Invite your prospects to an opportunity or presentation meeting. The problem with this strategy is that many prospects have heard about your Network marketing company and will not be positive because of the negative experiences and perceptions. This is the reason why many distributors use the curiosity approach. They may get a few prospects to attend but when the prospects attend they will be disappointed to find out that it is Network marketing and they have negative perceptions of the company.
3. Presentations
Many of the presentations focus on the background of the company and on the products. This approach will only attract product users. As you are aware, to build the network, you need business builders and not customers. Remember, facts tell and stories sell…
4. Quantity Vs Quality
The approach is to recruit as many distributors as possible. It is a numbers game! Eventually you will get the right people. Yes this is true to some extent but before a new distributor can get to the right person, he would have given up due to disappointment. I believe that not everyone can succeed in Network marketing. They need certain qualities and all you need to do is pre-qualify your prospects and then pre-frame them. In this way you zero in to the right person and do not waste a lot of time.
5. Product Demo
It is true that product demos are important, but what sort of people, usually do product demos? These are normally done by sales people selling items like water filter, vacuum cleaner, etc. So when you do product demos, you put yourself into the same category of these sales people. When prospects see you doing the demo, they will think that they will have to do the same thing. Also as I mentioned earlier, people do not like selling! So this is status down…
6. Travelling
Most Network marketers travel to many cities and countries to build their business. This is very stressful and expensive. It is a waste of time and money to travel just to do presentations. You can use the Internet and do Online presentations first. Only when you have a small number of committed leaders, you can travel to conduct trainings and assist them.
7. Push marketing
The old ways of doing Network marketing uses ‘push marketing’ strategies. As the saying goes, ‘people do not like to be sold to’. It is no longer effective in today’s environment. To be successful today, you need to use ‘Attraction marketing’. Attraction marketing involves branding yourself and educating and teaching your prospects. Only when they trust you, they will join you!
8. The ‘Me’ Generation
The traditional ways of doing Network marketing, was in the ‘Me’ generation. This involves telling and showing people how successful you are. Look at me and follow me! Look at the cars I drive and the home I live in… Today we are no longer in the ‘Me’ generation. In fact we are now in the ‘We’ generation. It is all about teamwork and collaboration. So you hear things like this… how can we work together to make this better?
9. The Pay Plan
The traditional pay plans are top-heavy. What it means is that the top distributors earn big commissions, whereas the grass-root and new distributor struggle to earn a decent income. This will allow the top distributors to flash their checks for the new distributors to see. The truth is that when a majority of the commissions are paid to the top distributor, the balance, (very little) are paid to the others.
Do you realize that some of the pay plans are designed to make sure that you fail! This is frightening!
10. Attrition Rate
In many old Network marketing companies, the attrition rate is very high. Some of them as high as 95%! What it means is that after a period of time, (like 18 months) out of 100 distributors that are in your team, only 5 will remain. This is the reason why many distributors have to work on the business over a long period of time. They need to keep on recruiting new distributors in order to maintain their business.
As a conclusion, I’ll say that the old ways are still relevant, but we need to change to improve ourselves. Changes that are needed, to remain competitive…
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