Network Marketing Companies And...
How You Can Overcome The Trouble They Cause
Network marketing companies do something wrong. Unknowingly - and more often than not - they do it by themselves and even ignore the consequences - to your disadvantage.
Here you get to know what it is and how you can make it better. You may not like what you will read here but, it's the truth.
What MLM companies confuse or do wrong is to put the money before people or effects before their causes in that:
- They advertise the benefits of joining a business. A method mostly used to sell you emotionally on the benefits of buying and using a product.
- They provoke an emotional joining decision while it should be a rational one.
As a consequence, network marketing companies show their downline teams the wrong way of promoting their business opportunity. New entrants will do the same and a negative viral effect unfolds. So what?
Let me tell you why and what's wrong with it
Prospects quickly perceive a risk in you. Growing your business by advertising the benefits of joining creates the feeling of risk in your prospects. To them it is a long way to reach these benefits. A way paved with too many question marks. Hence...
Many people simply ignore such advertising, especially when the benefits are outside the frame or reach of their own mind. See below why this way of advertising creates the feeling of risk...
Product benefits versus business benefits
Cause and effect for product benefits:
In case of the product, the cause and effect relationship looks simple:
| Cause: | : | You buy the product or service. |
| Effect: | : | You quickly get to feel the benefits of using the product or service. The effects are very predictable as they are built into the product or a result of the service. |
Not so when it's all about joining an opportunity...
The financial freedom, the Porsche or Ferrari, the villa and endless time for your family and friends - all these benefits are geared towards making you wanting to join - because it's the benefits we buy.
And this very benefit driven advertising creates the risk perceived in joining a business opportunity. See below...
| Cause | : | You buy in and join a network marketing business. |
| Effect | : | You don't get the benefits as quickly - even when you apply what your upline people tell you. There are no quick business benefits as you don't have to deal with products. Instead, you will need to deal with people from all walks of life. |
And as you know, risk increases with a less predictable outcome. So, network marketing companies' advertising is deceptive.
Do you agree that network marketing companies do indeed something wrong? Their advertising is not telling the truth!
It's network marketing companies starting a win-lose relationship with you just to see it turning into a lose-lose relationship in over 95% of all cases. What a waste of time and money.
The benefits of consuming a product and those of joining a business are not the same.
Advertising the benefits of joining a business is not the appropriate method to approach and find new leads and prospects.
Most network marketing companies put effects before their cause in order to get new leads for their business. In doing so, companies reveal their lack of win-win motives 
and their ability to act upon such motives. No integrity but, selfishness at work. And new entrants are given the wrong perspective right from the start. The result...?
Yes, your prospects perceive a risk
Prospects are aware of the difference between product and business benefits. Simply advertising the benefits of joining a business leaves question marks in the heads of your prospects. They perceive a risk and only see what can be done to them and don't want to see what you can do for them.
So the insight here is...The resulting question is...
What makes people feel safe or safer?
To answer that question in detail, allow me to take you on a small excursion.
What follows below is an explanation why humans behave in certain ways. You will see why and what we have to do to make people feel safe. If you want, you can jump this interesting section.
From my postgraduate business studies I can remember that:
- Marketing is about finding out what people need.
- Sales is about making people want what they need.
Often, sellers approach prospects without knowing the first step or what the prospect really needs.
Without wanting to dish up a lengthy discussion on needs versus wants, please accept the following light-weight definition:
A need is rational and causes you to want something. A want is emotional.
You do need to eat. But you have a choice as to what you want to eat.
There are even more choices such as:
a) where you want to eat and possibly
b) who you want to be with or surrounded by when you eat.
Yes, your decisions are mostly based on emotions. And you do feel safe making such a decision when you know why and how you can satisfy your need - here for food - most positively at any time.
When you know why and how you can satisfy your needs most positively, you don't feel any risk because you are totally in control of your own situation.
What if you are not in control? What if you don't know why and how you can satisfy your need for - let's say - more money?
See below...
When you don't know why and how you can satisfy your need for additional money with a given business opportunity, you will not be sure. And if you are not sure, you are not in control and you will perceive a risk. In this situation...
Your mind - or your control center - automatically switches into safety mode in order to put you back into control of your own situation. In this rational thinking mode, your mind tries to understand why you can earn money with a given opportunity. Questions such as the ones below occur:
- Is it safe (to invest my time and money)?
- Is it easy (to get into and work this opportunity)?
- Is it simple (to recoup my money)?
Each of the above questions has several other why, what and how questions attached to it. And...
If too many questions remain and if your minds' moral or value system does not agree with the answers it received, you start to make protective decisions. You doubt and reject any business opportunity with any network marketing company.
First, you try to find out WHY you can satisfy your need for making additional money with network marketing. When you agree with those reasons you make a rational decision to proceed and ask yourself HOW you can make network marketing work for yourself. So first comes why it should work for you and then comes how it can work for you.
When network marketing companies advertise the benefits of joining a business, they reverse the order and only tell you HOW you can benefit - not WHY. Your prospects are left with important questions. And that's why ...
Almost all prospects don't feel safe when presented an opportunity.
Is not telling the truth your way of starting a quality relationship? Is this how you would want to build your business? With deceptive means? I am sure it's not.
See more about misusing this fundamental cause-and-effect relationship.
The Chess-Game-Example displays what happens when you only know 'HOW' to move any one of the figures.
What does it all mean to you? How can you make it better?
Our prospects want us to make it safer and simpler for them to join our business than to do nothing or to join anybody else. We need prospects or leads in order to grow our business. As you know: prospects feel safest when they feel no risk.
Prospects want no risk and you need no risk.
So, how can we remove risk and what does it take? We simply need to know and act upon the fact that...
Prospects need to make a rational decision
Serve their need and help them making a rational decision. They will thank you for it, big time. Now, ...
How can you help them making a rational decision using the Internet?
The fundamental and most important ingredient any online business needs is the one that network marketing companies are having a problem with: Trust.
The solution is to replace Risk with Trust...
Your chances of getting this done online are much better than you may think. When you don't do what many network marketing companies do then that's your way out of the maze. Not promoting opportunities upfront and in deceptive ways.
Remove the risk your prospects perceive in you by getting them to trust you. Do what network marketing companies don't do: pro-actively answer all the why, what and how questions in your prospects. This way you make them feel safe.
Here are your choices on how you can do this online:
- Build your own content web site (no matter what theme). Use communities and blogs to share your experiences, thoughts and product benefits. See more on generating mlm business leads with content sites. OR
- Use your involvement in communities to introduce your prospects to a system such as this one which does the lead generation, qualification and education for you. OR
- Both of the above. That would be highly effective as you take care of both, generating reciprocal and residual revenue from product sales and sponsoring high quality people.
In other words...
Why a content based site (in tandem with a blog or forum)?
- Visitors who read your pages and comments are in control at their own end of the interaction and...
- You can give the answers people need to make a rational decision. Your prospects feel that it's simpler, easier and safer to deal with you than for them to do nothing or anything else.
- They will start to get to know you, your views and your actions, in short they start to like and trust you as a reliable, credible and safe to deal with person.
- Content sites increasingly win at the search engines. And they allow you to...
- Build a profitable online business which continues to attract visitors and to provide you with income, irrespective of the success of your network marketing business.
because it is telling you why what and how to build successful small business sites. The results speak for themselves. Many sites built with this action guide are in the top 1% of all sites tracked by ALEXA.If you want to leave the maze network marketing companies may have lead you in, in the top right corner of this page you will find links to helpful advice and resources relating to building a traffic attracting web site and how to use it to generate leads.
Network marketing companies should support their downline to find their own ways to make best use of the Web. People will find out what works best for them now and in the long-run!
Imagine you had an already working content web site on a topic you feel confident to write about. That site attracts targeted visitors who trust you and may already be your customers. At that stage, you could easily add network marketing to your income mix. And your network marketing company should be glad to have you as an distributor.
Not all network marketing companies allow you to build your own website (effectively controlling you and your business). That's why the tip below is important.
Whether you signed on with one or more network marketing companies, please don't use the company's name nor the name of any product in your web site. Simply describe the benefits of using such products. This will make you and your web site independent and keep potential claims at bay. Just read how you can do this with a content based web site.
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