I am not comfortable with straight out selling whether it is pitching a product or pitching an affiliate network marketing opportunity. My wife had already bought into a particular MLM opportunity and was hoping I would join her. She was already in real estate and doing quite well. I was told by our sponsors that this really is not selling! It is more like sharing information with family, friends and others about products. It is really word of mouth recommending, which we all know is the best way to attract customers. "In fact, the products are so good that they will sell themselves. You just need to open up your mouth and talk about them. And who would not want to share such good information with their friends, the people they love!" You have probably heard all this before yourself. But, for some reason, I found I needed to screw up my courage to open my mouth! And when I did, I felt uncomfortable and I felt a tenseness on their part. It sure felt like selling! I knew how much I disliked people selling to me. In this article, I would like to address this question head on. Is what we do in affiliate network marketing selling or is it not? And if it is, what are the consequences of denying it or soft peddling it? Is it true that we do "word-of-mouth" recommending of products? I want to explore the possibility of "selling" in a way that is not uncomfortable to me or the majority of other people who hate selling. I will introduce you to a totally different way of selling, one which is much more effective. Why "Selling" Is A Dirty Word in Traditional Affiliate Network Marketing? In traditional mlm you have two major objectives. One is to recruit prospects who will hopefully join your team and help you earn residual income and the other is to move products. In reality the former tends to get the emphasis and the latter is left to your own ingenuity. You meet your quota mostly by personal consumption, but are required to make a certain number of sales to others. Now, we all know that most potential recruits do not want to get into something that involves selling. When they ask, "Is this selling?", we learn to skirt the question. "Why do you ask? Do you like selling?" "No, that's what I don't like!" We answer, "Well you are going to love this! It is really not about selling. It's about "sharing" information about products. The products are things they are already using, only these are much better. You're going to love this!" How many of you have heard something like this? But we need to call a spade a spade. It is about selling! That is the heart of any business. In traditional MLM we have avoided the word "selling" so we would not lose prospects to our business. We want to get them in first and get them loyal to us and to the company before we introduce them to the hard truth that it is all about selling. The Most Potent Money-Making Skill in Business Ann Sieg puts it like this. "I discovered that the ability to sell, and more importantly, understanding how and why people do what they do, is by far the most potent money-making skill you can ever acquire. It is the beginning and end of all business success." So what happens in an industry, the network marketing industry, when you avoid the reality of "selling" to be successful in MLM? No, the products do not sell themselves! I had years of experience teach me that. What happens is that you have a whole industry which has an Achilles heal called "sales and marketing". Traditional network marketing is horrendously poor when it comes to marketing or sales. If you doubt me, check out any network marketing company to see what percentage of the goods sold are bought by members and what percentage are sold to outsiders. The vast majority are bought by members! What about the myth of "word of mouth"? It is true that word of mouth is a powerful way to spread good information. You see a good movie, for example, and you tell your friends. They in turn go to see the same movie. But do you see the difference here? When you recommend a movie, you get no commission on your friends going to see it. But when you use "word-of-mouth" to promote your products or your network marketing opportunity, it is not really word-of-mouth! You have a vested interest in their buying. You know and they know that you will benefit from their buying. What makes word-of-mouth so powerful is that there is no vested interest! Taking the Fear out of Selling by Using "Attraction Marketing" There has to be a better way of selling! When you do your selling after doing effective marketing it changes everything. You see, when you market you are looking for people who are "looking for" your business opportunity or your products. When you find "lookers," they come to you rather than you chasing them. Now just suppose you could attract people to you, either to your opportunity or to your products, and you could do it without approaching people and talking to them. You feel no embarrassment or discomfort in "pitching" and they feel no discomfort in rejecting your offer. Add to this the fact that they have benefited from the information, the valuable information, you have assembled for them to help them find or get what they are looking for, what they need. They now come to you, the one who educated them, and ask your advice. None of us mind the role of "advisor" or "consultant", in fact we kind of like it. They come pre-sold and we steer them to the product or opportunity that they so badly want. This is exactly what Ann Sieg discovered. She had been doing traditional network marketing for years with very limited success. When she started educating people, she found they came flocking to buy the products that they wanted. Then she learned how to do marketing on the internet. She developed a system which enabled her to sift and sort prospects by the hundreds before she actually spoke to anyone. By the time they got to talking to her, they were highly qualified. They saw her as an expert and they were seeking her advice. If you could do that kind of selling, the kind that focuses, not on products but on the people doing the buying would that bother you? What are their needs? Products are really solutions to the problems people have. A business opportunity is merely a solution to the financial need a person has to buy a house, or educate a child, or provide for retirement. Where to Go From Here? Without going into the details, let me suggest that if indeed marketing and selling is the Achilles heal of traditional affiliate network marketing and if indeed to be successful in building your own network marketing business you need training and "know how" in marketing, then it is up to you to get it for yourself. Do not expect to get it from your company. Supplement the good products and the good compensation plan they offer with your own marketing system. I recommend that you read further further about "attraction marketing" since I barely scratch the surface here. Enjoy the adventure!
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