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What Makes a Network Marketing Business Go

By Dan Lambeth

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Published: 09Mar2010
Word count: 911
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A network marketing company needs the same thing as a traditional, or brick and mortar, business to survive. It matters not what you call it, MLM, Direct sales, Affiliate marketing, Network marketing or any online business as well as any other type of business, they all need sales or revenue coming in.

You accumulate revenue through sales and marketing. A great marketing plan is the key to every business. You can have the most awesome product ever and it will not matter if you do not have an effective marketing plan because no one will know or care about it.

Sales is the only action that brings in money and every other action uses up money so your marketing plan is the most important function of any business. One of the most well known guru's in the business, Robert Kiyosaki, talks about this in his book "The Cashflow Quadrant" on pages 27 - 28.

He says people approach him all the time to talk about raising money for their projects. He can tell immediately where their focus is by what they are saying. If they talk about how their product is better than another or how nobody can compete with their product, he waits till they are finished and asks them, "Can you personally cook a better hamburger than McDonalds?" He says he has never gotten any other answer than "yes" and then he asks them, "Why does McDonalds make more money than you?"

Most people make the connection right away but some never get it. They don't understand that the skills of selling and delivering are way more important than the product. That alone should tell you that the most important skills any business owner can develop are sales and marketing.

The point is no matter how good the product, plan, leadership, etc... THEY will not make you rich. You may believe with every fiber of your being that yours is the best ever but you should know that everyone else thinks the same thing about theirs. The best marketers are the ones that are the best at communicating how good their product or opportunity is.

Do not misunderstand me. You need to have a high quality product or service and you need to know about it but it is not enough just to be an expert on your product or service. You need a marketing plan that communicates effectively how your product can help your prospects.

Most folks think that "word of mouth" advertising is the best form of advertising out there. Just so you know, it is not and to show you why, think about this, no one likes to be "sold to." That is why few people will actually buy from telemarketers, door to door salesmen, and those guys selling watches on the street corner.

When you want to buy something you usually go looking for it and, if you have seen some effective advertising, you will look for that particular product and if you haven't, you will look at what is out there and pick from the promotional ad that appeals to you.

There is something you need to realize about network marketing. A lot of people forget about the marketing part of network marketing. That may sound silly but you will know what I mean when you understand that;

1. Word of mouth advertising doesn't really work and LEADING network marketers use marketing like every other kind of business out there.

2. Just because one on one marketing is used does not mean it is an effective form of sales and marketing.

3. Most of the marketing materials you get from your primary company only talk about the features of the product and the opportunity and fail to mention the benefits or how those features will help consumers or representatives.

4. The "old school" proven system of "warm list", referrals, home parties, and hotel meetings is not all it is promoted to be.

One of the biggest problems with those old school methods of recruiting is you spend all of your time prospecting. Then a lot of your effort is a waste because most of your prospects have not been qualified and are not interested and in fact may even hate network marketing.

If you are lucky enough to sign up some of your friends most of them will not last long. Some of them just signed up so you would leave them alone and others signed up to see if they could make some easy money. But once they figured out it would take work they dropped out.

One thing is for sure, if you are not making money you will not stay in. People that you approach with your opportunity are usually not going to go in with the right attitude if you do get them to sign up.

If you have a system set up that qualifies your prospects and generates many leads per day, doesn't it make sense that you wouldn't have to work nearly as hard to build your business?

Not only would you stop using your limited personal contact list as a prospect source but if you got some real marketing training and learned to generate your own leads online you would have a never ending source of prospects that are interested in what you have and you would have effective marketing strategies that you could teach to them.

This would greatly improve their chances of success and that would help your retention rates tremendously.

Dan Lambeth, Network marketing on the Internet has many advantages. I learned how using my marketing system which is a funded proposal and has over 20 affiliate programs. It has weekly training sessions that are recorded and posted in the members back office to be reviewed as often as needed. To get your blueprint to MLM success visit my blog and get my newsletter with free marketing training.

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