What It Takes to Win at MLM
Virtually every MLM company has its “rags to riches” stories of everyday people who went from poor or modest beginnings to earning more money in a month than most people bring down in a year. These range from a couple living in their in-law’s garage, to a bankrupt minister in Texas, and a young man in Taiwan who rode his bicycle to opportunity meetings. These people, and thousands more have their own unique stories to tell.
Yet, across the business—you will find striking similarities in the ultra-successful people in all companies. These common traits are the prerequisites for long-term success in the business. Here are some thoughts that crossed my mind as I was writing the newly revised 4th edition of How to Build a Multi-Level Money Machine. What do all of the success stories in our profession have in common?
Everyone in the group is a dreamer…
They stopped buying the gloom and doom of the masses, and reconnected to the vision of greatness we all once had for ourselves. If Morpheus were to offer them the red pill or the blue pill, they would always choose the trip down the rabbit hole, rather than the safety of the Matrix. Because they know that in the new reality, the safe choice is where the real risk is. Those who choose being “safe” become the worker drones in the collective. The people who are willing to take what the herd would perceive as risks, are the ones who reap the reward of a life worth living.
Everyone in the group is a critical thinker…
They reject herd thinking and practice discernment. They are curious by nature, and open to challenging their most deeply held foundational beliefs. They are not cynics, but they are skeptical of conventional wisdom, they question authority, and they want to know the reasoning behind a premise. They know that any beliefs they have that serve them will survive a healthy skepticism, and any beliefs that don’t stand up under scrutiny need to be replaced.
Everyone in this group is a worker…
They don’t look for the free lunches and get-rich schemes. Far from running away from work, they get up, throw the sheets off the bed and actually look forward to work! Being a network marketing professional means welcoming challenge, growth, adventure, and helping others while helping oneself. So they love what they do, and don’t need a weekend, a six-pack and ten DVDs to escape from their “job.” They have discovered how to balance work and life and bring meaning to both.
Everyone in this group is a good teacher…
Here’s why: About ten percent of people are sales types. They like to sell; they’re good at it; and they don’t fear rejection. About ninety percent of the population rank selling right up there on their list of things to do along with jumping into a pit of rattlesnakes. The mere thought of rejection sends them scurrying for the cover of their comfort zone.
If you make cold calling, knocking on doors and approaching strangers on street corners part of your recruiting strategy—you will scare away ninety percent of your prospects instantly. Why? Because they cannot see themselves doing those things.
In fact, only one person in a hundred will be successful with those types of approaches. Worse yet, because they do not duplicate, they will have to keep sponsoring massive numbers on a monthly basis just to keep their income steady. All the rah-rah hype they can muster will not change this. They have no residual income security and will have to rally and rebuild lines every few months.
By contrast, successful network marketers concentrate on simple, duplicable actions that they can teach to anyone. Their number one priority is making sure that their organization knows everything they do. They do not knock on doors like encyclopedia salesmen, but rather, become their own best customer.
Everyone is this group is also a student…
They have a passion for lifelong learning, and set aside daily time for quiet reflection and self-development. It’s important that you continually sharpen your saw. Books, DVDs, CDs, or online seminars – the medium is not important. What matters is that you dedicate yourself to always being a little better today than you were yesterday.
Everyone in this group is a leader…
They weren’t born a leader. Nobody appointed them to the position, and they couldn’t care less about titles, hierarchy, or conformity. They are called to lead from the small still voice in their soul. They lead because they have belief. Belief in a better way, belief in contributing to others and a belief that prosperity is everyone’s birthright. And they know that this comes with a responsibility to share that belief with the larger community.
So how do you grade yourself on the qualities above? And any other ones you think I missed? Please check in below and share your insights
.
-RG
It takes ‘courage’, which is having fear but acting in spite of it, because your dreams are bigger than your fears. It requires ‘patience’ and the understanding of delayed gratification. You must have a ‘belief’ in yourself and the network marketing industry. Finally, it takes ‘commitment’ and a willingness to work on yourself daily and to develop leadership skills necessary to lead your team to victory.
I believe everyone in this group is a good listener. They listen to what others say and they connect on an emotional level. They show they care about the other person and what their needs are.
They are artists, they paint pictures in their prospects and group members minds. They communicate thoughts very clearly.
They overflow with conviction and enthusiasm for what they are doing.
~ Dorene
Hi Randy,
Thanks for all you do.
I believe another skill that is important to develop is power of observation. This is more than being a good listener. It is awareness of the people and physical world around us, and the ability to recognize our appropriate opportunity.
Your tele-seminar earlier this week was about adapting this skill in virtual settings, social networks, etc. It’s not just what we do and say that matters. We have to get the timing right as well.
Mary Jo
Wonderful insights Randy, thank you.
A good friend shared his 3 secret to success in the MLM business:
1. BELIEF IN THE COMPANY YOU REPRESENT. Whichever company you distribute products for, make it your own and believe you’re backed by a powerhouse that is there for you as you are there for it.
2. BELIEF IN THE PRODUCTS YOU DISTRIBUTE. Become a product of the product. We talk best to others about the products we truly believe in and love. And when you consume them dutifully and with a positive attitude, people will take notice and approach you.
3. BELIEF IN YOURSELF. Belief that YOU CAN DO THIS. That YOU CAN recruit with passion, train with passion, make your organization grow steadily. And most importantly, that if you add passion and duplicability to your work, the system will work in your favor.
If I coud summarize it, its about BECOMING a network Marketing, NOT DOING network marketing.
Federico
Randy,
Thank you for these very true statements in your article. I beleive that “Money is the outward expression of inward succsess” Just like you need to “Water the root to enjoy the fruit.”, it’s very important to water you mind with positive re-enforcement everyday by having definate and precise goals.
I have two very simple goals everyday. # 1. To make a new friends and # 2. To leave things better than I found them. I find these two very achieveable goals helpful in creating balance in my life and reward you daily. People remember acts of kindness and will gavitate towards uplifting individuals.
Nothing happens in America until somebody buys something. Without action, nothing happens. We all start selling from the day we’re born by expressing our needs for food and confort… “Walk in Balalnce”
HI!
I like the subject of this blog, so I decided to translate it and share it with some leaders in my company.
One of them ,Murielle, answered this for you I have translated it into english
Here it goes:
What to say besides, everything was said in my view! My reflexion would be:
To be a leader in network marketing , it is necessary to love people, to want to protect them, to guide them, to receive them, to take them by the hand and to show them the way, to encourage them, to support them in good as in the least good instants, to exceed our frustrations of human beings to wanting to do things in our way, to share what we are, not to judge and to let go those who enter and those who go out, to inspire those who want to succeed in surpassing themselves, to aim higher and to help them to get up again when they fall, to make small steps and big steps, to continue thinking that they can make a difference in the life of people, even if one month it did not go as they wished it.
Believe in a better world and give the best of ourselves so that every person can feel that paradise can be created here on EARTH as in heaven, that all that can be possible by turning our attention to essentials; see beauty in the infinitely small and at the immensely big things and have a feeling that they are part of a WHOLE and that WHOLE has its reason to be and that it links us to every one and each other.
Such is the design that life let me foresee and invited me to follow so that I can touch the face of God, this concept which they say “unspeakable of” since to name it, is to reduce it to a picture, to a presentation which restricts it in its infinity greatness, unthinkable for the human mind but that exists to the same degree as the wind exists.
So, goes life according to its comprehension and its truth, every being advances with the presents that life or God, gave him and transforms into gold or lead all that he touches. Is it the hand of God which accomplished it or is it man, the instrument of God, which demonstrated its potential that had stayed in a latent state waiting that this rise of Kundalini manifests itself up to the outside?
Such is question? It belongs to you now to answer it.
ML,
The instrument of God.
I agree with what she says, you have to believe in people and be servant to them.
Marcel
Randy,
Dude, get your videos onto Amazon S3 services so they will stream without all the dropped frames. Having crappy video streaming kills the message you’re trying to send with the MLM Revolution. Do it!
Every successful network marketer has patience and diligence as core personal character traits. Without any of these they would have never been able to create a team and income of any significance.
Dear Randy:
I’m so looking forward to meet you!! You´re a great sensei.
Another great skill one should develop is to be a great LISTENER, in that way we can know what our prospects need to become our partners and make an easier way for them.
Randy..
Back in the last “recession” (Depression in Oregon), the socialist crowd around Carter had blown the interest rate’s sky high, going from prox 8.5% to (get ready) 22.5% on home loans!
Needless to say, our up-to-then very successful Real Estate Business in the rural mountain area of Northern California was soon losing money.
Acting (for the first time) on the advice I learned when I got outa the war and worked in sales in New York City…. (farm boy from Colorado wanted to see what THAT would be like)
It was one of the best experiences in life, all high quality sales with dignity and professionalism. One day the owner got our attention in a sales meeting, and said: (assume Yiddish accent) “Boys, I vant to giff you da best advice wot I can giff you for da rest uff your lyffe. Here it isss: Your foist loss iss alvays da cheepust”
Translated: YOUR FIRST LOSS IS ALWAYS THE CHEAPEST.
It sounded profound to a twenty year old just outa the war, so I wrote it down, but made error after error in life because I did not apply that to marriages, relationships, and the like. This stems from making emotional decisions instead of hard line practical ones.
Failure to remember that slogan cost me untold amounts of money.
So in THAT recession, I remembered it, and we promptly closed two offices and handed back 37 licenses and operated from our house.
Ah, but an advertisement caught my eye: “Some of our people are making 30,000 a month in Health and Nutrition”
“Yeah, right”, said the hyper skeptic, me. “some one’s brother in law had a ton of merchandise credited to him so they could write a commission check and wave it around, forgetting that he had to give it back”
Man, was I upbeat about it or what?!
So I cut it in half in my mind, then knocked off 2,500 and wound up at 5,000.
“If ANYONE can earn 5,000 a month in Health and Nutrition, I can certainly do it and more.
However, since that ad had cost at least 300 dollars, I figured that I would wait and if it appeared two days, I would know they were serious.
It did.
So I told Diane that we were driving to Sacramento to look at a deal in Health and Nutrition, since I had been deeply involved in alternative cancer therapy and other natural healing modalities since 1972 when I was a founder member of a Committee for Freedom of Choice which was created to raise money for John Richardson, MD, whom the evil powers were charging with “quackery” for DARING to use alternative means on cancer.
I did not tell her that it probably was MLM, since we promised a friend to give them a year’s hard work in AMWAY a few years earlier (closer to two years) and although we sponsored some key figures in our county and attended all of the programs and huge rallies, we made no serious money.
But it was Herbalife. A tiny meeting but it impressed each of us with it’s total lack of any con. All the products were proudly displayed and when we heard the marketing plan, it was like a rocket went off , for I could see that we could make many times more income from the same volume and number of distributors as would be the case in AMWAY, even if you could reach those numbers.
We signed, got kits and products, the products (the ORIGINAL products) were superior, we got results, customers got results and we forgot there was a terrible recession going on. In fact, I never thought of it at all, since we entered Real Estate in the 73-74 “slowdown” and went to work, not knowing we “could never make it in such slow times”
The main point:
We struggled, as you MUST do in MLM, going living room by living room, no shows after no shows, packing the projector and screen and products back in the car and doing the same thing the next day, etc..
In our fifth month, one of the first three people we brought in, NOT A SINGLE ONE OF WHOM WOULD HAVE BEEN LOOKING AT MLM A YEAR EARLIER, SAME AS US, called.
One was a builder, for whom I had been “their” Real Estate Broker. They had gone from prox 30 homes a year to THREE, and things were tough.
The third person was behind in his ranch payments, for he had a nice sales job before. We are talking Oregon now, in 1982. Depressed ? Yes. The enemies in Washington had destroyed the lumber industry and they stood at a recorded 22 percent unemployment.
So M. S asked us if we could go to Oregon and do a meeting for his first level’s relative , because “I can’t get away”.
As sponsors of the group, what did we say?
SURE!
Problems:
1. It was winter
2. It was snowing
3..You have to cross the pass into Oregon, no fun when the snow and wind “get ya”
4. Oregon was depressed
5. It was 7 days before Christmas
6. it was 480 miles EACH way.
Off we went. Even I , the optimist fun loving Irishman, began to think:
“Who is going to show up on a snowy night a few days before Christmas?”
The miles became longer.
We got to the hotel, went in, and the ROOM WAS PACKED!
Does that raise your spirits? Ha! I hit the front of that room with raw power and things went so well that people ran home and brought more people, so we did TWO meetings, and when it was over, A and J had qualifed as Supervisors, the top position, as did two (I think) more, and there were many 300 to 600 dollar orders.
My long term friend Bill (we fought commies together) said: “Bob, I ain’t goin to that meeting. I can’t believe that you’re in a weight loss business. I sure ain’t gettin into any business to take fat offa women’s butts, nickle and diming it”.
“Who asked you, turkey?”, says me.
“I’m going”, said his wonderful wife.
She signed, never having done anything like this in her life, which was then about 56 years.
THE FOLLOWING MONTH, JANUARY OF ’83, SHE SOLD FOURTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS WORTH OF PRODUCTS.
Bill called and said.. “we need more products, so we are flying down before the bank takes back our airplane, and then we’ll all go to Los Angeles”
“Wait a second, Mr Control Freak, tomorrow is Christmas Eve and what happened to that nickle and dime business of taking fat offa women’s butts?”
“I learned a lesson”, says he. Quite an admission.
And the five of us, my first second and third levels, NONE of whom would have glanced at MLM nutrition a year earlier, ALL made it to the top producer’s club in seventeen months, and for that all too brief shining moment, before the media “hit’, we traveled the world, even to a week in Sydney, Australia.
What recession?