("Having A System For Your Success!" : MLM Network marketing secrets - is another great article about mlm, network marketing and a little about home based business on mlm network marketing In the 1970s, franchising revolutionized the business world. The concept, which was quite controversial at the time, was that the parent company (franchiser) would design a complete business plan, including site selection, operating procedures, purchasing requirements and employee training.)
"Having A System For Your Success!"
By Randy Gage
In the 1970s, franchising revolutionized the business world. The concept, which was quite controversial at the time, was that the parent company (franchiser) would design a complete business plan, including site selection, operating procedures, purchasing requirements and employee training. They offered this expertise and complete system for an up-front investment and some kind of royalties on sales.
The person who licensed the business (franchisee) gave up a percentage of his or her profits, but dramatically increased their chance of business success. These were "turnkey" operations. In other words, you turn the key and you're open for business.
There were step-by-step procedures to follow for each facet of the business, from the simplest detail (what brand of straws to use) to the most complex (how to lay out the kitchen equipment for maximum productivity).
McDonald's, of course, is the consummate example of that. Go to any store, anywhere, at 7 o'clock in the evening and you're likely to find it being run by a 19- or 20-year old who just recently graduated from teenage acne. It's possible this 19-year old has a mother who won't let him borrow her Volvo because she doesn't trust him with it. Yet, this same 19-year old is successfully running an operation that does in excess of $3 million a year in sales. What's the secret?
A system.
One of the most complete, specific and tested systems ever developed. A system that can turn any 15-year old into an effective, efficient and productive employee. One to three items go in this bag; four to six items go in the next size bag; here're the napkins you use; here's where you get them from; here's what day of the week you order them; and here's when they'll be delivered.
You see the same thing in the military. Eighteen-year old kids are flying fighter jets that cost more than the gross national product of developing countries. But there's a pre-flight checklist, an in-flight checklist, a post-flight checklist, probably a checklist just for the checklists.
Having this kind of system to follow created a quantum leap in the success ratios of start-up businesses. Today, as then, franchises have a dramatically higher level of success than independent businesses.
In the 1970s, a former beer truck driver from North Carolina was to revolutionize the Network Marketing industry the same way. This occurred when that driver, a fellow named Dexter Yaeger, joined the Amway Corporation. Although Amway had been established for many years, it was basically a collection of small time retailers, many selling soap door-to-door. Yaeger had a vision for the possibilities of building an organization.
At the time he joined, the Amway Corporation had no real system for organizational growth. Its system was exclusively devoted to retailing. Dexter's survival instincts and business savvy led him and his wife Birdie to develop a duplicatable system for their organization to replicate. Yaeger set out to construct his system, and the rest is history. Last year, his organization, which numbers in the hundred of thousands worldwide, produced retail sales in the neighborhood of several billion dollars.
Other Amway distributors, most notably Bill and Peggy Britt, and Ron and Georgia Lee Puryear, have followed in their footsteps. These distributorships are a prime example of the power of creating a duplicatable system and reaping lifetime residual income. Your goal is to find an organization with a complete, duplicatable system to follow. As I said earlier, it's a whole lot easier if the basic structure comes from the company, with minor variations put in place by your sponsorship line. Now, let's look specifically at what a system is, and why it's so important to you.
A system should completely delineate and spell out the entire process that a distributor will follow: from where to find prospects, to how to approach them, to how to sponsor them, to how to train them to reach the higher pin ranks. For the sake of simplicity and your understanding - I'll use the term "pin ranks" throughout the rest of this article.
This term means people who reach the top levels of your compensation plan, whether they're called Diamond Directors, National Vice Presidents or Master Coordinators. The name comes from the fact that distributors receive a pin upon achieving these ranks. Each stage in this process should be clearly defined and taught to the distributor at the appropriate time.
NOTE: What you get throughout the rest of this article is my generic system. If you find discrepancies between what I teach and what you're currently doing, check with your sponsorship line before making any changes.
Here's a breakdown of the steps that might be included in a system:
Step One - The Pre-Approach
This is the qualification step - the one that determines whether you have a suspect or an actual prospect. This can be done simply with qualifying questions, or qualifying questions combined with a pre-approach packet. Pre-approach means before the approach. In other words, this step will determine whether or not you would approach them about the opportunity at all.
Step Two - The "First-Look" Presentation
This is where you actually make an abbreviated presentation of your opportunity, including the products. This is usually done one-on-one in a non-threatening environment (example: in the prospect's kitchen or at a coffee shop). When you first begin, this should be done as a two-on-one, meaning you and your sponsor together presenting to your prospect. This can also be done in a small group meeting in your living room.
At the end of this presentation, the prospect should be given the Step Two materials: a Company Materials Packet, also sometimes called a Take Home Packet. This should be clearly spelled out so every distributor on any level is using the exact same materials in the packet.
Step Three - The Complete Presentation
This is where the prospect sees a complete presentation, usually at a larger home or hotel meeting, but it can also be done one-on-one. Again, at this step, there should be a clearly defined set of specific materials (the Follow-up Packet), which should be given to the prospect.
Step Four - The Follow-up Process
This step might involve getting the prospect to another, bigger presentation (like a large hotel open meeting) or simply bringing one more packet of information to the prospect and encouraging them to make a decision. Check with your sponsorship line. In either event, the packet of information and the procedures followed should be exactly the same for every distributor on every level.
Step Five - The Enrollment Process
This is the step that takes place after the prospect says "yes" and is ready to become a distributor.
NOTE: This will sometimes happen at Step Two, the presentation, or Step Three, the follow-up process, and sometimes at Step Four. Each prospect comes in at his or her own speed. It's important that even if a prospect is ready to join at Step Two (that's great!), we still expose them to the information in Steps Three and Four to preserve the integrity of the system.
Like our other steps, the enrollment process should be completelyspelled out, step-by-step. The training that you receive should be the same, exact training that someone on your 25th level, five states away, will receive when joining your organization.
These five steps are the foundation for your system. No matter which program you're in, it should generally parallel this process. Again, though, check with your sponsorship line for specifics. The later steps of the system will vary more greatly from program to program. They involve managing organizational growth and developing leadership skills.
Overall, however, visualize a system as a complete, step-by-step process that anyone who joins your organization - whether they're a doctor or waitress, Ph.D. or high school dropout - can duplicate. It means you should be able to fly to a city 3,000 miles away - work with someone on your 50th level whom you've never met - and be teaching the same principles and specifics they've been hearing from the person who's on your 49th level.
Why is this so important?
Two reasons. One, for your benefit. Two, for your organization's benefit. Let me explain:
The reason a system is so important for you is that it ensures walkaway residual income. When you have a system in place - you no longer become essential to the process. When you disappear, the system keeps perpetuating itself.
Most people, even the successful ones in Network Marketing, don't have a system. It's because they built a network based upon their sales talents, or because they give great meetings, or simply their sheer strength of personality. They mail 20 cards a day; they call all their key people five times a day; they hold rah-rah rallies all the time; and they are 24-hour-a-day sponsoring machines.
I know of a person who prospects 30 people a day. These kinds of people sponsor dozens and dozens of distributors a year ... which they need to replace the dozens and dozens who drop out. They walk across the stage at their company conventions; they make lots of money; they live in nice houses; and they drive nice cars. But they certainly aren't living the lifestyle of freedom and controlling their own destiny. They've traded enslavement to a boss for enslavement to a business.
What these people do works. It just doesn't duplicate. They work hard and mean well, but what they are doing to build their businesses cannot be duplicated by the average person. Now granted, they're probably making a lot more money in their networking enslavement than they were making in their job but they're still enslaved. More importantly, they can't show other people how to escape the rat race, because they're still trapped in it.
With a complete duplicatable system, anyone - sales type or non-sales type, shy or outgoing - can do the business. The most important axiom in the business to remember is this: it's not "Does it work?" but "Does it duplicate?"
Let me give you an example. Let's suppose you took an ad on the Super Bowl to sign up new distributors. You could sign up 10,000 distributors in one night. But how many of them would have the one and a half million dollars it takes to run a commercial on the Super Bowl? Maybe one or two of them. And you know what they would do between now and the next Super Bowl? Nothing. How you bring in your people is how they will bring in their people. So this scenario works. It signs up 10,000 people. But it doesn't duplicate.
Having a duplicatable system protects your people - from themselves. Here's what I mean. Suppose you're in Shaklee and you sponsor a chiropractor. He thinks, "these are great nutritional products. They will help all my patients. I'll sell them in my practice."
That works. But it doesn't duplicate. What you find in this scenario is that our doctor will retail a lot of product. But he'll never go down three levels. Here's why:
Even though he may talk to people about the business, 99 percent of them will never get involved. On a subconscious level, even if the business sounds enticing ... they'll be thinking that to do this business, they'll first need to become a chiropractor and have 30 to 40 patients a day to prescribe to.
Likewise, the dentist who joins Oxyfresh and markets the dental care products in his practice. Or the radio talk show host who joins a program and promotes it on her show. Or the personal trainer who joins ENVION and sells the products in his gym.
These things work, but they don't duplicate. If these people worked a system (asking a qualifying question, giving a Pre-Approach Packet, giving a presentation, etc.) ... they would have brought prospects into the business the right away - and they could be duplicated. So you see, a system is not just for your benefit - it's for the benefit of your people as well.
Let me give you one more example:
Ten percent of the population are sales types. They love to sell, they know how to sell, and they love to hear "no." They know that after a certain number of "nos" - they're going to get a "yes." Sales types have no compunction about cold calling complete strangers to present them the business...
Some of which will sign up, due to our sales type's savvy sales techniques. And, of course, of these people ... 90 percent are non-sales types, who wouldn't make a cold call to a stranger to save their life. So they join, do nothing, and eventually drop out.
Sales talents, techniques and methods are great - for sales. But Network Marketing is really not a sales business - it's a business of teaching and training, a business of duplication. Using sales techniques - which work great on the used car lot - will actually backfire in Network Marketing.
When sales types join your program and you have a system for them to follow - it actually prevents their sales skills from working against them. You and your people have no security unless you follow a system. The system gives you walkaway income.
Let's go back to our example of the successful networker who doesn't follow a system. They're succeeding based on their dogged determination, sales skills and personal strength. They make a lot of money and they look successful to their group.
But if they took a month off - their income would drop slightly. If they took two months off - their check would be down 30 percent. If they took off three or four months - they wouldn't have a business to come back to. When you build with a system, once you secure a line, you can walk away and it will continue to grow. You set the system in motion, and once it's in motion, it goes on without you. It's the consummate example of using the leveraging power of Network Marketing.
Here's the important thing to understand about a system: unless you're the head of the organization that creates it - you must follow it religiously and never change it.
Here's why. Let's suppose that you don't particularly care for the tape used in your company's Take Home Packet. You know of another tape that you think is perfect. So you switch. Now your front level people see this. And they learn that it's okay to change things in the system.
Now, they don't particularly like the brochure used in the Follow-up Pack. So they swap it for the one they like. Now, for the person on your third level - there is no system. The message they got was "choose the materials you like and design your own system."
This creates two major problems:
1. You cannot go down and work in depth in your organization, because what you're teaching will contradict what they've learned from their sponsor; and,
2. Prospects are much less likely to join your organization because one of the primary benefits - a step-by-step system to follow and an entire sponsorship line to teach it to them - is no longer there.
Being a good leader in Network Marketing means submerging your ego and following the system set up by your sponsorship line. They are where you want to be, and they want to help you get there. If you don't follow the system - they can't effectively help you. One of the secrets to Network Marketing success is learning how to edify your sponsorship line and put them to work for you. If you don't follow the system, you're effectively tying their hands. They can't come down and train in your organization without de-edifying you ... which is a lose-lose situation for everyone.
It's necessary that you follow the system - even if you don't like it - until you reach your company's highest level pin rank and you are prepared to completely administer your own. That means create the system, provide all training materials, and provide all the functions.
This means your organization would be hosting its own conventions, leadership conferences, rallies, etc. - because your people can no longer go to the ones provided by your sponsorship line, since the training would be different.
This is a major jump - one that should only be contemplated when you reach the highest levels in your compensation plan and are prepared to develop an entire support structure that creates materials, administers functions, schedules speakers, rents auditoriums and the like. I strongly recommend against this unless you simply have no other alternative.
Final thoughts on the subject:
Some of you reading this are right now working programs with no duplicatable system in place. You'll never have residual income in this situation. This gives you two choices, neither of which is easy.
1. You can quit what you're doing and find another program with a system. Know that this will mean starting over and you will likely lose many of your people along the way.
2. You can take charge of your business and determine that the system will begin with you. It's a tremendous amount of work, but it can be done. I have had to develop systems several times. Should you go the route of creating a system - I suggest you put a copy of my book "How to Build a Multi-Level Money Machine" and my "How to Earn at Least $100,000 a Year in Network Marketing" audiotape album in the hands of your sponsor. The more levels of the sponsorship line you can enlist - the easier it will be for you. When it's all said and done, however, the final responsibility for your success rests where it belongs ... on you. You can proclaim yourself a victim and decry your lack of a system -or you can do something about it.
Recommended Resources The preceding is an excerpt from Randy Gage's first full-length, hardcover book about how to succeed in multi-level marketing, "How to Build a Multi-Level Money Machine." Randy is the author of "How to Earn at Least $100,000 a Year in Network Marketing," the number-one selling audio album in Network Marketing. He also created the million selling audiotape "Escape the Rat Race." To order these or other quality network marketing and personal development resources from Gage Direct Marketing, call 1-800-432-GAGE or (305) 531-7085. You can also find other quality resources from Gage Direct on their web site, www.gagedirect.com.
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