Network Marketing or commonly known as Multi Level Marketing or MLM, you either love it or hate it. Most people join MLM with the hope of making money but unfortunately more than 95% will fail. Statistics show that only about 3% are successful.

Of course, the bad statistics doesn’t only apply to MLM. In fact, in the traditional brick and mortar businesses, the success rate is also about 3-5%.

If you’re interested to join a MLM company, take few minutes to read my personal experience with MLM. It may be useful for your evaluation and even increase your chance of success in MLM.

From my experience, there are four areas you need to analyze before joining any MLM company…

1. Product - first you need to look at the product and ask yourself this question: “What value can the product provide to its consumers?”. No need to analyze until you get paralyzed! Most legitimate MLM companies have high quality products. Just use your common sense, instinct and imagination.

2. Market - if the product is great, the next thing you want to look at is the market. Does the product have a market? A good product doesn’t mean that it also has a good market. For example, if you’re selling pager today, you will have a hard time because people are using cell phones nowadays. I don’t care how good is your pager, the market is declining.

3. Training & Support - I guess product and market are not too difficult to evaluate. You will do okay if you just use a little of your imagination or try the product yourself. Once you have a good feel about the product, the next thing you must look at is the training and support they provide.

From my experience, this is the most IMPORTANT part. To me, network marketing or MLM is the business of personal development. If it’s possible, attend and participate in their training session. Observe the people or leaders there. Ask yourself this question: “What separate the successful individuals from the rest?”. What kind of skills do these successful individuals have?

It’s very important for you to observe and confirm this because if you want to be successful in their organization, you need to pick up those traits or skills demonstrated by the successful individuals. It will be a journey for you to pick up all these successful traits and skills. That’s why I mentioned network marketing is a business of personal development.

If you don’t have a good feel with the people then with all due respect, you should not join the company no matter what they try to convince you. Just honestly tell them that you need more time to observe and familiarize with their culture. If you really feel that you can’t fit in then get out of there!

4. Compensation Plan - many people treat this as the most important part because the compensation plan is basically the rules of the game. It will explain how you get paid and how you get promoted to the next rank or position. Of course, the higher the position, the bigger the pay check. Now, talking about position, most MLM companies allow you to buy a position. They will use the word “INVEST”. They will tell you that you can invest in a higher position to take advantages of some of the bonuses.

Well, my advice for you is “DO NOT” buy or invest in a higher position when you’re just starting out. Just start from the base, learn, focus and grow naturally. If you’re doing extremely well in a short time then you can evaluate again whether to buy a higher position or not. This must come from your own decision. Don’t allow your emotions to take over or other people or your uplines to pressure you. Think and analyze carefully.

Concluding remarks: Success in any form of business is a process. I strongly believe that personal development comes first then success will follow. You will not achieve success overnight. Everyone must go through the process. Of course, some people will move faster than the others. So pick up the skills, grow them and move forward. That’s the way to success in network marketing.

From my experience, most legitimate network marketing companies are good. In my opinion, the two most important things are the products and the TEAM culture. You can’t work alone in network marketing, you must work in a team (with both your uplines and downlines). Therefore, make sure you can fit into the team culture otherwise you will have a difficult time. If you want to understand more about the human aspect of network marketing, download and read this FREE ebook: “The Worst Things About Network Marketing Are The Network Marketers“. Human beings are the most difficult aspect in network marketing. Read the book to find out why.

Network Marketing Business of Personal Development

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

(1 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Share This  |  Email This Post  |  Print This Post  |  Subscribe to It!
This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 at 3:36 am and is filed under Entrepreneurship. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.