The success secret of most businesses is in their NETWORK. Look at the most popular brands, such as McDonald’s, Target, Re/Max, Sam’s Club, Ford, Coca-Cola, etc., and you’ll see that they all exist within national and sometimes international networks.
What is a network? A network is an interconnected group or system. For example, if you have a cellular phone, you are part of your provider’s network of customers. If you work at an office that has multiple computers, they may be interconnected into a network. You, your immediate family, your relatives, your friends, mates, and acquaintances – all of you are organized into a network.
The purpose of every business network is to widen its exposure to potential customers. Thus, the larger the network, the greater are the chances to be noticed by prospect customers. The greater the exposure, the higher is the revenue; the greater is the frequency of purchases. And this cycle repeats.
As a linguist by education, I pay much attention to the words people use. That’s why to me the word ‘network’ is a compound noun. ‘Net + Work’ – that’s what it is. When starting in network marketing business, make sure you have a “net + work”-type of attitude. Network marketing is not about getting rich quick or overnight. Network marketing is about building a NET through a tremendous amount of WORK. If you are lazy by nature, you either have to work on improving yourself to make yourself work or NetWork marketing business is not for you.
A Network has an incredible power. This power is called leverage. Leverage is the condition when limited resources are used to create substantial financial profit. The great assets that can yield such profits are people and money. Little money can buy you a nice piece of investment property. Likewise small group of people can bring you huge financial profits. In network marketing people are expected to duplicate themselves by means of other team members. This process often creates an impression of a pyramid scheme. But it is not. From a pyramid it only has the shape. The process of duplication causes an exponential growth of your business. You bring two people to your team; those two people each will bring two more, etc. If you’re an employee, you average shift lasts 8 hours. So you have to work 8 hours to make a living. If you are a network marketer and have 7 people on your team besides yourself, each of your team members will have to work 1 hour to achieve the same goal of an 8-hour working day. The more people are on your team the higher is the power of leverage, the less effortless the income-generating process becomes.
People use leverage on a daily basis. Let’s say you take a taxi to go to the airport. Let’s say your ride will cost you $40. If you are the only passenger you suffer a full $40 loss. Imagine you’re going to the airport with three of your friends. In this situation, all of you can use the power of leverage and achieve the same result (reaching your destination – the airport) with a lesser loss or resources for each of you, because each of you will only pay $10. Would you rather use 100% of your resources to achieve a result or 25% to achieve the same desired result? The answer is obvious, isn’t it?
Every business uses some kind of leverage on a daily basis, be it people leverage (like construction business) or money leverage (banks and other financial institutions).
But if you are self-employed (a dentist or an attorney), there is not so much leverage, because you only use your own strengths, education, talent, skills, abilities, etc. And your self-employed mentality tells you that you can do everything by yourself to save money, because you know everything better. What about time leverage? You have none, because you not only work hard, you work more hours to accomplish tasks that could be accomplished by some other professionals. You can have some people leverage when you hire a secretary or an assistant, but your results will not be even close to those achievable in network marketing.
Network marketing is not only about building networks using the leverage of people, time, and money. The largest network of all times is the Internet. It allows everyone to leverage its global power and build their own network. How to build a network on the Internet deserves special attention and I’ll spend some time in the future to touch this topic. But today, you can start building a network of content on the Internet and by doing this expand your web-presence and exposure to your target prospects.
Here, we come to the next attribute of network marketing business – Marketing. It’s unthinkable to build a network without marketing. But what is marketing?
There are a lot of definitions of marketing, but most of them come down to one simple principle - identifying constantly changing needs of consumers and provide a solution, and all this process results in an exchange of values. I know, this sounds too simplistic, but it’s true. Here’s the proof. Let’s say you need to drill a hole. You go to a hardware store to buy a drill (solution). You pick the type of a drill you need and pay money for it (exchange values). Buy the way, it’s not only the drill that has some value, it’s the benefit it provides – the ability to drill holes. This is what you pay for along with the drill, the benefit.
That’s why, if you think Network Marketing Business is about pitching people to make a sale, you’re cruelly mistaken. In this business, we build networks and we build them through marketing, that is, identifying our prospects’ needs, finding a solution and providing value.
These are the key elements of marketing you should never forget about. Always keep in mind the three pairs:
Prospect + Need
Need + Solution
Solution + Value
What does this mean for you and your business? All the three pairs above represent a relationship-building model. No network will sustain without long-lasting relationship within the network. But you won’t be able to build a long-lasting network without starting and strengthening relationships with your prospects. It does not matter whether your goal is to turn a prospect into one of your downline members or into a customer, you have to be able to identify that person’s needs, find a solution and provide value with that solution; Because your relationship with a prospect does not end when he/she buys your product or opportunity. When they said ‘yes’, that’s the beginning of you relationship with them, and this is the point when they give you permission to continue dealing with them.
Marketing is a huge topic by itself and it’s impossible to touch all of its aspects in an article like this. But without marketing any business would be just a hobby. That’s why studying marketing and implementing marketing tactics and strategies is a key to success.
When I was first introduced to the network marketing business years ago, I thought it was cool to be called a businessman. But, oh boy, I had no clue what it meant not only to be called a businessman, but to really be one. I had no business skills, no marketing skills, no sales skill, no pitching skills, no... you name it. I was just a puppet in the Network Marketing Theater. I was doing what I was told to do: “share” the opportunity and the product to my family, friends, school-mates, room-mates, etc., etc. I was told not to get disappointed when someone said ‘no’, I was told to be happy when it happened, because every rejection brought me nearer to an ultimate ‘yes’. Did I believe all this BS? Oh, yeah! Was it stupid? Oh, yeah, it was so stupid that I do not want to speak about it longer than a minute.
But who was I to learn from? My Upline was a loser; my fellow MLMers were unsuccessful like myself. I was preprogrammed to fail.
When you join the Network Marketing Business, treat it as such. But what does it mean to treat business as a business?
In order to answer this question, it’s useful to remember the universal goal for every business – making money. No matter what you say or think about it, it is true for every business on planet Earth. This is the foundation and you can build anything you want on top of it – moral purposes, charitable purposes, religious purposes, etc.
If you say you’re in business, please mean it. And if you mean it, do whatever it takes to generate income. If you will treat your business as a business, so will others. If you will treat your business as a hobby, money will be visiting your pocket as a hobby too. Every hobby can become a business, and every business can become a hobby. While the first one is good, the latter is unacceptable.
Being in business means to participate in income-generating activities on a daily, and even hourly, basis in order to reap the desired results. And now, as you know a lot about what it takes to be an attractive network marketer, one key activity should fill your working day and occupy your mind – content creation. Go to the next and final lesson in the series to find out more.
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