What Struggling, Despondent Network Marketers Could Learn from the STEEMit Community

My aunty - love her to bits. 

Caring, loving, she was almost like a big sister to me as I was growing up but I noticed our relationship change as she got seduced by a charismatic gentleman from UTAH at a MLM meeting many years ago.

Pre-network marketing, our conversations revolved around my schooling, general family stuff, and her obsession with my love life.

You know, normal conversations between nephews and aunties.

But...

After she joined Amway  - everything changed!

Over the last couple of years I've noticed that our conversations start with a 5 min small-talk conversation and then we go from talking about why I need to settle down and find wife to...

"Would you like to be your own boss. Do you want to work all of your life and retire broke without a significant pension...."

Hmmm.

As someone who has studied marketing and knows a bit about MLM, I asked her a question that left her stammering, stuttering and an inarticulate mess:

"How many retail customers do you currently have that reorder from you on a monthly basis?"

Her response...

 "Um, Uh , well..."

Rhetorical question - ha!

You see here's the problem with most network marketers...

They don't know anything about MARKETING.

When they buy their distributor pack and sign on the dotted-line, they are given bad advice such as:

1. Make a list of 100 friends and family members and approach them to join your opportunity
2. Stop people on the street who come within 3 feet of you and ask them if they're happy with their jobs
3. Walk around car parks and place 1000 flyers a day on cars

...and the list goes on.

But here's my view...

If you don't know how to sell a consumable product, you have no business inviting people to join your opportunity.

Am I being unreasonable?

Didn't think so.

Apologies, I digress.

Back to my aunty...

After seeing her stutter, I asked her how many NEW customers she was getting every month.

One thing I love about her is that she is brutally honest.

Her response...

 "8 new people."

As far as MLM stats go, 8 new customers isn't that bad. 

She had a strategy to get new customers but was hopeless at getting them to reorder.

So, I asked her what she was doing with these people after she had sold them her products.

Her explanation shocked me.

"Well, I make sure they have received their products in the post after they place their order and I call them once a fortnight to see how they are getting on."

Aww - bless her cotton socks!

Not her fault , just bad advice and a lack of direction given to her by the person who sponsored her.

So..

I asked her if she could benefit from speaking to her new customer weekly.

"You mean to see how they are getting on with the products? To check that they are using them?"

Well that approach would certainly be better than speaking to them every two weeks but she couldn't read where the conversation was going.

What I wanted to her to understand was that people in the direct sales and network marketing opportunities RARELY reorder products or stay in a person's team because of the magical berry ingredient in the weight loss shake or the extra 5% royalty bonus paid on the 96th level in the downline.

No.

People genuinely tend to buy from people they trust and she could increase the level of trust that people had in her if she switched her focus from chasing the reorder to offering massive value.

After I explained this to her, the first thing she asked me was...

"How do I offer more value than the benefits that they will already get from the product"

Valid question.

She was selling a weight loss shake and some other pills and teas etc , so I advised her to go to her local library or Amazon by some nutrition-related weight loss books and to pick the tips that interested her the most.

For FREE!

She took my advice.

Then...

I asked her to try a few of the tips and until she found 4 tips that worked for her.

And once she had experienced the positive results, to share these tips with her customers on 4 weekly calls.

Initially she thought it would be counter-productive because she genuinely believed that if the free tips would work, her customers would not see the need to order her product.

But I explained that her customers wouldn't really know whether it was the product or the new weekly tips that complimented the product that was getting her customers the result.

All they would know is that having a relationship with her and being plugged into a weekly call with her was taking them one step closer to achieving their goals/results.

So...

After doing this for a couple of weeks, she was amazed at how frequently her customers would call, text and email her.

Great!

And...

At the end of the month 6  of the 8 customers did reorder.

Progress.

Soon after they reordered she was on the phone telling me about her little community retail customers.

I was happy for her but I could tell she was a bit disappointed that all of them didn't order.

She asked me what else she could have done to improve her reorder %.

My advice...

Turn your customers into a community.

Her response...

"I've already got a community."

No! No! No!

What she had was an audience.

You see...

An audience is a person or group of people that you talk to/at.

A community is a group of people who talk to each other.

The key to building foaming-at-the mouth brand evangelism is to be a connector of like-minds, who speak the same language who share a common goal.

So, I advised her to connect all of these people on a weekly call.

To celebrate their success stories and to praise those who had made the most progress.

Human beings are weird, we love to belong.

We love to be led/directed and we love to be recognized/celebrated.

So...

She opened up a teleseminar account with a local provider and hosted a weekly call with all 6 of them.

Here's what happened...

All of her customers started to become friends. They looked forward to the weekly call, not just to hear the tips but to connect with each other.

And at the beginning of the following month 4 of these customers reordered

However...

Only 3 of these repeat customers joined her weekly call the following week.

She, my lovely aunt, couldn't understand why they were behaving so unpredictably.

The mind boggles.

Here's the reality...

Life gets in the way, people get bored and are easily distracted and that's just the way cookie crumbles.

I explained this to her and she asked me what she could do to re-engage them.

My response...

Get in front of them more frequently.

You see...

Her group training call once a week was great but as every day goes by over that week she was allowing something else to acquire their attention.

So...

I advised her to try to get in contact with her customers using different forms of media over the 6 days before the next call. An email on Monday , a text on Wednesday, a social media message on Saturday etc.

You get my point.

As I was telling her this I remembered an amazing strategy that I once picked up from a marketing Guru at a training course that I attended . I'm not 100% sure who it was now but it was either Gary Halbert, Dan Kennedy or Frank Kern.

And...

I asked her the following question....

"Name me one activity that all of your customers do on a daily basis?"

Being a smart-arse (UK terminology), she said "wake up and brush their teeth ."

I asked her , "What else?"

She said..

"Eat breakfast, drink a cup of coffee,  have a bath , get dressed etc"

So...

Following on from the point about being in contact with her customers more frequently, I suggested that if she could be in their house in some way, shape or form so that they would see her as they were living their day-to-day lives, they would be less likely to forget about her.

Less likely to get distracted.

"And how exactly am I going to to that?", she said.

I responded...

"Well, if they drink coffee, why don't you send them a complimentary coffee mug with your logo on it". 

"If they have a front door, why don't you send them a key ring with your logo on it?"

"Use your imagination!"

Once again, it's all about front-of-mind-awareness and subconscious programming.

Not in a stroke a white cat, with a sinister expression of your face while plotting to take over the world kind of way but just to be less forgettable.

Make sense?

She didn't take my advice though.

The problem is that merchandising isn't cheap. She is probably waiting until she increases her customer base and maintains the level of reorders that she has currently got before taking that risk.

Fair enough.

But I'm eager to see how her business will change if she decides to adopt that front of mind merchandising awareness approach.

I would love to have told you that she took my advice and she now has a massive retail customer base that has allowed her to retire and she spend her days lying in a hammock, drinking out of a coconut.

She's not quite there yet.

However, the most significant/valuable change that she introduced into her little home business was to CONNECT her happy customers and this HAS paid off.

Reorders are no longer a problem for her now.

If every network marketer took this approach the industry would have a better reputation.

Don't you think?

I hoped you got some value from this, my FIRST Steemit post,so  feel free to upvote it if you want.

No pressure ;)

Till next time...

J