(by 20 people)
Don't be fooled by MLM heavy hitters.
New School Network Marketing: 11-Point Manifesto Summary
Here's a new little cheat sheet for someone who wants to use the principles of the New School to recruit the new breed of network marketer. (Published 12.24.06)
It's very big print, so you may not need your bifocals. And the pages are laid out sideways - landscape style.
The new school NM approach is for someone who isn't comfortable with the old recruit recruit recruit methods; the 'tell them whatever they need to hear to get that initial order' attitude, and someone who wants to use their own strengths to make the business work, not just duplicate something that might have worked once for someone else.
Here's the PDF - on the house.
It's very big print, so you may not need your bifocals. And the pages are laid out sideways - landscape style.
Download it right here.
If you're not afraid to see every old principle turned on its head, you'll enjoy this.
So have at it and your comments are welcome and appreciated.
Should you do it?
Is network marketing right for you?
Network marketing is one of the most lucrative and sophisticated ways I know to earn good, steady income, and do good at the same time.
It's not just me talking. Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway recently bought The Pampered Chef, a compnay that Fortune raved about. And Ripplewood Holdings and Activated Holdings LLC, together bought the Shaklee Corporation.
And then there's the dark side.
Hope has turned to frustration for many people involved in it today. First, the continued insistence on recruiting reps who are pushed to sign up more reps is not yielding long term results - just the upfront quick bonuses that disappear soon enough. And it's ruining the reputation of the profession.
The image many people have today of folks who do the business, is a direct result of this singular focus. See "Quality folks don't do the MLM stuff. MLM stuff draws the low-rent, scammers of the world..."
Only a few companies recognize customers as separate from the sales reps. Yet 90% of of all companies' income comes from product orders from regular customers.
80% of those in the business today are women. 85% are part time. Yet all the recruiting, training, financial incentives and recognition showered on the 20% men, and to the 15% full timers. The throngs of others are treated like step children. Is it any wonder most of them drop out? Not much fun to earn little money compared to the rare few paraded on stage, and get zero recognition for your work.
Not a good thing. Ergo the new school of Network Marketing.
The new rules of the network marketing game, according to one woman.
#1 We do not rely on friends, family or neighbors for sales.
They're too important. They give us a place to go for Christmas dinner, a shoulder to cry on when things go wrong, someone to relax with, have fun with. We don't want to sacrifice our personal relationships for the often empty promise of earning a few dollars.The Wall St. Journal reported a study on 'happy retirement' which noted that people would rather have a friend to walk to the park with than have a shiny black German car in their driveway.
#2. No more half-truths, empty promises, or making friends just to make sales.
Why let our values slide just to make a sale? There are many other ways to find prospects. And each person can pick which one(s) they prefer doing.
Options for finding business partners appear in the book, "The Truth. What it Really Takes to Make it in Network Marketing." (by Kim Klaver)
Options for finding customers outside your circle of friends appear in the book, "If My Product's So Great, How Come I Can't Sell It?" (by Kim Klaver)
Both give examples of how to present without half-truths or empty promises. Arter all, don't people who really WANT a challenge, or who really WANT to make a change make the best partners and customers anyway?
Both appear on Bananamarketing.com and on the Amazon.com module below.
Options for finding business partners appear in the book, "The Truth. What it Really Takes to Make it in Network Marketing." (by Kim Klaver)
Options for finding customers outside your circle of friends appear in the book, "If My Product's So Great, How Come I Can't Sell It?" (by Kim Klaver)
Both give examples of how to present without half-truths or empty promises. Arter all, don't people who really WANT a challenge, or who really WANT to make a change make the best partners and customers anyway?
Both appear on Bananamarketing.com and on the Amazon.com module below.
#3. We give equal voice to people who have achieved modest financial goals.
For example, women who are in it to earn mad money -- $200-$300 a month -- to make life a bit easier or more fun, or to give them some independence. These "nylon women" are not turned on by stories of mansions and shiny cars, or promises that their business will explode. They want to hear about how people are using the product and being helped by it. Women in general don't explode; they pick up the pieces. Chestbeating and strutting don't turn them on; they've seen and heard too much of it already.
Fact: 80% of networkers are women. Some of the most successful marketers are evolved men who respect this fact, and know that chestbeating and exploding are not the way to a consumer's heart - or wallet.
See episode #13: 3 Tips to Recruit a Woman onYourGreatThing.com See "Kim's New Podcast" module below.
Fact: 80% of networkers are women. Some of the most successful marketers are evolved men who respect this fact, and know that chestbeating and exploding are not the way to a consumer's heart - or wallet.
See episode #13: 3 Tips to Recruit a Woman onYourGreatThing.com See "Kim's New Podcast" module below.
#4. We're in it for the long term, not for the one time fast start bonus.
We're in it for the long term, not for the one-time fast-start bonus. So, we don't need to pressure or hype people into signing up. We see ourselves as advisors rather than masters of persuasion.
#5. We get good at learning survival techniques.
- We get good at learning survival techniques. Hear how here.
- How else can one's self-esteem remain intact as we go through the 9 in 10, or the 999 out of 1000 people for whom our thing is not a match?
We say "No" first; we never beg; we watch out for Mother Theresa Syndrome; and we don't drag people across the finish line.
The marketplace is much more skeptical than it used to be. Network marketers, who actually talk to their prospects to make a sale, are exposed to all that skepticism more than most, and need to be experts at emotional survival.
#6. We learn from the greatest teachers of the world.
The Jesus Technique for Prospecting, the Buddha Antidote to Hype. Business models from Dell, Apple, AOL and cable TV. Even techniques borrowed from medical schools, like Cadaver Calling and Immersion. We apply these to our little businesses so they have the best chance to blossom and last.
#7 Are you looking for something to get you started?
Something to keep you going? A new idea to give your business new life? Something to stop drop-outs? A perspective on customers in network marketing?
We have audios for people in different stages of a network marketer's career, and for people who are wondering if this business is for them. Audios for both parts of network marketing - customer growth and recruiting. Revolutionary techniques for people who are tired of the old stuff. And advanced techniques for people who have been in a while.
May the scripts be with you.
See next module...
We have audios for people in different stages of a network marketer's career, and for people who are wondering if this business is for them. Audios for both parts of network marketing - customer growth and recruiting. Revolutionary techniques for people who are tired of the old stuff. And advanced techniques for people who have been in a while.
May the scripts be with you.
See next module...
The Books, CDs, Tele-Courses.
- Overview
- For someone who's discovered it wasn't as easy as they said it was...
These are the books, CDs, telecourses and programs I've developed over the last decade to show how you too, can do network marketing - and with class, style, and humor. And without sounding like one of those high pressure sales types. - Amassing Customers - 5CD Program
- The income from regular customers can keep coming in for years after the intial work to get the customer has been done. If one makes $5/mo off a $50/mo order, and has 100 such customers, one could earn $500/mo. That's without having to dig up new customers every month. And there's no limit on how many customers one can go after...
The only limitation is the percent a company pays you for customers. Make sure it's enough to make it worth doing, or find another product line to represent. - Amassing Customers - 343p. book
- How do you talk to customers so they don't glaze over at all the techno babble? How do you find poeple like you? That's the focus of this book, "If My Product's So Great, How Come I Can't Sell It?"
- Recruiting
- A humorous introduction to what it takes to make it in the business when you focus on recruiting.
Recruiting methods without relying on friends, family or neighbors. How to keep your organization together. - Recruiting Scripts
- How to filter through people who want a part time job from home, versus a business of their own. How to tell a big banana from a little one. How to talk to the 80% women who want to do this part time. Recruiters cribsheet. 5 CD set.
- Rent These Audios like Netflix
- Visit Jiggerbug's Network Marketing Page, hosted by Kim Klaver
My Top Three
- "How to talk to a woman"
- "I was stunned and devastated when, on our 40th wedding anniversary, my husband presented me with a divorce..."
- "The day I beat Martha Stewart 1.21.06"
- "...on this one day at least, a site showing women how to make money trumps a site showing them how to make cookies."
- "So, what do YOU call consumers who are not interested in your products or business?"
- "In a recent piece in the Harvard Business Review, the authors remind us what a normal person wants when they buy something. And no, it is NOT the thing they buy."
Kim's Blog
Short pieces - most recent thoughts for women and evolved men who want to have fun marketing.
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byKim's New Podcast: Talking About Your Great Thing
Like a radio broadcast, but online.
Fetching RSS feed... please stand byWhy I changed. Little eBook.
Why I went from rabid recruiter to amassing customers
- Why I changed
- This little ebook is a short take on why I made the change from rabid recruiter to an advocate of the pursuit customers who love the products like you do.
File is about 36 pages. Download it right here. Pass it on. The rules are: no changes, no commerce.
Deal?
Enjoy. Debate. Change. Or not. - Here's the original book.
- The eBook "Why I Made the Change" is from the book, "If My Product's So Great, How Come I Can't Sell It?" This is the link.
Did you fall for that?!
- One Man's Hype...
- "Don't Believe the Hype (He Says That's What It Is)"
That's a headline from the New York Times, spoken by a man who sold his business based on his own hype, is now being sued for it, and in his own defense, warns: - Expired?
- Is it time to dump the "Fake it till you make it?" routine?
Would YOU knowingly buy from a faker? - "Surefire Way to Riches (and That's No Scam)"
- Dave Barry's Money Secrets is a "hoot-filled volume loaded with 'sure-fire, can't-miss, no-nonsense, common-sense, easy-to-apply, on-the-money hypenated phrases,'" says the New York Times.
Like dangling this possiblity in front of the gullible: "Ask yourself this question: Could you use an extra $200 milllion or more in income per year?" If so, try....(whatever opportunity is being sold).
Delightful read. Makes you aware of just how you might be coming across to people...Just out.
Contacting Kim
Best way to contact me:
[Kim]@[BananaMarketing.com] or
[Kim]@[YourGreatThing.com]
[Kim]@[BananaMarketing.com] or
[Kim]@[YourGreatThing.com]
What others are saying and doing...
- Another Squid Network Marketing Site...
- Right here, ranked in the Top 100, is Ty Tribble's site, another anti-hype person.
Now there are two... - What I'm reading now...
- At the moment I'm deep into Doug Rushkoff's "Get Back in the Box" an eye opener, and totally fun and engrossing read. Like a movie...
- Seth's blog
- Someone needs a description?! Enjoy insights, mea culpas, and pearls of wisdom to add brain and fun power to your day...
My favorite quotes...
- 2. "Don't believe anything I tell you..."
- "O monks, just like examining gold in order to know its quality, you should put my words to the test." - The Buddha
"Do not go on what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor, nor upon what is in a bood, nor upon the consideration, 'The monk is our teacher."
Rather, he said, test ideas and actions in your own laboratory of common sense. When you youself know they lead to harm or ill, abandon them; when you yourself know they lead to benefit and happiness, adopt them."
-Huston Smith and Philip Novak, Buddhism
This is how the founder of the oldest organized group on earth, the 2500 year old Buddhist religion, taught his followers. Don't believe me or take my word for it, even though I reached enlightenment. Test it for yourself, then decide.
No wonder his people have stuck for 2500 years. They self-selected: They are the ones for whom his teaching made a difference personally, not because it was in vogue or someone told them to. - 3. "People don't want to buy a product."
- The great Harvard marketing professor Theodore Levitt used to tell his students, "People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole."
In an article in the recent issue (12.05) of the Harvard Business Review, the authors present their case for products that focus on a job - a la Ted Levitt - to create differentiation in the consumer mind. But what makes that SO HARD to do for marketers, they write, is that focusing a product on a job means,
" also communicating what jobs the product should not be hired to do. Focus is scary - at least the car makers seem to think so. They deliberately create words as brands that have no meaning in any language, with no tie to any job, in the myopic hope that each individual model will be hired by every customer for every job. The results of this strategy speak for themselve...the automakers' products are substantially undifferentiated, the average subbrand commands less than a 1% market share, and most automakers are losing money." - Christensen et al, "Marketing Malpractice: the Cause and the Cure" HBR, 12.05.
Can you say clearly what job the product you love did for you so you can find out if someone else might like that job done, too?
Remember, something marketed as "for everyone" speaks to no one, and is, as the authors note, "the wrong message for prosperity."
:)
From Amazon...
If My Product's So Great How Come I Can't Sell It
How to tell your story to find buyers for your products.
Amazon Price: $24.99 (as of 08/07/2008)
Get Back in the Box: Innovation from the Inside Out
A brilliant example of how to live and do business for people who love what they do.
Amazon Price: $23.95 (as of 08/07/2008)
Try Kim's Stuff: Rent it first.
This wonderful new audio book rental service, like Netflix, only for audiobooks, has the largest collection of audiobooks available...and they have all my stuff too.
Dare we collaborate instead of compete?
"Where all think alike, no one thinks very much." - Walter Lippmann
That said, here's my question:
Why don't we promote cross-company customers?
That is, why couldn't a rep from say, PrePaid Legal, and one from Shaklee or Innerlight, be each other's customers, without the paranoia of someone stealing them?
That said, here's my question:
Why don't we promote cross-company customers?
That is, why couldn't a rep from say, PrePaid Legal, and one from Shaklee or Innerlight, be each other's customers, without the paranoia of someone stealing them?
- Some years ago, Paul Zane Pilzner asked me why it was that people recommended representing only one network marketing company, when say, pharmaceutical reps represented more than one.
2. I told him then (and believe it today) that it's like trying to recruit for more than one religion. If someone gets into a business and promotes it as a real income opportunity to someone else, because THEY love it, see its potential and want to find others to join them, then, it's kind of like religion, isn't it? How many can one person be passionate about and promote? Oh - you don't like Christianity? No problem, here - let me show you Judaism.
I refer to people who do the networking business because they love the business model and have found a company/product they use themselves and want to evangelize. Not the junkies who jump from deal to deal looking for the quick score.
Now the products - that's a different story. The only companies that could play, (very few) are those that let customers be customers. They do NOT require a regular customer to hand over their social security number to the person they're talking to, and then sign the distributor agreement.
Did you know that in most NM companies, you can't just be a regular customer?! Here these companies say they have products to help the world, only no one can use them unless they sign up as a distributor. Fewer than 3 percent of those who sign on to sell do so regularly anyway, so most are just customers by default.
Where else but with a NM company do you have to give your SS before you're allowed to buy products? (They could be creative and figure out other ways to track customers, couldn't they?)
MORE...
