Article: How I Found The One Way To Succeed In Network Marketing
by Donovan Baldwin
When I first became involved in network marketing, I happened to meet many people who had been successful. I tried to learn from each of them, but it was difficult. I am a smart guy, I have a college degree, I have been in several supervisory and managerial positions, and have earned several awards over the years. Even so, the more I "learned" about how to be successful in network marketing, the more confused I became. Eventually, I was able to figure it out, and I AM successful myself. However, when people ask me, "How do I succeed in network marketing?", I sometimes feel just as confused as back then.
As I said, at the beginning of my network marketing experience, I was lucky enough to know two extremely successful individuals (they each became a millionaire with a different company) who, in turn, introduced me to the people who either had helped make them successful, or who they had introduced into their company and who were doing well. I was surrounded by people who had been successful with two different companies, and they were spilling the beans right and left. There was no way I could fail...except for one little problem. Everybody seemed to have their own way of building their business!
One guy, Maurice, worked only with mail order and looked like a slob. Pat was the epitome of the female executive and she lined up presentation after presentation. Becky had a million friends and just chatted them up. Phil had been a bartender and just handed a brochure to everyone he met. Ed had been in insurance all his life and began by going down his list of contacts. One guy, whose name I don't remember, blindly mailed 100 brochures at a time, and his business was growing by leaps and bounds. Heck, I went on a business trip to Odessa, Texas and left a brochure on a Wal-Mart bulletin board. Two weeks later somebody in Odessa signed up. All this was before the Internet became a big player in network marketing, by the way.
The list goes on. Everybody I met had a method, but, while some seemed pretty much to duplicate each other, most just seemed to be doing their own thing! I was confused. I would meet someone doing extremely well, and I would try to duplicate what they were doing. There might have been some success, but it didn't seem like much, and a few days later I would meet somebody doing something else, and I would try that...again with some success...maybe.
There just didn't seem to be a rhyme or reason to the methods these people were using. Extroverts were doing it one way, introverts another. One guy sold a service and then got people to become distributors after they saw how well the program worked. Another concentrated on selling the business, figuring that even if the person didn't want to become a distributor, if they saw how good the product was, they might buy that anyway. They both were doing fine!
In the meantime, I tried technique after technique, and eventually began jumping from program to program figuring that maybe I was just in the wrong one. Yeah! Maybe that was why they were successful and I wasn't. They had hooked up with the right program, but I hadn't. I was a smart guy, I should be able to figure out how to make their techniques work...if I could only get into the right business.
Jump forward to today. I consider myself successful. Working part time, I built a small, but active network in an excellent company, and, without a whole lot of effort, I have reached the point where I have not worked a real job in a year, and am making over twice what I ever made before in my life. And yes, I think I know the secret now. The problem is, people are still saying they want to do what I do, and then they don't believe me when I tell them what I do! I finally figured out the one way to succeed, but it actually involves more than just one technique, action, or set of actions.
Obviously, Pat, the woman I mentioned above, was the kind of person who not only liked to give presentations, but she gave good ones. Phil, the bartender, just liked to talk to people, and, when he found this really neat program with good services and a great business opportunity, he told everyone about it. Maurice had been doing mail order for years. He knew how to create the ads that pulled inquiries and then expand the initial contact into a sale or distributorship...all by mail. As Yul Brynner said in "The King and I", "Etc. Etc. Etc."
While the particular technique used WAS valuable, there were two bottom lines.
1. Each successful network marketer found the technique that fit their capabilities, experience, personality, and networking skills and opportunities. The stay-at-home mom called friends and neighbors. The car salesman kept brochures on his desk and mentioned the product to his customers. Some, like Maurice and George, the direct marketing pros, already had a successful system in place and just plugged in the product. For some, like me, however, it was necessary to test various techniques and find which one best suited their personality or particular situation or set of skills.
2. Once each of them knew that they were locked onto a good product or service with a good company, they didn't quit. They kept at it, even if it was just handing out one brochure a day, every day, month after month, until the sheer volume of their contacts began to bear fruit. Again and again when I read the stories of those who have been successful in network marketing, I am struck how ordinary people who achieved extraordinary results did so simply by doing simple basic acts day after day. When I read of how these people built their huge downlines and accumulated incomes ranging from a few thousand dollars a year to millions, I see that very few of them have an easily duplicated system...except for the part about telling their story to as many people as possible, fervently and honestly.
There it is. That's what I've learned! Are there individual techniques which will work best for you? Sure there are. I am on the internet. I have several sites either selling things or with links to sites which sell things. I get traffic to these sites by writing articles. If someone asks me how I make my money, that's basically it! Many people can't write articles. There are lots of other things they can do, but they will have to experiment with all the possible techniques and find what works best for them...over time! Some have even found that their successful marketing technique is to combine techniques.
Like I said, I write articles to create interest in, and internet links to, my web sites. Last month, I stopped at a Smoothie King to get my wife a smoothie. They let you leave business cards on the counter. I left one. A few days later, someone who picked up one of the cards became a customer! Two days ago, I stopped to get coffee at a local McDonald's. while getting back in my car, I was approached by the assistant manager of a local business who saw the magnetic signs I have on my car, and that's not the first time those signs have produced a lead or a customer.
Find what works for you, and that may take some time, and then commit to working on promoting your business every day.
Donovan Baldwin is a Dallas area writer and a University of West Florida alumnus (BA Accounting 1973). He is a member of Mensa and has written and published over 190 articles including several on network marketing. He owns Texas Prepaid Cellular an online cell phone store.