Fact: "90% of network marketers fail within their first 3 to 5 months".
Why is the attrition rate so high in Network Marketing? What can be done about it to curtail this detrimental factor in an organizational downline?
If I were to pick a single reason why most people fail to recruit, retain, and have a guaranteed MLM downline is because you are taught to present your products and/or services in terms of how much money your potential prospect could make, you're taught to sell the opportunity instead.
Have you tried to entice a family member or a friend to look at your MLM company based on how much money he or she can make? When you do that, the obvious and natural question comes up:
Well, how much money are you making with that business?
At that point you have three choices:
1. Lie flat out to your prospect about how much you are making
2. Tell them the truth or
3. Tell them about your upline leader who is making the big bucks
I will never advise anyone to lie to a prospect to get them into your MLM dowline simply because that lie will surface early on. Once that person realizes that you misrepresented yourself, that's it, your credibility goes out of the window and to regain it back is extremely difficult, in many cases, it's just impossible.
If you tell them the truth, they would be left wondering...Well, if this business is as good as you say it is, why are you not making those big bucks yourself? How credible your business could be if you yourself are not making it? You can dodge the question, but your prospect will see right through.
The third case is even more damaging to your image because the minute you edify your upline leader as the person who is making all the money, you become a gopher, someone's running boy in other words.
You become someone who is bringing his/her warm market prospects so that this upline leader grows his/her network marketing downline even larger. I am sure you didn't sign up as an Independent Representative to wind up as someone's gopher, growing someone else's organization.
The sad part of leading with the opportunity to recruit someone into your business is that it gives you a false sense of hope, meaning that even if you manage to get that prospect into your marketing downline, the minute he realizes the money does NOT materialize immediately, he will quit the business, leaving you with that feeling of frustration, disappointment, and often times with thousands of business dollars totally wasted.
The real issue is...how can you recruit AND retain people in your MLM downline, right?
Answer: By leading with your products and/or with your services.
Sell the merits of those products to the consumers just like any other company that bases its business on the benefits of those products.
If you're selling health and nutrition products for example, identify your market, your customers, and target that sector of the market place with your marketing campaign.
Treat the opportunity as a benefit of consuming those products. You need to get a person to become a lover of your products first and foremost and then out of that love, that affinity to the product you can get a new distributor.
When you lead with the merits of your products and/or services that shift does two things for you:
1. It ensures your residual income, because now you have a customer, based on his/her affinity to the products/services.
2. Your retention rate goes through the roof because you first build the loyalty by providing a good service/product.
That person does not join in just driven by greed like most opportunity seekers. This is how you can increase your retention rate by 40%, 60% and even as high as 80%.
Remember that your compensation is based on how much of those products or services your customers and MLM downline members consume. It does not depend on how many people you recruit, it's all about customers. It simply depends on the consumption of your products or services.
Bottom line:
If nobody is consuming the products or services, then nobody gets paid a dime in your network marketing business.
Introduce the merits of your products and your services first to a hungry consumer market, as opposed to seek out greedy opportunity seekers wanting to make a quick buck.
One strategy is based on sound marketing principles while the other one is based on greed, hype, and pure emotional nonsense.
