MLM Success: No Experience Necessary?
If you spend any time on Google or the other search engines, you’ve undoubtedly seen ads for home businesses where it is boldly stated…..
NO EXPERIENCE NEEDED!!!
Well, I guess it is true that you need not have any prior experience in sales, marketing, or business ownership to START your home business. But SUCCEEDING as a home business?
Well, that’s another story.
I consider myself a fairly smart guy. Ph.D. in physiology at the age of 26, postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School, Associate Professor at Cornell University Medical College.
But when it came time to start a home business with my wife, Rosemary…… I was MYSTIFIED.
I mean, this was a whole new world!
I had never sold anything, never marketed online or offline…. but I was told that there was NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY to start a home business, so I dove right in.
What did I find? What everyone other network marketing newbie finds…
Confusion, Frustration, and Bewilderment.
Listen up guys… NO matter what anyone tells you….
THERE IS A LEARNING CURVE when you start anything new…. including Network Marketing.
How big is this learning curve? That depends.
- It depends on how much time you’re willing to spend learning your new craft.
- It depends on your level of experience when you start your business. Obviously, the more experience you’ve had, the farther up on the learning curve you will be.
- It depends on the business opportunity and how much in-house training they offer, and the quality of that training.
The last one was the reason we chose our current business, because they offered online training and education above and beyond anything we had seen (or have seen since) in the industry (the business is Carbon Copy PRO, and this isn’t a plug, just the truth).
But it still took TIME.
No getting around it… it just does.
Are you willing to invest in YOU, to get the training and experience you need, and be patient for the results?
I hear so many stories of people quitting their home business opportunity just before they are ready to reap the profits of their hard work. They become inpatient and disillusioned.
YOU CAN BE A SUCCESS IN NETWORK MARKETING.
IT MAY JUST TAKE A WHILE.
To your patience and dedication,
Dr. Bob Clarke
October 6, 2008; Cresskill, NJ
MLM Success Secrets: Can I Make Fast Money?
The quick answer to this question is: NOT USUALLY.
You’d be surprised how many people I talk with who really want to start a home business, or so they think. But when I really start asking the tough questions about their motives for wanting to be a home business owner, things often get a little dicey.
My first 3 questions are always the same:
- Do you have any prior sales/marketing/home business experience?
- How much capital are you willing to spend to get your business started and positioned in the compensation plan?
- What is your monthly income goal and how quickly are you looking to attain this goal?
By the time I get to the 3rd question, you can just see the eyes starting to glaze over. It’s about this time that they realize that a home business is going to mean HARD WORK and some MONEY to get it going and maintain it until a profit is seen.
It’s also at this point that I lose alot of prospects, but that’s okay with me. I’d rather find out now than to invest a lot of time in training and mentoring, just to have them drift away from disillusionment.
In the next few blog posts I will examine each of these factors in more detail, but in general, here’s the truth in making money with a home-based business:
- You’ll make money faster if you’ve had prior experience in sales and marketing, or if you’ve owned a business before.
- You’ll make money faster if you buy into the opportunity at a higher level in the compensation plan (consider this your capital investment).
- You’ll make money faster if you have a marketing budget that will allow you to get the word out. In general, the more you can spend in marketing, the more extensively your product will be in front of people, and the more sales you will make.
We’ll discuss these more in future posts, and how you can shorten your learning curve if you are lacking the experience that will put you in the winners circle.
To your prosperity!
Dr. Bob Clarke
October 4, 2008; Cresskill, NJ
Why is the MLM Failure Rate So High?
It’s generally accepted that approximately 97% of all MLM home business owners will spend more money than they make. This results in nothing more than a fairly expensive hobby, and ultimately results in MLM failure.
Why?
I posed this question to several of my colleagues in the home business industry and, to my surprise, there was an overwhelming similarity to their responses.
The NUMBER ONE reason that most experts gave for the high MLM failure rate?
UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS. People getting into the business for the wrong reasons, and expecting unrealistic results.
Who is to blame for these unrealistic expectations. I believe the fault lies with both the new business owner and the network marketing industry.
Many people start a home business NOT to build a long term source of income but to make money quickly. They need money to pay bills, to pay off debt, or for some unforeseen emergency.
They read the HYPE on the internet, or get caught up in the excitement of a presentation, and sign on the dotted line.
Next thing they know, they find out they have to spend more money to purchase more products or to get higher into the compensation plan to make the kind of income they need.
They soon find out that there are a whole set of skills they need to be truly successful, including sales, copywriting, and marketing skills that take most people years to acquire.
And they get frustrated.
What they really want is quick money, a lot of money is as little time as possible.
They did not sign up for the long term plan.
But that is what a home business really is. It’s NOT a get rich scheme, it’s a get rich slow scenario.
And we in the Network Marketing and MLM industry are also to blame. Because of the HYPE.
We set people up for their unrealistic expectations based on our “hypey” ads, our misleading sales pages, and our broken promises of full and complete training.
That’s the bad news.
The good news? There ARE companies out there that deliver what they promise in terms of training and support. There ARE companies that cut the learning curve down dramatically with their systems.
But even so, it still is going to take the inexperienced marketer some TIME to acquire the necessary skills to succeed in their home business.
That is why I make sure that all of my prospects UNDERSTAND UP FRONT that they will need to work at their business, to treat it like a business and not like a hobby, and to learn skills they may not have at the moment.
I make sure my prospects understand, REALLY UNDERSTAND our company compensation plan, so that they are not blindsided by any additional funds needed to get their business off the ground.
Do less people sign up with me because of this. UNDOUBTEDLY.
Does it bother me? NOT A BIT.
Why? Because the ones who don’t sign up are the ones who would drop out within 6 months anyway. They are not really looking for a home business. They are looking for extra cash. And most times they don’t really want to work all that hard to get it.
What am I left with? A team of serious entrepreneurs who understand that it takes time to attain success and that sometimes money has to be spent in order to generate more significant earnings later on.
And these people are HARD WORKERS. They are not looking for a free lunch.
They are my kind of people!
To Your Success!
Dr. Bob Clarke
September 30, 2008; Cresskill, NJ
Looking to Start a Home Based Business? Watch the Hype!
Enough is enough.
The HYPE in the network marketing industry is OUT OF CONTROL. The unsubstantiated income claims, the guarantees that can’t be met, the promises that can’t be kept. Enough already!
My wife Rosemary and I are network marketers, and up until recently pretty proud of this fact. But we are embarassed by the current state of online marketing. It seems that:
HYPE IS IN, INTEGRITY IS OUT.
Just today, I clicked on a website link for a friend of mine, one who I respect quite a bit. And up at the top of her site, I see these words…
“I guarantee that you’ll make $5000 your first week, or I’ll give you a free Flip camera!!!”
First of all, the claim is ridiculous. Unless you are an experienced network marketer with tons of marketing experience, or you are bringing a huge downline into a business opportunity with you, there is no way this will happen.
So what if it doesn’t and you call her on her promise? So she spends $125 bucks, gets you your FLIP camera, and pockets the remaining commission money she received when you signed on.
I call these types of claims misleading at best, unethical at worst. AND THEY ARE EVERYWHERE.
So what to do?
Well, I was lucky. I joined my current business opportunity on the advice of a very good business associate, someone who I trust and respect. And it turned out his advice was 100% correct.
But for the people who go into this blind, who have to place their trust in people making outrageous claims on the internet, I feel sorry for you.
How the hell are you supposed to trust people you don’t know?
It’s no wonder there is an atmosphere of mistrust, skepticism, and cynicism on the Internet these days.
It’s well placed and justified.
My wife Rosemary and I are doing well enough in our businesses that we don’t have to rely on hype.
We don’t need to exaggerate and we don’t need to mislead people to join us.
We market with integrity and we believe that we have to EARN people’s trust before they will join us.
It’s the way that resonates most with us, even if it takes us longer to make our millions than others.
At least we can sleep at night.
To your success!
Bob
Cresskill, NJ; September 15, 2008
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