One of the truisms of marketing is that people will tend to work towards the expectations you give them. If you expect them to slack off if you aren't breathing down their necks, they will. If you expect them to go the extra mile to make the whole process work, they will too. This tendency of people to "work towards expectations others have in them" is called the Pygmalion effect, albeit at something of a misnomer.



The original Pygmalion was the King of Cyprus and a gifted sculptor; according to myth, he sculpted out of marble the dream woman for him, the woman who was perfect to his expectations, and in the process, fell in love with a statue. The strength of his devotion, and the power of his love enabled him to beseech Aphrodite to bring the marble statue to life. This story has most famously been re-told as the play My Fair Lady, and it's actually the comment of Liza Doolittle to Mr. Perkins that's most germane to the discussion: She won't be a duchess to Prof. Higgins. She'll just be a Cockney flower girl to him - what makes her a Duchess to others is how they treat her in kind, not her fancy manners and new modes of speech and dress.

This applies to you, and the people who you do network marketing with. They will perform as you expect them to. If you raise your expectations and communicate them fully, you will find that people go to great efforts to meet those expectations. This process of "set an expectation clearly, and expect people to meet it" is one of the core tenets of leadership training taught in all of the Armed Forces, because it is the essence of instilling military discipline. If the expectation is that the men will do their job, no matter what, be it horrible living conditions, be it long periods of hard work with no respite in site, or holding their position with no relief in sight, good leaders will instill that belief, and set that expectation, and get it.

Perhaps the best example of this to be seen in cinema is the "Men Of Harlech" scene in Zulu. With civilians to protect, and a numberless horde ready to kill them, the men of the British Army at Rorke's Drift knew that if any one of them failed to do their duty, far worse things would happen to people they swore to protect, and while tens cannot harrow the hundreds and thousands forever, the expectations of the officers and sergeants at that battle meant that the soldiers filling the ranks would do anything to prevent themselves as being seen as the one guy who let the Lieutenant or Sergeant down, and by doing so, achieved one of the most incredible accomplishments in the field of military arms.

Now, it's one thing to hold hearth and home against a visible and ominous threat, and another to inspire your network marketing signatories to push to greater effort, or, at least, that's the common perception. In reality, motivating your network marketing associates uses the same techniques. You want to inspire them to put that extra effort in, to take that time to be persuasive, to direct traffic to your network, because it's by the aggregate of all of them that success works for everyone, and a money machine is built.

And the secret to this is the Pygmalion effect. Make it abundantly clear what you expect. Address them as a group and make sure that they understand that they're a team. While pressure is sometimes called for, expecting them to rise to the occasion will do far better, and give them an example to aspire to. Expect them to reach the greatness within themselves, and you'll be surprised (and they'll be surprised) at what they can accomplish.