Your distributor is standing at a party. An acquaintance says, Man! You look great! What will your distributor say?



If you have trained them, this person may become a customer or maybe a distributor. If you have NOT trained them, who knows. This is the essence of network marketing.

After 24 years in this industry, one of the things that frustrates me the most is the get rich quick mentality that some people in this industry sell. Hey, don't get me wrong. I am a true believer in the opportunity our industry supplies. BUT, it only works when some basic principles are applied.

he companies that succeed long term are those that have lots, and lots of consumers. By and large, the way consumers are found is the old fashioned way, one at a time.

Consider this fact, Acme Inc pays out 50% commissions, has an average order size of $100. For each distributor that makes $50,000 a month, there must be 1,000 people who purchase product and make 0 commission.

This is assuming all of the commission for these 1,000 people go to the leader, it doesn't, other distributors have to be paid. The leader will probably only get 10-20% of the commission. So a company will need 5,000-10,000 consumers to support each $50,000 leader.

So how do you get all of these consumers, you train your distributors on the basic skills of building a downline. What are those skills and how do you train on them?

Truthfully, the only difference between you and MLM experts is time. If you'll invest a little more time in reading, you'll be that much nearer to expert status when it comes to MLM.

Basic sales skills have not changed much since man first tied a rock on a stick, called it a hammer and sold it cave to cave.In direct sales this process has three basic components:

1. The 5-second hook: You have to catch someone's attention enough to get them to stop and listen. Remember the classic Herbalife? "Lose weight now, ask me how?" buttons.They begged a question. A good company will have several hooks -- different people are comfortable with different styles.

2. The 30-second pitch: Now you need to get them interested enough to listen to a presentation, but you are not somewhere that a full-blown presentation would be appropriate.So you pitch them, it has to catch their interest, but not make them feel like you have waylaid them. This is hard to learn.It is hard to make a coherent, reasonable, exciting, pitch in 30 seconds- 2 minutes.

3. Presentation and close: This is where a clear concise roadmap is laid out explaining the rational for the company.Now a distributor needs to be flexible. My 82 year old mother had read about a skin cream that sounded like just what she needed for her problem. She called her local distributor who ran right over, but would not sell it to her until she had listened to the entire 30 minute presentation, my mother was annoyed, when you are that old you don't have a lot of time to waste.

So how do distributors learn these basic skills of hook, pitch, presentation and close, they must get trained. These are not incredibly difficult skills, but people don't naturally have them either. They must be trained and practiced, companies need to have well thought out hooks and pitches that distributors can use. Because in the end this is a person to person business and when your distributor is standing next to a potential distributor or customer you need to have trained them on something to say.

In the end, it is all about having a volunteer sales force that is trained to promote your product. It doesn't come naturally.Training is the key.

As your knowledge about MLM continues to grow, you will begin to see how MLM fits into the overall scheme of things. Knowing how something relates to the rest of the world is important too.