How is your MLM enterprise like a fly?

Have you ever seen a dead fly at the bottom of a window sill?

It flew and flew and flew. It kept trying to get through the window.  It was persistent and never gave up, even to the point of death.  The fly doesn’t try and go around the window.  It flies to the light.

Jordan Adler shared this example with me.  He says if you have 18 flies and let them loose they will all try and fly through the glass of the window.  All they see is the light on the otherside and they want to reach it.  Meanwhile just a few feet away is freedom.  A few feet away is an open door.  All they have to do is go around the window but they refuse to.

What if one fly decides to go around?  The other 17 flies keep going. They keep trying to break through the glass and they never do.  That’s why we find so many dead flies on the window sill.

In your network marketing business many of you are like the fly. You keep bashing your head on the window of success.  Meanwhile just a few feet away is an open door.  All we have to do is fly around the window and go to the open door.  If we just take a second to think differently than the rest success is easy. We can fly at that window for hours or days.  The glass keeps us away from our goal.  Yet if we just think differently.  If we decide there is a better way and go off to the side we can find the open door way to success.  It is easily within our reach!

Does that make sense?

If not I will share another example with you which might make a little more sense… So come back and check Home Business blogs tomorrow

- Ben Fitts

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Here is another analogy about your MLM business that I picked up from Jordan Adler. He described building your MLM business like riding a bike.

When you’re learning to ride your bike, it takes awhile.  You start out with training wheels.  Then your parents take the training wheels off.  They hold you and help you try and gain your balance.  You try and try and try. You fall over and over again.  Then suddenly “you get it”.  Once you get it you have your balance and you can ride and ride.  You might ride and fall a little bit but it doesn’t take long and you can ride around the block.

This is like your MLM business.

Jordan was in 10 MLM companies without making a dime.  Yet suddenly in his 11th company “he got it”.  It wasn’t anything special about the company. It was within Jordan.  He found a system and started using it.  His belief system changed.

When you learn to ride a bike you learn balance.  As soon as you learn balance you never forget it.  You could stop riding a bike for 10 years and still remember how to balance.  You don’t even have to practice. You just get on your  bike and you immediately have balance again.

Your MLM business is like this.  Once you know what works you don’t even have to worry about it ever again. You just do it.

Once you know how to go fast you just do it.  There is no reason to go slow.  It’s like gaining balance.  Once you have it you will always have it.  Nothing can take it away from you.

Do you want to go FAST in  your MLM enterprise?  It really is simple.

- Ben Fitts

Popularity: 18% [?]

When I was chatting with Big Al last Wednesday he used a great analogy to describe prospecting.  He compared prospecting for your MLM to a roulette wheel.

You see a Roulette wheel has 38 spaces. 36 numbered spaces from 1-36 a 0 and a 00 space.

Prospecting in your MLM is like playing Roulette.  Sometimes the ball lands on your number.  Often times it doesn’t. Sometimes when you talk to a prospect they sign up on the spot.  Sometimes in Roulette you get lucky and sponsor the person on the spot.  Often times it takes 2 or 3 or more times before you get the prospect to sign up.  Sometimes you miss and you have to keep trying over and over again.  Maybe even a dozen times or more.  Sometimes you give up before you win.

This is a lot like playing Roulette.  Sometimes you hit the number quickly. Sometimes you hit it after a few tries.  Sometimes you play over and over and over again and just can’t seem to hit the number.

Often times when people come to us and tell us they want to replace their full time income with their MLM they are being unrealistic.  They only talk to one or two people a week.  It’s like the Roulette wheel.  Sometimes these people aren’t ready and you have to keep following up with them week after week after week.  But if you are only talking to one or two you probably aren’t going to sign up anyone this week and probably not next week either.  You might be lucky and sponsor one a month.

You see if they want to grow their business RAPIDLY and replace their full time income they need to sponsor at least one person a week and probably two.  But if you have a 1 in 38 chance you can’t sponsor one person a week.

However what if you threw 38 balls onto the roulette wheel. Your number would come up every single time.

If you want to grow fast in your MLM enterprise you need to talk to more people.

SIMPLE.

Just talk to more people!  If you’re talking to 30-40 people a week the odds are you’re going to sign up at least one of them!

What do you think? Do you think Big Al is crazy? or do you agree with him?

- Ben Fitts

Popularity: 18% [?]

Hi readers,

This is your last chance. If you want to meet me in Phoenix this weekend… I need to finalize my plans today.

I will be in Phoenix (actually Scottsdale) from Friday April 24th to late Sunday April 27th.  I am attending a personal development seminar on Saturday… if you’d like to join me just let me know.  I need a firm commitment from you today so I can make sure to get you on the guest list for the event (and for lunch.)

You can use the contact form to let me know that you will be attending.

I hope I can meet you!

- Ben Fitts

Popularity: 18% [?]

This came to me this weekend in Big Al’s Fortune Now newsletter.

Consider these definitions.

To be a coach, you don’t have to know how to do what you are coaching. Many coaches simply listen to their distributors and tell the distributors they already know what to do and how to do it. As coaches, they simply hold the distributors accountable for their actions.

These coaches don’t have to be good sponsors, good presenters, or good leaders. They simply hold the distributors accountable, and attempt to motivate them into action by talking about their “Why,” etc.

To be a mentor, you should already have the skills the distributor seeks to learn. In this case, the distributor does not have certain skills and experiences, and seeks the answers from the mentor. The mentor is not responsible for motivating or holding the distributor accountable. The mentor assumes the distributor already is highly motivated and will put the lessons into action.

To be a mentor, you must first master the skills the distributor seeks. And if you master the skills, the distributor seeks you.

And what if the distributor is not self-motivated?

Well, the distributor won’t be seeking you out.

Are you simply a coach that talks a good talk? Or are you a coach that motivates distributors to take action? Are you a mentor that has mastered skills and can pass them on to self-motivated people?

Or, are you simply a lousy sponsor that recruited a distributor and quickly moved on to finding your next new distributor?

Reprinted from Big Al’s Fortune Now newsletter.  Get great tips and advice like this from Big Al (and join his monthly cd club – I bought an annual subscription.)

Popularity: 18% [?]

Do you know what it takes to make your money back in your MLM enterprise?

Last night this lady named Lisa was spamming Facebook about a new MLM company called “Efusjon”.

When I commented that I didn’t like the company she wrote back to me that Send Out Cards wasn’t good enough for her. She wasn’t making enough money. So she had gone and joined this new company. (She’s working multiple companies at once which I also disagree with.)

Efusjon looks interesting. They make an “acai energy drink”. So instead of juice they combine acai to make energy drinks. That’s a good idea. It’s a good market and it’s a new twist to the acai juice idea.

Unfortunately in my opinion Lisa hasn’t thought things through. When you look at a company you have to look at the compensation plan.  One of the main things your prospect wants to know is:

1. What does it take to get their intial investment back?

2. What does it take to get their monthly order of product for free?

The problem with Efusjon is both of these.  You purchase your first order of product (4 cases) and a distributor option for $150.  Then every month you purchase 4 cases of product for $120 a month.

Here’s the problem.  You only make 4.25% commissions on your $120 a month orders.  That works out to be about $5 per order.  To make your money back you need to sell approximately 30 orders of product.

MOST people aren’t going to sell 30.  Less than 5% of people will probably do 30 sales. 20% of people will probably do a few sales but they won’t make enough money to pay for their investment.  So 95% of people in this company won’t make enough money to pay for their monthly autoship.  That means the attrition rate is going to be really high.  Most people will probably cancel their autoship within 3 months.

When you look at your MLM company you need to make sure you can help your people make their money back right away.  Even if they just get the product for free that’s enough reason for a lot of people to stick with it.  Your attrition rate in your organization will be much lower and because these people continue to work the business they’ll have the opportunity to grow and maybe one day find a leader that makes them a lot of money.

Efusjon gets around this by telling people it’s a 3 x 15 matrix (they call community overlap.) So the idea is you’d have overlap and you’d get rich…  Of course it never works out this way… It only works out like this for the first few people.  I don’t want to take the attention away from the point of this post.

Do you know what it takes to help your people make their money back?

The more people you can help to make their money back the better!  The easier it is to make their money back the better!  The more successful you will be!

- Ben Fitts

PS. Maybe Efusjon will work out. I like the idea for the product I just think their compensation plan is bogus.

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What are you doing on Saturday April 25th?

Would you like to attend a free personal development seminar with me in Phoenix, Arizona?

I’m going to be in Phoenix on the 24-26th of April for a personal development seminar.  If you’d like to be my guest, hang out, pick my brain, etc.  Then let me know. You can use the contact form to the right to send me an email and let me know that you’d be interested in coming.

If you can’t make it to Phoenix, I’ll be in Atlanta on Saturday, May 30th for another seminar.  I’d be happy to meet you there if that works better for you?

Interested? Contact me for more information!

- Ben Fitts

Popularity: 19% [?]

Todd a new reader wrote:

I want to start my own web page offering everything from printing services, advertising, web building, marketing, consulting and more since I work with people in this field already helping my clients.

I think one of the important things Todd is to not focus on too much stuff. You’re starting a new business and want to offer a bunch of services. But start small and add more services.  Do a great job at a couple of services then add more to the list.

One of the reasons I wrote my book Nichework Marketing was talking about the importance of selecting a niche.  The problem Todd has is he is trying to offer too many services to his clients.  If he focused on a niche he’d have less competition and be able to provide a better service to his clients.  Then develop referral partners for all those other services… and those partners will in turn refer clients back to him.

Todd goes on to write about some stuff that should bring this focus back on network marketing…

My problem is I’m always hitting the pavement and cold calling to try to make a sale to get a business to advertise. I spend many hours maintaining my clients business and so many more trying to find new ones. It gets to the point I have no more time to sell and find new ads because I have to maintain what I. Can you help with all this to increase my sales and my client’s sales?

Todd, the problem here is you are trading time for money.  You have your own business but you’re basically just self employed.  You have to do all the work.  There is only so much time in the day so you either have to get more efficient so you can do more in less time or raise your prices to make more money.

One way to get more time is to bring on some staff to handle some of these tasks.  That’s the traditional business model.  Hire some employees or pay some sales people a commission to bring in more clients.  At first you’ll have to give up a chunk of your income without any reward but once your staff get trained they’ll begin bringing in extra money. Whether or not they are doing some of your work for your clients or helping you sell. It will free up your time to do the aspects of your business that your employees cannot do.

One reason I do network marketing is I can leverage my time.  I build a team and train them so I don’t have to do all the work. I get a small override on their efforts.  Someone once asked…

Would you rather have 100 appointments to do your own business presentations or would you rather have 100 people who each go out and do 1 business presentation for you?

I don’t know about you but I don’t want to work that hard so I’d rather have 100 people who each do 1 business presentation for me!

- Ben Fitts

PS. Todd I’m emailing you more direct answers now…

Popularity: 18% [?]

Over the past couple of weeks I have been thinking about duplication in our MLM enterprise. One of the things that constantly comes up is just keeping things simple.

• The simpler the better.
• The simpler it is the easier it is to duplicate.
• The simpler it is the less fear a new distributor has in doing it.
• The simpler it is the more likely they will be to take action immediately.

With that in mind I’m taking an introspective look at my own business.

I know how to do some pretty kick butt internet marketing.  I wrote a book on how I got one of the top rankings for my company name and several other keywords related to my business. I think I’ve boiled it down to a pretty easy method for people to duplicate what I do… BUT I also thinks its reasonable to assume that not everyone on my team can duplicate this.  Some of them aren’t computer techy at all.  Some don’t have time to learn/do what I teach.  Others might not want to.  They might prefer working face to face.

Can enough people duplicate what I do to make it worthwhile?

So that’s my question.  With things like my blogs, can enough people do it to make it worthwhile? Should I focus more on simpler activites that more people on my team can duplicate?  Is there anything wrong with doing the activites that are super effective but maybe less people can duplicate?

What do you think?

- Ben Fitts

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Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers over the past week.  (For those who don’t know, My sister in law passed away in a motorcycle accident a little over a week ago.)

One good thing to come out of this is the reflection on our life.  My wife is only 35 and her sister was only 36 at the time of her death.  It has made my wife think about what she has done and what she wants to do.  She was trying to deal with family matters and she was getting all these petty emails on her Blackberry from people she works with. They knew she was dealing with the death of her sister and yet their sending her stupid emails about things like “ants” in their cubicle.

Can you imagine the nerve of some people?

She was faced with the reality that life is too short and other people she worked with are worried about ants.

A lot of good will come from my sister in law’s passing.  A lot of great kids at the school where she taught are taking inspiration from this.  My wife is taking inspiration too.  She has decided that perhaps there is something better out there for her than working a JOB. Or at least something better than the for profit company she works at now.

I don’t know what’s going to happen for sure but I know that she is more committed than ever to helping me achieve my dreams.  Why live an ordinary life?  Why live a life of stress and having to take orders from someone else?  Why have to beg a boss for time off?

Can you believe my wife’s boss only gave her 3 days off to grieve for the loss of her sister?

Who wants to work in corporate America? Not me!

- Ben

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