Dear Readers,
My buddy Jay McHugh shared this video with me. It is a little long but is a great video explaining the age old question, Is this a pyramid scheme. You should share this with your team so they can see how to rebut this.
Hope you’re having a great new year!
- Ben Fitts
Dear reader,
What is your batting average?
I like to use a baseball analogy sometimes. The difference between an average player who goes from pro MLB team to pro team, and a good player that gets $5-10 million a year, and a great player that gets $15-20 million a year… the difference is only a few percentage points.
A player who bats .270 for their career is someone who is average.
A player that bats .300 for their career is a quality player that gets paid good money and is someone who can have a long career.
A player that bats .330 for their career is a player that is one of the most sought after players in the league. They make the really big bucks. If they do this for a year or two they’ll make a lot of money. If they do it 10+ they are a hall of famer.
The difference between each of these? 3% between mediocre and good and 3% between good and great…
The success rate of a player batting 270 vs a player batting 300 is that he gets 3 more hits per 100 at bats. The difference between a hall of fame player and someone struggling to stay in the major leagues? Only 6 more hits per 100 at bats. Only 6%!
The point is a minor adjustment that makes you a little bit more successful can make a huge impact.
Now let’s apply this to Network Marketing and MLM. What if you could improve your closing rate? What if your closing ratio was 10 in 100. What if you could improve that to 11 out of 100? Or 13 out of 100? It wouldn’t take a lot of effort but making small adjustments can really improve your success.
An example my friend talks about in his book is:
You collect 100 business cards from local business people
What do you do with those cards? Do you throw them all in a drawer somewhere? Or do you follow up with them?
Let’s talk about follow up. There are different things you can do which can improve your success ratio.
You see how if you only do one of these activities instead of throwing the business card away will increase your closing ratio. If you could do 2 or 3 of these activites then your closing ratio will be a lot higher. If you do all of them then you’ll have the highest closing ratio of all.
It doesn’t take a lot, just a little extra effort. A little effort can go a long way.
Just like the baseball player, if you can improve your MLM batting average and improve your followup you’ll improve your closing ratio with prospects.
Does that make sense?
PS. I use a greeting card follow up system that allows me to do the greeting card follow up and it’s just as easy as sending an email…
If you enjoyed this post get free updates via email or RSS here.Before joining a business opportunity, consider these things.
These are some important factors I know many people are not considering when they join MLM opportunities. I have been approached in the last 7 days with 5 different opportunities which 4 of the 5 wouldn’t even pass these 4 questions above.
Question 1: Would I join even if it didn’t have a business opportunity associated with it?
To me this is very important. If the product is good enough people will join without an opportunity to make money. If you’re product is this good then you’ll find it much easier to attract customers AND keep your team members involved long term. If they are only there to make money then a lot of your team members will give up and quit, jump to the latest greatest fad, etc.
Question 2: Will this product be around 1 year, 5 years, or even 10 years from now?
Again another important item. For example a lot of people are pitching opportunities that probably won’t even last a year, and if they are lucky might last 3 years. However they will almost certainly not be around 10 years from now. How can you develop true long term residual income from a business that won’t be around for 3 years? Look at the Beatles. The Beatles catalog of music still generates millions of dollars in royalties annually but the Beatles broke up as a band in 1970. That is true residual income.
Question 3: Does the product risk of bring priced to zero (or close enough to not matter) like long distance has become as a result of VOIP?
There is a big name company right now that has made their Billions selling technology related products like this but they are products that are becoming so cheap they are becoming commodities. This means that the quality of the product from any vendor is the same and the price gets driven lower and lower. Take long distance as an example. We now have VOIP based phone services that can give you an unlimited amount of calling for $20 a month. In fact some services such as Skype for your computer or Magic Jack promise to give you an unlimited amount of calling for $20 a YEAR. Now this company is selling video phones which require a service commitment of $20 a month for 2 years. Meanwhile the same video phone type services can be had by software programs like Skype. Certainly within the 2 year time frame of a customer’s contract even more services are going to come up offering services for little to no cost. Why would someone commit to $480 for video phone services when they could get similar services at little or no cost! Now the company needs to develop another new technology or advantage to keep them ahead of the market.
Question 4: Is your product at risk of being superseded by technology / competition?
Another new fad are these web site based MLMs. They basically buy off the shelf software and slap together an MLM. The most recent are the ones that promise to be the next Facebook but pay you money. Guess what? Even Facebook probably won’t be around in 5 years. Think about it. 5 years ago Myspace was hot. Everyone was talking about it. Now it’s Facebook. In 5 years it will be something else.
First of all you’re assuming these guys have a clue at how to put together a social network. Again most don’t. Most are buying off the shelf software to make a social network. They are simply targetting opportunity seekers so you get a network full of MLMers. This always fails because the MLMers just target one another. It becomes a big spam fest. Only a few people have ever managed to do this successfully and they haven’t done it with an opportunity. They did it around training for networkers. The amount of content outweighed the amount of spam.
Someone just talked to me about a new social network… guess what it looks like a clone of? Wowzza. Wowzza is a social networking MLM I talked about in April 2008. In the spring of 2008 it was really popular but by the end of 2008 my prediction was coming true. The fad was over and only a few dozen people were joining a day. In the heyday of Wowzza dozens of people were joining every minute and thousands were joining every day. BUT the product sucked and it mostly attracted opportunity seekers. Once they found out the product sucked and the promised spillover wasn’t what they expected they quickly dropped out.
The point of all this isn’t that every opportunity is bad. There are some good ones out there. However if you want to build TRUE RESIDUAL INCOME then you want to make sure you are getting involved in an opportunity that is going to be around for awhile. Take a close look at the products too, not just the opportunity. Make sure this is something that can generate income for you 5 years, 10 years, or 20 years down the road.
If you have any questions about a specific opportunity I’d be happy to take a look at it for you.
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Hi everyone,
You’re probably wondering why I haven’t been writing as much this week. Well I’m happy to say it’s because I have been working on a new podcast called: Home Business Interviews!
This will be a regular weekly interview program where you can hear from top producers in our network marketing industry, the brightest personal development coaches, expert internet marketers, and much more. Every Wednesday I’ll post a new interview with another expert.
I’ve already recorded the first several shows. They’re really good! And I’ve got a half dozen more experts lined up for interviews in the next few weeks.
Best of all the web site is free to join (or download on itunes!) So check out Home Business Interviews today!
- Ben Fitts
If you enjoyed this post get free updates via email or RSS here.
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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