Dear networker,

What drives our business?

What drives our residual check?

What creates legitimate mailbox money we can collect from the beach, the cruise ship, or the mountains?

Product Volume is what creates residual income!

Without product volume we don’t have a business.  That is why I recently wrote the post “Network Marketing is about the Customers“.

What are some strategies for increasing mlm product volume?

One of the things I’ve done in my business is  to create educational materials about the product.  The educational material is a webinar series.  It is designed to provide real value to the webinar attendees.

My webinar series is called 40 Ways to Grow Your Business. 

My business is greeting cards, postcards, and gifts so our webinar series focuses on strategies to increase business with cards and gifts.

This webinar series is clever because it serves 3 purposes.

1. It is a prospecting tool for my team to use with prospects that are business owners or professionals that might not normally look at our MLM. However they are interested in ways to grow their business so they join in our webinars.
2. It serves as a training tool for my downline’s customers. They can join the webinar series to get ideas on how they can use our products and also grow their existing businesses.
3. It serves as a training tool for my team to discover new ways for using our product.

You don’t have to create a webinar series. You could create a training video or an ebook. 

You can create your own educational materials for your team that helps them understand why they should be using the product, gives them tips to share with their customers, and also serves as a prospecting tool.

You don’t have to be in the greeting card business like me. You could be doing a nutritonal product and put together a little special report on why your product is better… If you don’t know how you can find an affordable ghost writer to write a little PDF report for you.  You can then use a PDF rebrander to allow your team to rebrand the report with their own affiliate links.

An easier strategy for increasing MLM product volume: Hold Contests

Contests can be a great incentive. Some people will respond to a contest and go out of their way to win it.  They will work harder than usual because they are competitive and want to win!

For small contests I like to use prizes that are products from our company.  Our company has a lot of gift items. I can use gift baskets, food items, gift cards, or even personal development books as gifts.  This also allows me to show my team members the wide variety of products we offer.

For example we had a little contest where we paid out a $31 gift for every team member that sponsored one new distributor.  We paid out a couple thousand dollars in prizes!  Some people on our team that hadn’t sponsored someone in months suddenly sponsored someone.  It was a lot of fun.

Offer Free Samples or Gifts

This is such a simple strategy but so often overlooked.  A lot of times people don’t want to offer gifts or free samples because they come from a place of lack. They think it costs too much.

I’m the opposite. I give gifts to everyone!  I give a $10 gift of brownies to everyone, even a $3 customer.  I’m losing money on the gift but I’m exposing my customers to another one of our products. I’m also rewarding my customer and thanking them for being a great customer.  They’re going to remember me and want to continue to do business with me.  Of course the brownies also happen to be delicious and they are our most popular gift item.

What I’m doing is exposing my $3 customer to another line of products we sell. Products that can cost $100 or more.

Lets say for example that you are in a nutritional business. Perhaps your main product is a juice product. When you get a new juice customer do they know about all the products you sell? Do they know about your other nutritional items? Maybe you can give away a few gifts to your new juice customer and expose them to your other product lines.

Residual Income Is Driven By Product Volume

To be able to develop real mailbox money we need to have a large customer base.  People who buy products every month and generate commissions. New distributors joining our team can obviously generate some volume and for most of us they also generate some fast start commissions as well.  Distributor sign ups tend to fluxuate.  However if you can build a strong customer base making consistent monthly purchases then your checks will remain steady.

Do you have any tips for increasing product volume in your MLM organization?  If so leave us a comment and share. I’d love to hear your ideas!

- Ben Fitts

MLM Training > residual income

Dear networker,

Network Marketing is about the customers!

I know some of you may not agree but let’s break it down.

Customers = volume.  Volume = long term residuals.

The purpose of getting more distributors is to get more customers.  More distributors doing demos means more customers joining your organization.

The more customers you and your team have the more volume you have in your organization.

A lot of our business is based on volume. You might for example:

• Meet certain monthly minimums based on volume
• Receive a promotion based on your total group volume
• Make more money as a result of having more volume! (larger residual check!)

Obviously our goal is to get more distributors, but the end goal of even getting more distributors is more volume. We’re always looking to grow our team so that they can reach more customers.

Sometimes we get sidetracked by gathering more distributors and we loose sight of the reality that what we really need is customers.  Imagine if every person on your team has 2 distributors. Imagine if every went out and got just 1 more customer.  Your volume in your business should increase, 50% right?

There is another factor. In the USA we’re supposed to maintain a 2/3rds customers requirement.  Meaning each distributor is supposed to have 2 customers. This helps us stay legitimate in the eyes of the government. Otherwise the government might accuse us of being a pnzi or pyramid.

Finally, think about your team…. If they have customers ordering product every month, they’re recieving checks.  Even if they aren’t a big leader, but they get some small checks, they will stick with it.  If they don’t get checks they give up.  Not everyone is a big recruiter. Not everyone can sponsor a new distributor every week or even every month.  If we can help those people make some money we can keep them involved until they find that next person who could be their big leader.

What do YOU think?

- Ben Fitts

MLM Training > residual income

Before joining a business opportunity, consider these things.

1. Would I join this even if it didn’t have a business opportunity associated with it?
2. Will this product be around 1 year, 5 years, or even 10 years from now?
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?
4. Is your product at risk of being superseded by technology / competition?

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.

- Ben Fitts

MLM Training > residual income

There are only two ways to make money in MLM.

1. Gather customers
2. Teach other people how to gather customers

One of the problems in many MLM organizations is the focus isn’t on gathering customers. The focus is on doing the bare minimum of customer gathering and mostly sponsoring new distributors.

When I’m focused strictly on sponsoring new people I sponsor people that don’t do anything. I sponsor customers that don’t use my product and I don’t make much money! This is one of the habits many MLM’ers fall into. They just focus on the short term money made from sponsoring people. The people they do sponsor tend to drop out quickly because they haven’t gotten any customers and haven’t made their money back.

When your focus is on gathering customers and sponsoring customer gatherers then you build long term income. The people who join your organization will be more likely to stay longer as they will be getting quick income from their customers. The volume in your organization will grow and so will your residual income.

Don’t fall for the hype of short term income by focusing too much on the opportunity. Remember to always keep your focus on people who will use your product and teach other people to use your product. That is how you will build true residual income.

- Ben Fitts

MLM Training > residual income

Dear Readers,

I want to continue our conversation from yesterday about the Residual Income game and tools to grow your Network Marketing business.

RI Training provides several other helpful tools for growing your MLM business. RI Training’s staff holds a series of skills training calls where they go over 50 key skills. This skill training is free and is available every week on Thursday afternoon. The recordings are also kept online for several days so you can listen to them even if you missed the training.

You can sign up for the skill training calls here. If you do sign up using my link they will send you a $5 coupon towards our next training tool…

The Personal Effectiveness Profile – personal skills assessment. This skills assessment is a series of questions you answer about your network marketing skills. The assessment scores you in 50 critical skill areas ranging from your ability to communicate effectively with others to understanding your company’s compensation plan.

One of the great things about the PEProfile is that you can email copies of your score to your upline. This allows your upline to see how you rate yourself and to learn what your perceive your strong and weak points to be. In working with my team I’ve discovered a lot of simple things I can work with my team members on to make them more effective at presenting the business to others.

The idea being that the more skills you have the better you are at presenting the business and building a team. When you play the Residual Income game for example you have Personal Effectiveness Points. The more points you have the better you are when you speak to a group of 10 people at getting them to purchase your products. The more points you have the better you are when doing business presentations for your team.

The PEProfile skills assessment allows you to have a mechanism for tracking someone’s effectiveness and helping them become more effective. The PEProfile skills assessment is only $30. (get yours here) That way it’s affordable to anyone on your team AND anyone that is serious should be willing to do the assessment. If you have a big team and find it hard to know who to work with… this is one tool you can use to determine who is serious about their business and who is wasting your time.

Whether or not you play the Residual Income game, listen to the RI Training skills teleseminars, or do the PEProfile skills assessment you’ll find the tools provided by RI Training to be top notch.

One more tip… You can use these tools for things other than training your team! You can use these tools as bait for other network marketers! You could host game nights to show other networkers or for friends and family that were interested in developing some extra income.

I hope you like the game and if you’re in CT or you’re in Atlanta (next weekend) let me know. I’d be happy to play the game with you.

- Ben Fitts

MLM Training > residual income