Philip Harman
“If I were starting a Network Marketing company, I would say, what’s a different group of people that want to hear a story about how to succeed with network selling? What words, phrases and images do I use to help them understand what it is I have to offer?”
So opined our friend Seth Godin in an interview with John Fogg this past December (and thanks, gulliver, for bringing this comment to my attention.)
Why a “different” group (than those we have now)?
For one, too many visible people, including big name trainers, practice and teach the kinds of abusive, promise-them-anything kinds of behaviors that cause regular people, plus influential business people like Godin and Calacanis to tell us to our face that we’re low rent at best, and say they’d never even buy from a networker.
(And of course they recognize the recruit recruit approach with its emphasis on the big up-front order, as the fast-cash-grabbing method that it is for too many people doing and teaching it.)
So we wouldn’t want those kinds of practitioners of NM in the new group, would we? So they can’t come.
Second, 95% of those who came in with high hopes of making some desperately needed extra income leave disgusted, confused, broke or more in debt than when they came in.
They’ve used up their friends and family, spent their money on systems that mostly benefitted their upline (leads programs, Internet sites, training stuff.) Not happy campers. They join the ever growing biased againsts. Chances are they won’t come back, at least not in big numbers.
So they’re out.
And last, we don’t want to raid anyone’s organization for those that are happy where they are, right?
So that leaves them out.
So who might be in our new and different group?
Here’s one that comes to mind: The amateurs, as defined in the previous post:
Those who do something for the love and challenge of it, and who therefore have less conflict of interest because they’re not saying what they say to pay the bills or please someone else (like an upline or adoring spouse they want to impress).
The members of this new group would not join because of any money lure. No. They’d be like hobbyists who don’t treat this “like a business” (if that means doing things you really don’t like just to make money.)
Yes, like hobbyists who squeeze in whatever time they can to do something they are driven to do. The new group I’m talking about forming is NOT in it for the money. Although they’ll of course be happy to bank any. It just isn’t what drives them. Imagine that.
Time out. Adult beverage break. To be continued next post.
