No one with a surefire great product decides, "hey, I better push this product with a multi-level marketing business model", instead you usually have CEO's and Founders with MLM experience who just developed a product specifically to fit an MLM distribution model. This is why Sony doesn't have a bunch of college dropouts selling PS3's to their friends.
If they are on magazine covers (funny how its always the same dam magazine) and on TV...they must be heroes. Television and Media don't lie.
Maybe they should. They should also require the college drop out to pay $499 in order to be "licensed" to sell PS3s and also have customer service available to teach them how to recruit.
All MLM's are on magazine covers. You pay to get in or create your own. It'll be 2099 and MLM's will STILL be using magazine covers, classified ads in newspapers and dial-in conference numbers to run things.
DIAL IN CONFERENCES ARE THE BEST! Must spend 2 hours each week dialing in to listen to other people talk about how EXCITED they are and how things are GOING TO BLOW UP! Of course its more like dial in to listen, you can't participate =[
Just a heads up for everyone - giddyup is strongly averse to two things: reality and rational arguments.
I had some one pitch one of these MLMs to me a while back. It was called Big National, or something like that. It became apparent pretty early that the only way to make real money was to sign other people up, which I was not prepared to do. I liked how part of their sales pitch was to call other people involved in the MLM and tell me how successful it was and how much it changed their life. Like as if anyone they bothered to call on the phone was going to tell me that it sucked or was really hard or something. It bothered me how much they insulted my intelligence with that kind of crap.
Newbs have to beg their upline or sponsor to reach out or 3-way call potential prospects. It's sad. That's why they have the conference calls, so nobody has to take time calling a prospect that isn't theirs. Nobody wants to build their downline 3-steps away like that.
I am talking about friends that I met and made through the MLM I was involved with. I learned very early on not to bother friends and family so I'd mail 10-15 letters per week to total strangers that I picked out of the phone book with some educated guessing. I looked for good zip areas but not the wealthiest and I looked for couples names listed-- back in the early nineties you could find that kind of information in the paper phone book. I'd call them (this is pre-DNC) and inquire about their interest in starting a home-based business. I had every kind of conversation you can imagine. Getting hung up on. Getting cussed out. Meeting for coffee... and making a lifelong friend... and everything in-between. None of us "made it." I think a couple are still product users. We gave it a shot. Made some money. Spent some money. We learned a lot about ourselves and working with people. One of "my guys" is a national sales guy with a truck manufacturing concern. Another guy is an agent at one of the big life insurance companies that you see advertised on Sunday afternoons. Another became a software consultant. My "sponsor" was the Vet. His sponsor became a big mortgage broker, then the lawyer and then the city manager. Sorry, ziggy, but not a single one of these guys meets your qualification of being a college drop-out or some kind of loser. They have been successful elsewhere and all have raised families. However, we do know some people who were contemporaries of ours who stuck with it and made it big and I mean big. They succeeded because they were willing to do whatever it took. I was not. I had children at home, etc. At varying points ;most of us drifted away for different reasons. All this childishness that has been "cataloged" here is not the totality of experience. This was 20 years ago in case you haven't done the math.
Because folks here seem to want to have a problem with wrapping their minds around the notion of a continuum of heroism. It's not just soldiers. And it's certainly not just athletes. I made a statement that anyone who had built a successful, long-standing business in the MLM industry had worked heroically against a lot of criticism and discouragement and self-doubt.... that's all. I'd like to see a list of privately-owned or public corporations that have been around for a couple of decades that are NOT legitimate. I'm not talking about your drug-runners are any other clearly illegal business. What does not legitimate mean to you?
If you look at some of the crap flung around in this thread, I'm the only one with a grip on those two thing....
Herbalife has been around for more than 50 years. The wisdom in this article is that "perception is reality." This article claims that most MLM reps earn their money from recruiting people rather than selling product. Ever heard of an agency? Know anyone who is a realtor who recruits other realtors or an insurance guy who becomes a general agent to both sell and recruit other "agents" to sell? Both these models show people recruiting and training their own competition... oh yeah, they get an over-ride. SAME DEAL-- just without all the muss and fuss about licensing. It was just announced this week that Herbalife is moving into a facility built and abandoned by Dell.... www.journalnow.com/news/local/article_9c97c95e-4a48-11e2-8929-001a4bcf6878.html
I don't get why you keep comparing these MLM's to legitimate professions? What's the point? Just because something is legal and exists doesn't make it sensible. Also, I don't know a whole lot about the industries but real estate and insurance, the lower depths of it, can seem pretty low-level to me.
One of the guys I was formerly associated with makes about 12 million a year-- and has for a couple of decades. Is that sensible enough for you? The lower level of insurance and real estate is where everyone in that industry has to start. You have to have a proven track record before some company will set you up to represent them and to recruit and train agents to represent them. This is one of the problems with the MLM model. The barrier for entry is low-- even at $499 or whatever. BTW, by law MLM companies have to have a free or low-entry means of becoming a representative. This are sometimes free but usually between $29 to $49 per year range. The $499 package deals are sold as "fast start" packages or some terminology like that When I started in the insurance business in 1986, I was told to make a list of my family and friends. I was sat down before a phone and told to call them. Sound familiar? The very same thing was asked of me when I "started" with Amway but there was no pressure to do that like with insurance, so I figured out a way to do it that made me confident and comfortable. I knew NOTHING about Amway in 1989 except a few lame jokes on The Tonight Show. I quickly found out that others had more strong opinions on the company... opinions that didn't resonate with my experience, so I pressed on in search of people without bias. I figured that I didn't know more people than I knew so there would always be people to talk to about an opportunity. One of our mottos (you've probably heard this) was "Some will. Some won't. So what?"
Unless the realtor is a broker, then it doesn't work that way. Realtors can get referral fees for referring a client to another realtor, but they don't have anything that resembles a down line for "recruiting". Furthermore, in the broker/realtor relationship, the realtor typically receives a direct benefit from the broker in exchange for their sales.
Keller Williams is set up to scam realtors... they get money for bringing in people and engage in profit sharing...
That's exactly what I meant to say. A real estate agent can create an agency and earn over-rides on the competition s/he creates for her/himself. It doesn't plunge deeper and deeper like an MLM structure but I was just pointing out some inconsistency to the objection of earning off the efforts of others rather than just "selling for yourself." Virtually every sales organization has bonuses in place for sales managers when they meet certain quotas-- and they may have not sold a lick themselves. Direct selling for yourself is NOW money. Recruiting an organization is LATER money. Most people do both with an emphasis on the latter... in my observation.
