Good business practice. Etcetera.
Sensible shoes rather than 'fuck-me pumps'.
Let's return briefly to the week-opening piece 'Problems and solutions.', in which we considered Network Marketing excellence—or rather the to-date lack thereof… the cause of which we attribute to lack of sensible business principle & practice.
Ann Sieg has of course raised this issue in her 'The phenomenon of Network Marketing ignorance' piece, from which I clip:
MLM has been sold to the everyday American on the premise that 'anyone can do this'.
Nowhere will you find a bigger group of people all trying to do something that they don't know anything about. It's amazing really. 13 million people (that's just the US) all trying to run a business and only about 1% of them actually understand sound business principles.
You won't find this many clueless people in any other line of work. Except for maybe the government.
Good and valid stuff. However, Sieg's 'solution' is anything but—and I personally consider it adds to the problem through encouraging folk to sign-on to little more than an affiliate program structured around a hype-laden squeeze page which leads to a lot of 'buy this to succeed' stuff which seems to be chosen on the basis of having over-generous affiliate payouts.
Sidebar: Squeeze page?
Let's build on Sieg's tone, with a revisiting of an archive piece from my friend & colleague John Fogg who, in 'American Dream' has this to say…
People aren't trained properly; people lack enough self-discipline to cut it.
Sadly, many-to-most of the people who enter Network Marketing do so as if they were buying a lottery ticket; 'Herman and Hillary hope-it-happens'. Even more disappointing is how willing would-be sponsors are to sell them one.
So, enough: You get the picture. Now, shall we be proactive? If you want to put the blocks to this whole high turnover business in our business, start by telling the truth about what it takes to succeed in Network Marketing.
Network Marketing is a business—like any other. And as such, it demands to be treated with GBP—Good Business Practices: hard work, smart work, applied consistently to a plan of action whose structure will produce the results you are committed to accomplishing. Wisdom will make it all duplicatable, like the mini-franchise it is: a turnkey business opportunity you can offer to all your people and they in turn can offer theirs.
Although there are a number of distributors who got lucky and sponsored a superstar, Network Marketing success takes time. It's a building process: foundation, superstructure, interior and exterior elements, and the finish work following through on all of it—which when done with intelligence and compassion results in a high-rise of residual income… and a life of contribution that makes a difference in thousands of people's lives.
Damn fine stuff, and you'll be hard-pressed to find a more succinct & sincere outlining of 'the MLM deal'.
Returning to the week-opening 'Problems and solutions.' in which we made clear our (albeit cliched) 'a serious business, for serious people' agenda:
- 1 A huge area of potential market gain in NM is through banging the 'lack of business awareness' drum.
- 2 Sieg's of course right in her 'expose' of it. But the solutions she proposes mostly fall short of any reasoned 'Would Godin do it that way?' marker.
- 3 Fogg's absolutely on-the-money with his viewpoint, but has chosen to not develop it. (And that's a loss for us all.)
- 4 There's a strong Chayefsky 'Network'-thing to be done… that whole Peter Finch 'enough and not going to take it anymore' schtick.
We'll return to points 3 & 4 later in the week. Right now though, let's pause on a constructively-outrageous tone:
Long-story-short… this business needs sensible shoes rather than 'fuck-me pumps' [slang expression for sexy women's shoes].
Filed by g on July 9 2008
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Good business practice. Etcetera. Sensible shoes rather than 'fuck-me pumps'.