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MLM: What’s Your Type?

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Everyone involved with an MLM falls into one of two types. You’re either a customer or a distributor. Every company needs both customers and distributors to make a profit and to remain legal in the eyes of regulatory bodies.

Within each of these types there are sub-types, and once again your company needs individuals of each sub-type. All of five types fill different purposes—each helps your company thrive in their own way. Let’s take a look at what these types are and what they provide your company with.

Customers

Consumers

This category includes most of the people who sign up but don’t recruit anyone else. Why do they sign up? There are various reasons. Maybe they love the product and want a convenient way to purchase it at wholesale price. Or, maybe at first, they really thought they could build the business, but later suffered rejection and changed their minds. Or, perhaps the only reason they signed up in the first place was to get their brother-in-law off their back so they could get back to watching the game!

Despite the fact that they signed an application, these individuals are actually customers. There is a good chance they want to purchase product because they believe it helps them. It gives them more energy or smooths their wrinkles, or whatever.

Some customers just want to purchase product and be left alone. Others enthusiastically play the role of a product evangelist.

Product evangelists

Product evangelists love the product and they love to tell people about it. They want their friends and acquaintances to benefit from it and they would recommend it even if they were not signed up. They simply don’t want to invest a lot of time building a business or don’t feel comfortable closing a sale. We all know that the best kind of marketing is still word-of-mouth—product evangelists prove it. They help a company’s business. They are the “network” in “network marketing.”

Customers are vital to a network marketing company’s success. If they weren’t out there buying product from the distributors, there would be no company. Corporate must consider their customers’ interests in every decision made, including decisions relating to the commission plan.

Customer retention may be the biggest problem that most successful MLM companies face. Whenever MLM companies treat these folks like salespeople, those individuals almost always leave the organization. However, if they’re treated like consumers, they often stick around.

Distributors

Salespeople

These people are important because they sell product, they take care of customers, and they’re the only ones who can do it. They do well in sales-oriented organizations. The product evangelists knows how to talk about the product and get others interested in it, but the salespeople know how to actually sell it, close, and follow up. They may or may not be strong in recruiting, but they know how to move product.

Sales Leaders

Along with the salespeople, the sales leaders provide the backbone of a company’s business. They hold the meetings, close the leads the product evangelist customers create, and keep the customers happy and supplied with product. A good indicator of the health of a company is the stability of the income of the sales leaders. It’s the sales leaders, in fact, who create stability for a company. If there’s constant turnover, or if, after a reasonable amount of time working their business, they don’t make enough money to justify the time and energy they put in, there is a problem with the company.

Dream builders

A special class of sales leaders typically does the dream building. They “paint the dream” in everyone’s minds. They have grand ideas. They blaze new trails. They build the big meetings. They provide the leadership, passion, enthusiasm, and excitement for a company’s mission. They’re the ones who understand and can explain the mission and value proposition of the company in a way that people can really understand it. Dream builders inspire people, and best of all, they are willing to take risks and open new markets. They fly around the country and sometimes the world. When a company opens a new country, the dream builders are the ones who fly to that country to recruit distributors. They’re the ones who decide to reach out to different niche markets. The dream builder pulls together a unit of likeminded people to create the magic and achieve success. The momentum of a network marketing company is generated by its dream builders.

Dream builders typically spend a lot of money on their businesses. Often, they have a staff. They are the reason why an MLM commission plan needs to provide a way to pay big earnings.

Often, when dream builders achieve the top level in a company, they slow down in building their organizations. They are so goal-oriented that when they no longer have goals to achieve, they often lose their drive. Sometimes, if for one reason or another, an MLM company decides against having a dream builder continue to participate in what the company is doing, the company loses the boundless creative energy this individual directs toward the company’s success.

There are typically only a few of these individuals in an MLM company. I’ve never seen a company be successful without attracting and retaining dream builders. A network marketing company needs these people!

Numbers

What are the typical numbers you might expect there to be in these different distributor categories in an MLM company? A company doesn’t usually have a lot of salespeople and sales leaders. If a company is doing $24 million a year in business, it likely has at least 30,000 customers, but probably fewer than 1,000 salespeople, fewer than 100 sales leaders, and only a few dream builders. Anyone who likes a product can be a customer, but the number of salespeople and sales leaders is limited. I’ve never seen a company be successful without attracting and retaining a core of sales leaders, including dream builders.

What’s the Most Important Type?

So, now the $10,000 question is, “Which distributor type is most important in an MLM company?” The answer is simply, “All of them!” Each is equally important to the successful network marketing company mix. When the correct balance is attained among these different groups, the synergy can be amazing, bringing success to the company overall as well as to each of these individuals in the field.

It’s important to remember that just because you are currently one of these types of distributors, you aren’t necessarily constrained from becoming another type. It happens all the time. That’s part of the beauty of the MLM opportunity. All you have to do is go for it!

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Source:Understanding Multi-Level Commissions and Their Role in a Successful Company, Mark Rawlins.

All contents Copyright © Infotrax Systems LLC. All rights reserved. Duplication or reprints only with express permission from Infotrax Systems LLC.

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