Preparing Your Distributors For Disappointments

The caller wasn’t very happy with me. My suggestion to improve one’s skills and attitude certainly hit a raw nerve. “Hey! I’ve been in network marketing for over five years. Don’t give me any of that phony self-improvement stuff. I’m not some wet-behind-the-ears beginner. I just need to find some quality people.”

Well, there was the caller’s problem all laid out. He just wasn’t listening to himself talk. In fact, this caller was one of the thousands of network marketers who just don’t get it.

They think that networking success is outside of themselves. They are looking for someone else to make them successful. They hope that a great ground floor opportunity will go to work for them while they wait for the big, successful bonus checks to arrive in their mailbox. Or, they hope to find a really good prospect who will go to work and make them rich while they watch.

Whoops! networking isn’t about other people making you successful. Networking is about making yourself a better person so that you can make others more successful. Boy, that’s a big difference.

Let’s take a look at the networker who constantly changes companies. Why does he change? Because his present company didn’t make him successful. They didn’t send the products on time. They didn’t come out with that four-color brochure soon enough. And, their products just didn’t sell themselves.

So, if the present company just isn’t doing its job, what should the networker do? Yep! Join another company and hope that company does a better job. Sounds pretty logical until you find out that companies don’t work. Companies only provide an opportunity.

It is the distributors who work (or in my caller’s case, don’t work). The misinformed networker is constantly looking for the perfect company that will make him successful. Too bad. Most companies have to hire people—so there goes the perfect theory.

Will this misinformed networker spend his entire career searching for the perfect company? Sometimes. Eventually, most misinformed networkers get frustrated by the constant stream of imperfect companies, so they quit networking and look for the perfect job, a government job. Now you know where the government gets many of its so-called ‘workers.’

Believing in perfect companies sounds pretty silly, doesn’t it? However, where do you think our prospects and new distributors get this perfect company idea? From us. Aren’t we the ones who tell them that the reason they should join our company is because our company is the only perfect company? And so they believe us and stake their career on this mistaken foundation.

Then what happens? The company makes a mistake. Oh, it might only be a little-bitty mistake, but now the company is no longer perfect.

What’s our distributor to do?

Quit.

And then search for the perfect network marketing company that will make him rich.

Preparing Our Distributor For Disappointment

The solution to this overselling is obvious. Instead of using the ‘perfect company’ pitch in our presentation, why not tell our prospect that our company is not perfect?

That’s right. Our company couldn’t find computers to fill all the positions and had to hire error-prone, imperfect humans. And, our company utilizes the post office, a shipping company, and the local telephone service. There are plenty of chances for errors right there.

Let’s tell our new distributor that our company will make mistakes. It’s part of business and part of life. However, we can add that our company fixes the mistakes—most of the time—to our satisfaction.

That’s all we ask. We just want a reasonable chance to develop our business. The real foundation of our success will come from what we do, not from what some distant corporate office does.

One distributor who didn’t believe this quit his company with the following words:

“Now my business is ruined! I didn’t receive my order in time and some of the items were mis-packed. My whole career and business has failed because of the actions of a single minimum wage employee in a corporate office 1,500 miles away.”

Yeah, right. And this so-called leader allowed himself to be controlled by that ‘single minimum wage employee.’ That’s not much of a leader, is it? Maybe the sponsor should have recruited the home office employee instead.

When we prepare our distributors for the eventual and hopefully occasional company mistake, our life becomes a little easier too.

Now when our distributor calls to complain that his newsletter got wrinkled in the mail, we simply inform him that this is just one of those challenges that comes with being in business. We don’t have to defend every little perceived imperfection in our company. We don’t have to pave a rejection-proof path ahead of our distributor.

And the best part is that we have realistically prepared our new distributor for the real world. No hype, no lies, and no false expectations. Our new distributor now sees these ordinary problems as ordinary problems—not as career-destroying forces of evil. Now that our new distributor has a clear vision of the road to success, he can drive at the maximum speed limit to financial security.

Published with Authors Permission-How To Attract Good MLM Leaders © 2011 by Tom “Big Al” Schreiter and KAAS Publishing. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.