Succeed By Mentoring, Not Selling

Network marketing has been filled with success stories as well as failures in the past 50 years. There are plenty of reasons why there are more failures than successes, but the major reasons are not so obvious.

One reason for a high failure rate is that people join and don't do anything to build it like a business. Network marketing IS a business and should be treated like one. It requires a plan, a system and perseverance. Too many people "try" a network marketing company to "see how it goes." These are the people that you don't want in your organization. You want serious business builders that simply duplicate what the successful people do. The "see how it goes" people are just not serious enough. They will be the ones constantly complaining about it not working and they will suck you dry of time and energy and are often the ones that jump from one program to the next.

Then there are those people who think of all network marketing opportunities as "get rich quick schemes." Sure, the possibilities are there to make a substantial income with network marketing and it could happen faster than a regular job, but nothing is going to happen over night. Just because you sign up for a program doesn't mean you're going to make money. You aren't "entitled" to anything for doing nothing, and that's a fact of life. My experience working in an officer position for a major U.S. bank opened my eyes to the reality of this. My pension plan would pay me about $2,000 per month when I retire from the company. This would be after working for the company for 20 years!! Yikes! With network marketing, I could make $10,000 per month RESIDUAL INCOME after one year if I did it right! After doing the math (which took about a whole 2 seconds), I realized what I really had in my hands.

The third reason for failure that I want to mention in this article is that people try to make it into a sales business. It's not! Stop trying to sell your business to someone else! You are not here to convince people. You are here to look for the one that is looking and present the opportunity. If they are interested, you simply train and mentor. That's it! You train and mentor them to duplicate what you do...train and mentor. The moment you think of it as a sales business, you're sunk.

Here are two key things to keep in mind when talking to someone about your primary business:

1. You can not say the wrong thing to the right person.
2. You can not say the right thing to the wrong person.

Don't try to "convince" someone they should join and don't worry about messing up what you say. You'll get discouraged and end up quitting yourself. Just present the opportunity. I once had a guy email about my opportunity and he said, "I challenge you to convince me this is the right opportunity for me." I kindly replied to him stating that I don't consider it a challenge. I told him that I GET the opportunity, and if he didn't that's fine. It's not my "job" to convince people. I wouldn't want him to feel he has to convince people as well should he join me.

Realize it is not an event, it is a process. Expecting overnight success won't happen without action. If you change your perspective on network marketing and focus on duplicating a "mentorship", then your chances of success are almost guaranteed.