What is Network Marketing?

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

"Multi-level marketing (MLM) also referred to as Network Marketing is a business distribution model that allows a parent multi-level marketing company to market their products directly to consumers by means of relationship referral and direct selling.

Independent unsalaried salespeople of multi-level marketing referred to as distributors (associates, independent business owners, franchise owners, sales consultants, consultants, independent agents, etc.), represent the parent company and are rewarded a commission relative to the volume of product sold through each of their ndependent businesses (organisations). Independent distributors develop their organisation by either building an active customer base, who buy direct from the parent company and / or by recruiting a downline of independent distributors who also build a customer base, expanding the overall organisation. Additionally, distributors can also earn a profit by retailing products which they purchased from the parent company at wholesale price.

Distributors earn a commission based on the sales efforts of their organisation, which includes their independent sale efforts as well as the leveraged sales efforts of their downline. This arrangement is similar to franchise arrangements where royalties are paid from the sales of individual franchise operations to the franchisor as well as to an area or region manager. Commissions are paid to multi-level marketing distributors according to the company’s compensation plan. There can be multiple levels of people receiving royalties from one person's sales."

Pretty dry stuff huh? But, there are some interesting statements in this definition. Let's take a closer look shall we?!! Now, it may get a little complicated, but so is marketing on the internet these days. Stick with me on this there is a method to the madness.

Now, as I read this definition, there are two parts to Internet Marketing one, is the attempt to build what we call a down line or in my line of work i call them "reps". A rep actually works for a larger company on a commission basis only if and when they generates sales. The other, is becoming a distributor where you can sell multiple product categories on a volume basis to create residual income and profit.

Let's focus on the first part of this definition for a moment. If you Rep a product, usually the company has multiple product categories and you can obtain distribution on a bulk basis in order for them to retail it in business outside of the internet. So you are selling many products on a commission basis to your distributors or "down line" for them in turn to retail. However, on the internet, it seems all too often the focus is on selling a single "system", a one true way, so to speak, with a large one time pay out with no real distribution on the other side to generate any substantial residual income or profit. So in other words, you have to sell the system to a new distributor each time in order to get paid for your hard work and effort promoting someone's "how to and i do it better than the rest" guide.

In short you spend all your time networking, marketing, promoting and trying to sell one thing.

Now the second part of the definition discusses representing a company that allows you to not only grow distributorship but also retail product yourself. Looking at this model in the short term, the pay out may seem a lot smaller than the previous model. I know the lure of a big pay out is tempting but hear me out. If you represent a company that has multiple streams of income and pays you a commission per sale through your distributorship and your own retail
sales the numbers start to add up to equal or exceed the big one time pay out package with a lot less investment of your time and the residual income is yearly not on a one time basis.

In short you have multiple ways of selling and
promoting your product to the same individual.
A good, better, best business profile.

Let me slow it down for a minute so I can make my
point. Network Marketing, is simply the art of selling.
You have a choice on the internet which way you want
to develop your income. One model is the Rep, on the
Internet, a Rep sells a "system". The "system" being
one that you buy into that has a large 1-up, as I see
it, one time pay out per sale. You are selling a program
that someone else controls. Typically you spend your
time Networking seeking interested individuals to
become fellow distributors and buy the system. He in
turn needs to do the same, and so on and so on.
What's missing here is who does the distributor get to
retail to? No one. How many other categories of product
do you Rep for the company? None. How much time and
how many people do you have to present the offer to?
An incredible amount. How many say yes? Very few.

For example, you are a Franchiser trying to sell another
Franchise to someone else in order to get paid. Ask a
Franchise owner of McDonald's how much money they
would make if they could only sell Franchises instead
of billions of burgers at $3.00 bucks a pop. Not much
if you look at the yearly sales and time vs income per
sale. On the other hand, the Rep who can sell both a
distributorship (aka Franchise) as well as sell product
(the burgers) may make less per sale, but has the
opportunity to have more success and a higher dollar
income per year because they are diversified. So the
odds of Networking and making either a retail sale or
a wholesale sale per lead is far greater. The time
spent per individual you Network with ends up being
a greater payout. The odds are simply in your favor.

The road to success is always paved with good
intentions, the reality is, you can't spend all your time
training and pitching. At some point you need to start
selling and building a business. So the question is,
what is your time worth? What is your perceived value.
How do you want to sell in it? Training and pitching to
people on how to sell someone elses "system" to others
or selling wholesale distributorship along with retail to
the masses with an infinite number of sales potentially
available with little or no time training?

The day of the one time big pay out "systems" are slowly
coming to an end. "Marketing Systems" have a defined life
expectancy. Over time the market becomes saturated.
Eventually the well runs dry by the sheer numbers of it.
As the down line forms, more and more people understand
the program less and less. It gets watered down, like that
game "telephone" where in the beginning everyone
understands the program and the internet but somewhere
as the line gets longer, the message gets garbled and the
meaning and intention are lost. The value of your
investment decreases as the number of investors rises who
are leass and less satisfied with what they have invested in.
They give a large sum of money and get nothing in return.
They are told to "leverage". Leverage in this case
means charge a couple of thousand to your credit and being
told that you will make the money back in 30 days. What if
you don`t? Then what? You are now in debt, scrambling for
as many leads as possible to make a sale out of desperation.
This is not sales folks, this is not Network Marketing,
this is panic mode.


If you take a step back and act as a business person,
the slow and steady daily income, and the built in residual
income that comes with it, is a great way to build and fund
other opportunities. All too often I see people investing in
large expensive programs without have any way to fund
them. Build your business, Network and Market yourself.
Build your relationships an income and more importantly
take on other programs slowly. If you want to be a
Representative of multiple products, make sure you can
produce sales on your own and have the customer base
to sell it to before putting yourself in the red.

That my friends is good business, good sales policy.
Then you have something very special to Market on the
Network we call the Internet.......

YOU!

As always, feel free to contact me with your questions.

I enjoy passing along information that helps you growyour business.

Keep those questions coming!

Wishing you success this week.

Corie Wallace

Email: cwallace.1000@gmail.com

Skype: corie.wallace

Phone: 508-660-8640

Success through listening skills, what does your customer really want.

“If you spend more time asking appropriate questions rather than giving answers or opinions, your listening skills will increase” - Brian Koslow - American Author and Entrepreneur


How many times has an offer been presented to you
that you had no need for. How much time did the
presenter spend talking and how much information
did he obtain from you in regards to your business,
your needs to improve your business. Very little I am
sure or more, did you know what they were even
talking about? Did it make sense to you and did it tap
into anything for you? If I can pass on one piece of
information to you that will open the doors of success
it is this... Information is knowledge, and with that
information you will succeed.

Think about where you do business, why do you go to
a particular barber or hair dresser, why you shop at a
particular store, where you bank, your lawyer,
accountant. There are people there you know and
trust because they know what you need. You know
they care about your best interests. They want to help
provide you with the things you prefer, or the way you
like to be treated. Now how did those people learn all
that about you to create such loyalty? How did they
build that kind of trust? How the heck did the dog
groomer know so much about you? Why did the
prospect pick the other guy instead of you for the
same product?!!?

These people were masters at building a
relationship, asking the right questions and
listening to the answers.

I want to tell you a little story that was one of my great
successes. Not to brag, but to show you the power of
listening and what it can do for you. I represented a
line that had six major competitors; all excellent
companies, all good products similar in nature and
very lucrative, with reps that all had excellent
relationships with the customer I had. I won the
account for this product category. It was big, it was
sweet , it was incredibly satisfying .... it was
exhausting!

Most people, even if they know you, don't make snap
judgments. I'm sure you don't agree to buy something
just because someone said, "hey, buy my stuff!" Not
only do you need to know the whys, you need to know
how it will help you before you fork over your hard
earned cash. But, listening to incessant babble about
why the presenter thinks its a good deal doesn't mean
it's a good deal for you. I had the luxury in my case
of having a great relationship with my customer, and
had proven that I could be relied on, gave great
service, was honest and cared. But so did the five
other guys. We were all selling "fiffle fafffle" and they
all talked about how great their "fiffle faffle" was. I
chose not to talk about "fiffle faffle", I chose to ask
why he was considering "fiffle faffle". From that one
simple question a dialog ensued that gave me an
incredible amount of information. I knew why he
wanted change, I learned about his frustrations, his
concerns, the need to grow his business. I learned
what other products I represented that would be
useful in the future. I sat there listening, not
speaking, empathizing where necessary, taking
notes and started to build a program based on his
business as he saw it not how I thought it should
be. So, when I did finally present my "fiffle faffle"
there was no need to negative sell the competition,
there was no need for endless hours of stating my
"fiffle faffle" was the greatest "fiffle faffle" in the
world.... just a program that fit his needs and a clear
way it would help grow his business in the direction
he wanted it to go.

The short of it is folks, you can't sell something big
if you don't understand who you are talking to. If
you speak more than ask questions, how will you
know anything? You can email people all day with
free stuff, and $5.00 e-books making money here
and there, but what have you've gained? Nothing.
You may have a data base of thousands of leads and
prospects, but do you have any clue what they need?
Do you know what they want in order to grow their
business? How do you know you need to have it to
sell if you don't know what it is? Are you missing an
opportunity? If you asked your base any of these
questions, would you know how to communicate
with them better? YES!

Whether you communicate through emails, or
through all the social networks out there, or through
forums, ask and listen to the responses. Write down
what you learn or use your computer's note pad.
We spend so much time learning the technical
aspects of what we do, looking for the easy way to
make things happen that we neglect the human
factor. There are people on the other side of the
screen folks. Sometimes we forget that. If you
want to succeed in this crazy place we call the
information highway, we need to learn what
information is valuable information.

As always, feel free to contact me with your questions.
I enjoy passing along information that helps you grow
your business.

Keep those questions coming!

Wishing you success this week.

Corie Wallace
cwallace.1000@gmail.com
Skype: corie.wallace
508-660-8640

How To Handle Objections

"Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers." Anthony Robbins - Success - Questions


I'm assuming most of you have loads of leads or purchase leads, but what are you doing with them? Endless emails are a thing of the past. It's the age of human contact, videos through you tube, etc… reaching out and turning prospects into customers. I've sat and listened to numerous self designated expert Internet "salesmen" telling you how they are successful and you will never be as good as them. I say yes you can. It just takes practice. Now folks, I don’t profess to be any sage guru, any expert except that I've been doing this in the real world for many years. It is innate at this point, automatic, and I have many successful business owners outside of the Internet that can attest to the fact that I helped grow their sales and impact their company's bottom line and I still do. Sales and marketing is what I do for a living, I eat sleep and breathe it every day. I know you can learn it too. Folks, I know it can be uncomfortable coming out from behind the screen and reaching out to a stranger, up until now I bet you've enjoyed the anonymity. We all hate telemarketers, but that is not what I am speaking of, these are your prospects that opted to give you their telephone number. You have piqued their interest. Reaching out and asking the right questions and listening, I mean really listening to the answers, will guide you in what your prospect's needs are. Think of it as a courtesy call. No selling, just sharing information and ideas. Build your relationship. Never greet someone and then start selling your stuff. You will get no where. I don’t care what anyone tells you. I've heard people say, "Treat it like the movie boiler room", The, take it to "no", so what, next theory. That’s a topic for another time. It takes a unique person to sell that way and they are doing it by sheer numbers. Call a thousand people odds are you'll get 10, and of those 10, how many will stay your customer or just buy your one product because they were pressured? That is no way to build a customer base let alone get a dialogue going to even get the opportunity to receive an objection.

Handling objections is a very subtle topic; you may not realize they are objecting. Simple responses are, "I'm not ready at this time", "I'll think about it", "I don’t understand your product", "I need to do more research" are among many I hear for Internet sales. I don’t suppose you've run across these subtle responses. They sound reasonable and the untrained may think that is a reasonable response. You may have found yourself answering in that manner. But ask yourself what did you really mean by that? You know what the answer is, you were trying to put off the sale. Ask your customer that very question; always ask an open ended question that requires more than a yes or no. Information is knowledge, and you learn about your prospect and his needs. Have a pad and paper at hand and right down the why's and why not answers. Don’t ever be afraid of getting a flat out no.Personally, I love no's. That’s when the selling starts. Now don’t get me wrong,when I say selling, it's really in the context of being an advisor, an ally, a consultant, and most importantly a mentor. See folks, I believe in the products I represent. I believe they help other people in one capacity or another. So if you truly believe in what you are offering, and know that product well, you will succeed more than not, because in the end that belief will get passed on. When I do receive a "no" I simply ask one question..."now that we've agreed that we don’t have a fit, would you mind telling me why you are not interested". Now you can put that in any words you want that you are comfortable saying but it is the one thing a prospect doesn’t expect. The perception that you have accepted and respected their answer. You have, but you've created, in one simple sentence an environment and an atmosphere that allows them to put their guard down and tell you what they really think. Folks, that is the key to sales,communication and the exchange of information. Now you can understand his reasoning, and maybe you won’t sell him this product but guess what, at the very least, you've built a relationship with this person. Always ask if you can call him again, 9 out of 10 times they will say yes because you spoke with them. When you send an email, the prospect will regard it as a personal note because they know you are a person, not spam. You have set yourself apart from the masses my friends in one simple conversation. Odds are in the end, you will have one heck of a loyal customer.

As always, feel free to contact me with your questions. I enjoy passing along information that helps you grow your business. Keep those questions coming!

Wishing you success this week.

Corie Wallace
cwallace.1000@gmail.com
Skype: corie.wallace
508-660-8640

Network Marketing and Sales Training

Network Marketing on the internet is a booming business ready to explode. How do you capitalize on your sales? Up until recently most sales have been done passively through emails or clicks to a site. But as the competition grows and the marketers, more savvy, how do you stay ahead of the pack and set yourself apart? How do you close the sale instead of the other guy?

My name is Corie Wallace; I have been in sales most of my adult life and have been quite successful at it. I have worked for over 20 years as a sales specialist, manufacturers representative where I was responsible for multiple lines. Last year I generated in one category alone over 6 million dollars in sales in one year and grew company's businesses by 20-30% consistently. I've dealt with high level corporations with multi branches requiring many sessions of sales techniques and training with people at all levels of skill and helped make each one a success. After so many years of helping make the wealthy, wealthier; I opt to help you the individual get your business off the ground and the experienced entrepreneur that extra something that puts them over the top.

Over the next few weeks, I’d like to go over some of the nuances of good salesmanship and success. Here I will break down the sales process:

• How to handle objections effectively.
• What can you do to improve your listening skills?
• What are the customer's real needs?
• How to offer information and close the sale.
• How to instill confidence in your prospect.
• Why “you” are the key element to your success.
• How do we translate that into internet marketing?
• Using the social networks to get free leads and build a larger sphere of influence.

I want to help you learn how to create a perceived value for yourself. Learning the technical aspects of internet sales and marketing is important, search engine optimization and link popularity a must, but it all really comes down to “who does the customer want to do business with “ that is the key. You need to set yourself apart, learn how to build a relationship with your customer base, grow your business by selling the customer their needs not your "cash cow".

Remember the best salesperson is the one who believes there is always something to learn from the person they are trying to do business with.

I look forward to these trainings with you and sharing my knowledge. I invite you to contact me with your questions.
Through you, I will learn just a little bit more.

Wishing you much success.

Corie Wallace

cwallace.1000@gmail.com
skype: corie.wallace
508-660-8640