How Recruiting is Killing your MLM biz-op
August 10, 2008
The problem with most biz-op deals is that the real money to be made is in recruiting others to join the deal rather than on building a customer base. Again, understanding how insidious this problem can be comes back to understanding your comp plan as a business building blueprint AND as your strongest allies in building your biz-op. If your company offers “big bucks” for recruiting, then people are simply going to do what every great detective does in all those old movies; “follow the money.”
I’m an “old school” networker who has watched more people fizzle out than I care to recount and the problem often has its roots in the comp plan. What happens is that you, or your new distributor, “gets” someone to join the deal as a new distributor. Then they promptly abandon their new recruit to go find another recruit. Why? Because the big payday is often in recruitment. This would be like a traditional business hiring an unskilled employee, celebrating, and then going and finding another employee, and another, and another, etc. When put like that it sounds crazy, yet in MLM we are paid to do just that.
My advice, Don’t Be Stupid! Like I have said for years, “Just Because Something Works in MLM, Doesn’t Mean You Want To Do It.” You are going to spend your Time, Treasure & Talent building your biz-op. Don’t throw your 3Ts into the street. Sometimes you have to ignore the fast BIG money, to make the LONG small money. If your comp plan has a solid back end concentrate 80%+ of your efforts on that, or you will forever be playing the endless recruitment, no residual income game.
Old School says; “Get someone into your deal. Then love on them and support them until they either make it (and then you love on them even more) or until it is painfully obvious that they are not going to do anything in your biz-op.” The old line that many MLM pros quote about you spending too much time with the wrong people is only partially true. Understand that in our industry 99% of us who join MLM have zero experience with the last “M.”
You are not recruiting someone to make you money. You are not even recruiting an employee. You are recruiting a business partner. Treat them as such or don’t recruit them. If you want to make money off them, fine, I suggest you be clear about it and make them a retail customer. If your comp plan doesn’t reward you more for that activity you are, IMHO, working for a Ponzi scam. For example, one of my favorite comp plans offers an intro pack to a prospect for $99. If it is offered at Retail, the distributor pockets roughly $25. If it is offered as a beginning pack with recruitment, the distributor doesn’t earn any fast start money.
Brilliant! This plan still incentivizes massive reaching out with a 25% commission like most fast start plans offer yet it isn’t about endless distributor recruitment. It is about finding real world customers. Let me put it another way. Everything hits “market saturation” at some point. For example; imagine if you went to your local used car lot to buy a car and the salesperson made more money getting you to become a used car salesperson than they did selling you a car. Question One, How many used car sales people can your town handle? And Question Two, Do you like the ones you already have now?
The lesson is this: If you are on a recruiting rampage you are chasing the scheme dream, if you are building a real business you are more interested in keeping the customers and distributors you have already “gotten” secured.
Have a groovy day
