Insight into the world of MLM. What you can expect and what you should be considering.

I have just read a great article about someone’s experience with MLM (multi level marketing), or network marketing as it is sometimes known and I would like to say a few words myself. I have been in a few over the years with varying degrees of success and my conclusion is that it is just not for me. Making out your first “contact list” is probably one of the most excruciating processes I have ever been through and as for calling all these people who really don’t want to know about vitamins, water-filters, overpriced household products or whatever the hell it is being sold, well it can be quite painful as you feel your credibility and friendships of yesteryear and today disappear.

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It’s a numbers game and that’s all it is. The products themselves become irrelevant as the numbers game becomes the business. Now if you don’t care, then for it but I cringe at the thought of the “successful persona” you have to assume even if you have not made a bean yet, watching people nervously sign up to a business you know they wont succeed in.

Even if you do manage to recruit people to fill all those little circles on the flip-chart, unless they are seasoned networkers you will have your evenings taken over by meetings and “motivating workshops” to keep them in. Its hard graft and if we look closely at the numbers how many big winners can there be?

Treating people as numbers is a hard thing to get used to and in MLM it is dressed up as “mining for diamonds” or some other analogy that de-humanises the process.

Proof of the pudding is to take a look in the “business opportunities” section of any paper and see the list of “home-based businesses, call for your free info pack”, or the more upfront; “get in early, new MLM product”.

Its just a business like any other, but with most other businesses you get to keep most of your friends.

In itself I think that MLM is a genius system for moving a product, so if you are thinking about getting into it make sure you find a product that you are absolutely in love with, if your just in love with the numbers then your merely playing the game and the numbers you will be crunching might just be people.