When I designed my first website in 1994, the Internet was still in its infancy. Designing websites was largely done in text-editors, and features were very basic. The website (The cOZino) no longer exists – it was part of a project I was working on with a friend (while we were at Uni). The website was incidentally shut down (by the university administration), shortly after it gained worldwide recognition through an article in TIME™ magazine. These images are fairly basic quality, but they are unfortunately all I have in memory of the website.
In the middle of 1994, there were around 2,700 websites on the internet. By the end of 1994, there were more than 10,000 websites. A conservative guess is that there are about 250 million websites today. Google didn’t exist in 1994 (it arrived four years later), and the available search engines were by no means as sophisticated as we expect them to be today. So, how did a small website created on a university web-server in Australia make its way across the world into TIME™ magazine? The fact is that there is a channel of communication, which is more efficient than any search engine robot can ever be (if it is employed properly) – network marketing.
But, isn’t network marketing all about forced selling of overpriced products to reluctant customers?
Indeed, that is one of the feelings many people have about network marketing, and there are even some network marketing companies that propagate this definition – not explicitly, but by how they promote themselves and their opportunities.
Network marketing is about interacting with people and passing on information to them. It can be as simple as telling your friends or colleagues about a cool movie you saw, or about an online casino (as it were). They then tell their friends and colleagues, and before you know it, your recommendation has travelled to places you have never been, and has been heard by people you have never met.
We have all had experience in network marketing, ever since we first started forming our own opinions about life and the experiences around us. In general, we don’t get paid for recommending a movie, a shop or a website. However, the popularized notion of network marketing involves the added bonus of getting paid, and that is where everything becomes a lot more complicated.
The idea of getting paid for something we have done naturally since the age of five, would normally appeal to most people. However, as soon as we have something to gain from spreading information, we become less relaxed and as a result, the people we talk to are less likely to be amenable to our information. Whether we want to or not, we become pushy sales-people, desperate to inflict our information (and hence, our product or opportunity) on as many people as possible.
Network marketing is not about selling information, products or opportunities. It is about connecting with people, listening to them, finding out what they want, and helping them get what they want.
“You can’t help someone get up a hill without getting closer to the top yourself.” – Norman Schwarzkopf
If network marketing (the variant that you get paid for) is done properly, it has the potential to make you as successful as you want to be. If it is not done properly, you will more than likely find yourself in a situation where you have lost more than you have gained – not only from a financial perspective.
Knowing that network marketing is a people-business, not a sales-business, is the first step in becoming a successful network marketer. The next steps are knowing how to talk to people and what to say to them. Whether we are aware of it or not, when we approach someone and say “… Network Marketing … Best Opportunity Ever …”, their reaction is more than likely to fall back on all their preconceived ideas, with regards to what they think we are talking about. The trick is learning how to dispel these preconceived ideas.
How do we learn what to say, how to say it, and moreover, to whom?
Regardless of whether you are involved in network marketing already, and regardless of whether you are successful (in business and/or life), if you would like to learn the answers to the questions above, click here, or contact me.
