Customers Should Be the Immediate Goal in Your MLM Business

Once upon a time, in the very early days of Network Marketing, customers were the foundation of everyone's business. Success in the business came early on by introducing the products to friends and others, and developing a small, loyal customer base.

These retail buyers not only provided ongoing profit for the MLM Business Owner, they often became a source of referrals based on their own product testimony. They tried the products to support a friend; fell in love with them; provided ongoing orders; and recommended them to others.

Occasionally, these product users would become interested in the business based on their belief in the products. This creates a very strong, solid business builder because of this product belief. Enthusiasm and the story these customers-turned-business-builders had to share was infectious, creating a larger organization of product lovers.

Somewhere along the way, the MLM industry changed course and the idea of gathering that small customer base fell by the wayside.

MLM became a "wholesale buying club." All of the "customers" were also distributors, and many of them were not in it for the products, but rather for the compensation plan.

For anyone not great at contacting, inviting and presenting the MLM business opportunity and then sponsoring others in would quickly find that they really had no business at all.

Just a pile of mounting debt. And, many left with a bad taste in their mouth for MLM.

Instead of telling a few friends about their products, they began to tell their friends that Network Marketing doesn't work. Ever hear the statistic that if someone has a good experience, they tell a few people? If they have a bad experience, they tell everyone!

This is what began to happen with the MLM industry and it plays a big role in why some have a negative opinion of the industry. Many of these naysayers have not had a bad experience. They have heard about someone else's bad experience.

So, they tell a few more people.

My experience with my first company did a great job of laying a solid foundation for me about getting that small, loyal customer base. It was required to get 20 customers and keep them in order to get paid on other business building efforts. That did a great job of teaching me the basic MLM fundamentals and getting some success under my belt immediately.

I'm not sure what your company requirements are, or how solid your ability is to actually retail your products. Hopefully you have a product line that has a retail price structure built in so that you can actually compete in the general marketplace.

Too often, these days, the wholesale cost of the products is more than you would pay for a product of equal quality elsewhere, from a non-network marketing company.

This is another thing that leads people to think negatively about our industry of MLM.

Often, we hear "Oh, but this product is the best and so it is priced higher."

Oh, really, and how do you know for sure? Have you taken it to an independent lab and had it analyzed against a competitor?

Be careful making any claims that your prospect might call you on. Make sure you can back everything up with proof.

Network Marketing industry statistics show that the average amount that a distributor will bring to a company in product sales monthly is between $100 and 300. That number seldom changes. You will have some who do more and some who do less, but when averaged, this is the number that prevails.

My own statistics support this. I am not a big retailer but I stick to my loyal customer base and my goal is to generate at least $100 in retail sales each month. While it doesn’t happen every month, the annual average always reflects an amount above the $100 goal and less than the $300 maximum.

So, how about you? What do you see that might be different if you personally set a goal to develop a small, loyal customer base and taught your team to do the same?

What might that do to lower attrition and create a sense of success among the new distributors?

What mindset shift might occur of more people achieved some level of success right away in their MLM business?

I'm committed to this process, how about you? What's your personal customer and monthly retail average goal in your business?

Here is one way I get customers online.