MLM In An Ever-Shrinking World

Remember trying to recruit someone into your Multilevel Marketing (MLM) business, via “long distance” in the old days? That was one of the most challenging aspects of the business wasn’t it? Well, with the advent of the Internet, the whole world is open to us. Smart MLM’ers are taking advantage of that!

No more of the traditional expenses associated with long distance sponsoring. Sending out packages of information, racking up long distance charges, in some cases even traveling to meet and train your new distributor.

None of that anymore. It’s time to shout, "Hellooo World!" The world has really become a smaller place...a global village if you will. Now we can transfer or send information within minutes and often time within seconds! No more do you HAVE to send out your packages of vides, audios, brochures etc.

Now with this rich “multi media” of information available we can just direct our prospects to our/company’s websites to get the information that will address the situation at hand.

Websites have even evolved to a point where no longer are they just static billboards of text and images; they’re as visually stimulating as any recruiting video could ever be! Moreover they’re interactive! Prospects can ask questions, voice concerns and objections and get answers in real time.

Case in point: Here I am in Toronto (Brrrr! It’s cold! :) And you might be in sunny Australia, sitting out on your porch and reading this very article!

So there’s no question that the Internet has made “long distance” sponsoring much easier and cost effective, not to mention making accessible a much larger pool of prospects world wide.

HOWEVER, don’t make the common mistake that I see distributors doing all the time these days...taking their business exclusively online. See, even though the Internet is such a powerful medium, it has a couple of major downsides in terms of our business:

First….

We should keep our perspective in terms of the source of our pool of prospects! Where are our prospects? Well, for one, more than half of them are NOT even online yet!

Therefore for any prospecting whether “long distance” or otherwise, that’s a whole lot of people that would fall through the cracks if you were to focus exclusively on working your business through the net.

Second …

One of the biggest obstacles that we have to face as MLM’ers is the aspect of “credibility.” In other words this business is very much of a “see, feel and touch” sort of business.

Unfortunately until our great industry becomes “self evident” in terms of general perception of MLM being a viable method of doing business, this will continue to be an obstacle.

Much as we’d (those of us who use the NET for our businesses) like to believe otherwise, the Net is still considered by the general public to be somewhat of a cold and sterile place.

Because of the anonymity of it, (makes it easier for the scammers and hucksters) people view business opportunities in general with even MORE skepticism than they would “offline.”

So what am I saying here? Don’t take your MLM business on the Internet? On the contrary! Not to take advantage of ANY means of exposing your products and business to prospects would not make business sense!

However, consider the Internet as just another medium to get your message out there. An extremely powerful one, but just another tool in your MLM toolbox.

So just keep things in perspective, realizing that your main market is still offline (but coming online at a phenomenal rate!) and approach your business using ALL the tools at your disposal...OFFLINE as well as ONLINE!

After all, “Duplication” is the real key to MLM success. Unfortunately duplication can come in two forms, duplicating the right things and duplicating the WRONG things! Approaching your business using ALL the means at your disposal would be setting the stage for the right duplication.