“It’s not selling. It’s sharing!”
Doesn’t that just give you warm fuzzies inside?
This untruth also has a distant cousin which often takes the form of gibberish like this:
“Your family and friends should buy from you just because you’re you. I mean, why
would they give their business to some large corporation when they could give it to a
close friend or relative. It’s called keeping your money in close circles. People a hundred
years ago used to do it.”
More about this in a minute.
First, let’s talk about the severe ramifications this whole idea of “sharing” has for people
who are just getting started.
Here are the two major side effects of this lie:
Side Effect #1. There’s a huge deficiency of proper sales training because if it’s not sales,
then there’s no need for sales skills. As a result, people are thrown to the wolves totally
unprepared to retail their products and their opportunity.
Side Effect #2. People are set up for failure because they’re given false expectations
about how easy this is going to be. Labeling this whole business as “sharing” makes it
sound like child’s play. New distributors are given the impression they’re doing one
thing, when in fact it’s something else entirely. They think this is going to be a cakewalk
and when they find out it’s not they aren’t too likely to stick around.
When people are fed the idea that it’s simply a matter of sharing, they’re in for a very
harsh reality check. They go out and eagerly “share” their incredible product with all their family members, only to be sorely disappointed when they’re shot down. Then they’re baffled as to why it didn’t work for them.
One of the main reasons people tell this lie is because they don’t want to scare new
prospects away. They want people to get this nice, cozy feeling that all we’re doing is telling the rest of the world about our wonderful product and people will be so swept away by our enthusiasm that they’ll automatically buy.
(The Renegade Network Marketer Report)
After all, it’s common knowledge that most people hate sales. So uplines and sponsors
will beat around the bush and basically sugar-coat this inconvenient and uncomfortable
fact:
If You Are In Network Marketing, You Are In Sales.
Understand this: Anytime you’re asking another person to give you money in exchange
for something, you’re talking about sales. Selling is not sharing and sharing is not selling. We’ve all heard it before. Word of mouth is the most powerful form of advertising there is, right? Right.
What do you do when you see an incredible movie at the theatre? You tell your friends
how awesome it was…how gripping the plot was…how engaging the actors were…blah,
blah, blah, all that good stuff…and that they absolutely have to go see it. Same with
eating out at a great restaurant or picking up your favorite artist’s new CD.
People will be very likely to go spend money on these things after hearing a glowing
report from you, their trusted friend.
Here’s where the stick gets thrown into the spokes.
Your personal recommendation for all that stuff is so powerful because you have nothing
to gain by “selling” them to your friends. As soon as you throw a financial interest into
the mix, everything changes - both for you and for them.
For starters, you’re not as comfortable. You don’t feel as natural as you did with
something you don’t make money off of. Now you’re forcing it and as a result, it just
doesn’t “flow” the same. It’s also different for them because they know you’re making money from the deal. It’s no longer an unbiased, “third party” opinion. People can smell an “incentivized” referral from a mile away. The whole dynamics of it has changed.
So the fact is, in network marketing you have now crossed over from the world of
personal recommendation to the realm of direct sales. Don’t let anyone tell you they’re
the same, because they’re not.
Click the book to get the complete report - FREE!
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