Work at home, sell online. It’s fun. It seems easy. And it’s a career. It’s one I chose to follow several years ago. But I didn’t opt to use multi-level marketing (MLM) as my starting business model. And I wouldn’t recommend it unless you understand what you’re really doing.
Do You Truly Understand What MLM Entails If You Want to Work at Home, Sell Online?
If you’re looking to work at home sell online by way of a conventional MLM operations, consider what Neil Offen, president and CEO of the Direct Selling Association, told NPR News about the difficulty that you’d face in trying to replace full-time income with direct-selling and home-based businesses.
It may be fun work to hold a product party at some friend’s house. It may seem easy to close on a sale after you demo all your wares. That alone can be very satisfying for the right type of temperament. But convincing someone to release their purse strings after only 1 appointment takes skill.
It’s not impossible. The rewards can be substantial.
Offen says that 8% of 16 millions people doing direct sales in the United States dedicate full time to this kind of work. Half of these 1.3 million full-timers earn over $50,000 per year and about 13% of them earn over $100,000 annually. Imagine the work that these champions have to do to reach such income levels!
They’re in the top 1% of their class. They have a method. They know their clientele, products, competition and ‘turnover rates.’ They nurture their customers. They run a business all the way, every day. It’s work. And it’s not for the lazy.
The work at home sell online crowd often do not understand this, but are tempted by the get-rich-quick gimmicks espoused by charlatans who prey on people’s perceptions of the Internet as being a panacea to the high cost of starting a conventional brick-and-mortar business.
If you’re accustomed to making, say, $50,000 per year in salary and you wish to replace it with a work at home sell online scheme based on MLM direct sales, yet you’re starting without a client base, without deep knowledge of sales and marketing techniques, without a full grip on either your products, a product distribution policy, the benefits that your prospects want from dealing with you, how to recruit a sales team to help you grow your downline, and how to set up a lead generation process even if you have no money, then are you sure that you really know what you’re getting yourself into?
Are you that good that you’d make it into the top 20% of all direct sales and distribution reps in the country, by receiving your training from the MLM vendor alone?
Although it’s true that you can give yourself a try to test your mettle, should the main objective be to replace your former salary?
Work At Home Sell Online Success Is Not For The Lazy
How reasonable is it for you to think of reaching the goal of replacing a $50,000 salary within 12 months doing MLM sales online? The answer most likely is not much, because the first question for you to ask should be whether the MLM organization that you’re joining is not a pyramid scheme or a financial trap.
To discover this you need to learn upfront whether that team is running an honest business, by disclosing to you how it’s structured and how it operates, including its actual rates of profitability, cash flow, expenses, rep turnover and price competitiveness. You also need to analyze with a magnifying glass every bit of information available on the methodology that they’re using for carrying out sales.
Why are the products not sold in stores?
How many customers are there who are not fellow distributors?
What program are you to follow to close sales with them?
Who is your competition and why are they inferior?
By the way, did you know other distributors like you are also your competitors? How many of them are there around you?
Where’s the proof that your claims will be true and how reliable is this proof?
You’re buying into a business, right? You’re entitled to know all of the above and more. Will you receive this information from the MLM company your joining? That’s another question.
Getting to Understand Sales and Marketing First Before Learning MLM
Let me not discourage you entirely from MLM ventures, though I only recommend them to those who know how to sell and who can make it into the top 1%. But let me encourage you to understand marketing and sales first before undertaking any kind of business venture, where you’d be promoting affiliate products or services to strangers.
Let me point you instead to a methodology that will help you succeed in working at home and selling online, if you have the determination for it. Technology is indeed within your reach and has become easier to understand and use. It is very affordable. What matters is your ability to understand intimately a market segment consisting of people with the desire and money to buy from you. If you already have such an insight, then the following work at home sell online approach is custom made for you: Prospecting Sucks: Magnetic Marketing for the Multilevel/Network Marketing Business.