I joined Amway in 1989. A high school friend of mine called me and asked me a simple question. “Was I interested in making an extra $2000 per month?” who would say no to that question, right? I was about to get married and had a lot of expenses and was struggling to move up in my career as a R & D Engineer. I was invited to see the “plan” at his home. Later during the “follow up” I spent about an hour arguing with my friend that it could not work. Eventually he said “fine then don’t join”.
That really made me mad; him telling me I shouldn’t do something I want to do. Wait a minute here, now I want to do this? I remember telling him I’m going to do this just to show you it can’t work. Really dumb statement, I know.
I started to learn about how to build the network marketing business by sharing with my friends and family. Some of them actually joined us and we had a great time together. Then I moved on to the warm contacts. These were people that I worked with and knew from the past but did not have a current close relationship with. Then last but not least the dreaded “cold contacts”. We wrote a script and would call people we met during visits to shops and to the mall, looking at cars, whatever & whenever. Clearly this was the largest group of people and in fact many of the leaders in the group came from cold contacting.
We were following the examples and teachings of the leaders that were in my upline. Don Wilson and Randy Haugen. These people had reached a level of success we all wanted. They were millionaires many times over. They taught us how to do what they did and to build good size teams. It worked too! These leaders became very successful in Amway and we reached some levels of success as well.
Around 2001 Amway they created Quixtar. It was intended to be an online business concept where all customers could order online. You could enroll online and you had a back office and all. This was going to revolutionize the business and I think the idea was a good one. Just a bit premature. Especially since we all only had “dial up” internet access. It was very slow and many people did not have access. We left Quixtar in 2003 and in 2007, Amway got rid of the name and went back to the name Amway Global.
What’s New Today?
A couple of years ago I started looking for the best network marketing companies today, and there are several. I wanted to get back involved in this form of business because I had been involved in running conventional businesses over the last 20 years and really missed the focus on working as a team, helping other people, building something of your own and having unlimited earning potential. Plus there is no other business that allows you to duplicate your time as easily.
Now with virtually everyone having access to high speed internet service, cellphones in everyone’s hand, and constant social media viewing the network marketing business needs to change as well. There are still people trying to build the “old” way with face to face marketing and there is nothing wrong with it, if it works for you. What I have found is that people are moving at a faster pace than ever. It’s hard to get their attention and keep it, long enough to share the opportunity with them.
I felt that the network marketing building methods had to change somehow to take advantage of the current culture of being online and accessing social media almost continually. Today we don’t call it “cold contacting” we call it “lead generation” and the whole process is flipped upside down from what we used to do.
In the old days we would ask a cold contact “if they have considered other business ideas” or “have you thought about owning your own business?”, or something similar. Sometimes we would hand out business cards or collect them. I even taught people in my group how to call people out of the phone book. I cannot believe that we used to do that. Wow! It worked but it was not for the faint of heart. Most people were deathly afraid of talking about a business opportunity to someone they don’t know face to face. Or even over the telephone. It was very hard to help people who said they don’t know anyone else, other than their broke brother in-law and their best friend who just got out of jail and really needs the business.
Frequently we would waste our time talking to someone who was not interested in doing something else other than working their job. They did not have a dream or goal to own their own business. Some just were not thinking of the future, just wanting to get by paycheck by paycheck.
Today we don’t need to ask people who are not looking. Today we make sure people who are looking can find us. By using social media, videos, websites and blogs we can draw in people who are searching just the way I was a few years ago. We have automated marketing systems and we can reach out to a much larger audience of “pre-qualified” people. I call them that because they are already clearly looking and they may be open to what your business opportunity is all about.
Once they locate you and join your team you just teach them the methods you use and so on. Now I am simplifying it a bit because we use some special tools and methods that only people who join our team get to use. However the principle is still the same.
Times continue to change so I plan to adapt to them in my network marketing business and continually improve. This is what will provide sustainability for years to come.
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Thanks for reading!
Mark Balderrama
