Archive for August, 2009
Entrepreneur Tips From The Shark Tank
Monday, August 31st, 2009I watched Shark Tank last night and picked up a few entrepreneurial tips that I thought I would share with my fellow network marketers. I don’t normally work on Sundays but that’s when the show was on and I do like the show.
Entrepreneur Tips from Kwame
The first guy up was from West Africa, Kwame Kuadey, who grew up in such poor conditions that I can only imagine. Of course, if you don’t know any better are you really missing out? Kwame lost his job recently and was up before the sharks asking for $150,000 so that he could get his home based business off the ground.
Kwame’s company Gift Card Rescue. Gift Card Rescue buys unused gift cards from consumers and resells the cards at a lower value. Here is what I got from Kwame to take and use in business today or in the future:
Don’t let your past dictate your future. Kwame grew up even poorer than I did but from what I could see, he doesn’t let anything stand in his way from getting what he wants.
Use the bad economy in your favor. Here is what I loved best about Kwame’s idea. Not only does he help people to make money by selling their unused gift cards but he also helps people who want to purchase gift cards to save money. I didn’t realize that there were so many gift cards purchased and a good percentage of those bought never get used.
From an environmental standpoint, I think his idea is also a winner – a business model that helps keep items from going to the landfill is okay in my book.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one that saw some great characteristics of an entreprenuer in Kwame. He came in asking for $150,000 for a 30% stake in his company and left with $200,000 and two sharks, Robert Herjavek and Keven O’Leary, to help his reach his full business potential and he only had to give up 50% of his company.
Entrepreneurial Tips from Gina
Second up in the tank was Gina Controneo. Gina’s mission is to spread positive messages to the world with your line of gifts and accessories. Here is what I got from Gina:
Don’t let your passion for something cloud your business judgment. It’s one thing to be passionate about what you are doing and to get joy from it but if you are in business for yourself, you also have to be realistic. One thing that I noticed about Gina is that her passion is so great for what she does that even when she gave herself some boundaries, she ignored them. She said on the show that at her last trade show if she didn’t make a profit selling her items, that she would stop putting more money into her business and move on but she managed to talk herself into keeping it up no matter the cost.
After looking at Gina’s line of product, none of the sharks wanted in. The numbers just didn’t add up. They thought she had a good idea but didn’t think it would make any real money.
Entrepreneurial Tips from Dan
Next up was Dan Claffey with Coffee Brand Gifts. Dan is hoping to use people’s love of coffee to sell his products. Here is what I got from Dan:
Check to see if you can trademark terms that you thought were already trademarked. Dan was able to trademark terms like; espresso, java, and latte. I would have thought those terms would have already been taken.
Ask for the sale. Dan made a huge mistake in that he hasn’t gotten any written commitments from anyone to buy his products. His thinking is that he will make the products first and then sell them. And while I think that having all of your ducks in a row is a good thing, if no one buys your product after you have spent a ton of money making them, you will be left with a house full of teddy bears that no one wants.
One thing that I have learned in network marketing is that you don’t have to have everything perfect before you launch your business. Make sure that you have a market that wants your product before you spend all of your time and money making everything perfect.
The sharks didn’t bite and Dan left without a deal. I had a question for Dan. It’s been my experience that the majority of people that drink coffee are adults. How many adults really want a teddy bear with the word “Java” on it’s belly?
Entrepreneurial Tips from Amy and Allison
The last entrepreneurial tip that I got from the show was from Allison Costa and Amy Feldman. And that was to get a patent on your product if possible. They had a really good idea that I think will become a standard item to buy for anyone that buys a playpen for their kids. They call it CoverPlay and it is a slip cover for playpens (I noticed that they call them play yards now. Did some kid get offended about being put into a pen? Just wondering.)
The ladies went with Barbara Corcoran who offered a deal of $350,000 for 40% stake in the company. I think they wanted to work with Barbara even before they stepped into the room and would have taken any deal that she offered.
That’s it for last night’s Shark Tank, I hope you got some good tips that you can use for your home based business to make it as successful as you want it to be. If you would like to see the show for yourself you can catch it on ABC Sunday nights at 9pm ET.
How Top MLM Companies Make Their Money
Thursday, August 27th, 2009Let’s face it, businesses are in it for the money. They may provide a great product or service but no one wants to work for free. How do the top MLM companies make their money?
Grocery stores make money by selling groceries. The more people that come in to buy their groceries, the more influence they have over what people purchase, and the demographics of their shoppers will dictate the amount of money the store owner makes.
Multi Level Marketing Businesses are basically the same. The more people that come to buy their product or service, the quality of those people (the demographics) and the influence that they have over their audience will determine their profitability.
That’s why your MLM company can make a killing in this industry. They get you to join the MLM business opportunity with the idea that you can make money from home and then they influence you to buy more and more of their product or service and share it with everyone so that you have to buy even more of their product.
What Do The Numbers Tell Us
Let’s take a quick look at some facts about the network marketing industry that you may not be aware of:
- The success rate in this industry is less than 2%. It doesn’t matter what MLM company you are with, what your up line tells you or anyone else tells you, the chances of you making your multi level marketing business grow using what is currently taught is less than 2%. Bugging your friends and family, passing out fliers (CDs, DVDs, business cards, etc.), dragging people to meetings and home parties, doesn’t work for most people and it isn’t likely to change just because you are excited about your opportunity.
- The national average says that most network marketers will put 2.5 people into their downline before they quit. Why do they quit? They quit because their company only teaches them to use their warm market to market to. Most people can make a list of their friends of family and come up with 100-200 names. Out of that list you may get 2 or 3 people to sign up.
- Most network marketers quit marketing their business in 90-120 days. Why would you stay in a business where you aren’t making any money? The retention rate goes to zero if you have nothing more to offer than a failing system. After all of the hard work of getting people to join your network marketing program it really is discouraging to see so many people drop out. Have you ever wondered how you are supposed to build momentum with such a high attrition rate?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to tell you that it can’t be done using these techniques. I’m not bashing on MLM companies or this industry. The simple fact is that they have to survive and if they don’t, you don’t get a check because they will go out of business.
Most network marketing distributors that get involved don’t have a clue how to build a business, so MLM companies are forced to teach methods that are very easy and simple for everyone to use and understand. If people knew that they were actually going to have to “sell” something, they probably wouldn’t get involved in the first place. So you may use the techniques taught by your company and you may even put 10 or 20 people into your business, but it might take you more than a year to do it and it may take you more money than you will earn to do make that happen.
Of course, you may also be one of the lucky 2% and make it to the top of your MLM company using the techniques that are taught. But the numbers aren’t in your favor.
How To Find Your Niche With Your Multi Level Marketing Business
Wednesday, August 26th, 2009If you have been in network marketing for any length of time you have probably come across the term “niche marketing”. What is a niche? According to Wikipedia, a niche market is the subset of the market on which a specific product is focusing on.
Let’s say that you are in one of the best MLM companies (It doesn’t really matter which one it is, we all think that ours is the best) and your MLM products are centered on health and wellness. Then health products would be your general niche.
Why Do You Want To Find Your Niche ?
The reason you want to find a niche is to narrow your target market. This may sound counter productive because we want to attract as many people as possible to our website and to our network marketing program as possible but in order to do that we have to be seen and to be seen we have to remove the competition. And since we can’t hire a bunch of hit men, we have to do it by focusing on a niche.
Which Niche?
How do you know what niche to focus on? Let’s use an example to break it down for you. You are in a MLM Company that has a great opportunity but I just said that the competition for finding home based business opportunities is huge. So, we definitely want to stay away from that market.
What is our MLM Company? Actually, we probably should also stay away from using our network marketing company’s name as well. Not only are all of the other distributors trying to go that route but there may also be legal issues about using your company’s name.
What is our product? This one is a better option. For example, if you are in a health and wellness company and your main network marketing product is a healthy juice, then compared to trying to push a home based business opportunity, your competition is relatively smaller. Again, don’t use the name of the company when you are selling your product.
What are the benefits of your network marketing products? Now we are getting somewhere. Everyone wants to know what in it for them. So let’s market our MLM products based on the benefits. If it’s a health juice, then your benefits may include: more energy, quicker recover from workouts, vitamin rich, low in calories, etc.
By narrowing down your niche to one specific item (health juice), you can focus on getting only those people that are interested in the benefits that one MLM product can provide.
Once you have identified your network marketing product, you want to look at your competition. What makes your product different from all of the other similar products already on the market? Can your healthy juice do something that none of the others can, is there something unique about it that will make it stand out from all of the others?
Niche marketing is one way to really target your market. It may take a little research to find a good niche to get into but once you do, it can a be very profitable way to grow your network marketing business.
You Only Need To Master 3 Things To Sell Your MLM Products
Monday, August 24th, 2009What I want to know is, why is it so easy to get started with any of the multi level marketing businesses available, yet their is a such a high failure rate in this industry. Why do so many network marketers never make a dime working their home based business? If you are doing everything that your highly successful network marketing company leaders are teaching you, why aren’t you successful?
You know, I asked myself that same question. I did everything network marketing program taught me to do; the 3-way calls to my upline, expensive network marketing lead lists, hotel meetings, fliers and a whole list of other things that didn’t do anything to grow my business but did a lot to put me into debt.
My first year in network marketing, I took massive action but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why I wasn’t making any money at this presumably easy business that anyone could do from home. I got rejected time and time again, no one joined my network marketing business, and I created enough credit card debt to keep me in the red for a very long time.
One day I got a call and this guy asked me a question. He asked, if I would like to know how to add 20-30 people a week into my business, would that be worth about 45 minutes of my time to find out how to get that done? I started to do the calculations in my head. At the time I would have been happy to learn how to ad one person a week into my home based business. So I said yes, please show me how to add 20-30 people a week into my business.
The result of that phone call was that I learned that there are 3 things that you have to master if you want to be able to sell your mlm products. They just weren’t the 3 things that my upline told me about. The 3 things that you must master are; the telephone, the written word,and the Internet.
