This post in response to a recent article at Helium. The author mistakenly believes traditional MLM is dead because of the Internet.No..the Internet did not kill the MLM business model. The MLM business model started dying years before the Internet became a viable sales, marketing and business building tool. What happened to so many MLM companies is that thousands of people in these business organizations stopped sponsoring and started recruiting. (See: How To Recruit & Sponsor Effectively)
Sponsoring is not recruiting and recruiting is not sponsoring.
Yet, so many well meaning people fail to comprehend the differences between these two activities. Effective sponsoring is no more or less than successfully connecting with people emotionally and intellectually, and in some cases spiritually.
The primary reason so many people have difficulty sponsoring others is they confuse sponsoring with recruiting, or use the terms interchangeably. In order to completely understand why so many people fail at this critical aspect of their business, you must know the difference between sponsor, sponsoring, recruit and recruiting.
Recruit: A recruit (other than a newly enlisted man or woman in the military) is any new disciple or follower of a cause or organization.
Recruiting: Recruiting is the active process of finding followers or disciples for a cause or organization; whereas, the organization can be a commercial enterprise.
Sponsor: A Sponsor is anyone that literally accepts responsibility for another. This includes, but is not limited to, his/her debts, statements, obligations, actions and activities.
Sponsoring: Sponsoring is the active process of finding people that will be responsible or accept responsibility for others.
Accepting the responsibility for another human being is a solemn obligation that should not be taken lightly. Recruiting is basically finding bodies to fill quotas. The language of networkers that are trying to build an organization by recruiting is: "You get 5, and they get 5, and so on down the line." The language of a sponsor is entirely different. When a sponsor speaks, it is always what we are going to do and what we are going to accomplish. We are going to work together. My income is dependent on how well I fulfill my obligation to you.
Accepting the responsibility for another human being is a solemn obligation that should not be taken lightly. Recruiting is basically finding bodies to fill quotas. The language of networkers that are trying to build an organization by recruiting is: "You get 5, and they get 5, and so on down the line." The language of a sponsor is entirely different. When a sponsor speaks, it is always what we are going to do and what we are going to accomplish. We are going to work together. My income is dependent on how well I fulfill my obligation to you.
Therefore, your role and function is not only to help the person you sponsored increase his/her income, you must also teach that person how to accept responsibility for someone else. Hence, you must teach John how to sponsor Bill, so Bill can teach Edgar how to sponsor or accept responsibility for Sally. This is the traditional MLM business model and it has not changed in 50 years.
When you decide to join a commercial enterprise or organization that requires sponsoring others in order to grow, 99% of the support these people will receive will come from you. The remaining 1% comes from the company, organization or your upline.
When you join a commercial enterprise or organization that requires recruiting, 0%, or none of the support these people receive comes from you. Once an individual has been recruited, your role and function is over. All the support an individual will.., or will not receive.. comes from the organization or commercial enterprise.
Every Home Based Business that has a user based product or service; whereby, the product must be consumed or used in order to earn income, and growth is realized by developing a distributor network, is a sponsor oriented commercial venture. To succeed in this particular business format will require sponsoring, not recruiting.
Every Internet Based Business is a recruiting oriented business venture. The very nature of an Internet based enterprise prohibits sponsoring as a means to grow. This covers all affiliate based enterprises and cash flow commercial ventures that market or sell education or self improvement products or services.
Unfortunately, thousands of networkers bought into the Internet Delusion and Illusion. Certainly, millions of people around the world click on web pages daily. However, only a very small percentage are looking for income opportunities. The vast majority of Internet users are looking for information relative to their needs, wants and/or desires or their circumstances or situation. This does not include the millions that surf the web for recreation and to satisfy their curiosity.
When it comes to using the Internet as a tool to grow and develop an MLM business network, the best use of the Internet is to provide access to products and/or services and to educate and inform members of your downline, not to sponsor others. Not even the Internet can replace one-on-one personal contact which is the foundation of the multi-level marketing business model.
Because sponsoring requires so much more of the individual,such as knowledge, personal growth and skill acquisition, networkers by the thousands were eager to find a safer and less demanding method to grow networking organizations. The Internet became their "Silver Bullet" to slay the sales and marketing werewolves of rejection and the ongoing personal growth requirements that multi-level marketing demands.
Networking organizations could create and perpetuate the myth of no personal contact, no calls, no selling and a 365/24/7 sponsoring machine. This has not happened nor will it ever happen. As long as there are user based products and services that require consumption in order to earn income and a distributor organization must be built in order to maximize earnings, the traditional MLM model is the best way to accomplish these twin objectives and build this type of organizational structure.
Networking organizations could create and perpetuate the myth of no personal contact, no calls, no selling and a 365/24/7 sponsoring machine. This has not happened nor will it ever happen. As long as there are user based products and services that require consumption in order to earn income and a distributor organization must be built in order to maximize earnings, the traditional MLM model is the best way to accomplish these twin objectives and build this type of organizational structure.
This is a fact of business and sales and marketing that every would be networker or mlmer needs to understand. In 6,000 years of recorded history no lazy, cowardly, fainted hearted, timid, or fearful person has ever amassed great wealth or ever had any great accomplishment and utilizing the Internet as a networking tool will not alter this actuality.
To those men and women that understand sponsoring and the power of sponsoring to build networks and dramatically increase income, the traditional MLM business model is alive and well. Additional information can be found at: (Your Effective Sales, Sponsoring & Recruiting Market)
