If you've been a network marketer for any significant amount of time you'll likely hear the statement "Retailing is the lifeblood of your business." Why? The justification is . . . Retailing is supposedly easier than recruiting as it's only a one time sale requiring little commitment on the side of the potential customer and thus easily generates the day to day income network marketers use as they grow an organization. If you've ever been taught cold calling tactics you've learned that if nothing else get the retail sale from the prospect that couldn't be recruited. (As if it was that easy.) The truth is, retailing is vitally important to your business. You need day to day income to grow your organization over the long haul, but there's a problem. Look around the internet; do you see anyone retailing their company's products online? It's highly unlikely you'll find traditional retailing done online in a big way ever and I'll tell you why? First some important facts . . . *Less than 20% of all products sold by traditional network marketing companies occur outside of the distributor force *Retail profit margins in most cases amount to less than 20% *Consumers can likely find cheaper alternatives to your companies products *No long term incentives are placed on retailing What this creates is a situation where retailing is not only unappealing to most, but unprofitable due the fact that such slim profit margins don't allow for distributors to actually realize any real profits when all costs are tallied. Think about it, when was the last time that your company tied a huge incentive for you to retail their products? The reason is your company knows that its real money is in its distributor force, that's where it has a huge competitive advantage and so that is where the incentives are. As a network marketer you get paid for recruiting. That's how you make long term income and that's how your company makes it's money. Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with this, but it does create a dynamic in network marketing where your one and only focus is recruiting which is a big blunder and a cause for failure to many. As I said, you need day to day income to finance your business, but the truth is recruiting doesn't get you there. It's a leveraged situation. It takes time to build a sizeable income, but once it's there it ain't going no where as long as you protect it. That's what's great about network marketing! What most do though, is they think that if they just spend, spend, spend and call, call, call they'll hit a point in the first 90 or so days where there business is paying them for their recruiting efforts. It happens, but not often. What happens more often is people spend, spend, spend, then call, call, call and never make any money and then quit. It doesn't have to happen that way if you just spend, spend, spend, earn, earn, earn, earn, call, call, call. You see how that works? If you make your money back and more as you spend it you can take your time to find the right people to join your business, but to do this you have to know how to earn, earn, earn, earn. And online earning isn't retailing your company's product. There are several ways to make sure you earn money on the front end in your recruiting efforts online, but they're NOT what you'd traditionally think. What's better? Spending $500 a month and recruiting one person, or spending $500 a month, earning $1000 a month and recruiting one person? Do the math . . .
REtailing is a good way of making that extra csh flow but anyone should be really focusing on sponsoring new people all the time and building their teams. That is the most important thing to do. Tal
