What Dan Kennedy taught me about a MLM….No Business is Different!

Multi-Level Marketing companies like YTB Travel, World Ventures Travel, AMWAY, Avon, BareFoot Parties, Pre-paid Legal are a “real business” and what can you learn from them?

I will start out by saying that when I say I own a telephone company people would say oh, like Excel- the Giant MLM? And I would get kinda angry and say NO , I put 100 thousand dollars worth of surety bonds with the Public Utility Commission. I am not just a MLM.

But Dan, taught ma a little nugget of info about his early days at AMWAY, that changed my business and changed my mind about MLMs altogether…

My father was a top distributor for Jafra and several of my relatives sell Avon so the concept was not foreign to me BUT, I just wanted people to know that I originally invested more than $147.

But what I also learned from Dan about MLMs is that we are crazy not to use their training opportunity meetings, reward system in our regular business daily and other ways to recruiting and keeping a member. This proving the point once again that no business is different.

First the one big breakthrough I learned was when Dan described his early years at AMWAY and the spin off vitamin business.

1, 3,7,13,24,40,62,90

What in the world are these numbers?

They represent follow up steps. AMWAY did tons of research and concluded that if the salesman followed up with their buyer on the days above, they would keep the customer 82% more of the time.

1. They would stop by to see the customer on day 3 and leave a plastic container with days written on it to make sure that they were taking their vitamins

2. In a week, they would check back with another vitamin related gift.

3. this went on until the 90 days were complete and by that time the buyer was feeling better from the continuous vitamins and saw how easy it was Voila – they were ready to reorder their next set.

So after I heard Dan tell this story, I changed my welcome letter and follow up sequence to my customer. Dan reminds us that the marketing should increase AFTER the sale not before. So I changed how I contacted my customers.

Instead of just one welcome letter with the customer’s account number and telephone number, I created a sequence up to the date that they were historically leaving my service But the magic happened when I put a customer contact sequence or i.e. phone call, postcard, email, and letters at the same intervals that AMWAY told Dan to contact his customers and my retention rate increased from 3 months of service to 11.5 months.

Let me give you the real numbers – at 3 months my customer value was $185.50 and at 11.5 months my customer value was $800.00 Do you see the difference? It increased 400%

What to takeaway from this information?

1. No business is different – what works in other industries, companies will work in yours

2. Think about how you can use traditional MLM techniques like to recruit to find an extended sales force on straight commission

3. Use the “party” concept like Barefoot Parties or Mary Kay free facial concept. For example, get your other business owner friends to invite their clients to a party – paid by you, then, it allows you to give a short pitch. He gets a free way to tell his clients that he cares, and you get access to his clients…WIN WIN situation Of course there are hundreds of different MLM techniques that you can adapt into your business. You just need to pay attention and by all means, realize that no business is different.