One of these things just doesn’t belong.
He didn’t know it was hated. Just kind of “frowned upon”.
I had an encounter with a MLM guy several years. He kept telling me (and a buddy I was with at the time) that he wanted to talk to us about a unique business opportunity. I pushed back, and kept saying “it’s not XXXX, is it?” and he swore up and down that it was not. After about 20 minutes of this I finally said, yeah show me your portfolio, just to humor him. Low and behold he was shilling for XXXX company. The very one he swore he was NOT representing. I just shook my head, and told him to go away.
They are scams because they offer these “great opportunities” but in reality the vast majority of people invest too much in overpriced shampoo and fitness supplement in order to get to the first rank, and then find they can’t unload them.
Only a very few people actually make real money at it. The vast majority loses.
Looking at how my ex-wife’s MLM, they set these goals that in order to get any money from the “downline” you really have to be in a higher rank, with high sales quotes for a set period. For my ex’s MLM, the person had to have three months of $500 or $1,000 (forgot the details) per month in sales. It’s not so much that it’s impossible to do, but high enough that it’s a drain on finances.
Most people “invest” into the merchandise – spend their own money – and then can’t get rid of it. They try to pressure friends and family to buy unnecessary or unwanted items.
My ex-wife burned through countless friends and family trying to get them to succeed so she could keep her gold level. No one ever managed to make money. She did a bit, but the person who signed her made a ton of money from them.
Signing people up is all done on emotions rather than careful analysis. Hence the desire to connect in 20 seconds.
My career was in sales, but commercial sales with long-term customers that you didn’t lie to because you depended on repeated business and your reputation.
The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.
@Dr. Strangelove
I don’t believe you have to “fake” sincerity. Sincerity, humanitarism, etc, is natural to us, when we’re little kids. Racism, hating another person, etc, is learned behavior. Which makes me wonder, sir, who taught you that your natural human nature is “fake”?
@TokyoBayer
I’m sorry to hear your wife’s bad experience with Network marketing. I agree, many are pyramid schemes mainly because those companies sell “air”. They continue to sell “air” till eventually the bubble they’ve created gets so heavy, that the bubble bursts and everyone but the people at the VERY TOP continue floating through the skies, while everyone else smacks the ground hard.
I’ve almost fallen for a NM company called Herbalife and ITworks. Two health and wellness companies that are outdated, but continue to function, I think?, because “they’ve been around for 20+ years! So we have to be legit…right?!” kind of thing. The founder of herbalife is a very humble man, a friend of mine knows him personally, it’s just the people working with him is what made herbalife sink low.
Hell, their health products themselves, to me, are POISON to the body. Same with ITworks and their “fat reducing wraps”. *Ahem…NOPE!
You have to be a product of the product. If you don’t know shit about what you’re selling, can you share it to other people? No. No you can’t. Like sharing food with someone. If you never seen, heard or tasted it before, why in the hell would you share it with another person? Could be poisoinous berries for all we know!
You can take this however you want, but your wife was a amateur. If she did it properly, she probably wouldn’t have gotten ridiculued by her friends and family. But the question is, “how was she to know how to do it right?”. Leadership. If no one trains her, will she do well? Maybe if she’s a prodogy, but even for myself, I had to take 1 WHOLE MONTH to get ready to finally approach people I knew and loved. If I can do it, you and your wife SURE AS HELL CAN!
I am a network marketing professional. Your wife WAS a network marketing amateur. If she was under MY leadership or my upline’s, she probably be making what she always wanted to make in residual income and be living the life she wants to live, instead of whatever she’s doing now. Just some tough love there. 
I agree, you definitely SHOULD NOT LIE to clients OR customers. Doesn’t matter if you’re in it for the long-term or short-term. Customers and clients are customers and clients. They can always give you referrals if you gave them good product/service/business. Network marketing is a legitamate business. It’s NO DIFFERENT than your commercial sales job, selling tech at BestBuy or wherever! It doesn’t matter! People LOVE to buy but DO NOT want to feel sold, right?
I won’t say anymore than that. It’s up to you think with your mind and not your emotions and ego. If you’re interested in learning more, PM me. I’ll get back to you in the next few days for sure. I am running a business after all!
And still you’re asking in this very thread for tips to lure people into the appearance of a social interaction, only to try to sell them your shit after they’ve been hooked. This for me is a particularly perfidious kind of lying, but unfortunately many people fall for such stunts, though I never understood how this ploy works again and again with some people. I’d run far away and you’d never make business with me this way.
Read* Lord of the Flies*. Then get back to us with what you understand about human nature.
You’ve posted multiple times in this thread now and you still haven’t explained what network you’re marketing, and you’ve had far more than 20 seconds worth of people’s attention.
Ahem I believe I can summarize this quickly…
This one singular line is in total contradiction with your Original Post.
So, you were either lying to us in the OP, or you were lying to us in the post quoted above. And you have several other contradictory statements throughout this thread.
Add it up, it comes to one result: Slimy salesman.
I shall have none of you.
Good day, sir.
Somewhat admirable, but you were responding to a joke. Worse, you missed the most important point–sincerity is impossible to fake by definition. You can only fake the appearance of sincerity; faking sincerity itself is a contradiction.
Your other posts don’t indicate that you can reliably tell the difference between appearances vs. genuine feelings, or that you can even distinguish between the two. My joke above relies on this ambiguity and you fell for it.
A common practice with MLMs (as well as cults, self help gurus, politicians, pickup artists, and shitty cult-like companies in general) is to cast blame and disparagement on anyone who doesn’t “succeed” in the system. “Your wife was an amateur.” “You didn’t sell hard enough.” “You didn’t put in enough effort.” Etc. Etc. It’s never “Out product sucks.” “Our business model can be more accurately described as a ‘racket’.” “Our management team has no vision or leadership.” “Our ‘experts’ have little to no real experience or credentials.”
Seriously bro. At the start of this thread, you were asking how to convert a 20 second conversation into a follow-up call. Now you’re suddenly a “sales expert” who is qualified to advise @TokyoBayer’s wife? One WHOLE month of training?! Wow!
I recognized your joke!
Seriously, so many salespeople I meet come across as vapid, smiling automatons. Like they’ve been programmed to run a script in order to get a certain response leading to a sale.
All that sleazy crowd had stories just like this. “It was so hard. But I did it. You can, too.” Hell, my cousin was giving that same line back in the 70s with Amway.
Not everyone can throw touchdowns. Not everyone can learn to dance and sure as hell not everyone can sell. Not even with 1 WHOLE MONTH’s practice.
This is the lie that MLMs tell: that ANYONE can be a WINNER if they follow that particular system. It’s absurd but endlessly repeated by the naive who get cleaned out and the vultures who prey on them.
Pfffft. My wife’s upline were among the first people in Japan for NuSkin and made more money in a week than you make all year. Those were professionals. Charming psychopaths of course, but rich.
You really think they didn’t say the exact same things 25 years ago?
I donno. I think this summarizes it better.
Which of course contradicts this. . .
Well put.
The thing is… it probably works to some extent. Salespeople, at least among the more cult-like end of the spectrum, have to engage in that blustery enthusiasm. The best really do start to believe it themselves, and maybe they do eventually achieve genuine sincerity. Of course it looks ridiculous when it fails, and it usually does, but not everyone has such finely-tuned bullshit detectors.
In the case of MLM schemes like Amway, there’s also the fact that is harder to break the news to a friend or family member that they’ve fallen for bullshit. They’ve tried so hard to build up their enthusiasm and you don’t want to crush them. So maybe you buy a few items since maybe it’s not complete garbage, and you’ve helped sustain the business.
MLM folk are all the same. They will use ANY venue, (even a freakin’ messageboard devoted to fighting ignorance) to spout their crap and suck in the unwary.
The OP’s OP was just a ruse to sniff out fresh meat, in the guise of ‘just asking questions’ fer’ gawdsakes.
That’s part of what they prey on. That people are too nice or polite to tell them to fuck off. So they try to get you to make an emotional investment and then slowly ratchet up the sale until they suck you in and you’re too invested to back out.
I’m largely immune to salescraft (or at least mostly aware of it) because I’ve spent most of my career in sales-driven professional services organizations. Also because I’m not afraid to be a rude, cynical prick. But my type of sales is more based on building long term relationships that actually address a client’s needs. We’re not selling snake oil and wampum beads that no one needs.