When I was a young man I was told by an older and a much wiser man than I, "The only thing that is permanent in the world is change." That axiom certainly holds true for the field of Network Marketing. When the idea of Network Marketing was conceived it sounded like a great idea. Here was the opportunity for the "little guy" to build a large income and a business without all of the expense of a traditional business.
In the early days of Network Marketing (which used to be called Multi-level Marketing or MLM), the leading distributors filled their garages with product inventory. Their down lines would then come over and pick up their inventory which they had ordered through their leaders and they would deliver it to the week's customers. They usually collected for the orders when they delivered to their customers. This method continued through the 1960's, 1970's, and 1980's.
Recruiting meetings were held in homes, garages, basements, and sometimes rented meeting rooms. The distributors would do their best to bring their prospects to these meetings. Very few prospects were interested in attending. If they were left to their own devices, most of them would not show up for it. Often times the distributor would have to pick up the prospects and bring them to the meetings. At the meetings two or three of the leaders would speak to the audience explaining all the benefits of affiliating with their company.
After that everyone would break up into small groups and the leaders would attempt to "close" the prospects. Sometimes high pressure tactics were used to get the prospects to join. I attended one of these meetings. During the 1990's there were two major improvements in how recruiting and marketing the products were accomplished.
The conference call became a method of doing presentations to prospects and training enrolled distributors. Customers could call the company and order their products and the products were shipped directly to the customers. Things began to advance quickly starting around year 2000. The conference call was universally used as a prospecting and training device. With customers ordering directly from the company the distributors are now paid directly from the company and that saved the distributors a lot of time.
The largest event in the life of the Network Marketing industry is the use of the internet. Today all Network Marketing companies have a web site and most of the companies supply replicating web sites to their distributors. That gives the distributors the ability to build a list of prospects by having anyone who visits their site register and allows their customers to place orders from the replicating web site. E-mail became heavily used for prospecting.
It quickly became unreliable as spam became a problem and ISP's started filtering their customer's e-mails. Auto-responders became a major tool for e-mail management with most Network Marketing companies. They were used primarily for opt-in list management. Some individual Network Marketers have learned how to do Internet Marketing effectively. It takes a lot of study and trial and error to master the techniques of Internet Marketing.
However, those distributors that have mastered it have built large organizations. Today, there is a new revolution going on in the Network Marketing industry. It is called a "Funded Sponsoring Franchise." It is an old concept that has been used in stores for many years. However, it was adapted for Network Marketing by a young company in May, 2006. As of the date of this writing they have grown to 53,000 members (six months).
The name of this company is Pay-It-Forward-4-Profits (PIF4P). It is free to join this company and you will not be asked for money. However, you will be asked to participate in the free trainings where you will learn how to do Internet Marketing effectively. All of the training is geared for building a large Network Marketing organization and duplicating everything you learn with your down line.
You are taught how to prospect correctly on the internet and shown affiliate programs that can effectively support your prospecting efforts. You are taught how to use these tools and techniques to build your current primary program. Your Primary program is the program that is supposed to build you residual income for many years into the future. It also funds your retirement.
You will also be taught how to evaluate any program and determine if it is a satisfactory Primary program or not. If you choose to use the techniques that are mentioned here and follow through completely, your success is almost guaranteed.
Bill Briggs is an experienced and successful Network Marketer. Discovering Funded Proposal has made life even more fun and prosperous. Sign up for free information, tools, and outstanding training at http://www.billbriggsinc.com.
