I could never SELL anything !!!

I have a retail customer who is very satisfied with the products I provide to her. Month after month she continues to buy and use them. In addition, she is very unhappy with her current job and is looking at starting a home-based business. So, it would seem like a perfect situation to present the opportunity to her, right?

Wrong.

Every time I bring up the subject, she becomes completely unreasonable and refuses to even listen to me. Recently, I invited her to a meeting where a distributor who makes $250,000 a year would be speaking. Her answer: "I'll buy it. I'll use it. But I won't sell it. That's just not me. I could never SELL anything. And I don't want to discuss it any more!"

And yet, this same woman wants to spend 15 to 20 thousand dollars to get set up in a desktop publishing business. How she expects to be successful in that business without selling anything, I do not know.

In order to make money in any business, you must sell something, either a product or service. There is simply no other way. Even employees with traditional 9 to 5 jobs must sell something -- themselves -- in order to get the job in the first place.

I think network marketing suffers an image problem because of that word "marketing" and the focus on marketing.

People who are considering going into business will go to great lengths to avoid thinking about having to "sell." People who detest the thought of "selling" will pay $50,000 for a print shop franchise so that they can be in the "printing business" instead of paying less than $50 to get started in a network marketing "selling business." But the truth is, they'll have to do just as much, if not more, selling in the printing business than they would in any network marketing business. Customers are not going to just walk in off the street that often. A print shop owner will have to spend time selling and spend money advertising in order to make any money with the printing business. And then once he gets business, the print shop owner is also going to have to do the work, or pay someone to do it.

No matter what business you are in, you must sell a product or service to make money. The traditional business owner makes money only from his own personal sales efforts or the efforts of his employees. Contrast that to the network marketer, who benefits not only from her own personal sales, but the sales of all those in her downline. Now when you look at it that way, you see that in network marketing (supposedly a "sales" business), there is less "selling" necessary than in a traditional business. Secondly, the traditional businessperson must not only sell, but must also produce the product or service. In network marketing, the company, not the distributor, handles that aspect of the business.

So, in network marketing, yes, you do have to sell a product or service. But you can also recruit other people to do a lot of your selling for you. In any other kind of business, you also have to sell (without the luxury of a large sales force) AND you have to advertise, rent commercial space, pay employees, and produce a product or service.

Furthermore, in network marketing, even though you must sell a product or service, you do not need to be a "salesperson." In normal sales, you're trying to get somebody to buy something. In network marketing, if you have the right company and the right product, the product and the opportunity usually sell themselves. All you have to do is talk honestly about it. In fact, in network marketing, traditional sales experience can often get in the way of success.

Another objection I often come across goes something like this: "But I don't KNOW anybody."

Well, of course that's usually not true. Most people do know some people. But the general perception is that in order to be successful in network marketing, someone has to be a real "party animal" with hundreds and hundreds of friends. Well, the truth is, very few people have such enormous social circles.

Network marketing is just like any other business in this respect. Namely, it's great if you know a lot of people but there are lots of other ways to generate leads. Does the person buying a yogurt shop franchise take into consideration how many people he knows? No, probably not, because he realizes that there are proven methods of generating customers from the general public.

There's nothing different about network marketing. Most network marketing companies teach their distributors many different ways to generate leads. Contrary to popular belief, this is not a business where you have to beg your friends and relatives to buy from you. Now it does happen that most people, if they truly believe in the product and the opportunity, will naturally want to talk about it with their closest acquaintances. But there is no reason why the person who doesn't know "anyone" can't be just as successful as the president of the chamber of commerce.

In fact, in network marketing, you really don't have to generate nearly as many leads as you would in a traditional business. Let's say, for example, you opened a vitamin store in the mall. In order for your business to be successful, you would need to generate hundreds to thousands of leads every month -- getting people into your store to buy your products. You would probably do this by newspaper, radio and television ads, a yellow pages listing, direct mail, coupons, and other means.

Now let's compare this to becoming a distributor for a network marketing vitamin manufacturer. Let's say you just generated 10 leads per week (just 2 per weekday), and of those 10 you sold products to 5. At the end of the first month you would have 25 customers. Now let's say that 5 of them became distributors and began to duplicate your efforts the next month. At the end of the next month you'd have your 25 original customers, plus another 25 that you found, plus 125 from your new distributors. As the process continued to grow, you could soon have thousands of customers in your downline, by personally generating only 10 leads per week.

Meanwhile, back at the vitamin store in the mall, you'd be struggling month after month to generate thousands of leads. And you'd also have to worry about paying the rent, making sure your minimum-wage employees show up for work and don't steal from you, complying with all the city, state, and federal regulations for your business, and a whole host of other concerns.

Network marketing looks pretty darn good when you compare it to traditional business. And such a comparison is an excellent way to bust down the stereotypes that people have about the business.