More thoughts about network marketing.

Strangely making a comeback, certainly in the UK, are vinyl albums. Ten years ago the music gurus told us to ditch the turntables and buy CD players. Many of my friends did as they were told.

Then came the "second wave market". All those influential albums from the seventies and eighties now copied onto CD's. All because they were the "music of a generation" and a "must have" in your "new" CD library.

Now you can replace your old vinyls with shiny silver CDs. The carboot sales (garage sales in US) were full of vinyls for pennies. My albums went in the loft.

But one thing I did not do was ditch the turntable. Even when I replaced music equipment I always bought one's with a turntable. Why, I hear you all say.

Firstly, it is attachment. If I had sold my turntable at a carboot sale, the vinyls I had in the loft would be useless. Full of stuff that I had influenced me in my youth, but now unobtainable, unless.....

....I bought into the "second wave market" in retro-CDs. I may even have bought "new" defining albums of my time, even though I did not like them when I was more receptive to influence, in my teens (Evidently not true).

Secondly, my vinyl albums have an intrinsic value for me. They are tangible, I can probably recall exactly when I bought them, who I was with, how I felt at the time, and after one replaying, at which party the second track got scratched!

All this about vinyl albums has a point for networking. The symbolic relationship between the linear track and being captivated by the mindset to go forward.

With a CD you can jump around randomly from track to track. This deflates the chronology and required track order (particularly if a concept album) orignially intended by the artist. Try randomising the tracks on Pink Floyds "The Wall", it makes no sense at all.

Even worse is the MP3 player you can crop and mix tracks. Its great to be able to be unique, but neither for you or for anyone else is the specific mix ever repeatable, exactly.

Network marketing is a business of relationships. The relationship is the invitation. We care about our sponsor, not because they are ousing success, thats part of the invitation. We are also not too bothered about their business or product.

We want a system, but not just a system to marvel at. We want one we can copy or

REPLICATABLE

In must be linear, it must follow a logical progress. One stage needs to lead into the next smoothly. We need to get the chronology. We need to feel comfortable to extol the virtures of this "seminal album".

Our sponsor is like the great musician who recorded the album, and we learn the tracks so we can sing at whime, even with or without the soundtrack.

We trust the sponsor, because they have shown us a repeatable (re-singable) approach to building our business.

There is no clever technology or jargon in the system. We are not sold on fancy autoresponders or advertising matrices. These are tools. It is the confidence in our selves that we get from relying on an unforgettable sountrack to our life.

Indeed, many of the best albums produced in the seventies and eighties were recorded on basic equipment, with multi-track devises overlapping one instrument over the other. Re-mixing was time consuming, Fleetwood Mac took two years to produce their album "Tusk", with computers nowhere in sight.

There are flaws in the tracks, but that makes them special. These become the reference points to our pleasure, because we listen more intently for them.

 If you really think about it, we are all more influenced and guided by the lyrics of favourite songs and the pronouncements of our best bands than politicians and experts. Just look at the influence of Live Aid.

Strange though, that Bob Geldoff, knew no more about third world poverty than the rest of us before November 1984. He saw the light. He was inspired to act. His enthusiasm drew other musicians in. Their collective inertia took the public with them.

Music fans responded in their millions and bought the song. They did this even before the knew or understood the problem in Africa. Bob and his friends were showing leadership.

In network marketing we crave good leaders. It does not matter what their primary business is. It could be selling ice to eskimoes.

If we trust the sponsor and like their system because it is simple and repeatable, we will follow.

I have not been in network marketing very long. I am a quick learner though. As a consequence and infact an irony, of what I have been doing, I have found the successful people in network marketing do things in common (there are other things), but the one I want to cover here is "research".

You could call it reading, studying or investigating, but it amounts to the same thing; they are constantly looking. But what is it they are looking at/for?

Is it the next great product opportunity?

Is it technical jargon about how the product works?

Is it boasts about how fast the downline is growing?

Is it solvency of the backing company?

Is it how long the business has been going?

Is it the testimonials about how well the compensation plan works?

Is it product testimonials?

OR Is it the technical details of how the cannot fail auto- this and that works in promoting the opportunity.

You might say it is all of them. From what I have read, you would be wrong.

This is the irony, my research was to findout about the underbelly of how network marketing works, because I am so new to the sector.

In fact, for the list above, only one piece of research would interest the successful networker, and then only partly. That is the last one, after OR.

All the other issues are sales pitches for the company your sponsor and the product. They are inherently bias to the specific product.

The truly successful networker is looking for simple repeatable techniques to improve his/her ability to develop their downline.

Using the music industry theme, they are "samplers" they want to cherry pick the best and make the sum of the parts a whole lot better.

Things come round in circles, because they want to perfect their system to be repeatable and like the album, seminal, other opportunity flock to them because they like what they are hearing.

A soundtrack for their soul and a way of changing their life today for the future. And the soundtrack is not product qualties it is realising that this business is about building relationships, where trust is the binding force.

My "seminal album", that I was playing in the background, has finished and the needle is running on the buffer track. I must go and reset it.

If you want to know what album I was listening to on vinyl, from an original 1970's pressing, drop me an e-mail.

All the best

Mike Johns-turner

johns-turner@btconnect.com